some popular preacher or other, who, being twitted with having more servants in his congregation than masters, replied that he was glad it was so; and on being asked his reason for this preference, said that they had the upbringing of the masters' children! This is true of the nurses at least; and how great, then, is their influence in the family and upon society! The songs with which the nurse lulls her babe to repose are the last to echo in the ruin of the old man's memory; the hymns which she teaches can seldom be untaught; and the religious impressions which she makes are so mingled with all that most people delight to look back to the early home, the early friends, with life's golden promise that they survive storms in which many other good things have been shipwrecked, and help to bring those sinking to the land." Nurses! consider how you act, and pray God to make you the honoured instruments of training up the children of your charge "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Let them always hear good words. Let them see a good example. Let them know no false alarms. Leave with them a happy memory and a Christian influence. Beware of finery in dress. That has often been the step to ruin. It is unbecoming; and when you may be wives and mothers, and sometimes while still in service, leads to debt. Let it be yours to say,— "I've aye paid,-I'll pay my way yet; Takin' on things is next door to thieving. For dress I was never in debt, Nor shall be so long as I'm living." Avoid late hours as you would a serpent. Beware of hastily-formed companionships. Be never led into a publichouse. Seek to live with and serve a family that fears God. Be decided in your character,-prayerful, upright, and indus trious; and though your place be humble, it will be blessed, useful, and honourable. Serve the Lord Christ with a single eye and a faithful life,-obeying earthly masters and mistresses, "not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: knowing that whatever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free." Christian employers! pray for your servants. Like Abraham, instruct them. Place no temptation in their way, either to habits of carelessness, or to intemperance or immorality; which last are seriously induced by left glasses of wine and spirits and late hours at night. Much, in the present critical state of domestic servants, must be done by employers for the saving of the souls and reforming the manners of servants in the house. Are you doing your part? Are you kind, considerate, exemplary? Can it be said of you as was said by the Searcher of hearts to Abraham, "I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him?" In conclusion: let servants and employers strive together to adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour in all things. Courage, sister! do not stumble, Though thy path is dark as night; There's a star to guide the humble,— "Trust in God, and do the right!" Let thy path be long and dreary, Perish "policy" and cunning, Perish all that fears the light; Trust no forms of sinful passion, Friends may look like angels bright; Blessed rule and safest guiding, Inward peace and inward light, Star upon our path abiding, "Trust in God, and do the right!" N. M'L 66 CHAPTER X. HARRIET STONEMAN, ONE OF THE AFFLICTED POOR. "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."-ISA. xlviii. 10. "Trials make the promise sweet; Trials give new life to prayer; Trials bring me to His feet, Lay me low, and keep me there." THROUGH much tribulation we must enter the kingdom," said the apostle, and it is abundantly verified in the experience of the children of God. sage compared with others. meet, few sorrows to bear, and few foes to fight. No doubt, they have a share of the family lot, and are sanctified by what they realize; but others, But some have a smooth pasTheir course has few storms to "Beneath a rougher sea, Are whelmed in deeper gulfs." In poverty and in pain, and with scarcely a relation, they pass weary years, and only find a home when they enter the house of the Father in heaven. Dependent upon the parish, and made to exist upon as little as possible, conscious of their burdensome life, they lack their comforts here. Nevertheless, as of old, the poor, decrepit, and sore Lazarus is borne at last by angels into Abraham's bosom. God is the helper of the needy, the friend of the poor, and his grace has adorned some of the most unfortunate and tried on earth, and made them useful to his cause. HARRIET STONEMAN was one of those who passed through much tribulation into the kingdom. Her life was the beauty of holiness and the example of usefulness, and her death a triumph of grace. She was born at Batcombe, near Cerne, Dorset, on the 7th September 1797. Her father was a drunken soldier, whose habits sent his broken-hearted wife and his own wasted life to an early grave, and left his children destitute orphans. In her thirteenth year, two years before her mother's and four before her father's death, Harriet was seized with a disease which, through the long period of thirty-nine years, literally consumed her bones, and entailed upon her the living agony of "dying by inches." From the loss of her parents and the poverty of her friends, she became early dependent on the parish. Her allowance was three shillings a-week, one of which was spent for house and washing, and by means of the other two, with occasional aid from Christian friends, she contrived to eke out her subsistence. It was not till her twenty-third year that she was led to the "Balm of Gilead." Under the faithful ministry of the Rev. John Davis, vicar of Cerne, she was awakened, and by his kind instruction brought to the Lord. She now found great pleasure in the word of God, made it her constant study, and longed to tell others of its blessed gospel. Her growth in grace was very constant and striking. Many memorials of this remain in meditations on passages of Scripture and letters to her Christian friends, especially to her minister, and to one who afterwards became her biographer, the Rev. THOMAS CURME, vicar of Sandford. "The Lord," she wrote, "has led me by a way that I knew not; my bitterest sorrows have, I trust, been my greatest blessings. I have been brought to the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was found of me when I sought him not. Oh, to grace how great a debtor is your poor Harriet! What a monument, what a miracle, of pardoning love and mercy! "Sometimes I enjoy a sweet foretaste of heaven, a glimpse of glory. In the house of God, in particular, I feel the influence of his Spirit; there has my burdened soul been released of its weight; there has my Saviour whispered peace, and enabled the guilty Harriet to go home rejoicing in God her Saviour. Pains, poverty, and scorn, were nothing then. Jesus had given me peace which nothing could take away." Again, to another she wrote: "I enjoyed the sweetness of the word of life this morning. Oh, what a season of refreshing from this sacred treasure did my weary soul receive! It was like rain upon the thirsty land. In turning over my precious Bible, the companion of my afflicted days, there did my eye meet many a sweet passage marked as a proof of past mercies. They were to me like Hagar's well of water, -near in time past, but I could not discern them; but when discovered, O how welcome! Then, thought I, my God is still the same; he can cheer and bless me again, and cause me to delight in him, and make me joyful in every means of grace." Under her heaviest afflictions she was enabled to rejoice in the Lord. Those who sat by her bed-side found it was good for them to be there, her conversation was so heavenly. |