calmness of soul in an entire rest in him. I seemed to myself to perceive a flow of divine love come down from the heart of Christ in heaven into my heart in a constant stream, like a stream or pencil of sweet light. At the same time my heart and soul all flowed out in love to Christ, so that there seemed to be a constant flowing and re-flowing of heavenly and divine love from Christ's heart to mine; and I appeared to myself to float or swim in these bright sweet beams of the love of Christ, like the motes swimming in the beams of the sun. My soul remained in a heavenly elysium. I think what I felt each minute during the continuance of the whole time, was more than all the outward comfort and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my whole life put together. It was a pure delight which fed and satisfied my soul-it was a sweetness which my soul was lost in.

"In the house of God, so conscious was I of the joyful presence of the Holy Spirit, that I could scarcely refrain from leaping with transports of joy. My soul was filled and overwhelmed with light, and love, and joy in the Holy Ghost, and seemed just ready to go away from the body. I had, in the meantime, an overwhelming sense of the glory of God as the great eternal all, and of the happiness of having my will entirely subdued to his will. This exultation of soul subsided into a heavenly calm, and a rest of soul in God, which was sweeter than what preceded it. My mind remained so much in a similar frame for more than a week that I could never think of it without an inexpressible sweetness in my soul."

Such was the glorious experience of this devoted Presbyterian lady, as given by herself a hundred years ago. There is not a higher description of Christian privilege and enjoyment in Methodist biography.

INFLUENCE OF MOTHERS. GREAT is the influence of mothers. The Christian Church, not less than Sparta and Rome, owes her heroes to maternal training. Eunice, the mother of Timothy, has been honoured

by the embalming of her name in the sacred canon, for her faithful efforts to familiarize his mind with the Holy Scriptures from a child. Nonna, the mother of Gregory of Nazianzen, took him, when an infant, to the church, and there solemnly dedicated him to the Lord, with a copy of the Gospels placed in his little hand. Arethusa, the mother of Chrysostom, left a widow at the age of twenty, withdrew from society, to give herself to the education of her son. The pious mother of Theodoret, like Hannah, consented to put her son out of her hands when he was but seven years old, that he might be early trained up in a monastery by its holy inmates. Monica, the mother of Augustine, with persistent care, sowed in the breast of her wayward son the seeds of religious truth, which, though long ripening, could never be eradicated, and finally bore glorious fruit. Augustine's highly educated taste turned away from the Gospel, because he found there no flowers of rhetorical eloquence. But though he openly embraced Manicheism, and plunged into debauchery, and was passionately fond of the theatre, his mother could not give him up. She followed him with her prayers; she endeavoured to interest a certain bishop in undertaking his reformation, with copious tears and entreaties, and even wearied him with her importunity, till he dismissed her, saying, "Leave me, and dismiss your anxiety; it is impossible that the son of such tears should perish!" The words, as she often afterwards repeated, she received as if they had sounded from heaven.

THE CLASS-MEETING; OR,

THE SPIRITUAL COLLEGE.

THE class-meeting fosters and promotes social culture. A simple and honest relation of religious experience, perhaps beyond anything else, has a tendency to knit soul to soul, and cultivate the purest spiritual affections. Is the experience bright, hopeful, joyous? Our hearts beat in unison. We are made partakers of the joy. We are drawn together

by the ties of a common faith and a like glorious hope. Is it sad, despondent, sorrowful? Our sympathies are still at work. We weep with the weeper. And these very strains of sadness serve to draw still closer the cords that bind us in a common cause. In this way have sprung up the sympathies and pure spiritual affections which have distinguished the Methodists of all lands. And no institution of the Church has contributed more than the class-room, to that social culture which is one of the great ends of Christianity.

THE FOUNTAIN OF LIVING

WATERS.

SUPPOSE a number of persons standing by a river's side. They are invited to drink of its waters, but they are not thirsty, and therefore do not desire them. At length their thirst is excited, and they look round for vessels with which to take But their vessels up some water. are all filled with some worthless thing, which they are yet unwilling to part with. But as their thirst increases, they become willing to give up what they had thought of so much value, and finally emptying their vessels of this rubbish, and receiving the water, they quench their thirst. Thus it is with sinners: Jesus Christ invites them to come to him, the Fountain of living waters. But they decline his invitation, their hearts being filled with the treasures of earth. They do not thirst for Christ till God takes away the love of the world and its vanities, and the Holy Spirit fills them with desire to come to him. Then they hunger and thirst after righteousness, and are prepared to receive Christ.-Payson.

