glory and reputation. Nor indeed could less be expected from one who had the happiness to receive her education from you, who in your house was accustomed to everything that was virtuous and decent, and even began to love me on your recommendation. For as you had always the greatest respect for my mother, you were pleased, from my infancy, to form me, to commend me, and kindly to presage that I should be one day what my wife fancies I am. Accept, therefore, our united thanks; mine, that you have bestowed her on me; and hers, that you have given me to her as a mutual grant of joy and felicity." 473. Praying Wives.- -Two Christian ladies, whose husbands were unconverted, feeling their great danger, agreed to spend one hour each day in united prayer for their salvation. This was continued for seven years; when they debated whether they should pray longer, so useless did their prayers appear, and decided to persevere till death, and, if their husbands went to destruction, it should be loaded with prayers. In renewed strength, they prayed three years longer: when one of them was awakened in the night by her husband, who was in great distress for sin. As soon as the day dawned, she hastened, with joy, to tell her praying companion that God was about to answer their prayers. What was her surprise to meet her friend coming to her on the same errand! Thus ten years of united and persevering prayer were crowned with the conversion of both husbands on the same day. 474. Prisoner's Solace. The following narrative is found among the notes to a volume of poetry published in the United States:"Some years since a young man by the name of Brown was cast into the prison of this city for debt. His manners were very interesting. His fine dark eyes beamed so much intelligence, his lively countenance expressed so much ingenuousness, that I was induced, contrary to my usual rule, to seek his acquaintance. Companions in misery soon become attached to each other. Brown was informed that one of his creditors would not consent to his discharge: that he had abused him very much (as is usual in such cases), and made a solemn oath to keep him in gaol 'till he rotted'! I watched Brown's countenance when he received this information; and whether it was fancy or not, I cannot say, but I thought I saw the cheering spirit of hope in that moment desert him for ever. Nothing gave Brown pleasure but the daily visit of his amiable wife. By the help of a kind relation, she was able to give him sometimes soup, wine, and fruit; and every day, clear or stormy, she visited the prison to cheer the drooping spirits of her husband. She seemed an angel, administering consolation. One and she came not: Brown was unday passed the hour of one o'clock, and she did not appear: Brown easy. Two, three, and four passed, was distracted. A messenger arrived Mrs. Brown was very dandying in a convulsive fit. As soon gerously ill, and supposed to be he darted to the door with the greatas Brown received this information, est rapidity. The inner door was opened, and the gaoler, who had just let some one in, was closing it it. The gaoler knocked him down as Brown passed violently through with a massive iron key which he held in his hand; and Brown was carried back lifeless and covered with blood to his cell. Mrs. Brown died; and her husband was denied even the sad privilege of closing her eyes. He lingered for some time, till at last he called me one day, and gazing on me, while a faint smile played upon his lips, he said 'he believed that death was more kind than his creditors.' After a few convulsive struggles he expired.” 475. Study under Difficulties.Melancthon is reported to have frequently studied the gravest point of theology with his book in one I will immediately come to thee hand and in the other the edge of pray go then, for I am very busy.' a cradle, which he incessantly rocked; and M. Esprit, a celebrated author and scholar, "has been caught by me," says M. Marville, "reading Plato with great attention, considering the interruptions which he met with from the necessity of sounding his little child's whistle." 476. True Wife.-Lady Fanshawe, wife of that most excellent and faithful servant of Charles I., Sir Richard Fanshawe, in the "Memoirs of her Life," which are dedicated to her son, gives the following beautiful picture of connubial affection and fidelity:-"One day, in discourse, Lady tacitly commended the knowledge of state affairs, and that some women were very happy in a good understanding thereof, as my Lady A., Lady S., Mrs. T., and divers others, and that for it nobody was at first more capable than myself; that in the night she knew there came a post from Paris to the Queen, and that she would be extremely glad to hear what the Queen commanded the King, in order to his affairs; saying, that if I would ask my husband privately, he would tell me what he found in the packet, and I would tell her. I, that was young and innocent, and to that day never had in my mouth, 'What news?' began to think there was more in inquiring into business of public affairs than I thought of; and that being a fashionable thing it would make me more beloved of my husband (if that had been possible) than I was. After my husband had returned from council, after welcoming him (as my custom ever was), he went with his hand full of papers into his study for an hour or more. I followed him. He turned hastily, and said, 'What wouldst thou have, my life?' I told him I had heard the Prince had received a packet, and I guessed it that in his hand: and I desired to know what was in it. He smiling replied, 'My love, When he came out of his closet, I resumed my suit; he kissed me, and