At this period, I believe, mortification had taken place, and the cessation of bodily pain left the mind freer. Her words were few, and consisted chiefly of broken prayers and ejaculations for pardoning mercy, which, while they moved our feelings, excited us to hope for the returning sinner; for Jesus is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and the cry that was heard on the stormy waters of Galilee is still heard around the throne which the praises of cherubim and seraphim incessantly encircle. The exact words of these expressions I have forgotten; and in bringing forward the case of this woman as a remarkable testimony to the power of the Divine work, I am careful not to put into the lips of the departed a single expression which, as well as I remember, might not have fallen from them.

The day was wearing away, and the shades of death were rapidly drawing over the countenance we watched. Alternately we had been beside her bed, and now I was there alone: anxiously had I prayed that time and space for repentance might be granted to the sufferer. Death was very rapidly advancing, but I did not know how rapidly. The shades of the evening were drawing on, and no priest had yet appeared; the poor woman lay composed and quiet; she had never expressed any wish to see him since the time I watched; and after that time I had spoken to her more freely of the danger and folly of depending on man instead of God, and urged her to look from the broken cisterns of human help to that fountain of living waters set before her in Christ Jesus. She made no opposition; she listened to and appeared to believe what was said, but now she had sunk into a state of languor, and seemed scarcely able to speak. She had lain some minutes in this state, when I was suddenly informed that the priest was come. I was alone in the chamber of death, for the person who brought the tidings instantly withdrew. I shall not forget my feelings at that moment; the sound of the priest's heavy footsteps was already on the stairs; I bent over the dying woman : "A-," I said, "the priest has come; now will you trust to anything that man can do for you, or will you trust to your Saviour only?"

She opened her dimmed eyes, raised up, far above her head, the arms from which, in a few hours' space, the flesh had shrunk, and, exerting her voice, cried out aloud, and with energy, "To none but my blessed Saviour! to none but my blessed Saviour!" The wasted arms dropped down, the eyes and the lips closed, and never opened again. The priest

heard no confession, pronounced no absolution; these were the last words she uttered, and these, as being the most satisfactory, dwelt the most strongly on my memory.

We believed her spirit passed away as the priest's foot was on the threshold; but the exact moment could not be told. He thought her dead when he went in, but he asked for lights, and anointed her body, and went through the ceremony of extreme unction over the senseless form; and after a visit that seemed to disgust him much, of about two or three minutes, he took his departure, and all was over.

ON FEMALE DRESS.

S. B.

WOMEN who profess godliness, and who have the care of young persons of their own sex, are, perhaps, in no point more blamable than in the example which some of them set, and the liberty which, perhaps, a greater number allow, of undue conformity to the world in the article of dress. Few ministers touch upon this subject in their public discourses: and, indeed, it is not very easy to treat it with propriety from the pulpit. Yet whatever is unsuitable to the Christian profession, an inlet to temptation, and productive of evil consequences, should, in some way or other, be noticed by those who have the honour of the gospel and the welfare of their fellow creatures at heart. I make no further apology for offering a few hints, which I hope will not give offence, and which I pray, so far as they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, and confirmed by experience and observation, may be attended to.

I doubt not but many parents, who desire to see their children brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, give them many excellent lessons in the nursery. They endeavour to impress their tender minds with a sense of their sinful state by nature, of the evil of pride, and of the vanity of the world. But, when their children begin to appear in public view, for want of due reflection, or resolution, or both, they either encourage, or at least permit, them to form habits which have a direct tendency to counteract all the benefits which might otherwise be hoped for from the instruction of their early years.

I am certainly no connoisseur in the article of dress; but I know how I am affected by what I see, and I can hear what other people say. The simplex munditiis of Horace, which may be translated an unaffected neatness, according to

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different situations in life, seems a tolerable definition of a becoming dress. But Christian women should aim to comply with the apostle's advice to adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety. When he adds, not with gold, or pearls, or costly array," I do not think it necessary to take this restriction so rigidly as to affirm that such ornaments are universally, and without exception, unlawful: I think this is one of the many expressions in Scripture which are to be understood in a comparative sense. Thus, when our Lord declares, "That unless a man hate parents, wife, children, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple," we are sure he does not contradict, what by his authority is expressly enjoined in many other passages, that we should pay a due regard to our relations, and take a proper care of ourselves. He only teaches us, that whenever our dearest temporal concernments stand in competition with what we owe to him, they must be given up and renounced.

