At one period of my life, during a revival of religion, God led me by his Spirit to see and feel that the many years I had been a professed follower of Christ—­which had been years of alternate revivings and backslidings, had only resulted in dishonor to Him and condemnation to my own soul.  True, I had many times thought I had great enjoyment in the service of God, and was ever strict in all the outward observances of religion.  But my heart was not fixed, and my affections were easily turned aside and fastened upon minor objects.  In connection with this humiliating view of my past life, a deep sense of my responsibilities as a mother, having children old enough to give themselves to God, and still unreconciled to him, weighed me to the earth.

I plainly saw that God could not consistently convert them while I lived so inconsistent a life.  I felt that if they were lost I was responsible.  I gave myself to seek the Lord with all my heart, by fasting and prayer.  One day, in conversation with my dear pastor, I told him my trials, and he said to me, “What you want is a baptism of the Holy Ghost.  Give yourself up to seek this richest of all blessings.”  I did so—­and rested not until this glorious grace was mine.  Then, oh how precious was Jesus to my soul!  How perfectly easy was it now to deny myself and follow Christ!

I now knew what it was to be led by the constraining love of Jesus, and to do those things that please him.  Then it was that he verified to me his precious promise, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”  Very shortly, one of my dear loved ones was brought to make an entire surrender of herself to Christ.

I trust I was also made the instrument of good to others, who professed to submit their hearts to my precious Savior.  Will not many more be induced to take God at his word and believe him when he says, “Then shall ye find me, when ye shall search for me with all your hearts”?

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Original.

EXTRAVAGANCE.

The following paragraphs, which we have met in the course of our reading, contain a great deal of truth worthy the consideration of our readers.

Extravagance in living.—­“One cannot wonder that the times occasionally get hard,” said a venerable citizen the other day, “when one sees the way in which people live and ladies dress.”  We thought there was a great deal of truth in what the old gentleman said.  Houses at from five hundred to a thousand dollars rent, brocades at three dollars a yard, bonnets at twenty, and shawls, and cloaks, &c., from fifty dollars up, are enough to embarrass any community that indulges in such extravagances as Americans do.  For it is not only the families of realized wealth, who could afford it, that spend money in this way, but those who are yet laboring to make a fortune, and who, by the chances of trade, may fail of this desirable result.  Everybody wishes to live, now-a-days, as if already rich.  The wives and daughters of men, not worth two thousand a-year, dress as rich nearly as those of men worth ten or twenty thousand.  The young, too, begin where their parents left off.  Extravagance, in a word, is piled on extravagance, till