talked of other things. At supper I would eat nothing. He (as usual) sat by me, and drank often to me, and was full of discourse to the company that was at table. Going to bed I asked him again, and said I could not believe he loved me, if he refused to tell me all he knew; but he said nothing, and stopped my mouth with kisses, and soon went to bed. I cried, and he went to sleep. Next morning, very early, he called to rise; but began to discourse with me first, to which I made no reply. He rose, came to the other side of the bed, and kissed me; drew the curtain softly, and then went to court. When he came home to dinner, he presently came to me, as was usual; and when I had him by the hand, I said, Thou dost not care to see me troubled.' To which he, taking me in his arms, answered, 'My dearest soul, nothing upon earth can afflict me like that; and when you asked me of my business, it was wholly out of my power to satisfy thee; for my life and fortune shall be thine, and every thought of my heart, in which the trust I am in may not be revealed; but my honour is mine own, which I cannot preserve, if I communicate the Prince's affairs; and pray thee, with this answer rest satisfied.' So great was his reason and goodness, that upon consideration it made my folly appear so vile, that from that day until the day of his death, I never thought fit to ask him any business but what he communicated to me freely, in order to his estate and family." In a voyage from Galway to Malaga, the ship in which this lady and her husband were, was approached by a Turkish galley, and the prospect of slavery stared them in the face. "This," says she, in her Memoirs, was sad for us passengers: but my husband bid us be sure to keep in the cabin, and not appear, which would make the 66 of Lady Fanshawe, her husband was liberated; and this happy pair, whose fidelity to their unfortunate sovereign and to each other was so exemplary, lived to witness the restoration of Charles II. 477. Two Wings.-A listener to Dr. Payson, when he visited the city of Boston, towards the latter part of his life, was led, by his preaching, to a considerable degree of serious concern for his soul. But different to the subject. One day, his wife was in a great measure inmeeting her in company, the Dr. said, "Madam, I think your husband is looking upwards; making some effort to rise above the world, towards God and heaven. You must not let him try alone. Whenalone in such efforts, it makes me ever I see the husband struggling think of a dove endeavouring to fly upwards while it has one broken wing. It leaps and flutters, and perhaps raises itself up a little way, and then it becomes wearied, and drops back again to the ground. If both wings co-operate, then it mounts easily." Turks think we are a man-of-war; but if they saw women, they would take us for merchants on board the vessel. He went upon deck and took a gun, a bandalier, and a sword, expecting the arrival of the Turkish man-of-war. The captain had locked me up in the cabin. I knocked and called to no purpose, until the cabin-boy came and opened the door. I, all in tears, desired him to be so good as to give me his thrum cap and tarred coat, which he did, and I gave him half-a-crown; and putting them on, and flinging away my night clothes, I crept up softly, and stood upon the deck by my husband's side, as free from sickness and fear, as I confess, of discretion, but it was the effect of the passion which I could never master. By this time the two vessels were engaged in parley, and so well satisfied with speech and sight of each other's force, that the Turks' man-of-war tacked about, and we continued our course. But when your father saw it convenient to retreat, looking upon me, he blessed himself, and snatched me up in his arms, saying, 'Good God, that love can make this change!' 473. Wifely Resolution.-Polyand though he seemingly chid me, xenus, Dionysius's brother-in-law, he would laugh at it as often as he who had married his sister Thesta, remembered that voyage." When having joined in a conspiracy Sir Richard Fanshawe was taken against him, fled to Sicily, to avoid prisoner during the Civil War, and falling into the tyrant's hands. was confined in a little room at Dionysius sent for his sister, and Whitehall, the fidelity of his wife reproached her very much for not was no less remarkable. "During apprising him of her husband's intime of his imprisonment," she says, tended flight, as she could not, he "I failed not constantly, when the observed, be ignorant of it. She clock struck four in the morning, to replied, without expressing the go with a dark lantern in my hand, least surprise or fear, "Have I all alone on foot, from my lodgings then appeared so bad a wife to in Chancery-lane, at my cousin you, and of so mean a soul, as to Young's, to Whitehall, by the entry have abandoned my husband in his that went out of King's-street into flight, and not to have desired to the bowling green. There I would share in his dangers and misforgo under his window and call him tunes? No! I knew nothing of it; softly. He, excepting the first time, for I should be much happier in never failed to put out his head at being called the wife of Polyxenus the first call. Thus we talked to- in exile, in the most remote corner gether, and sometimes I was so wet of the world, than in Syracuse, with rain that it went in at my neck the sister of the tyrant!" Diony. and out at my heels." Through sius could not but admire an the active and unceasing entreaties | answer so full of spirit and gener fax, in order to win the bride, actually served an apprenticeship of seven years to a saddler, and afterwards bound himself to the rich saddler's daughter for life. osity; and the Syracusans in general were so charmed with her magnanimity, that after the tyrant was suppressed the same honours, equipage, and train of a queen which she had before, were continued to her during her life, and 480. Wise Decision.