closely-written volumes. Many refreshing seasons are recorded in these reminiscences of her Christian experience, which prove the sincerity and depth of her piety, as also the clear views she had of Christian doctrine and privilege. She often records the humbling views she had of herself, and of her attainments in the divine life; and expresses her gratitude unceasingly, for the many mercies and blessings, personal and domestic, vouchsafed to her. The Bible, the Wesleyan Magazine, and Drelincourt on Death, were her favourite companions, when her numerous domestic cares allowed her so to spend an occasional leisure-hour.

Having five children of her own, and being called to attend to the business connected with a large farm, it may be supposed that, for many years, she had but little time for devotional exercises; still it was evident, to those who knew her, that she lived in the spirit of devotion, and delighted much in secret prayer. She had learned to carry all her cares and burdens to a throne of grace; and there, by an act of faith, to cast them upon the Lord. On one occasion, after the preaching at Mouldsworth, which was in our house there for twenty years, a high-spirited horse, brought by a Local Preacher, ran away with one of my brothers on its back, as he was taking it to water at a pond by the road-side. The horse sped past many of the congregation up the road to the Common: some shouted, and tried to stop the animal; but this only increased the danger. My mother retired into her room, to pray that God would preserve him. As the animal was still going at a great speed, the danger kept increasing: he threw himself off, alighting upon a bush of gorse, and escaping with only some few contusions. This occurred while she was still upon her knees, imploring for him the divine protection.

For many of the latter years of our continuance at Mouldsworth she was frequently much indisposed, and often suffered much. This led her to familiarize death to her thoughts; and, in conversation, often to express the joy she felt in the prospect of shortly meeting, to part no more, with many beloved relations and friends who had escaped long before to the mansions of bliss in the city of God. She was truly a spiritually-minded Christian, and appeared to live always under a most comfortable sense of the goodness of God, in relation to both his providential dealings, and the dispensations of his grace. Many of her letters to her friends, written during the successive stages of her life, showed that she had taken the Lord for her portion; and, therefore, embraced cheerfully every movement of his hand as an expression of his fatherly care; recommending, by her example and precepts, to her children and others, that religion which had so evidently supported her through life, and so manifestly comforted her in the view of death.

For the last two or three years, her increasing infirmities prevented her nearly altogether from attending the public means of grace; but she derived unspeakable comfort from the word of God; and when the

class, for her sake, met monthly in her room, it was to the members, who thus heard her statements in regard to her religious experience, as well as to herself, a rich privilege. During the last few months of her earthly sojourn, it was evident that she was fast ripening for the heavenly garner. Often did she express an earnest "desire to depart," that she might "be with Christ, which is far better." Her last illness was short and severe; but her confidence in her Lord was unshaken. She said to a friend, "I am now on the great ocean; but I shall soon finish my voyage." At another time, when asked if she had any fear of dying, she instantly replied, "No; the sting of death is removed." Frequently, while suffering, she would repeat the verse,—

"Jesu, lover of my soul,

Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,

While the tempest still is high:

Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
Till the storm of life be past;
Safe into the haven guide;

O receive my soul at last!"

During the last and mortal conflict, she was several times heard to whisper, "Come, Lord Jesus; come quickly." At length, in the seventy-ninth year of her age, May 12th, 1841, she calmly and quietly breathed her spirit into the hands of her God and Saviour; having, by the uniform consistency of her life, and the peaceful triumph of her death, taught the numerous members of her family both how to live and how to die.

THE NECESSITY OF CHRISTIAN WATCHFULNESS. "WATCH and pray, that ye enter not into temptation;" that is, that we may be quickly alarmed at the indications that a thing is becoming temptation. "Here a questionable effect is beginning upon me; nay, but it is a bad effect." "Certain principles of truth and duty are beginning to slacken their hold upon me." Beware of becoming so partial to a thing, that this circumstance shall appear a trifling matter. You may have seen such examples; uneasiness has been felt for a while; there may have been a questioning whether to relinquish the object; but the heart grew faster to it. Be cautious of pursuing an evident good in a way in which there must be temptation. Be specially fearful of that where, if there be good to be obtained, the good is to come afterward, but the temptation first. If the temptation coming first shall blind my perception of the good, cool my zeal, or destroy my relish of it,-if I should stop with the temptation, and abandon the good! And be fearful of that where the temptation is certain, and the good only possible, or, at best, only probable. A dangerous problem this, how much good possible, is worth how much tempta

