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OLD JEDDY; OR, THERE'S REST AT HOME.

"I was preaching one Sunday afternoon in the door of a log cabin in the village of P, to a congregation which filled the house and the front yard. When about half through the sermon, I observed an old negro riding alone towards the house. He dismounted, fastened his horse to a tree, and took his stand among the throng. The tears soon trickled down his furrowed cheeks, and it seemed impossible for him to repress some hearty exclamations. At the conclusion of the service he presented himself with profound reverence as my guide to Col. M.'s, nineteen miles distant. It was my next appointment, and, having just arrived on the circuit, needed some guidance. I had already preached three times and ridden twenty-three miles that day, and proposed to Jedediah, or Jeddy as he was called, to tarry till the morning; but he replied that his master, the colonel, insisted upon seeing me that evening. Do go, massa,' said Jeddy, 'for no preacher be there for four months.' mounted to start, but Jeddy's horse was found too lame to return. The late rains had swept away a bridge over the only road, and rendered it necessary to take an indirect course through a boggy prairie, in order to cross the stream nearer its head. The horse had sprained one of his legs in a quicksand of this prairie, but Jeddy insisted on returning on foot.

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"We started into the prairie, but had not got far when I perceived that, owing to the wet state of the ground, we should not reach our destination till the next morning, at the pace of Jeddy. But, though slipping and tugging at almost every step, the good hearted negro's large eyes gleamed with delight at the thought that he had induced the 'massa preacher' to accompany him. I directed him to mount behind me; he seemed astonished at my kindness, and looked at me in silent amazement; but at last yielded to my reasonings. By a little familiarity he became quite communicative. I led him into a recital of his whole history, particularly of his christian experience. It was related with evident sincerity and deep emotion; the tears flowed from the old man's eyes frequently, and I could not restrain my own; we wept together like children. Though jogging along in no very interesting plight, I felt that St. Paul's language was not inapplicable to us-God

"hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.'

"When we had passed the first nine miles, the night was falling fast, and, what was infinitely worse, we began to falter among those patches of quicksand so frequent and so dangerous in some of the western prairies. After plunging in a number of these, Jeddy dismounted, to relieve the danger by lessening the burden of the horse. We had not gone twenty rods further before the poor animal sunk above his knees in the mire, and only extricated himself by the utmost violence. Though accustomed to greater difficulties, the fatigues of the day had so affected me, , that I began to shew less courage than the poor slave who guided me. Dismounting, I leaned wearily against my horse, and expressed a disposition to return rather than risk the perils and fatigues of the remaining distance.

"No, massa,' replied Jeddy, 'be not discouraged, there be rest at home for you.' There was something in either the tone of Jeddy's voice or my own mood of mind, which gave the expression at once a double sense. 'Yes,' I involuntarily exclaimed, thank God, there is a home for us, Jeddy, where the weary are at rest.'

"O yes, massa,' said the old labour-worn negro, as the tears started in his eyes, 'me often tinks of dat-me hopes to get dere some day.'

"There is rest at home'-the sentence gave me new energy, and has often since, in many a harder trial.

"We jogged along, but ever and anon were struggling in the bogs. Wearied at last, we sat down on a small protuberance of the prairie, too fatigued to proceed. "How old are you, Jeddy?' I enquired.

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'Seventy-three, massa; me be getting towards dat home, masɛa.'

"Have you a wife, Jeddy?' 'Yes, massa; but me know not where she be: former massa love not God, and sold her far away.' 'Have you children?' 'Yes, massa.' And where are they?' 'All gone, too, massa; me know not where. But we all served God, massa, and hope to meet in dat home where be rest.' The tears started afresh in the old man's eyes. I could enquire no farther. My feelings overpowered me. What, thought I, are my sufferings, compared with those of this poor, sorrowstricken servant of my Master?

"There is rest for us at home,' said I

involuntarily, and motioned to proceed. It was very dark, the rain was falling, and my horse limped with lameness. I was compelled to lead him by the bridle the remaining ten dreary miles. Through rain, and mud, and quicksands, we plodded on, nerved against them all by the thought which ever recurred with refreshing influence to my mind, that there was rest for us at home.' At last the glimmer of a distant light fell on our course. 'Dat is home, massa,' exclaimed Jeddy, with ecstasy.

"So I have often thought, since then, gleams the light of hope over the valley and shadow of death to the christian pilgrim.

