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to sleep, out of downright fatigue, and to make a variety. Their bare feet hot on the boards, and to be pattering through the cold mud at night to their close, dirty homes, where they won't be let sleep long enough to get up refreshed for to-morrow's toil."

yet you dare not: to see the children about you, moving their fingers with their eyes shut, dreaming they are at work, and the overlooker giving the poor things a cut to wake them; so that the fright sets their hearts going like mad, and then they feel weaker and sillier than before. I can't bear to think," added the boy, while tears stole down his cheeks, "I can't bear to think that now, when I am basking in this beautiful sunshine, leaning on your kind knee, and having you watch that I don't even overtire myself at any pleasant work, my poor little companions are going on, on, on, in their weary slavery, the whirligig wheels always whirring, and not a pleasant sight nor a cheerful sound

"It does cheer me, Willy, to think you are out of it all."

"It ought: and oh, Richard, we should pray for those men who are trying to make the factory children less miserable; and whenever you speak to the great folks, put in a word: for I can't help thinking God must be angry with them while they take so much care about their own little ones, and have no thought, no feeling for the perishing children of the poor!"

PASSING THOUGHTS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE short Essays contained in the following pages are what their title imports-Passing Thoughts, excited by familiar objects, or recollections, which were noted down as they arose, with such application as the theme suggested. The greater part have appeared in that excellent periodical, "The Church of England Magazine," whence they are now collected, and, with some additions, formed into a volume.

Christians in general find it a delightful exercise to trace the hand of God through the various operations of his power, in the kingdom of providence, as in that of grace. It was the favourite occupation of David; and he who follows it in the Psalmist's spirit, seeing Christ in all, and enjoying all in Christ, will always be led to the Psalmist's conclusion: "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches!"

February, 1838.

PASSING THOUGHTS.

THE BRANCH.

ONE of those sudden and violent gales, that occasionally sweep over the fair face of summer to wrinkle and deform it, had blown so strongly during the night, that morning presented the unwelcome spectacle of a branch-the only one left by the woodman's axe on an aged elm before my window-broken from the trunk, and hanging suspended by a merely external connexion, which could convey no nourishment to it. During the day, I watched, with regretful looks, the evident fading of those leaves that had formed so graceful a screen to the window of my study: while tossing more wildly in every fresh gust of wind, the broken branch seemed hastening to its final fall.

branch, thus cut off, fell, and was borne away, to be cast into the fire and burned. Perhaps few seasons are more friendly to solemn thought than the closing eve of a summer's day, clouded over, and ruffled by the stormy wind. Here was a text, that would require very little skill to spin it out to a long discourse; a similitude clear to the dullest apprehension, and fraught with humbling considerations. Likening my elm to "the True Vine," how could I fail to follow up the comparison? A fair professor, with much to invite the good opinion of men, unable to withstand the trial of trouble and persecution arising because of the word, and virtually broken off through unbelief; yet maintaining that outward hold, which includes no spiritual participation in the root and fatness of the tree; hanging on, with weak though vaunting tenacity, and pointing downward, while every living branch bears its head toward the sky; the very abundance of his leafy professions only rendering more conspicuous his progress towards utter corruption, and holding out a perilous temptation to thoughtless souls. They, perhaps, not stopping to investigate the reality of his union with the tree, and delighted to find him tending to their own earthly region, from which his fellows la

Towards evening, a party of idle boys congregated on the open space; and, after trying various pastimes, took it into their heads to enjoy a swing, as they said, on, or rather with the drooping branch. By turns they seized it, springing from the ground, or climbing by the trunk; and, struggling as high as they could, they set the bough in motion by their weight, waving to and fro, in desperate glee, at such a distance from the ground, that had the slender strip of rind given way, the conse-bour more and more to rise, catch at him quences must have been dreadful. as a sort of connecting link-professing to boldened by impunity each foolish lad en- rely on the stock that he seems to spring deavoured to surpass his predecessor in from; clinging to him rather than to that this wanton exposure of life and limb; un- stock; and, by the weight of their worthtil, alarmed at the scene, I privately sent to less fellowship, hastening the fall that may a person sufficiently authorized, who, plac- prove as fatal to themselves. I marked ing a ladder against the trunk, mounted, how the grasp of those climbers continuand with one blow of an axe rendered the ally tore down the leaves, which lay separation complete. The withering heaped beneath, until a very rude, short