tion certain? Beware of being beguiled in this manner; namely, that a positive, unquestionable good can be alleged; but, in truth, it is not this that is the real inducement, but that something connected with that good offers a pleasing temptation which can be entertained under the plea of the good. Be peculiarly suspicious in any case where all appears pleasing and attractive, and there is nothing for mortification and self-denial. Let suspicion and alarm be awakened, when we find our minds at work to make out any thing to be innocent against doubt, and an uneasy conscience. Be careful that when unquestionable duty leads into the way of temptation, we stay not longer near the temptation than we are honestly about the duty. Beware of the kind of companionship that directly leads into temptation; but let no man be beguiled to think he is safe against temptation at the times when his only companion is himself: the whole tempting world may then come to him through the medium of the imagination: the great deep of his own heart may then be broken up. In this solitude may come that tempter that came to our Lord in the desert. In truth, unhappily, there is no situation or employment in which temptation is not to be apprehended.

We may add, what vigilance and prayer are necessary against the sudden violent surprises of temptation! These may come with as little warning almost as the dreadful accidents that befall men's persons. A sudden flash of infernal fire kindles the passions, and prostrates the judgment and conscience. Divine aid can come as suddenly as these assaults; but who may confidently rely that it shall?

Now, think of all this; and then of a heedless, self-trusting, and prayerless state of mind. What must be the consequence? Serious persons, amidst their self-reproachful reflections, may be amazed at the preventing goodness of God, that still worse has not befallen them. To think how many days and weeks they have begun, how many seasons and occupations passed through, with little of real earnest prayer, little of solicitous, conscientious vigilance! How grateful should they be, to think how many temptations they have been mercifully kept out of the way of, which they probably would not have resisted! But let them consider whether the proper testimony of that gratitude will be, that henceforward they little care for, or apply to, his heavenly protection. They would have cause to dread that, even if they should not be at length fully and finally given up to evil, they will be suffered to fall into some great iniquity, in order to rouse them by the horrors of guilt. Think solemnly of the frightful extent of the possibilities of falling into sin; and that it is an insult to God to calculate on escaping without the means he has enjoined,-"Watch and pray." These must be combined; for watching, without prayer, were but an impious homage to ourselves. Prayer, without watching, were but an impious, and also absurd, homage to God.-Lectures, by the late Rev. John Foster.

MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

THE POWER OF THE KEYS.
(To the Editor of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine.)

"I WILL give unto thee the keys of the kingdom
of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind
on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall
be loosed in heaven." (Matt. xvi. 19.)

"Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be

bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt. xviii. 18.)

"Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever

sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." (John xx. 22, 23.)

THESE sentences were addressed by our Lord Jesus Christ to Peter, and again to all the Apostles. The Church of Rome teaches, that a power was thus conveyed to them and to their successors through all ages, a prerogative of binding and loosing, not things, but persons; and this they call the POWER of the keys. It does, indeed, seem that some extraordinary prerogative was imparted by Christ to the Apostles; but it is not less evident that those expositors take for granted more than can be proved. They assume that,

1. Persons, not things, were to be bound or loosed.

2. That the Apostles had suc

cessors.

3. That such successors now inherit the prerogatives of Apostles, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

4. That both to the Apostles and to their (so called) successors, not merely a faculty, but a power, was communicated; or, in other words,

5. That Christ has delegated to his Ministers the power of remitting and retaining sins.

All this is incapable of proof. Scriptures not understood by the unlearned have long been cited in support of clerical pretensions, made irrespectively of the original commission; and there is a remarkable uniformity, if not identity, in the professed doctrine of two parties usually regarded as distinct.

The Romish Priest professes to bind the souls of men; and is directed, in the Pontifical, to employ the following language :-" By the judgment of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and of blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, and also by the authority committed unto us unworthy, and by the power of binding and loosing in heaven and on the earth, divinely conferred on us, we separate him" (the person excommunicated) "from the participation of the precious body and blood of the Lord, and from the society of all Christians; and we exclude him from the gates of the holy mother Church in heaven and on the earth, and sentence him to be excommunicate and anathematized, and adjudge him to be damned with the devil and his angels, and with all the reprobate, in eternal fire."* The Anglican Priest is now again heard to arrogate to himself and his ordained brethren the right of fulminating this same anathema at their discretion; and as the old Romish rituals are the magazine whence these men take their ammunition, (for there are other formulæ used beside those found in the Common-Prayer Book,) doubtless their form of excommunication would be borrowed from the Pontifical. And who could reasonably charge the Anglo-Catholic with having transgressed the Orders of his own Church, if he should confine himself within the limits prescribed in the "constitutions and canons ecclesiastical," where not fewer than eleven classes of persons, including some of the best Christians of our country, are solemnly denounced as "excommunicate?" This is to bind in good earnest.

*Pontificale Romanum. Ordo Excommuni

candi et Absolvendi.