"I was received about midnight at the log, cabin, wet and weary, yet as an angel of God. The table had been spread with every thing good the house could afford for my refreshment. After a thousand congratulations, a prayer and a song of praise, I laid me down to rest. Rest, thought I, what a sweet word! Never did I feel its significance more than in the slumbers of that night, sweetened as they were by beautiful visions of that better land, where there remaineth a rest for the people of God.'"

THE INFIDEL AND THE DYING CHILD.

The child's disease was scarlet fever. Ten days and nights of ever-deepening gloom had passed, and in the silent night, having insisted that Evelyn, who had herself shewn symptoms of illness through the day, should retire to bed, Euston Hastings sat alone watching with a tightening heart the disturbed sleep of the little Eve. It was near midnight when that troubled sleep was broken. The child turned from side to side uneasily, and looked somewhat wildly around her.

"What is the matter with my darling ?" asked Euston Hastings, in tones of melting tenderness.

"Where's mamma ?-Eve want mamma to say, Our Father !'"

Euston Hastings had often contemplated the beautiful picture of his child kneeling with clasped hands beside her mother to lisp her evening prayer, or, since her illness forbade her rising from her bed, of Evelyn kneeling beside it, taking those clasped hands in hers, and listening to Eve's softlymurmured words. Well he knew, therefore, what was meant by Eve's simple phrase," To say, 'Our Father.'"

"Mamma is asleep," he said: "when she awakes I will call her."

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'No, no, papa; Eve asleep then."

"I will call her at once, then, darling," and he would have moved, but the little hand was laid on his to arrest him.

"No; don't wake; poor mamma; papa say, 'Our Father' for Eve."

"Will Eve say it to papa? Speak, then, my darling," he added, finding that though the hands were clasped, and the sweet eyes devoutly closed, Eve remained silent.

"No; Eve too sick, papa; Eve can't talk so much; papa kneel down and say, 'Our Father,' like mamma did last night; won't you, papa ?"

Euston Hastings could not resist that pleading voice; and kneeling, he laid his hand over the clasped ones of his child, and for the first time since he had murmured it with childish earnestness in his mother's ear, his lips gave utterance to those hallowed words of prayer. At such an hour, under such circumstances, it could not be uttered carelessly; and Euston Hastings understood its solemn import-its recognition of God's sovereignty-its surrender of all things to He understood it, we say; but he trembled at it. His infidelity was annihilated; but he believed as the unreconciled believe, and his heart almost stood still with fear while "Thy will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven," fell slowly from his lips.

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Soothed by his compliance, Eve became still, and seemed to sleep, but only for a few minutes. Suddenly, in a louder voice than had been heard within that room for days, she exclaimed, "Papa, papa, see there!-up there, papa !"

Her own eyes were fixed upward on the ceiling, as it seemed to Euston Hastings, for to him nothing else was visible, while a smile of joy played on her lips, and her arms were stretched upward as to some celestial visitant.

"Eve coming!" she cried again. "Take Eve!"

"Will Eve leave papa ?" cried Euston Hastings, while unconsciously he passed his arm over her, as if dreading that she would really be borne from him.

With eyes still fixed upward, and expending her last strength in an effort to rise from the bed, Eve murmured in broken tones, "Papa come too-mamma-grandpa -little brother-dear papa-”

The last word could have been distin

guished only by the intensely-listening ear of love. It ended in a sigh; and Euston Hastings felt, even while he still clasped her cherub form, and gazed upon her sweetly-smiling face, that his Eve had indeed left him for ever.

And yet not for ever. He straightway sought the Lord, and has now followed her to glory.

NEVER CROSS A BRIDGE TILL

YOU COME TO IT.

