“I am resolved, through grace, to seek a closer walk with God, and sweeter communion by the Holy Ghost.  I want constancy, and more faith.  I am convinced of my cowardice in not confessing the sanctifying grace of God which I enjoy; and thus insensibly lose sight of it.  I desire continually to be led by the Spirit.  I went to converse with a neighbour about having family-prayer.  The mother is an old Methodist.  Saw another person, who is a widow, and in trouble; both heart-touching visits.—­In visiting, I met with the son of one of my members, whom I requested to read six verses of scripture every day; got the whole family together, and prayed with them.  There was considerable feeling among them.—­I am now entered upon the last hour of this eventful year, in which thousands have been swept away by cholera, and many by sudden death; but it has not come nigh me.  I began it with the fixed purpose of living to God; but Thou, Lord, knowest how often and wherein I have failed.  I feel I can plead nothing but the blood of atonement, to which I come; I want stronger faith, and more love.  The unhappy divisions in our Connexion have rather done me good; for I feel a hungering after Bible Christianity, and more of that love which ‘never faileth,’ and which ’thinketh no evil.’”

XX.

THE STORM.

  “THE LORD HATH HIS WAY IN THE WHIRLWIND AND THE STORM,
  AND THE CLOUDS ARE THE DUST OF HIS FEET.”  Nahum i. 3.

The storm, that spreads ruin and devastation in its path, is no less a proof of a wise and overruling Providence than the gentler phenomena of nature, which, with such constant and unvarying regularity, refresh and bless the earth.  It cleanses the atmosphere, and sweeps away the poisonous miasmata, which have been engendered during a period of quiescence, and which must, if not removed, prove prejudicial to human life.  A similar effect is exerted by those painful dissensions which too often arise in religious communities.  God permits them for the purification of His church.  What is useless or injurious is swept away; what is good is confirmed; and if unhappily many, that are weak, are injured, it is because they do not seek shelter in Him, who is a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest.  During the fierce agitation, which swept as a whirlwind over the Methodist societies in 1849 and 1850, Mrs. Lyth never lost sight of the great purpose of life.  She stood faithful and unmoved at her post; and meddled no further with matters of strife than positive duty required.  The questions which many loved to discuss, and thought themselves quite competent to settle, were never willingly the topic of her conversation.  They were the subjects of her prayers.  She retired to her closet; she wept in secret over the breaches of Zion; she sought her refuge from the surrounding excitement in the secret place of the Most High, and hence that, which in itself was a serious evil, became to her a source of personal benefit.  Happy would it have been for many, who needlessly exposed themselves to the fury of the storm, if they had been like minded.