The providence of God has made an evident distinction of rank and subordination in civil life. There is a long gradation from the highest state of those whom we call the rich, to the lowest state of the honest and industrious poor. It is to be hoped that some of his own dear people may be found, in all these different conditions. And I see no impropriety in paying some regard to them in dress. At present, however, through the dissipation and extravagance of the times, the proper distinction is almost wholly lost, and it is often not easy to distinguish (except, perhaps, in the article of jewels) between a countess and a milliner. If clothes are considered merely as a covering for the body, and a defence from the cold, it will be difficult to draw the line, and to determine exactly between what is necessary and what is superfluous. I think some women may as lawfully wear satins and pearls, as others may wear stuffs and glass beads; and it is more for the honour of the gospel that a woman professing godliness should be distinguished from others by modesty, sobriety, and good works, than by the shape of her cap or the colour of her garment.

Yet even to ladies of the greatest affluence, who love and fear the Lord, I will venture to suggest a word of caution. Το you I say nothing of the expense; you can, as the phrase is, very well afford it. And, if in other respects you are generous and bountiful, ready to distribute, and willing to communicate, the cost of what you choose to wear is of no great consideration. But a nice attention to dress will cost

you much of what is more valuable than money, your precious time. It will too much occupy your thoughts, and that at the seasons when you would wish to have them otherwise engaged. And it certainly administers fuel to that latent fire of pride and vanity which is inseparable from our fallen nature, and is easily blown up into a blaze. I hope you will not be among the first of those who are eager to catch at, and give sanction to, every new mode; nor is it necessary, if the mode be decent and general, that you should be the very last to adopt it. But something there should be in your exterior to indicate that, though you do not affect a needless and scornful singularity, (which is often the source of censoriousness and envy,) yet your heart is not set upon those little things. If a woman, when going to public worship, looks in the glass, and contemplates with a secret self-complacence the figure which it reflects to her view, I am afraid she is not in the frame of spirit most suitable for one who is about to cry for mercy as a miserable sinner.

There are likewise women who, we hope, are pious, and, therefore, of course, benevolent; but an attachment to dress, and a desire to approach, as near as they can, to the standard of those who are their superiors in fortune, blunt their compassionate feelings, and deprive them of the usefulness, comfort, and honour they might otherwise attain. The expense of their dress is so great, compared with the smallness of their income, that when they have decorated themselves to their mind they have little or nothing to spare for the relief of the poor. I doubt not but they take it for granted that, upon the supposition that our Lord and Saviour was again upon earth in a state of poverty and humiliation, as when he walked in the streets of Jerusalem, and they knew that he wanted a garment, when they were about to spend their spare money in some useless piece of finery, they would gladly forego their purpose for the honour of assisting him. But the heart is deceitful. If we live in the neglect of present duty, we have no right to suppose we should act better in different circumstances. He has said, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me." And if we are inattentive to the wants of those whom he appoints to be his representatives, we cannot be sure that we should be properly attentive to himself, if he were with us in person, and in a low, obscure condition.

But I am not so much hurt by observing the materials as by the manner of female dress; by what we call the fashion,

and the eagerness with which every changing fashion, however improper, is adopted by persons whose religious profession might lead us to hope they had no leisure to attend to such trifles. If some allowance is to be made for youth on this head, it is painful to see mothers, and possibly sometimes grandmothers, who seem, by the gaudiness and levity of their attire, very unwilling to be sensible that they are growing older. It may be a sufficient censure of some fashions to say they are ridiculous. Their chief effect is to disfigure the female form; and, perhaps, the inventors of them had no worse design than to make a trial how far they could lead the passive unthinking many in the path of absurdity. Some fashions, which seem to have been at first designed to hide a personal deformity, have obtained a general prevalence with those who had no such deformity to hide. We are informed that Alexander had a wry neck, and, therefore, his courtiers carried their heads on one side, that they might appear to be in the king's fashion. We smile at this servility in people who lived in Macedonia twenty centuries before we were born; yet it is little less general among ourselves in the present day.

But the worst of all the fashions are those which are evidently calculated to allure the eyes, and to draw the attention of our sex. Is it not strange that modest and even pious women should ever be seduced into a compliance with these? Yet I have sometimes been in company with ladies of whose modesty I have no doubt, and of whose piety I entertain a good hope, when I have been embarrassed and at a loss which way to look. They are, indeed, noticed by the men, but not to their honour or advantage. The manner of their dress gives encouragement to vile and insidious men, and exposes them to dangerous temptations. This inconsiderate levity has often proved the first step into the road that leads to misery and ruin. They are pleased with the flattery of the worthless, and go on without thought, "as a bird hastens to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for its life." But honest and sensible men regard their exterior as a warning signal* not to choose a companion for life from among persons of this light and volatile turn of mind.

How far does the richest dress which studious vanity can procure from the spoils of birds, beasts, and insects, fall short of the delicate texture and elegance and the beautiful tints which we admire in a flower or butterfly! "Even Solomon,

* Insufficient covering is "a sign," if not

66 a sin."