"How do I know I have not the Holy Spirit ?" She threw herself on her knees, and remained long in prayer; but before she arose, the sweet, fuli, settled conviction had possessed her mind that her petition had been heard and nswered. I soon found myself again at M's bedside. Still there was the same sad answer, the same bitter tears, the same silent anguish. It seemed almost as if she could not die for the unrest of her spirit; and with regard to her mortal frame, it was reduced to the last stage of utter weakness, while her once rounded features had assumed a ghastly On the occasion to which I am referring, I appearance. expressed an earnest hope that "at evening time it might yet be light," and my petitions for her were closed with these words of that beautiful hymn "When she treads the verge of Jordan, Bid her anxious fears subside; I saw her feet were nearing the dark river, and I remembered the words, ""Tis only they whose souls are burden'd With unforgiven sin, Need shrink upon that river brink, And fear to plunge therein." How heavily lay that burden on her soul, few, I believe, had any idea. But I must hasten to the close of my narrative. Finding herself fast sinking, she gave to her intended husband her bible; he wept so violently on receiving this, her parting gift, that in her own words," He cried enough to break his own heart, and mine too." She had evidently renounced all idea of living, and she disposed of all her little trinkets. A few weeks before this she had said to her mother, "There is my pink silk bonnet; I should like it wrapped carefully up, and put away; you know I may want it again." Such hopes had all fled, and she knew the time was come when she must die. It was only four days before her departure that I saw her for the last time. I bent over her, and whispered, "Is it peace ? " "Yes," she answered, in a calm, slow, decided manner. We both wept, and at length she added something in such a feeble tone I could scarcely catch the words; but I thought they were, "I hope I am right in wishing to know that I am forgiven." I kissed her cold brow, and bade her farewell for ever in this world. She had said to her mother about a week before, "I do not think I should feel as I do if I were not forgiven." On the dear relative to whom I have before alluded visiting her, she remarked, "I think I am safe, but I do not enjoy religion." No: she had lived without it: and though hers was not a hopeless death-bed, it was not a happy one. On the day on which she died, her mother was lifting her now almost lifeless form, when she gently laid her head on her mother's bosom, and faintly said, "Just as I am." How those words echoed in her mother's memory! At the beginning of her illness, Mary had learned that beautiful hymn by heart, but it seemed only at the very last that she was able to appropriate it. She was dying for many hours, apparently conscious, but unable to speak. Her mother and her kind-hearted landlady alone were with her; and just before the day-dawn on a cold spring morning her spirit fled. There was "hope in her end;" but it will be our own faults if we have not a brighter closing to our earthly day. I do not know if I am correct, but it has often struck me that there is much connexion between a life of uniform devotedness to God-following the Lord fully-and a happy death-bed. Let us take for example the apostles Peter and John: Peter denied his Lord, and the very death he so much dreaded, and from fear of which he denied Him, was the very death he died, and that too at an age when he was far less able to bear suffering than he was when his Master was crucified. We know, too, that from deep humility and unfeigned shame at the remembrance of his sin, he thought himself unworthy to suffer even in the same posture as his Lord, and thus by his own earnest request were his sufferings aggravated tenfold. I would not for a moment be supposed to wish to detract from the character of Peter. I know how much the church of the living God is indebted to him, who was, indeed, "the rock upon which it was to be built." I know, too, how many have been built up in their most holy faith by the reading of his blessed epistles; and I know that many of the ambassadors of the Most High have been incited to greater zeal, and more devoted earnestness, while studying the character of the lion-hearted Peter; but it is with something like regret that I think of his closing scene, and turn for comfort to that of the loving John-he who, although for a moment overcome by human weakness, yet was enabled, by a strength not his own, to follow Jesus into the palace of the high-priest, and through that livelong night to stand boldly by him: no fear seemed to lurk within him, for we are told, "He went out and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter." He quailed not at the darkness that overspread the