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keeping of your domestics; will you not, therefore, assist us in our efforts to make them intelligent, faithful, and conscientious?

Christians, we beseech you by your principles. You believe that all souls are alike---alike in their origin, value, and duration; and equally capable of being fitted, by Divine grace, for usefulness, for holiness, for happiness, and heaven: we entreat you, therefore, by the love you bear to immortal souls---by the obedience you owe to your Master in heaven--to aid us to effect the conversion of female servants, and thus to make them instruments for extending the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

THE CLERGYMAN'S WIDOW.

THERE is one class of widows whose peculiar kind of change, distress and desolation, is but rarely touched upon by those who draw on the sympathies of mankind; and yet of all the tribes of mourners, who may say to those who pass by, "Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow?" the widows of the clergy are that most afflicted class; between them and other widows there are no few shades of difference; there is a change, a sad change to all, but to them most of all.

The wife of the clergyman, like the clergyman himself, holds no fixed place among the various grades of society; if humble, she is not even conversant among the aristocratic branches of society, if wise, she is more generally found among the middle classes—and if useful, not unfrequently does she mix with those accounted poor in the world's eyes— if gentle and prudent, she walks among all accep

tably, unflattered by the attentions of the noble, yet not ungrateful; and, visiting the poor, is yet uninjured by contact with the lowly. The pastor is

still more free, and less affected by caste-to-day the guest of nobles: to-morrow, on mountain and moor, the visitor of the wind-swept hut, he sits with the peasant and the peasant's children-travel, and the free wind of heaven have given relish to the humble food which is timidly yet affectionately offered, and, if he partakes with the poor man of oaten cake or the more humble potatoe, a sacred blessing on his honoured head goes up from the host, and from that poor household; and the pastor returns homeward, not less a pastor, nor less suited for the work of the ministry, nor yet for mingling with the greatbecause, like his heavenly Master, he loved the poor, and because the poor "ministered to him of their

substance."

Blessed be God! hundreds of such pastors are around and increasing. How honoured the wives of such-they live in an atmosphere of blessedness -every day they hear the claims of the poor, to the relief of which they are enabled by their influential position to be auxiliary-they hear the voice of grateful acknowledgment-their home is trodden by the feet of numerous wealthy and kindly parishioners;—they are familiar with every parochial movement, and are favoured by the Christian friendship and intercourse of surrounding ministers-their children grow up amid the kindness and attention of many; should even a trifling ailment visit their home, the knock of affectionate inquiry is frequent— should any want be manifested, it is often eagerly yet delicately supplied. The pastor's wife is happy amidst all this din of usefulness, kindliness, and

comfort, and if her husband be faithful in the pulpit, and from house to house, and if her own heart iesponds to every gospel promise, and rejoices in every prospect of souls won from death to life, then indeed are her "lines cast in pleasant places -"her cup

runneth over"-and her constant, silent, yet gladsome expression is this," Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name

Thus full and overflowing is the cup of her happiness-it is even dangerous, like every other prosperity, in the hazard of decreasing spirituality; be this as it may, the wife of the pastor, is happy, honoured, and blessed among women: days dawn in usefulness and prayer, and close in gratitude and peace; the sweet incense of holy prayer floats in the atmosphere, and penetrates from the parsonage to the remote and most lowly of the habitations of the flock; in one blessed volume of adoration the hearts of all are made one; and what heart so happy, knowing its own gladness, as is the heart of a pastor's wife?

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But suppose that the process of years had silently -fleetly rolled on--and that the desk and the pulpit must know its transient possessor no more; suppose, full of years and honours; the aged man of God, like a "ripe shock of corn," is to be gathered to his predecessors-and that she-the loved and faithful friend of his bosom-witness and softener of his trials-is to survive; or let us suppose a case not unfrequent that in the midst of life's vigor and most energetic usefulness, the pastor is summoned to give an account of his stewardship—and the woman, still young, and expecting aught else than this, is suddenly bereaved; long-long does it appear but a dream, and tears seem unnecessary, the apparatus of

death and the funeral array are but as a dream only ; slowly and wearily the vision is invested with substantiality-and bitter truth demonstrates that it is simple, awful' matter of fact,'-the voice silent-the flock deserted-the house masterless-the kind and the true and the faithful departed—her joys clouded -her hope withered-her babes orphans—and she -a widow.

A few brief weeks and the glebe-house must be resigned-the sunny lawn where the children sported -the garden, with its endless pleasures-and the flowers which the children had planted, and on which the departed had smiled—each thing familiar is to be forsaken, and the world is all before herchildren partake of her bitterness; and in their fond memories, in after years, revert to the possession which for a season was theirs.

It is sweet to think that a voice from heaven has proclaimed-" Leave thy fatherless children to me— I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me,' and they that trust in Him he never disappointed. Still another home must be chosen, and other means of existence found; and many a clergyman's widow has no home-no means.

The widow of a pastor who has lived generously and affectionately towards the temporal and spiritual wants of men, is, indeed, a desolate object-soon does the tide of sympathy ebb, and what remains is dried up in the revolving years that pass on, until the once loved, honoured, widely known, and greatly happy as the pastor's wife, becomes forgotten; other preachers have arisen more gifted-more adapted to rising exigences; new plans have obliterated the old, new generations arise; by little and little the old stock drops off, and after many years the

widow gazes on her husband's church, and wonders how strange all things have become !

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The families of preachers are often the worst attended to, and while their flocks have bread to spare," their own little ones may be hungry. They are often engaged in plans so gigantic, in studies so profound, in labours so multifarious, and they are too apt to forget what the end may be,' the sickness and the sorrow, the mourning congregation, the platform trodden by other feet, the meeting hushed before other voices, the hearts occupied by other messengers of truth; and the shroud and coffin, the portion of their earthly tabernacle, while wife and little ones, to use the language of the beautiful chaunt of Wolff, sit alone and weep.'

ANON.

LINES TO A WIFE.

IN SICKNESS.

I SAID, I would love thee in want or in wealth,
Through cloud and through sunshine, in sickness, in health :
And fear not, my love, when thy spirits are weak,—

The troth I have plighted I never may break.

Aye, sickness :-I know it, long day upon day,

But the sun must come through, and the clouds melt away;
Melt away every vapour, and leave upon high,
Not a spot, not a speck, on the midsummer sky.

Aye, sickness :-but sickness, it touches the heart
With a feeling, where how many feelings have part!
There's a magic in soothing the wearisome hour;
Pity rears up the stem, and HOPE looks for the flower.

The rose smells as sweetly in sunshine and air,
But the green-house has all our affection and care;
The lark sings as nobly, while soaring above,

But the bird that we nurse is the bird that we love.

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