a glance the situation of his friend, "thank God. He has not forgotten you! I have been much troubled on your account, my dear sir. I have thought much about you lately. I have been much afraid for you. Things have gone so well with you for so long a time, you have been so prosperous, that I have been almost afraid that God had forgotten you. But I said to myself, surely, God will not forsake such a man as this; will not suffer him to go on so long in prosperity without some check, some reverse! And I see he has not. No; God has not forgotten you."

These were the sentiments of Richard Cecil, on the design of affliction; and his friend, Thomas Williams, thankfully and joyfully responded to them. Within three weeks of his death he related the incident as it is related here, and the feeling of his heart was, "He hath done all things well."

LOVE DIES NOT.

BY W. H. BURLEIGH.

DEEM not, beloved, that the glow

Of love with youth will know decay;
For though the wing of time may throw
Its shadows o'er our way,

The sunshine of a cloudless faith,

The calmness of a holy trust,

Shall linger in our hearts, till death
Consigns their dust to dust.

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These still are ours, while looking back
Upon the past with moistened eyes,
on our life's brief track,

Oh! dearest,

How much of sunshine lies!

Men call us poor, it may be true,—
Amidst the gay and glittering crowd
We feel it, though our wants are few,
Yet envy not the proud.

The freshness of love's early flowers,

Heart-sheltered through long years of want,
Pure hopes and quiet joys are ours,
Which wealth could never grant.

Something of beauty from thy brow,

Of lightness from thy household tread,
Hath passed; but thou art dearer now
Than when our vows were said.
A softer beauty round thee beams,
Chastened by time, yet calmly bright;
And from thine eye of hazel beams
A deeper, tenderer light.

The mother, with her dewy eye,
Is dearer than the blushing bride
Who stood, three happy years gone by,
In beauty, by my side!

Our Father, throned in light above,
Hath blessed us with a fairy child,
A bright link in the chain of love, —
The pure and undefiled!

Rich in the heart's best treasure, still,
With a calm trust we'll journey on,
Linked heart with heart, dear wife! until
Life's pilgrimage be done.

Youth, beauty, passion, these will pass,

Like everything of earth, away,-
The breath-stains on the polished glass
Less transient are than they.

But love dies not, the child of God,-
The soother of life's many woes,
She scatters fragrance round the sod
Where buried hopes repose!

She leads us with a radiant hand

Earth's pleasant streams and pastures by,

Still pointing to a better land

Of bliss beyond the sky!

SMITTEN OF GOD.

"Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?"

WHO has not felt, when one dearly beloved has been snatched away, an inclination to forget all the things of earth, and to stand idle, helpless, stricken, on the shores of Time; gazing, longing after the lost, regardless of all that is left; all love, all remembrance, all hope, swallowed up in the one agonized sense of bereavement?

"Smitten of God, and bereaved;" was not this, too, written by one who knew of what he spoke ?

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who had felt the bitter pang of parting; the awful sense of God's agency in earthly sorrow; the struggle between passionate regret and holy submission.

The human soul knows no variety in sorrow for the dead. Whatever else may change in the course of time, this remains the same throughout the ages. Paul, the sainted, the subdued, wrote not those tender words without a swelling of the heart; and many a mourner since responds to them with tears.

Death has been busy, of late. Many a tender flower, many a "shining mark," many a household stay and comfort, has he snatched away within a few short days. To many of our friends and fellowcitizens the bright spring heavens seem hung in black, and all the joyous associations that came up with the warm sunshine are changed to images of sadness and despondency. The idea of “a gloom on the face of Nature" is not a mere poetic fiction. To the mourner whose grief is in its fresh bitterness, there seems an absolutely perceptible shadow, like a pall of dark vapor, spread over the gayest objects. Nothing looks as it used. The heart sees not like the careless eyes. We feel as if the sun could never shine again for us.

CHANGE OF WORLDS.

BY REV. J. N. MAFFIT.

"Though I walk through the gloomy vale,
Where death and all its terrors are,
My heart and hope shall never fail,

For God my shepherd's with me there."

THE shafts of death fall thick around us, and this charming world, like the field of strife, is strewn with the dead and dying. The mourners go about the street; they follow the young, the lovely, the beautiful, the good, to their long home, the silent grave. The mournful knell chimes to their measured pace, and mingles its sepulchral tone with the burst of sorrow.

But in all the circumstances of woe, attendant on the departure of those we love from the busy scenes of life, there is to the Christian much consolation, when he feels assured that they had witnessed a good confession. Seeing they have escaped these storms and billows of life's tempestuous sea, and conscious that they are safe in the port of endless bliss, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are forever at rest, we feel resigned, knowing that our loss is their infinite gain. Indeed, we rejoice, rather than mourn; for truly our separation will be a very short one, and our meeting with happy connections,