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gust of wind swept them off in a moment, letters are worn past all hope of decipheramid clouds of dust. Here was the posi- ing a single sentence. Come away." tive reality of the prophet's touching image, And thus ends the last effort of poor "We all do fade as a leaf; and our iniqui-humanity to perpetuate its cherished sorties, like the wind, have carried us away." rows, or to display its pompous boastings, I turned from the window at length, over- in the sight of posterity. That old, grey, powered by the thought-how awful is the mossy stone, with its half-shadow of a responsibility of a branch, a recognized cherub's face peeping out from the broken member of the visible Church! Either it outline of a pair of wings; its green and is good, pleasant, profitable, doing honour yellow patches of corroded surface, where to the stem that bears it; or a blemish, a the long inscription once appeared; and disgrace to that stem, and to those who its slanting position, bending forward while behold it a snare. And oh, how mysteri- it sinks sideways into the soil,-that is the ous is the union, which, abiding, gives life, sole surviving memento of-what? It is a strength, beauty, and fertility; but which memento, for it says "Remember;" but may be destroyed without immediately who or what is to be remembered by it, breaking the outward tie. May not such all the wit of all earth's wise ones cannot a branch, under the power of self-decep- discover. Nay, though, right under the tion, conceive that still it lives, though pal- cherub's chin, we may trace the course of pably withering in its place? It is an im- the "Hic jacet," by knowing where it pressive call for deep searching of heart, should stand, still, no more is communiwhen, for aught we know, the axe may be cated than the bare existence of such a sharpening that is to lay us in the dust. tablet in that place must make known. It As these ideas occupied me, I happened is a grave-its inmate has long tenanted to glance on a favourite greenhouse plant, the silent dwelling; and here our inforthe principal part of which had once, by a mation ceases. fall, been apparently broken as hopelessly as the elm-bough; but my anxiety to save it had prompted so many expedients, that, by dint of propping, binding, and other careful helps, the injury was repaired, and my plant stood as vigorously blooming as ever. Sweet lesson! I mentally said; may it be mine to become a healer wherever I see a weak branch in danger of separating from the tree. Many a wounded spirit is utterly broken by the injudicious harshness, or unbelieving hopelessness, of those who might bind it up, if they would heartily set themselves to the work. Surely this, one of the blessed offices of the Saviour, well becomes his followers. To crush a weak brother is an easy, and, to our corrupt nature, congenial task; but to raise the falling, to support the wavering, to dress the wound, and, by dressing, to hide it from unfeeling eyes-this is an acting of the new nature, which God the Spirit alone can create and sustain.

THE GRAVE STONE.

"It is useless to puzzle yourself any longer over what is utterly illegible-the

Is it, then, idle and vain so to mark a spot, endeared, perhaps, to some fond breast far beyond all that the residue of the globe contains? No; it is comely and befitting our nature so to do; though I look on the practice not as a mere natural impulse, but as one among the multitude of unregarded evidences afforded of the doctrine of the resurrection, as having been revealed to man from the earliest period. We find the art, not only of sepulture, but of preserving the human body itself after death, carried to a pitch of perfection at which modern science can only gaze and wonder, when unrolling from its delicate wrappers the corpse of two or three thousand years' unchanged existence. It seems to bespeak a thorough conviction that the spirit would reanimate its earthly tenement; but with a total ignorance or mistrust of the Power that could gather up the scattered dust, and say,

"Lost in earth, in air, or main,
Kindred atoms meet again!"

Probably not to one in a thousand who puts a head-stone at the grave of a departed friend does it occur, that there is the remotest connexion between his act

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