-We read after her death the people numer-in classic story of an Athenian ously attended her body to the who, hesitating whether to give his tomb. daughter in marriage to a virtuous man with a small fortune, or to a rich man who had no other recommendation, went to consult Themistocles on the subject. "I would bestow my daughter," said Themistocles, " upon a man without money, rather than upon money without a man." 479. Winning a Wife. It is related that a rich saddler, whose daughter was afterwards married to Dunk, the celebrated Earl of Halifax, ordered in his will that she should lose the whole of her fortune if she did not marry a saddler. The young Earl of Hali IDOLATRY. Gen. xxxv. 2; Deut. xxvii, 15; Psalm lxxxi. 9; Ezek. xiv. 3; Acts xv. 29; 1 Cor. vi. 10. 481. Absurdity of Idol Worship. -"A Bechuana man," says a missionary, "once came into my house and sat himself down. He took up one of our missionary sketches that was lying near him. Having looked at it, he concluded that the figures upon it-ugly ones-represented living animals. It never entered into his mind that man would make a thing that never existed. He asked my little daughter Mary, 'What game is this?' She said, 'They are not a game; there are nations that worship these things.' 'Oh!' said he, 'how you tell fibs!' She replied, 'I am not telling fibs. I heard mamma say so, and my mamma does not tell fibs.' He asked her again what game they were, and she again told him that they were things that were worshipped; for they have no name for idols. He burst out into an exclamation of wonder, questioned her again, but received the same answer-that people worshipped these things the same as her papa wished them to worship Jehovah and Jesus. The man was full of amazement, and repeated that she was telling fibs; I but she maintained the truth of 6 The a whistle made of ivory, and carved with some device, perhaps a man's head, or a buffalo, or a giraffe, he looked at the whistle with great reverence, and nodding his head in a very solemn way, said, 'What would my people think if I were to worship that ? Just at that moment, while he was talking with much animation, his staff dropped from his hand. He grasped it, and pointing to the picture, he held up his staff and said, "This looks as well as this monster, and I might as well worship my staff just as you worship Jehovah. What would my people think if I were to do so? They would think I was a madman, and would throw me over a precipice, and cover me with stones."" near the pile, and shook and wept bitterly; upon which three or four of these executioners, the Brahmins, together with an old hag who held her under the arm, pushed her forward, and made her sit down upon the wood; and lest she should run away, they tied her hands and legs, and so burnt her alive." 483. Gentle Missionary.-Henry Martyn, in his journal, writes: "I walked into the village where the boat stopped for the night, and found the worshippers of Cali by the sound of their drums and cymbals. I did not speak to them on account of their being Bengalees. But being invited to walk in by the Brahmins, I walked within the railings, and asked a few questions about the idol. The Brahmin, who spoke bad Hindoostani, disputed with great heat, and his tongue ran faster than I could follow, and the people, who were about a hundred, shouted applause. But I continued to ask my questions, without making any remarks upon the answers. I asked, among other things, whether what I heard of Vishnu and Brahma were true, which they confessed. I forebore to press him with the consequences, which he seemed to feel, and so I told him what was my belief. The man grew quite mild, and said it was chulabat (good words), and asked me seriously at last what I thought-' Was idolworship true or false?' I felt it a matter of thankfulness that I could make known the truth of God, though but a stammerer, and that I had declared it in the presence of a devil. And this I also learned, that the power of gentle 482. Cruel Custom.-Bernier relates some interesting incidents of the barbarous custom in India (now happily yielding, through European influence, to reason and nature) of widows immolating themselves on the funeral pile of their husbands. After exhibiting some almost incredible instances of the serene fortitude which the infatuated women have shown on such occasions, he proceeds: "But nature will sometimes prevail. I have seen some of these victims who, at the sight of the fire and the pile, would have gone back when it was unhappily too late; those demons, the attendant Brahmins, with their great sticks, astound them, and sometimes even thrust them into the fire, as I once saw them act to a young woman who retreated five or six paces from the pile; perceiving her much disturbed, they absolutely forced her into the flames. For my own part, I have often been so enraged at these Brahmins, that if I daredness is irresistible." I could have strangled them. I remember, among other occasions, that at Lahore I once saw a very handsome and very young woman burnt, not more, I believe, than twelve years of age. This poor, unhappy creature appeared more dead than alive when she came 484. Picture Worship.--At Baitenzorg, a village of Java, Messrs. Tyerman and Bennet observed a street occupied exclusively by Chinese. They called at several of the houses and noticed an idol in each. In one they observed an |