you day of wrath is come. But the admonition is not inappropriate to the professing and the pious ;-Do not trifle with Death-for, if you are habitually disposed to forget it in the bustling employments of business, this is a trifling with death;-and if are living in the neglect of any requisition of your Lord's will, of either experience or practice,—this is a trifling with death;-and if aware of present unfitness, you frigidly throw your hopes on the future, and satisfy yourselves in the promise, altogether indefinite or unmoving, that you shall be fit by and by, this is a trifling with death;-and if you know you must be entirely holy, and you neither expect to be so before your last moments, nor can present to the view of truth and fidelity the evidences of an ever-growing sanctification,—this is a trifling with death; and if, having witnessed in your own circle the untimely ravages, or rising up from the perusal of these Memorials, of a death premature, according to our views, and altogether unexpected, you remain wholly as you were, and renew, exactly as they were, the spirit and the manners of your restless worldly engagements,-this, too, is a trifling with death. The present glory and happiness of the dear Friend who has left us, forbid us to regret the exchange on her account;-the wise and sovereign will of our great Lord glances down all murmurs on our own. Clouds and thick darkness are truly round about Him; but justice and judgement are the habitation of his throne.' Within the darkness and the clouds there reside a Presence and a Wisdom, changeless and unimpeachable; and surely, while the thick volumes, though impervious and rayless, are unsettled and shifting round about, we may hope that, between the interstices, there shall stream upon us, from afar, a light and glory which shall serve both to illustrate the dispensation, and shine upon the way for faith and hope, out of the obscurity surrounding it. As our friend was eminently fitted for usefulness on earth, we fondly deemed her destined to it; the hope that these Memorials may, through the demonstration and the power of the Holy Spirit, accomplish the salvation of some around (and for this, while she lived, she incessantly prayed and laboured) will help to sustain the affliction of her removal, until the full disclosure in eternity of what we know not now, shall produce, on this very account, a higher rapture of joy. The salvation of one soul would far more than counterbalance all the miseries of bereavement, indescribably great as they are. Pardon me, that my obervations have been much extended beyond the limits I originally prescribed to myself; but, on this subject, thinking is to me interminable: you were sharers in the interest I felt in her who is now departed, and so you are likewise in the sorrow which claims, on the proper occasions, the privilege of expression and the indulgence of tears;-the present can never be repeated. Let me gratify myself, by only adding, to remind you of it, that the bitterness of disappointment, and even the ungovernable ebullitions of grief, may find some alleviation in the just and scriptural indulgence of such sentiments as those which the sweet Moravian Singer has vested in the charms, and empowered with the magic, of poetry;-they are sentiments which derive commendation, higher than all others that can array them, from the authority of God, from the vicarious atonement of Christ,from the effectual working of the Holy Ghost,-and from the immutability of the plans and the promises of Divine Revelation : Thou art not dead! thou couldst not die! To nobler life new born, Thou look'st with pity from the sky, Upon a world forlorn, Where glory is but dying flame, And immortality—a name. Farewell;-but not a long farewell; In heaven shall I appear, In thy delighted ear, Shall sing with thee th' eternal strain, 'Worthy the Lamb that once was slain.' 'Meantime let us give all diligence to make our calling and election sure:'-so that, 'whether we live, we may live unto the Lord,-or die, we may die unto the Lord; that, living or dying, we may be the Lord's.' 'For this cause,' my endeared relatives and friends, I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole Family in Heaven and Earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might, by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth and length, and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.' 'Now unto him, that is able to do exceeding abundantly, above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.' I am, Your bereaved, afflicted Relative & Friend, Gloucester, Oct. 20, 1822. WILLIAM BARBER. Memorials. SECT. I. THE HE deceased, Mrs. ANNE BARBER, was born May 12, 1801, at Treworgan, Herefordshire: she was the fourth and youngest daughter of Mr. James Howell. The aged Father survives; but of the counsels and the care of the Mother, the family, consisting of a husband and ten children, were deprived, when Mrs. Barber was only eight years of age. The painfulness of this bereaving affliction was as overwhelming as its mysteriousness was unsearchable: but the suffering it involved, and the aspect of impenetrable gloom which it wore, conspired to produce in the survivors only a state of motionless astonishment; they were too feeble to resist the Almighty, and too fearful to reply to Him; but their minds were yet not sufficiently enlightened, by the shining in upon them of the light and glory of another and a better world, to allow a yielding im D |