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spending your old age in desolation? Perhaps sometimes you think you have more troubles than any one else. Now, compare

your case with this poor widow's. O! let me beg you to seek for that godliness with contentment which is great gain. If Christ is yours; you have all things-life and death, things present and things to come all are yours.

EUNICE.

PRAYER ANSWERED.

THERE was a widow, who was left with six or seven children, with no means of support for them beyond the labour of her hands. One severe and inclement winter, this woman gave the last crust of bread she possessed to her children, before they went to bed; she had not a shilling left to purchase bread in the morning. In her distress, after she had put her last child to rest, she took her Bible, knelt down, and spread her wants before God, pleading to him his promise to the fatherless and the widow. There was a

rich farmer who lived near, who was remarkable as a selfish manone who was always buttoning up his pocket against the poor. This man was singularly disturbed by an impression that this poor widow was in want of bread. He did not sleep all night, and the next morning early he went to the cottage. He asked after the health of the family, and then inquired with respect to the widow's circumstances. She said she had no bread, nor any money to purchase it. He asked how long she had been without. She replied, that she had given the last morsel to her children at such an hour, and then prayed to the God of the fatherless and the widow. He inquired what hour it was. She said such an hour. "It is strange," said he, "for at that time I began to have an impression that you were in want, and I came this morning to inquire if it were so.'

RESTITUTION.

"If I have taken any thing by false accusation, I restore him
four-fold." LUKE XIX. 8.

RELIGION leads to restitution. When a man is converted, he asks the forgivness of those he has injured. If the injury be of a pecuniary nature, he makes restitution. It is not enough for him to say to his injured neighbour, I am sorry; he must restore that of which he has robbed him. When Zaccheus was converted, he felt willing to restore four-fold. If a man thinks he is converted, and can hold all his previously acquired unrighteous gains, when it is in his power to make restitution, he deceives himself, and his religion is vain. Conversion is the beginning of right doing, not an absolution from the rules of common honesty. Grant that resti

tution would be inconvenient-would lesson your worldly comforts. Hell will be inconvenient-there are no comforts in hell. If a man will be a Christian, he must obey Christ's commands. Reader, have you wronged your neighbour in his property? Have you repented? Have you restored unto him his own? Remember, you cannot be a Christian and a robber at the same time.

DRINKING USAGES.

MR. EDITOR,—The article in your present number on "drinking usages," inclines me to consult you on one of the little difficulties incident to a rural ministry.

A benefit club has recently been formed in our village. Now, I always feel disposed to encourage such mutual helps for the poor, provided only that they be established on right, (that is) on Christian principles. My worthy neighbours, however, have, on this occasion, put it out of my power to sanction and assist them; seeing that they have adopted the Old Friendly Society rule, of requiring a certain sum for each member to be spent in drink, at the monthly meetings.

However general may have been the adherence hitherto to this (what I consider unchristian) regulation; and however respectably it may have been sanctioned, I cannot but think that it falls under the reproof of such Scriptures as these Hab. ii. 15, and Matt. xviii. 7: while the rule in question seems the less defensible, by reason of the fact, that its rejection in many cases has proved far from fatal to the existence of such societies. Nevertheless, the supposed impracticability of carrying out their purpose on other principles, is the great argument set up by the leaders of our Village Club, who, (though with all proper respect and good humour,) therefore decline rescinding the objectionable rule.

Now, Mr. Editor, as some, whose opinion I value, think that I am making too much of this objection, in withholding my countenance from so useful an undertaking, while, at the same time, they allow the impropriety of such "drinking usages," you might perhaps be conferring a benefit upon us all, and upon others placed in similar circumstances, if you would lend the assistance of your experience to the determining of this question-who is in the right? Yours, Mr. Editor, &c., &c.

Lincolnshire, Dec. 3, 1844.

A CURATE.

[The Editor has no difficulty in giving his decided opinion on this case. Whatever may be said with regard to the allowance of drink at all, at monthly meetings, nothing can be more objectionable than the making it a rule that each member shall, as a matter of course, contribute so much towards drink. It is amongst the worst of drinking usages: many a young man who neither wants nor likes liquor being absolutely driven into the formation of the

taste and liking for it, even against his inclination. Nothing can be worse. And no Clergyman should countenance such systematic mischief. There should be no drinking at all, at a monthly meeting; but if any, it should certainly be optional, and limited to a glass.]

