REPENTANCE.

URING the period when the dread scourge of cholera swept through the length and breadth of the land,

our neighbourhood and parish were not entirely free from its fearful visitations; although the cases were very much less numerous than might have been expected in such a thickly populated district.

There was a married couple residing in Ashdale, who, in their habits and pursuits were neither satisfactory nor judicious. The husband, Peter Barker, was a joiner by trade, and having a regular place under an opulent builder in the town, made very good wages every week. His wife worked in one of the manufactories, and brought home weekly a considerable addition to the family purse. They had no children, and consequently had none of those incentives to frugality and self-denial, which in many of the poorer class draw out the deep feelings of a parent's heart, and teach practical lessons to

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selfishness and extravagance which might put to shame the conduct of many of their wealthier neighbours; but the self-indulgence and comparative luxury which their circumstances thus permitted to the Barkers proved a snare to their principles and a stumbling block to their practice.

By habit and education they were dissenters, but many of the good rules and moral lessons inculcated by the body of religionists to which they belonged were thrown away upon them, and they even (Peter especially) manifested great negligence in attending upon the Sabbath observances of their own chapel.

Eating, drinking, and smoking were the things which Barker loved best in the world; in the two first his wife imitated him, and gluttony and intemperance were too frequently the results of the well-filled pockets they each possessed; these vices often producing scenes of violence and dispute.

He was of a cold, selfish temper, and would have enjoyed his habits of luxury and excess quite as much when alone, as if they had been shared by others; but Ann was of a more generous and social spirit, and frequently invited friends and neighbours to partake of the good things she had purchased, and thus obtained a certain degree of popularity from her thought

less guests, which acted as a set-off to the censure her prodigality provoked from her more prudent neighbours, and the anger it frequently produced in her husband's mind.

Peter and his wife were different in many respects, in appearance, in disposition, and in feelings. He was tall, thin, and cadaverous looking; the "good things of this life" were thrown away upon him, as concerned any improvement in personal appearance. Ann, on the contrary was short and stout, with a florid complexion, which from her gluttonous propensities too often assumed the dark hue, indicative of apoplectic tendency. He was silent and sullen; she was hot and hasty. He was almost an unbeliever both in principle and practice; she was an enthusiast, and laboured under the fatal error that to acknowledge a Saviour was sufficient without doing any thing towards "working out her own salvation."

The sect to which she belonged preached "faith without works," not going on to the end of that text, which would have proved that preaching false. Poor Ann thought that if she went occasionally to her chapel, and there was worked up to feelings of intense excitement by the loud and vehement declamation of the preacher, so that she could join with earnestness in the deep groans and audible approval

his hearers frequently uttered, that she might feel satisfied these feelings were produced by the stirring of God's Spirit within her.

Again, she often heard that "we are saved in spite of our sins," and as this was a comfortable doctrine which did not involve the necessity of denying herself any of those habits which a more rigid system would have required, she rested quite safe and easy in the hope and belief that she was one of those to whom the happy question was addressed "Who shall lay any. thing to the charge of God's elect?" She was naturally good natured and cheerful, and the occasional "strong crying and tears" produced by the violent and excited language of her minister left no other traces upon her character, except a secret satisfaction that she had felt so deeply moved.

Peter did not very often accompany his wife to chapel, and when he did he more frequently sneered at what had so excited and delighted her than derived any sort of edification or instruction himself,

For years they had gone on in the same way. Which of the two was the most pitiable it were hard to determine: the cold, indifferent, scoffing unbeliever, or the self-satisfied, self-deluded, fanatical predestinarian.

They had had no pastoral superintendence;

they had "followed the imaginations of their own heart;" and the results, as might be supposed, led to "evil continually." Pity that when a friend and instructor was at length mercifully sent to their assistance they rejected his proffered kindness. Mr. Chester made his parochial visits in vain at the cottage of the Barkers.

Peter was an ill-conditioned, ignorant, and sulky fellow, who considered the parson's interference with those who did not attend his church as a great piece of impertinence; and consequently, if he happened to be at home when Mr. Chester approached the house, he always took care to leave it. Ann was more civilly disposed, for she had great respect for "gentlefolks" in general, and held the apparently inconsistent opinion, so frequently found amongst those in her class, that the "church parson" was far above their own "minister " in station and importance as "a gentleman," therefore she received his visits willingly, and with a degree of pride at his condescension, but on topics of religion she was deaf to his mild exhortations and arguments.

"Father always went where she did, and everybody had said when he died, that a saint had gone to Heaven, and so she hoped she was in the right way herself."

Mr. Chester probed her self-love and self-re