to take my flight to yon bright realms above.  But is that bliss prepared for me?  O let me feel it.  This afternoon my brother Richard died.  Alas! how uncertain are all sublunary things!  He was just entering life, and lo! he is snatched away.  Surely the all-wise ‘I am’ saw evil gathering, and kindly removed him to a happier clime, safe from impending danger.  Well, my Richard is gone; while I, four years older, am yet alive.  Mercy, that took him, spares me with the same gracious design; ’not willing that any should perish, but that all might have everlasting life.’  May that blessed end be answered in my poor soul, which without Thy enlivening presence feels an ‘aching void’ which the whole world cannot fill.

“This day has been a day of affliction, but it drives me to the Lord.  My dear husband and children are entwined about my heart.  Lord, help me to give them freely up, and do Thou take, and possess me whole.”

The following lines were addressed to a valued friend:—­

  Whitehead, awake! and sweep the lyre again
  With touch seraphic to a Saviour slain;
  A Saviour, worthy of sublimest verse,
  A Saviour’s love too mighty to rehearse;
  The purest theme that ever fired the tongue,
  Gave life to genius,—­harmony to song;
  Fill thy enraptured soul with thought divine,
  And pour its fulness on the glowing line.

“1809.—­Have had a tooth drawn.  O that the dire root of sin were as effectually taken away, never more to disturb my happiness; and that pure perennial peace might succeed,—­I have been visiting the sick:  but oh! how inadequate to the responsible task!  O my God awake my drowsy powers, and fit me for every sphere I have to fill in life.—­I feel more heartfelt joy in leaning upon Christ than anything else; yet it is hard work to keep the mind disentangled from worldly cares.  Things needful to me, seem the most dangerous, and what I am most liable to be ensnared by.  In visiting some infirm people my soul was deeply affected, when I considered their age, and ignorance, and my own inability to instruct them.  How great is the ignorance of mankind!  O that God would apply some word spoken by his poor dust.”

During the time the Rev. A.E.  Farrar was stationed in York, her aspirations after purity of heart reached a crisis, and she was enabled by faith to claim the promise; “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.”  For some time her convictions were so clear and distinct, that to use her own words she “durst not say she had not received the blessing.”  But this happy experience—­the Christian’s highest privilege on earth—­was soon interrupted by doubtful reasonings; still her conscience was

  “Quick, as the apple of an eye,
  The slightest touch of sin to feel.”