band, a sorrowing father, with the same comfort wherewith you are now comforted of God. Their sorrows before, you could only imagine, and I believe you will now admit, that imagination is a bad painter, because it has never come up to the reality. You can now speak from reality, your heart will feel truly, and your words will be like apples of gold in pictures of silver. If your severe affliction leads you to live near the throne, and to feel for, and comfort others, it will prove to be done in infinite goodness, even to you. I know full well the difficulty of bringing the mind to complete resignation, but constant endeavor with the divine blessing will do much. It is my earnest prayer that the blessings of heaven may rest on you and your dear little boys, that your wounded heart may find in the dear Redeemer's love, a solace for all its cares. My soul ardently desires an interview with you, but I know not as such an opportunity will soon present. Farewell.

E. D. HUBBEL.

"HALFMOON, March 1, 1834. My dear afflicted Brother, I mingle with you the sympathetic tear, and you are present in remembrance when I approach the Friend who doeth all things well. But though friends may and do feel for you; by this severe trial you are placed where their condolence is not all that you need. I too well know the strength of those bands, which unite two kindred souls to trifle with your tears or imagine that worlds can be of any avail. The throne of grace is your only source of sure relief, and there the child of God may leave all his care, and in exchange, divine consolation will heal the deepest wound. O here repair, for one smile of Him who sits on the mercy.seat will ease a heart

though pained like yours. She who used to mingle her petitions with yours, has only gone within the veil, and the glory that now bursts upon her beatific vision, shuts her from you. But though in solitude compelled to roam, that religion that made her triumphant in death, is yours to console. Yes, brother, the promises of the gospel are yours, to support and prepare you for greater usefulness in your Master's cause. We have cords which bind us to the earth, and you have indeed had a very tender one severed. There is not

a fibre of the heart but must feel the stroke. A shade is undoubtedly cast over earth's brightest pleasures. In this afflictive dispensation you have a specimen of earthly enjoyinent. There is nothing here deserving the affections of an immortal mind. * * * * * "Lean not on earth, 'twill pierce thee to the heart.” There is nothing here that can be firmly grasped, for all things are fleeting and vain. Not so with the christian's inheritance. That is eternal in the heavens, and fadeth not away. O my brother, in order to enhance your pleasure, would you even wish the dear departed back? I know your love was of a nobler kind. The event which deprives you of so lovely a friend, has given her possession of that glorious mansion prepared by her Lord, and a blessed freedom not only from all her groans, and griefs, and fears, but from sin, her worst enemy. With open face she beholds the glory of her Lord, and is changed to the same image, from glory to glory. Afflictions, how light when put in competition with such a weight of glory! It is our unsanctified natures which prevent our seeing the necessity of dispensations so dark and mysterious. Blind mortals cannot scan the ways of Providence. I have often asked why a sister Malcom, and a sister Mallery were removed from the sphere of their use

fulness, while I, who am a cumberer of the ground, am spared. I want to see you,

* * * * * *

and those dear little boys. May a mother's dying prayers be answered, and may you be enabled to be faithful to the important trust, is the prayer of

L. B. H.

CHARLESTOWN, May 20, 1834.

My dear Brother,—It has been my intention to follow the letter I sent to you, shortly after the decease of your much lamented companion, my respected friend, by another communication more particularly expressive of the feelings of my heart, occasioned by that event. To me, it remains a solemn, and deeply interesting event, and to you, my brother, it is indescribably so. The several years of our acquaintance have tended to deepen and strengthen the genuine af. fection and high respect that I at first felt towards you; and never have I visited your dwelling, or met with Mrs. Mallery at other places, when my opinion of her many excellences was not increased. In her, you have lost a prudent, and conciliating counsellor, and your children, a kind and discreet mother. But the loss is not confined to your own family. The large circle of her personal friends has been deprived of a member, who ever contributed to the cheerfulness, wisdom, and piety of its social and religious relations. God grant that we may be followers of her, as far as she was an imitator of Christ.

If the loss of many children, and the oft-gathered shadows of a death-bed scene, without the decease of our dearest friend, qualified one to enter into your feelings, I might claim the privilege. This, I do not, however, think sufficient. As an afflicted correspondent, like yourself, lately wrote me, so I believe. "But

my brother, no one who has not passed through the trial, can tell how bitter it is. You have seen the fur. nace heated; you have felt how warm it was as you drew nigh to it, but this is nothing, to passing through it. May the Lord sanctify to you this passage, that you may, like the fire proof men in ancient times, remain unburned. The endurance of such a trial, my brother, is but a small part of that to which we are called. It is a most costly means of grace," saith the same friend, "but only a means, and liable to be a curse as well as a blessing, like any other means, unless the Holy Spirit be shed abroad upon us abundantly. I entreat that I may not be permitted, when one comfort is removed, to fly to another, but to rest my whole heart, bruised and broken though it is, upon Him who is alone the comforter of the cast down. I feel, my dear brother, that in a world where death reigns, the only suitable state of mind we can have, is that of the apostle, having a desire to depart, and be with Christ, which is far better.' For this I wish to labor and pray, and God grant that I may never cease laboring and praying for it, until I, through grace, attain to it." I copy these brief extracts not only because they express the state of mind that I want you to possess, but also in the hope they may be considered valuable by you.

To be made better by affliction, is affliction's great end. Our great duty is to tread in the pious steps of departed saints. This duty the providence itself enjoins, and this privilege God permits us to enjoy. And to me, it is a blessed privilege. I love to contemplate the pious dead, and to dwell on their works that follow them. They have, indeed, as the devoted Dickson remarked concerning himself, "left their good deeds and their bad deeds, and fled from them both to

to Christ, and in him found peace;" but still, there is comfort to be taken in meditating upon whatever porCtion of the image of the heavenly they bore, and there is comfort to be derived from their departure, in reference to our own. In them we see that God is true and kind. It is evident He did not wish for them to become perfect before He gave them his paternal hand, or conferred upon them his grace. No! "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust." And God will be equally good to us, if we, like our departed friends, exercise towards him a filial confidence. He will also be with us in the dark valley. And though the shadows of departing day may then thicken around till the night of death encompass our spirits, still the darkness will soon flee away, and the brightening twilight of heaven will usher upon us the glorious, and unclouded, and never to be obscured splendor of that eternal city, where "the Lord God giveth light." There the sun of righteous. ness is forever ascending; and never to us will he pass his meridian glory. What a suggestion! what a pros. pect! O, 'tis indeed encouraging, when we see our companions in toil, when they cease to look on us, meet with such grace and receive such a reception. Amid so many deaths like that of Mrs. M., that have transpired around me within a few years past, I sometimes feel that I will never spend time to distrust or perplex my mind, by suspicions concerning my own final hour. Depend upon it, my dear brother, we shall not feel about death as we have often thought we might, when we come to feel his touch. If our life be devoted, as it ought to be, dying will be going home. "The streams of that Jordan which is between us and the Canaan, may run furiously, but" as said Bishop Cowper,