TELL ME ABOUT JESUS. IN a prayer meeting in Boston, a middle-aged man arose and said, "I have been thoughtless and impenitent till within a short time, and I will tell you how it came to pass that I am now, as I hope, a disciple of

Jesus,

"One Sunday evening I was lying on the sofa in my parlour. My wife had gone out, and no one was with me but little Mabel, a sweet child about six years old, who was making a visit to us, and who sat by the centre table amusing herself with pictures. At length, getting tired of them, she came up to the sofa, and began caressing me in her winning, child-like way. 'Uncle,' said she, putting her soft little hand into mine, dear uncle, I want you to tell me something about Jesus. Mamma always does on Sunday nights.' I was struck by the question; but I evaded it, and began talking of something else. But the little creature would not be put off. Again and again she came back with the same request, 'Uncle, tell me something about Jesus.' Finding I did not comply, she at last said, opening wide her clear blue eyes, Why, you know about Jesus, don't you?' That question awakened thoughts and feelings such as I never had known. I could not sleep that night. The dear child's wondrous words, 'You know about Jesus, don't you?' haunted me through all the long silent hours. I felt I did not know about Jesus-that I had not wished to know about Jesus, and a sense of my ignorance and guilt weighed too heavily on my soul to be shaken off. I was distressed for days. I read the Bible with an inquiring, anxious heart, till at length I found the blessed Saviour, and could say in humility and faith, Now I know about Jesus, of whom little Mabel so eagerly wished to hear.""

6

FALL OF REMARKABLE

METEORIC STONES IN INDIA. "AT Dharam Saal, on July 28th," says a reliable eye-witness, "between the hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon, the inhabitants were thrown into a state of the utmost terror and alarm by a series of fearful shocks, resembling, in intensity and power, the explosion of an immense powder magazine, and which seemed to shake the very mountains from their foundations.

In the course of my experience I never met with any freak of Nature which so powerfully impressed me with its grandeur and sublimity. Though no stranger to the ravages of the electric current, and the destructive character of the gigantic thunder-storms which periodically visit the Apennines of the East, I was scarcely prepared for an occurrence so fearfully impressive in its ensemble, yet happily so free from casualties of every kind. Horribly discordant noises rumbled forth from the bowels of the earth, following each other with the utmost rapidity; then succeeded long and loud explosions, which gradually decreased in degree and duration until they became beautifully less; then came intensely luminous flames of fire, each flame about 12 feet in length, shooting with extreme velocity from north to south, as though belched forth from the mouth of ordnance of extraordinary size and calibre. These were again replaced by a shower of meteoric stones, which, wherever they fell, ploughed up the earth like so many cannon balls. I cannot find words adequate to describe the sensation which everywhere prevailed, at the sight of this singular and startling phenomenon. The over-credulous viewed it as the beginning of the end, while the more enlightened were fearful of the destruction of life and property. Happily, however, not a single person was injured, as far as I have been able to learn, though the stones were of so formidable a nature, that one might well be pardoned for looking with the utmost alarm, not to say dread, at the results.

"I subsequently strolled over the 'field of destruction,' and discovered a number of boulders and meteoric stones, of diverse forms and size, many of which bore a great resemblance to ordinary cannon balls just discharged from the engines of war, but which, when touched by me, felt like so many pieces of ice. Of course, a phenomenon so extraordinary has been the all-absorbing topic of conversation in these parts,

and has given rise to the most absurd and highly-coloured reports of witchcraft and sorcery."-A Resi-' dent.

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY.

LIGHTNING CALIGRAPHY.