land; and when the last scene was passing on Calvary's hill, John stood by the cross, and received his Master's only earthly legacy, the care of his mother. Turn we to his latter end. The aged disciple carried in a litter to the upper chamber where prayer was wont to be made, infecting with his own loving spirit that little assembly, while the words, "Little children, love one another," were all his aged lips could utter; and finally, his peaceful death in his own quiet chamber, so different from the violent and bloody death of all the other disciples, seem quite in keeping with his gentle and holy life, and consistent with our ideas of him who lived in such close fellowship with his Lord, as to lean on his bosom, and whose honoured name has come down to us as, "The disciple whom Jesus loved.” Why," it may be asked, "has this little narrative been written at all? There are no interesting conversations, no dying expressions of holy joy, in fact, nothing particular; it is but a specimen of the death-bed of multitudes." 66 That is quite true; there is, alas! nothing particular in being unprepared for death. But what in most cases would have been said of such an individual? "Oh! she was a very amiable, nice girl; she had always been so; she did not, certainly, seem very serious till her last illness; but we are not her judges, we must hope for the best." It was in this case Mary's perfect candour and simple truthfulness of character, and her mother's earnest anxiety, that brought the truth to light, and laid bare the secret anguish of her heart. Oh! it was anguish; silent, uncomplaining suffering of body, enhanced tenfold by that worm preying on her vitals, "the sense of unforgiven sin." Would you, dear young people, avoid the mental conflict, the inward struggle, the bitter weeping which I have described? then seek in God's strength that you may devote the morning of your days, the spring-time of your life to Him! yea, that you thay give not the refuse, but the firstfruits to the Lord. UROPE, so rich in mines, and so abundantly furnished with most of the more useful metals, yields a very small quantity of silver. Among the metallic products of our own country, it occupies a very subordinate place; and it is now nearly one hundred years since it has been found in sufficient quantity to render the working of it remunerative. The most profitable vein ever discovered in modern times, under British hills, was wrought at Alva, in Stirlingshire, and was very profitable for a time, though soon exhausted. In Cornwall, Devonshire, and Derbyshire, it is often found accompanying the richer sulphurets of lead: it rarely amounts to as much as 100 ounces per ton of lead; in some districts to not more than an average proportion of twelve ounces per ton; yet such is its value that it is found profitable to separate it by subjecting the ore to a very high temperature, even when it exists only to the extent of eight ounces per ton: that is to say, it is worth while to consume one ton of coals and melt two tons of sulphuret of lead, in order to extract as much silver as will make a teapot. The small quantity of silver thus extracted by British ingenuity, and that produced by the miners of Kongsberg in Norway, and of Hemmel's-fürst in Saxony, comprises nearly all that is at present yielded by the continent of Europe. Unlike gold, silver is not found at or near the surface of the land, or in alluvial soils, but imbedded in rocks, often in a perfectly pure state, running in branch-like veins or in tangled masses of fine threads; occasionally it is dug up in large insulated lumps. one of these taken from the mines of Hemmel's-fürst, weighs 150 pounds; another obtained at Kongsberg weighs upwards of 560 pounds, it is preserved in the royal museum at Copenhagen, and supposing it to be pure throughout its mass, is worth about £2,240 of English money. We have next to mention the Russo-Asiatic mining districts as producing silver, namely, the Ural moun tains, which divide Europe from Asia, but whose principal sources of riches are on the eastern side of that chain, and the Altai chain on the southern frontier of Siberia. Ekaterinburg may be called the mining capital of the Ural chain. It is situated on the margin of the lake Iset, and is almost entirely inhabited by Russian lapidaries, and Russian miners and merchants, the natives having no aptitude for the pursuit of mineral treasure, and little appreciation for the their country. They are a simple race, products of and betrayed no unwillingness to allow the first Russian adventurers a footing in the country, merely stipulating that the geological remains of those huge animals which are found there in such abundance, should be duly re they gave for insisting on such forbearance betrayed spected and not needlessly disturbed; but the reason less knowledge than simplicity; they must indeed |