lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." He was taken ill on the Tuesday, and died on the Wednesday. His bodily trouble was severe, but his mind was in perfect peace. He spoke of the covenant of grace as all his salvation, and all his desire, and as the chariot of the wood of Lebanon in which the Lord had conveyed him through so many troubles and temptations already, and was now conducting him through the valley of the shadow of death to Heaven. He had heard, a short time before, a discourse after the Lord's Supper, on the better country; to it his desires were directed, and longing for his removal from the body of death to the life of perfection, said—" God has never left me in the wilderness, and he will not leave me in the swellings of Jordan. I am refreshed by some drops from Heaven, but I am going to the fountain of living waters." His illness was so short that his son could not arrive in time to see him before he died; but, instead of repining at this, he rejoiced in the presence of the "kinsman Redeemer who had bought back the mortgaged inheritance of eternal life;" and in the Sweet assurance of his kindness both to the living and the dead. As he had lived so he died in the faith. God granted him his desire that he might not be chargeable to any. A

little pittance of the price of his property remained, and was merely sufficient to defray the expenses of his funeral. Among the mourners that followed him to the grave there was not one who did not feel veneration for his character; and it would have been a most appropriate inscription on his humble grave-stone, that by it was laid an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile.

This sketch shows what a blessing religion is to the married state. Its graces render the husband the happiness of his wife, and the wife the joy of her husband. There is not a sorrow which can arise in that state which it hath not power to alleviate; and, in the hour which brings with it the disruption of every earthly tie, it preserves the heart from a hopeless sorrow. The beauty of holiness decays not with the advance of age; and the righteous man's portion is beyond the reach of misfortune. It can make contentment reign amid the most painful privations-joy to abound in the poorest dwellingand light to arise in the darkest hour. When a couple is thus pious, religion shines with peculiar lustre in a dwelling by this combination of its graces-rich is the influence of Heaven on such a family, and frequent are the visits of angels to it. In such parents children are doubly

blessed. They are thus in circumstances most favourable for religious nurture; and while piety thus directs a father's care, and sanctifies a mother's tenderness, there is reason for hope that they will early seek God. Let heads of families remember that then only is their union complete, when they are one in Christ—and that mutual piety is the true source and the best security of domestic felicity.

A YOUTHFUL TRANSGRESSOR.

THOUGH the lives of malefactors may seem no inviting subject of biography, yet a strong curiosity is usually felt to know something of those whose course is terminated by public justice. There is something in the energy of such characters, however unhappily directed, which produces a strong excitement; and a narrative will be eagerly read which awakens pity or horror, while the calm tenonr of ordinary life is marked with indifference. To gratify this desire, the lives of various criminals have been written by themselves or by their friends; and this has been often done in a manner which

cannot be too strongly reprobated. Their de predations are detailed with a minuteness which shows that they were not ashamed of them, and which teaches dexterity to the thief and the robber; and, instead of picturing the remorse and fear which haunt the path of the workers of iniquity, they are exhibited as passing their time in unmingled jollity; and manifesting a courage, inspiring a terror, and dividing a spoil which throw a glare around them,-which dazzles the adventurous, and represses the scruples which oppose the suggestions of evil desire. We have no hesitation in condemning the colouring which has been sometimes employed to heighten the piety or the beneficence of the good; but it is a prostitution of talent still more criminal, which transforms the villain into a hero, and makes the atrocity of his deeds to be forgotten amidst the ingenuity with which they are planned, the arts by which they are concealed, the courage with which they are perpetrated, and the firmness with which the punishment of them is endured. If such lives are written, they should represent the way of transgressors as hard-describe the uneasy feelings which prey on their hearts-the continual perils in which they move-the dark reflections of the season of confinement-the horrors of a

violent death--the infamy which attaches to their memory-and the shame and anguish of their friends, that others may fear to do evil, and learn to do well.

My object in this sketch is not to give a minute account of the life of a youthful convict; for in it there were few incidents of any importance to detail-but I shall present some circumstances respecting him, which may be useful for the purpose of moral admonition.

This young man was not born in circumstances which placed him in the way of temptation to theft. There are many children who are cast upon the wide world, and who are thus left to those who, for their own ends, initiate them in the arts of deception and pilfering; and there are others whose parents live by such arts, and who, in their early years, instead of the lessons of justice and, truth, hear nothing from their lips but what is adapted to excite covetousness and envy, and see nothing in their conduct but fraud or violence. It cannot surprise us that such children do the deeds of their fathers. To place them under the nurture and admonition of the Lord is true charity; and, instead of devoting their time and attention to the religious education of those who are under the best culture at home, the promoters of early in