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Madame Guion.

I HAVE sometimes thought, that God, who always respects man's moral freedom, carries on and completes the great work of his salvation, not only by grace, but by position. Let any man read the life of St. Augustine, Xavier, Baxter, George Fox, Henry Martyn, and then say if different circumstances, (a situation for instance, comparatively exempt from privation and toil,) would have developed the same men, the same strength of purpose, the same faith in God, the same purity of life. If this doctrine be true, it throws light and beauty over the broad field of God's providences, and shows us why many have passed to glory through great tribulation.

Madame Guion made Faith the foundation of the religious life. While in prison she seemed entirely resigned and happy: there were alternations of feeling undoubtedly. Sometimes darkness and sorrow settled in what may be termed the outside of her system-in her shattered nerves and bleeding sensibilities but faith unchangeable, which always brings God to those who have it, made light and joy in the centre. Wherever she went, the Holy Ghost seemed to attend her. Her life and presence, bearing as it did, a divine signature, constituted a divine announcement. Her sermon was her life-and her eloquent lips only made the application of it.

Fenelon now made the acquaintance of Madame Guion, and the circumstance told upon his whole after life. The immense importance of the subject, the correspondence between the doctrines of a transforming and sanctifying spirituality; and the deeply felt needs of his own soul: the presence and fervid eloquence of a woman, whose rank, beauty and afflictions could not fail to excite an interest exceeded only by that of her evangelical simplicity and sanctity, made a deep impression on the mind of Fenelon.

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What was spoken comparatively in secret, was uttered afterward upon the housetops. The voice which was uttered at the foot of the Jura Mountains and the Alps, in the cottages of the poor, and amid the solitary and inaccessible cliffs of the Chartreuse, was repeated from province to province, till it reached the high and public places of Paris. And it was from this time that we find her name associated, either in unison or in opposition, with some of the most distinguished names of France.

If the writings of Fenelon, taken in all their relations and all their results, have exerted an influence probably not inferior to those of any other man, it ought not to be concealed nor disguised, that it was a woman's mind, operating upon the mind of their author, from which no small portion of the light which pervades and embellishes them, first proceeded. Bossuet was her opponent. He was Bishop of Meux, and confessedly the head of the French church. And if we estimate him chiefly by his intellectual strength, I think we may well say that he deserved to be so.. Possessed of vast learning, and not greater in the amount of his knowledge than he was in the powers which originated and controlled it, he brought to the investigation of religious subjects, whether theological or practical, the combined lights and ornament of research, of reasoning, and of rich imagination. The reputation, which might well fill any ordinary amount of secular or of ecclesiastical ambition, was so dear to him, that he had, for many years, as if by the strong instinct of habit, fixed his withering eye on the slightest heretical deviations. He knew well what was going on in France. But he who had broken the spear with the strongest intellects of the world, felt some reluctance to entering the lists with a woman. If such distinguished men as the Dukes of Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, and more than all, if such a man as Fenelon, on whom the hopes of France had fastened, as its burning and shining light,-had

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come under this influence, to what would these things lead? It seems never to have occurred to him, that the hand of the Lord might be in all this! He is not wise, who thinks lightly of the influence of a woman who has the great intellectual powers, the accomplished manners, and the serious and deep piety of Madame Guion. But suppose it to have been otherwise. Suppose her to have been fanatical in feeling, and weak in judgment, as her enemies chose to represent her. Is it not true that God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the mighty? Has he not declared, and has he not sustained the declaration by the history of spiritual movements in all ages of the world, that he has selected things which are not, to bring to naught things that are?

It was not Madame Guion, but God in her, that produced these results. It was a favourite idea with her, that the all of God-his presence, wisdom and power-dwells, more than anywhere else, in the nothing of the creature. In a letter she says the great majority of those who profess an interest in religious things-those who are religious teachers and guides, as well as those who are seekers of religion,-stop short, and are satisfied with remaining in the outside and surface of things. They ornament and enrich the exterior of the Ark, forgetting that God commanded Moses to begin with the inside and overlay it with gold, and afterward ornament the outside."

Bossuet and Fenelon were now fairly pitted against each other. Bossuet was argumentative and vehement: stronger in the thunders of the law than in the invitations of the Gospel : carrying the intellects and hearts of his hearers, as if by a mighty force. Fenelon, rejecting on principle those arts of authority and of intellectual compulsion, which he felt he had the power to apply, won all hearts by the sweet accents of love. I suppose we may be allowed to say that both were Christians: but one, allied in this respect to the great body of believers stopped in the seventh chapter of Romans, proclaiming, with

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great sincerity" When I do good, evil is ever present with The other, advancing a step further believed, with the declarations of the eighth chapter of the same inspired epistle,

"there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.” Fenelon wrote to Bossuet-"two things only do I desire: Truth and Peace-truth which may enlighten, and peace which may unite us."

Fenelon did not hesitate to drop his eloquent pen, with which he conversed with all Europe, whenever Providence called him to listen to the imperfect utterance of the most ignorant and degraded among his people.

There is, perhaps, not another man in modern times, whose character has so perfectly harmonised in its favour all creeds, nations and parties. His religion expanded his heart to the limits of the world. It was natural, therefore, that the whole human race should love his memory. In the time of the French Revolution, when the chains which had been fastened by the tyranny of ages, were rent asunder by infuriated men, who, in frecing themselves from outward tyranny, forgot to free themselves from the domination of their own passions, the ashes of the great of other days, in the forgetfulness of all just distinctions, were scattered by them to the four winds of Heaven. But they wept over and spared the dust of Fenelon.

T. C. UPHAM.

He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend !
Eternity mourns that! 'Tis an ill cure
For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them!
Where sorrow's held intrusive, and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity.

H. TAYLOR

Music.

I AM not musical-I never could

Fall into raptures o'er Italian singing; "Songs without words" I never understood,

Though soft and sweet as "harp of Houri's stringing:" I never ask a lady for a song,

(No matter how "divinely" she may sing it) Without a secret hope it won't be long, Unless the poetry has beauty in it.

Yet there is music, to whose sound my heart
Beats in glad unison-sweet music, filling
The soul with joy, though all unschooled by art—
Sometimes in melodies low-voiced and thrilling
It comes; and sometimes on the charmed ear
Falls in a gush of sweet, wild minstrelsy:
Anon its lofty organ tones I hear,

Lifting my soul in solemn gladness high.

Would'st hear this music? then go forth in Spring,
When nature from her death-like trance is waking:
Hear the glad robin and the blue-bird sing;

List the sweet clamour that the brooks are making;
Hark to the whispers of the young leaves, telling
That May, sweet May, is come to us once more;
Stand by the lake, where tiny wavelets swelling,
Break in melodious chorus on the shore.

Would'st hear this music? Listen to the thunder,
Mingling its deep voice with the summer rain:
Stand mutely gazing, filled with awful wonder,
And hear Niagara's loud anthem strain :

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