ONE of the most modern and most remarkable achievements of electricity is thus referred to by a writer in Once a Week:

"Another great element of our present civilization is beginning to make signs of its existence in the South Kensington Museum. We allude to the electric telegraph. Bakewell's copying machine is one of the most interesting of this class, as it brings before the public eye the means that can be employed to write with a pen a thousand miles in length. If the At'antic cable were in working order, for instance, a man through its instrumentality could sit down to write a letter in London, and feel certain that a fac-simile of his handwriting was at the same moment coming out of the telegraph office at Quebec. The manner in which this astounding machine works is as follows:-The message is originally written on a conducting material, such as tin-foil, with resin or some non-conducting ink. Over the face of this letter, which is placed on a cylinder, a point of metal revolves-this point is in connection with the conducting wire. At Quebec, say, a piece of chemically prepared paper is placed on a like cylinder to receive the message; both cylinders are made to move round by clock-work. As the point at this end of the wire passes over the non-conducting resin writing, no current passes; hence the point which moves synonymously with it at Quebec does not change the colour of the paper, but, all the other surface of the writing tablet being a conductor, the current passes and deepens its colour by chemical action on the far-distant recording tablet. The receiver thus obtains a perfect fac-simile of his correspondent's handwriting, done in white upon a blue ground. Specimens of this electrical handwriting are placed

G

of the gracious promise, "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me."

Our brother used often to say he did not know the time when the Holy Spirit did not strive with him, in answer, as he always thought, to a sainted father's prayers. Leaving his home early to learn a trade and provide for his own wants, long before the age of twenty-one he was out of his apprenticeship, and came to London. Coming at once to the Scotch Chapel, in Wells-street, and having presented the certificate of membership he had brought with him from Scotland, he was kindly received by Dr. Waugh, then pastor over the church; but no searching enquiries about salvation were put to him. Three times on the Sunday did he diligently attend the means; for twelve months did he seek in vain for relief to his anxieties; but was wearied in not finding spiritual repose. No kind Christian friend, taught by the Holy Spirit and full of love, showed him the way to the Cross. Indifference took possession of his heart; he gave up religion altogether, and left the church to which he was united. By a mysterious course of events he entered the navy, was borne from his home and country, and served for a time in those wars when the battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar were fought, and Nelson with others fell in their country's defence. Often has he referred to those remarkable and mysterious events, and to that providential care which guarded his path. One fell on the right and another on the left, and frequently when with him they were working the guns, yet he was unhurt. On one occasion a ball struck the man next to him, and scattered his brains and blood over him. Turning round, when the momentary shock was passed, he said, "My God, am I alive?" In after years, when these scenes re-appeared to his mind, and formed the subject of conversation with his friends, he would say, "Such preserving mercy was in answer to a father's prayers;" and he would exclaim, "The Lord was good to me in those terrible days, and brought me out of that death-struggle unhurt."

Again he came to London, and soon after met with her who is now left to mourn his death. She first took him

to Great Queen-street Chapel, where he heard the great salvation, the free grace of Christ set forth. His former views, tinctured with Scottish Calvinism, gave way; that intellect, vigorous in defence of the things he had learned at home, yielded to the power of the Holy Spirit. He was broken down and subdued under a sermon on the love of God, delivered by that devoted minister, now in glory, the Rev. Walter Griffith. He realized salvation, he joined the Society at Great Queen-street Chapel, and now he and his beloved partner walked together in the enjoyment of all those Christian privileges which the church furnished.

For more than half a century did both he and his partner walk together in "the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost." Let it not be supposed that now he had no trials; he had them, and sometimes they were of no ordinary kind. One case at this time will show how bitter was his cup.

In the wars that raged near fifty years ago, various plans were adopted by the Government to obtain men. He and his partner had both been enjoying the Sabbath-it had been a refreshing season. Dr. Adam Clarke had been preaching one of his delightful sermons on "Trust in God." Monday came. Mr. Whitehead returned home at the hour of dinner; he had scarcely begun, when some persons inquired for him, and entered the room where he was-it was a press-gang. He said to his wife, "I must go." He accompanied the men to the place of destination. But who could have thus betrayed him, and taken the price of blood?-a young man in the shop with him, the object of his care and guidance, who had been kept fully employed when others were only partially so, and who had often been sheltered by Mr. Whitehead's kindness. This was the individual who betrayed his benefactor for a small, a paltry bribe! The men in the trade society to which he now belonged, when the inquiry was made about it, were astonished that any one could injure him in thought or deed.

When Mr. Whitehead was taken with others on board the receiving ship, most of the men were roughly treated and put to all kinds of work, while he said he did not know how it was he was left alone both by officers