* * *

glory. This is often a great motive with me, to stir me up; for I feel that I am losing not only present comfort, but eternal enjoyment, when I trifle or sin away my time. I never find lack of work to be done in the Lord's vineyard.” What a spirit of industry in the service of Christ breathes throughout this passage! The invalid can thus be busy. In correspondence, study, prayer, speech, she was serving the Lord with a single eye and a diligent heart.

Miss Newton's advancement in holiness corresponded with her zeal. There was no neglect of her own soul in the abundance of her benevolence towards others. A few passages from her diary and letters will fully illustrate this :

"How did I know that my sins were all washed away? Because I was trusting simply to the FINISHED work of Christ, and was not waiting until I had done anything to evidence it.'

THE HOPE OF GLORY.

"So bright is the hope of the glory before me,
I'm often impatient, in haste to be gone;

I long, blessed Jesus, with saints to adore Thee,—
Those glorified spirits surrounding Thy throne.

"So bright is the hope, that I would not live alway,
For pleasures this poor fading earth can bestow;
They never can satisfy-never can cheer me,

For each one is tainted with sorrow and woe.

"Of this body of sin and of death I'm so weary,
I cling to the bright hope of GLORY' in store
For the souls who have found all on earth to be dreary,
And long to attain to the heavenly shore.

"Lord, hasten the time of Thy blessed returning,
To give us the peace and the rest that remain

For Thy servants who stand with their lamps ready burning,
To enter Thy glory, and with Thee to reign.

"This, this is the hope that is now set before us;

Oh! when shall we enter that glorious rest?

Welcome pain! welcome death! if it brings us to Jesus,

And banishes hope in our pleasures POSSESSED."

"I sometimes enjoy my lonely Sundays very much, and they go quicker than ever. And no wonder, when they are spent in the study of that blessed word which is the life of the soul."

“To be told you have an incurable disease is nothing alarming to me; so far from it, that it only makes me hope God will soon accomplish his work in me, if such be his will, and then take me to be where he is! What a thought!"

"I have been looking out all the different meanings of the Hebrew words for 'prayer,' and have found nearly thirty, each having some rather different idea attached to it."

"I often feel inclined to smile at my sofa, with a Hebrew Bible and Lexicon at one side, a Greek Testament and Lexicon at the other, and one or two English Bibles always about it too. I long only more and more to make my Bible the study of my life.”

“All day long my heart seems to be panting after nearness to Jesus."

"You can't think what longing I have had for a sight of Jesus lately; faith does not in the least satisfy me."

"I can remember the time when I was so much afraid of dying that I often dared not go to sleep at night lest I should not live till the morning. But during the last five or six years, and often when I have been apparently on the very brink of the grave, I felt no fear at all. Quite the contrary; I longed to die. Now you can surely guess what made this change in me-once outside, now in Christ.”

"I can sink into Christ, though I cannot rise to him."

Thus was Jesus her all in all. His glorious person was ever present to her soul. His appearing the second time was fondly longed for, and his fellowship her strong desire. She fell asleep in Jesus on April 26th, 1854, aged thirty years.

Afflicted believer! learn what can comfort your soul in sorrow. Jesus was Miss Newton's stay and joy. The trials of her life were all sanctified by his grace, and made matters of praise, as the wilderness experience of Israel was the theme of David's psalms of thanksgiving. "Music is sweetest on the waters," says Willison, "and praise from the waters of affliction is sweet in the ear of God." And thus writes

one:

"I would not the dark wave removed should be,

If on its crest it bears me on to Thee.
If trials bring me nearer to Thy breast,
And fix me there, I surely shall be blest.
I only pray that Thy sweet presence be
With me in every fire-in every sea."

CHAPTER XV.

ELIZABETH FRY, THE MERCHANT'S WIFE.

"I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me."MATT. XXV. 36.

"One I beheld! a wife, a mother, go

To gloomy scenes of wretchedness and woe;

She sought her way through all things vile and base,

And made a prison a religious place;

Fighting her way-the way that angels fight
With powers of darkness-to let in the light.

*

The look of scorn, the scowl, the insulting leer
Of shame, all fixed on her who ventures here;
Yet all she braved; she kept her steadfast eye
On the dear course, and brushed the baseness by.
So would a mother press her darling child
Close to her breast, with tainted rags defiled."

CRABBE.

ALMOST all Christian denominations have had the consecration of God in the exemplary lives and useful labours of some of their honoured members. Though diversified in their polity, forms, and minor points of doctrine, yet agreeing in all the truths essential to salvation, there has been a striking likeness in their Christian biographies. Amidst variety of appearance and garb, the relationship of the family of God is distinctly portrayed in their spiritual character. When meeting together, they realize kindred emotions and speak the same language. They embrace as brethren, and are conscious of unity in diversity

"Distinct as the billows, but one as the sea."

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS-itself but a small portion of the united Church-has had this seal of divine blessing.

Philanthropy has ever marked its members. Illustrious names among useful Christians are numerous in their circle, and of these are "honourable women not a few." A minister among the Quakers, distinguished by the drapery and speech of the sect, ELIZABETH FRY occupies a most conspicuous place in the holy Catholic Church, and exercised a ministry which had its fruits in the alleviation of human misery in the prisons and dungeons of Europe. Around her memory emphatically may the eulogistic garland of the Redeemer's words be wreathed,-"I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me." And though none more lowly, yet to her whose aim was ever to serve her Lord in her ministry to the forlorn, will the Redeemer's words be spoken,—“ Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

At Norwich, on the 21st May, 1780, the subject of our sketch was born. She was the third daughter of John Gurney, Esq. of Earlham, Norfolk; and by the mother's side descended from the Barclays of Ury, Kincardineshire, one of whom was the celebrated apologist of the Quakers. The Gurney family, like most persons of their rank at the time, professed religion, while they lived in the gaiety of the world. They did not wear the usual garb of Quakers, nor practise their peculiarities. Mrs. Gurney, whose training of her children was religious according to her light, early left them, eleven in number, bereaved of a mother. Elizabeth was then twelve years of age, and, from her peculiar disposition, felt the loss most keenly. She was timorous, reserved, obstinate, and idle-failings which soon gave place to the corresponding virtues for which she was afterwards so remarkable.

The visit of an American Friend-William Savery-to England, was the means of a great change in her character. Having heard him preach in Norwich on February 4th, 1798, she