TO CONTENTMENT.

Where dost thou live, where dost thou dwell,

Whom dost thou smile around?

Alas! how very few can tell

Where thou art to be found!

I'll ask the proud, whose lofty eye
Spurns all beneath its glance,
If e'er he felt thy power nigh
In pleasure's giddy dance?

I'll ask the miser-he who hoards
His money with such care,
As if it all his bliss affords-
If I shall find thee there?

I'll ask the man who, blest with wealth,
Profusely spends each day,

And wastes his time, destroys his health,
And squanders life away.

They all will say "I know her not-
She dwells not in my mind:

Fain would I have her crown my lot,

But her I cannot find!"

Where shall I find thee? In the man
Who little has in store,

But still does all the good he can

With that, nor craves for more:

Who with an honest heart and mind,
And free from slander's thrall,
Can keep stern penury behind,
And bless his God for all!

I'll find thee, too, in those who rest
Their only hope on God;

They feel no pangs within their breast,
But kiss his chastening rod.

'Tis they can say, with hearts elate,
And minds on heaven bent,

"I've learn'd, in whatsoever state
I am, to be content."

FOSTER, PRINTER, KIRKBY LONSDALE.

H. T. F.

FRIENDLY VISITOR.

No. 318.

MARCH, 1845.

VOL. 27.

"WHAT I HAVE GONE THROUGH!"

Ir is an expression often used-sometimes uttered with complaint and murmuring, sometimes with thankfulness to him who hath led the sufferer through so much. There is not one of all the children of God but must pass through tribulations on the way to the kingdom of heaven.

At some period of the journey of life, at some restingplace, the pilgrim pauses and looks back, and sees what he has gone through; what hills of difficulty are surmounted, what floods of tribulation are passed through. How hath the blind been led by a way that he knew not! how hath the crooked been made straight! how have the rough places been made plain! But the full retrospect will be when life is all ended. What different histories will the redeemed of the Lord have to recount! how different as to the variety of incident and the minute details! how alike, in that they all tell of the goodness of God! And each one shall sing, though in a different tone it may be, but all those tones shall blend to swell one harmony: "I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O Lord, will I sing."

How have I enjoyed that little simple hymn, the burden of which is, "glory, glory, glory;" that little hymn composed by a converted Hindoo, sung by that Christian brother in his home far away, but borne to England, that believers here may learn how converts from the heathen sing! O, while in how brief a moment that one sentence has been sung,

"And meet my Father's children there
In glory, glory, glory,"

what visions have crowded round me! "My Father's children!" O, what a numerous band! the redeemed of how many a clime! Many who died long ago; some

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wafted to their abode of glory yesterday; the young, the aged; the rich, the poor; the child who had never known sorrow, but who soon closed his eyes on this fleeting world; the martyr, whose death-bed was a sea of flame; some whom I knew, dear ones with whom I had taken sweet counsel, and in company with whom I had walked to the house of God; saints who had helped me on the way to heaven, though I never knew them, but who, being dead, yet spoke by what the Holy Spirit had enabled them to write. "My Father's children!" I seemed to behold them in their heights of glory. And what they have all gone through, how will it seem at last? To tell the sufferers now would sound unfeeling, did not the word of inspiration speak. "I reckon”—an apostle, a martyr elect speaks-“I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.

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"What I have gone through!"

From the very poor,

I do not wonder that I have often heard such words. Poverty, sickness, loss of friends, unkindness, injustice -these, in different forms and at different times, mortals have to bear: some pass through one trial, and some through another; some through several trials at one time. It does us good to compare our case with that of another.

"What I have gone through!" Words suitable indeed, as uttered by a poor aged woman, who gave me the details of her journey to a distant city to pay a last visit to her husband, whom she and many others believed to be innocent of the charge which had been brought against him. But he had been condemned to die; and she had to visit him in his prison cell, and then, after his execution, to return home with his dead body. But I will not dwell on such a detail.

"What I have gone through!" was often said by one of the poorest women I ever knew. I seem to see her now, and to hear her account of suffering during the illness of her children. Her husband had fallen from a cart nine years before, and had been so much injured,

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