Youth is the vernal

the time at command, the spirit unoppressed with the rude cares of life, and the heart not bowed or broken with the sorrows of this world. Halcyon season! did the young know it. But, alas! they do not consider this, and instead of remembering their Creator in the days of their youth, they put off the consideration of piety to the uncertain hereafter. Their temptations I admit, are many. season of existence, and it is the first and only spring of its kind they will ever spend. The whole scene is covered with " living green," and adorned with blossoms of hope. Every thing has the freshness and charm of novelty. They roam onwards, pleased with the present, and still more attracted by the dim visions of the future; and thus, my dear S. A., the character is too generally formed by the plastic influence of things seen and temporal, and formed exclusively for an earthly existence, while

things unseen and eternal are left out of view, and God is not in all their thoughts. Hence, Jehovah, in great mercy, sometimes darkens the whole scene by affliction, that in the bitterness of disappointment they may turn from the vain shadows of the world, to the substantial realities of religion. How many have been plucked from the vortex of earthly pleasure, by the severe but merciful hand of a chastising God, and have not only made it their confession on earth, but the theme of their song in heaven,- "It is good for me that I was afflicted."

God is love, and since he has placed our world, through the mediation of his Son, under a dispensation of mercy, the sufferings of the children of men are rather disciplinary than penal. "He does not af flict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." His language that accompanies

every affliction is this, "I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not hear; this hath been thy manner from thy youth, that thou obeyedst not my voice; now hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it." God hath told us in a few words, the secret of all the sorrows which he calls us to endure on earth; "He chasteneth us for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness." We cannot imagine that the bitter disappointments and deep sorrows of the following narrative, could have been inflicted by a God that delighteth in mercy, but with some merciful design. Seek, then, my dear S. A. that in reference to your own trials, you may be of one mind with God in sending them; and you know what that is, that you might be a partaker of his holiness. An affliction sanctified, is better, said an old divine, than an affliction removed; and the first proof of a sanctified affliction, is an

earnest and prayerful solicitude that it might be sanctified. In that precious volume, which is at once our pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, our brightest sun in prosperity, and our only lamp in the dark chamber of sickness, it is said "they that sow in tears shall reap in joy." The drops of sanctified sorrow on earth, are the seeds of immortal joys in the heavenly world. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

To that glory Clementine CUVIER has departed; and do think what heaven must be, where there are millions similar to her. What would earth be if its inhabitants were all as holy, as humane, as intelligent, as she was? but the least in the kingdom of heaven is far greater than she was here below. O, who ought to cling to this world, or should be reluctant to leave it, when such a community, gathered around

the throne of God and the Lamb, beckon us away to their sublime, their perfect, their everlasting fellowship. May all your sufferings, by the grace of God, be the means of preparing you for that society, and then will you confess that you have not had one too many.

the case, is the prayer of

That this may be

Your affectionate

J. A. J.