down, and the falling mass of coal and clay stopped up the passage, so that, whilst it confined the boys there, it prevented the foul air from reaching them." The boys themselves appear fully convinced that this preservation was an answer to prayer. May the impression abide with them. "And what didst say in thy prayer, my son ?" said the father. The boy's answer was a touching specimen of natural eloquence. "Lord," his prayer began, "Lord! thou knowest how bad 'tis to go to work in the morning in health and strength, and to be carried home to poor father and mother dead." Poor boy, as he spoke, the remembrance of the agony from which he had so lately been delivered so agitated his weak frame, that he with difficulty restrained his tears. The father was much affected. "Then,"

said he, "that went to my heart more than anything, that he should remember his poor father and mother in his trouble." Another, who had had a little brother born only the day before the accident, told me he thought of the baby when he was down in the pit, and said to himself, "If the Lord takes me away, there's another to stand in my place." This poor fellow was beyond measure distressed at finding his mother so ill. She had suffered very much, and her strength was nearly exhausted, for she had mourned for him all the time she was awake, and dreamt of him during the few minutes that she slept. She fainted when she was told that he was alive, and was, I think, insensible at the time he was carried in. "Don't mind me," said the boy, though his life, and that of his companions, hung for many days on a thread; "I don't look after myself at all, but it hurts me to see mother so ill. I'm afraid mother'll die." But no! the Lord bringeth down and lifteth up, he killeth and maketh alive; and, in a very few days, when I saw the mother, there was only left on the pale brow that expression of peace of which I before spoke-a calm whose depth alone told through what a tempest she had passed. And now is my story done; or could I fully enter into the beauty of the text which I taught the children of my class the Sunday morning after, by way of preparing them to join heartily in our church's thanksgiving that day"It is meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found;" could I so deeply feel the natural application of the text, and not say to every reader of my true story, "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God-(greater than these poor parents felt at the resurrection of their buried sons)-over one sinner that repenteth." Shall I lay down my pen without marking once more the providence of God, ruling everywhere, in the sea and in all deep places, without charging, on my own heart and on my reader's, to acknowledge him in all our ways? Let us both try to come to the same conclusion to which an old man to whom I talked on the subject brought me. He remarked many striking