"Never cross a bridge until you come to it!" was the counsel usually given by a patriarch in the ministry to troubled and over-careful christians. Are you troubled about the future? Do you see difficulties rising in Alpine range along your path? Are you alarmed at the state of your business at the uncertainties hanging over your life at the dubious prospects in reserve for your children-at the gloomy contingencies which fancy sketches and invests with a sort of life-like reality-at the woes which hang over the cause of the Redeemer, or at any other earthly evil? Do not cross that bridge until you come to it. Perhaps you will never have occasion to cross it; and if you do, you may find that a timid imagination has overrated greatly the toil to be undergone, or has underrated the power of that grace which can lighten the christian's every labour. In approaching the Notch of the White Mountains from one direction, the traveller

finds himself in the midst of conical hills, which seem to surround him as he advances, and forbid further progress. He can see but a short distance along his winding road; it seems as if his journey must stop abruptly at the base of these barriers. He begins to think of turning back his horse, to escape from hopeless enclosure among impassable barriers. But let him advance, and he finds that the road curves around the frowning hill before him, and leads him into other and still other straits, from which he finds escape simply by advancing. Every new discovery of a passage around the obstructions of his path teaches him to hope in the practicability of his road. He cannot see far ahead at any time; but a passage discovers itself as he advances. He is neither required to turn back, nor to scale the steep sides of towering hills. His road winds along, preserving for miles almost an exact level. He finds that nothing is gained by crossing a bridge before he comes to it! Such is often the journey of life. How much of its toilsome ruggedness would be relieved by careful attention to the above admonition! Never cross a bridge till you come to it! Or, to express the same counsel in a form that does not involve the charge of Hibernicism, "Be careful of nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep (garrison) your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

Religious Tracts.

TO TRACT WRITERS AND TRACT DISTRIBUTORS.

We consider it a most difficult task to write a good tract. To write a pious one, a scriptural one, one sound in doctrine, one which any good man could give away without scruple, all this is very easy; and every one knows that this would describe ninetenths, or perhaps double that proportion, of our tracts. An evangelical clergyman, or one of the pious ladies of his flock, can write them by scores. Some most ordinary case of a good old man, who kept close to

tract.

church, and off the parish on "agricultural labourer's " pay, with some common-places about the best known texts and gospel truths, are quite enough to make a staple An ounce of biographical incident, and a heavy weight of sermonizing, and it will do. Will do for the writer, but what do the readers do with it? Possibly, plod uninterested through the whole. More probably, try and pick out the scraps of incident, and leave all the rest. Some fourpage tracts now lie before us; excellent for the devout spirit they breathe,-many

The Weekly Tract Society, 8, St. Ann's-Lano, Martin-le-Grand, London. Our tract distributing friends would do well to order specimens of them.

of them ingenious in their titles, some in their subjects, but though superior to the large class described above, most of them are, in our opinion, too much like the generality of Sunday morning sermons to strike the careless masses. We think, as we have said, tract writing to be so difficult an art, or so rare a gift, that we are at the furthest remove from any harshly critical feeling, and we know that in one case* we might possibly incur the reproof "physician heal thyself." Still we wish to stir up ourselves and others, in the department of tract-writing, to meet the "wants of the age."

Now, we do think that the age for the dogmatic tract is entirely gone by. The multitudes without have lost all reverence for the gown and cassock; perhaps no very serious loss; but they have also learned to ask for reasons more than for authorities. Let them have reasons. We can give them. (1 Pet. iii. 15.) Let us do it. Then, again, the masses of our population have been supplied abundantly with entertaining reading, much of it, indeed, of the most depraved character; but it necessitates our attempting to interest too, or we shall not get readers. Whitfield, when preaching was the almost only door of access to the many, condescended to get a congregation by the very means used by their seducers, making good use afterwards of the attention he had secured. The press for the populace, should be like Whitfield for the populace. It needs not be always in full canonicals. It needs not to keep within the leading-strings of Blair. Whately would be an incomparably better guide, or rather prompter. .We admire, indeed, some of his own smaller pieces for the many (in his line of writing), as much as his most elaborate performances.

It is of no avail to reply, readers ought to attend to what is good and pious. The fact is, pious dulness and common-place must share the fate of all other dulness. Tameness and every-day thoughts or illustrations will not interest. Nor ought christian teachers to shirk the labour necessary to gain attention, or be above what they know will interest, because it accords not

with the rules of the religious drawingroom. ACCEPTABLE WORDS are, after all, the point.

