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Death rides on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower;
Each season has its own disease,
Its peril, every hour!

Our eyes have seen the rosy light
Of youth's soft cheek decay,
And fate descend in sudden night
On manhood's middle day.

Our eyes have seen the steps of age
Halt feebly tow'ards the tomb,
And yet shall earth our hearts engage,
And dreams of days to come?
Turn mortal, turn! thy danger know,
Wher'er thy foot can tread,
The earth rings hollow from below,
And warns thee of her dead!

Turn, Christian, turn! thy soul apply
To truths divinely given;
The bones that underneath thee lie
Shall live for hell or heaven!

UNPUBLISHED HYMN.

BY THE LATE SIR ROBERT GRANT.

PSALM lxxiii. 25.

Lord of earth! thy bounteous hand
Well this glorious frame hath plann'd;
Woods that wave, and hills that tower,
Ocean rolling in his power;

All that strikes the gaze unsought,
All that charms the roving thought;
Love-a flower of Paradise

Friendship! gem transcending price!
Yet, amidst a scene so fair,

Should I cease thy smile to share,
What were all its joys to me?
Whom have I on earth but thee?

Lord of heaven! beyond our sight
Rolls a world of purer light;
There, in love's unclouded reign,
Parted friends shall meet again;
Martyrs there, and prophets high,
Blaze a glorious company,
While immortal music rings
From a thousand seraph strings:

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Oh! that scene is passing fair!
Yet, should'st thou be absent there,
What were all its joys to me?

Whom have I in heaven but thee?

Lord of earth and heaven! my breast
Seeks in thee its only rest;

I was lost thy accents mild
Homeward turned thy wayward child;
I was blind-thy cheering ray
Charmed the long eclipse away;
Source of every joy I owe,
Solace of my every woe,
Oh! if once thy smile divine
Cease upon my soul to shine,
What were earth or heaven to me?
Whom have I in both but thee?

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FRIENDLY VISITOR.

No. 246.]

MARCH, 1839.

[VOL. 21.

THE OLD CONVERT'S WIDOW.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "REALITIES OF LIFE."

A very interesting work, which the Editor strongly recommends. Those who have read the account of "the Old Convert," in one of your past numbers, (see vol. 20, page 129,) may perhaps be interested to learn that his aged wife has also left this world; that the same gracious God who in her old age begun, as we trust, a work of grace in her heart, continued it, carried her safely through the remainder of her life, and has, we trust, brought her safely to a land of rest. She still continued to live in the cottage which she and her husband had built together; but, from the time of his death, her spirits seemed broken, and she often expressed, very feelingly, her want of some friend to be with her in her old age. She had indeed a daughter, one who, though living in a distant country, never forgot her aged mother. I seldom called without her showing some new proof of her daughter's love: sometimes it was an apron, or a pair of shoes, or a curtain for her bed; and once, pointing to a small mat and asking what that was for, she answered, "that was sent to me from my dear daughter to kneel on when I say my prayers.'

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But, though all this kindness was pleasing, yet, when sickness and death came, where was she to look for a nurse? How could one so busily employed, at such a distance, be then of any use? Oh! warm and natural affection is a precious thing! and it was this that led her child, on hearing that she was ill, promptly to leave all her engagements, and come to wait on her dying mother. I met her, I remember, about half a mile from the cottage. "I heard that my dear, old mother was ill," she said, "and I could not stay at

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Arthur Foster, Printer, Kirkby Lonsdale.

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home a minute. I left all, and to-day I have walked the last thirty miles that I might be with her." And when next I visited old Joyce, her daughter was doing alb that love could do for her. I told her that I rejoiced that her mother had some one to wait on her. "dacame away in a hurry," she said; "and every thing was so left, that I find I must go back again to see that all is set to rights;" and the next day she left, staid as short a time as possible, and then returned; and all this was done from pure filial affection: each journey was upwards of seventy miles. time of her mother's death drew rapidly on; I saw her many times; but the nature of her complaint produced a deadening effect on her mind, yet the little she said was satisfactory. She continually spoke of Christ as the Shepherd who had found her; and her most constant feeling seemed to be thankfulness that she had ever been induced to attend the Church and the Sacrament, and great affection for those who had been the means of leading her there. She was, indeed, slow of speech, and naturally dull of understanding, and could perhaps have answered only a few questions as to the way of salvation; but what she knew she practised.

From the first time that she and her husband felt the duty of attending church, never did a Good Friday or Christmas Day come round without our seeing our old friends there on both parts of the day; and thus ceasing from their work, when we consider that their daily labour scarcely, at their advanced age, supplied them with daily bread, was no small proof of their love to that Saviour whose birth and death they came to celebrate.

Alas! are there not some who, having been instructed from their cradle in the truths of religion, and able to converse on them fluently, give no such proofs of Christianity having found its way to their hearts and consciences? Death came gently and quietly, and, I firmly believe, not before she was ready. I love to think of her as one escaped from a world of evil, to one of everlasting happiness.

I remember a touching letter from a missionary, in which, speaking of the death of the Rev. David Browny he says, "he was dreading the hot months in India; but before that season came round, he was taken to that country where the sun shall not burn by day, nor the moon smite by night;" and with the same kind of feeling, but with that difference of expression which a different climate makes, I often think, with respect to some of our poor people who have been taken to their quiet homes in the churchyard, before the setting in of a stormy winter; and I cannot hear, as I do at the moment I write, the heavy falling of a November storm, without a feeling of thanksgiving to God, who has called some of his beloved ones from a world where it was his will that they should hunger and thirst, and have no settled dwelling-place, to a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Poor old Joyce, the broken roof ill kept out the rain and wind, even in her last illness; and her God, I trust, took her to a city that hath foundations. The steep hill, too, was beginning to be more than even she, with her patient and enduring spirit, could encounter, and she was removed to that land where the inhabitants, night and day, are before the throne: and hunger, thirst, and sickness were familiar to her; but now she is in that land where the inhabitant shall never say, am sick.

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I never pass by the cottage without a touching thought of the old couple; "the way and the day were indeed alike long." Almost the next storm that fell after poor old Joyce had left it for her long home, battered in her roof; stones and tiles blocked up the entrance; and one day, as I passed, a stormy gust of wind had blown the shutters open, and displayed, in all its misery, the poor hovel where our old friends ended their days. One touching thing I saw on the discoloured wall was a printed paper, at the head of which was written, "A Farewell Word from an Affectionate Minister." Most beautiful were the words: I can give only a few of them. "O hear me whilst I

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