Let every pious writer of a tract† put the question to himself, "Will my servant (if uneducated and unconverted) be unable to lay this tract down before she goes to bed?" or "Will that knot of Sunday idlers and scoffers wish to read it through ?" Will my "putting of the thing" detain their attention? There are many classes of tract readers, and great varieties in style and thought which would interest them. Even close reasoning, if a little popular in the style, will please hundreds now; but pithy, striking remarks, vivid description, and lively dialogue, are always in favour. Tract distributors can recal at once illustrations of the truth of this remark, by only trying to recollect which tracts they have circulated or read themselves with interest. How few compared with the total ! A few considerations should never be forgotten; such as, that a tract especially, or any article in one, should make some one point unmistakeably clear or impressive. Even a narrative should be told (though not coloured) with an eye to its principal religious lesson, which then may be so brief that he who has read the narrative will read the lesson deduced, and retain it too, as naturally growing out of it. Cowper's hint in his "Conversation," should be always in the tract-writer's mind,

"A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct; The language plain, and incidents well linked; Tell not as new what every body knows, And, new or old, still hasten to a close; There, centering in a focus round and neat, Let all your rays of information meet." Connected with this is the importance of not making each tract a creed, or a system of divinity. As we have heard John Foster express it, "the grand thing is to catch them by some corner of their souls." Tracts in England are not written for those who will be unable to find further religious instruction. Let interest in religion be awakened in any mode, specially in the way of conviction of sin, and by far the most important point of the tract-writer is gained. What did the thief on the cross

*We refer, of course, to "The Appeal."

+ Our tract writers who have had a classical education (and they are many) should not surely forget one of their masters' hints. Horace, Ars Poctica, 99, 131, 153, 343, et ss.

We have already recommended "The Happy Home," by the Rev. James Hamilton of London, as one of the best series of tracts we know for the more intelligent working people. They are, however, but a specimen of what might be done, and ought to be done, more extensively.

know of the doctrines of grace in their ordinary theological garb? And any other man could surely be saved as he was, knowing only the two great facts that he was a sinner, and that Jesus was the Saviour of sinners. We have seen tracts, otherwise good, spoiled by the attempt to make all the principal doctrines of the gospel fit naturally in. What a contrast to the Parables of the great Preacher of the gospel; they all have one point, and how would their impressions be marred if five had been fixed to every one of them! It naturally suggests the difference between the singlepointed wound of the javelin or spear entering deeply by the whole weight behind it, and the superficial incision of some manypointed instrument soon healed and hardly leaving a scar.

Another point is, that the writer for the many should personally know them, heartily sympathise with their reasonable desires, and be ready to accord them their social rights. We frankly avow that a religious teacher cannot fairly expect the regard of the many, who does not, like his Master, feel an interest in every thing which relieves their sufferings, or who wants the impartiality to perceive, or the courage to maintain, their rights as men. With the knowledge now spreading on every side, of the incompetency, selfishness, and scandalous prodigality of our rulers, wasting as they do the earnings of the poor on worthless idlers, and worthless objects, it is worse than useless to appear to sympathise more with the afflictors of the nation than with those whom they defraud of the necessaries or comforts of life. Religious tracts are not the place for politics, yet if they are suffi

ciently adapted to the present age to interest it, the leaning of the writer must sometimes appear. No one could doubt whether the Hebrew prophets and Christ himself took the people's side or not, in the world-wide and world-long controversy between the selfish oppressor and the suffering subject. Rulers, not the common people, were always the great enemies of prophets and apostles. They were the people's champions. In this aspect some of Hannah More's tracts were positively pernicious.

Probably many of our readers may apply our own remarks with too much justice, in censure of our own attempts in our Halfpenny Magazine; and we will freely admit that we have never equalled our own wishes. Yet we have gone far in what we think the right direction. We have not been above any consistent expedient to gain attention. We have combined great varieties of writing. We have sympathised with the views of the many, without pandering to any of their errors; and our number for this month will shew that we even invite them to correspond with us on their difficulties and doubts. We could too, as we think, point to many articles as approaching a pretty high standard, considered as intended to interest the many, and to be remembered by them. But, oh, that the spirit of Paul might be bestowed in double measure, on some Burns, or Walter Scott, or Charles Dickens, that the Halfpenny Tract might. circulate in millions, its weekly appearance longed for, and its weekly lessons interesting the masses, more than the vile tales of horror and licentiousness which crowd the cheap-shop windows!

Correspondence.

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College, appears to be a metaphysician. If the following sentences do not contain "the Philosophy of Prayer," they contain the genuine experience of a couple of eminent saints: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear," &c. David says, "I was dumb; I opened not my mouth because Thou didst it." He says also," What time I am afraid, I will trust in God;" and "I will cry unto God most high; unto God who performeth all things for me." At any rate this is good philosophy.

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