consciousness of superior genius or learning? God has placed a ready antidote within your reach. The abode of learned leisure is seldom far from the humble dwelling of some unlettered Christian. Thither let your steps be directed. Take sweet counsel with your poor uneducated brother. There you will find the man, whom our 66 King delighteth to honour." His mean chamber, graced with one well-worn book, is as "the house of God, and the very gate of heaven." Observe how far the simplicity of his faith, and the fervour of his love, exceed any thing you can find in your own experience, cankered as it is with intellectual pride. God has taught him many lessons, of which all your learning has left you ignorant. Make him your instructor in spiritual things. He is a stranger to the names of your favourite poets and orators. But he is very familiar with the sweet psalmist of Israel; he can give you rich portions of the eloquence of one, who " spake as never man spake.” He can neither " tell you the number of the stars, nor call them all by their names.' "But he will discourse excellently concerning "the star of Bethlehem." He is unable to attempt the solution of a difficult problem. But he can enter into some of those deep things of God's law, which to an unhumbled heart, are dark and mysterious. He will not talk to you "in the words which man's wisdom teacheth;" but Oh! what sweet and simple expressions of divine love are those which "the Holy Ghost has taught

him." He knows nothing but Christ crucified; but this is the excellent knowledge, to which all other knowledge is foolishness. He has "the fear of the Lord; that is wisdom. He departs from evil; that is understanding." 1 When your soul is refreshed by this simple and lowly communion with one of the meanest of God's saints; return to your learned retirement. Look over your intellectual possessions. Choose out the brightest jewel in your literary cabinet. Place it by the side of " the meek and quiet spirit" of this obscure Christian. Determine which is the "ornament of greater price." 2 Compare the boasted treasures of your mind with the spiritual riches of your illiterate brother. Run over the whole catalogue. Let not one be omitted; the depth of your understanding, the strength of your reasonings, the brilliancy of your fancy, the fire of your eloquence. Be proud of them. Glory You cannot. They have dwindled into insignificance. They appear to you "as a drop of a bucket, as the small dust of the balance."

in them.

The pressure, however, of increasing illness, constrained her to relinquish her habits of personal activity for some time previous to her death. It was her appointed dispensation rather to suffer, than to do, her heavenly Father's will; while her solitary hours were cheered by the contemplation of the glorious prospects opening now upon her view, "looking for the mercy of her Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."3

1 Job xxviii. 28.

21 Peter iii. 4.

3 Jude 21.

CHAPTER IV.

FURTHER EXTRACTS FROM HER WRITINGS AND CORRESPONDENCE.

It is not to be expected, that the quiet tenor of Miss Graham's habits in a retired village could furnish any variety of incident or detail. We shall however abundantly compensate for this deficiency by a more full exhibition of her fine, powerful, and spiritual mind, as illustrated in her writings and correspondence.

But this department of our work is too large to be comprehended in one mass. We will therefore set it forth in several distinct divisions, and give her sentiments upon the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel-upon subjects of interesting Theological discussion - upon some points of moment connected with Christian Experience and Profession-and upon Miscellaneous subjects,

1. HER VIEWS OF THE GREAT DOCTRINES OF THE GOSPEL.

Her apprehensions and statements of the grand fundamentals of the Christian faith, were eminently Scriptural.

On the humbling doctrine of Original sin, she justly remarks in a Posthumous work 1.

'It is the very first lesson in the school of Christ: and it is only by being well rooted and grounded in these first principles, that we can hope to go on to perfection. The doctrine is written in Scripture as with a sun-beam.

If we do not feel some conviction of it in our own hearts, it affords a sad proof that we still belong to that "generation that is pure in

"The Freeness and Sovereignty of God's Justifying and Electing Grace." (Pp. 121.) Notwithstanding the inversion of Scriptural order in the Title (which her mode of discussion unfortunately required), and one or two incidental inaccuracies of illustration, its statements of Divine truth are full, clear, encouraging, and practical. The substance of the work was written about four years before her death, in a letter to a serious relative, with the desire to impart to her mind a more clear and comprehensive knowledge of the Christian system. She brought it into its present form during her last illness, and lived only to correct the two first proof-sheets. Her object in publication is stated in one of her latest communications. Now that I have experienced the exceeding comfort and delight, which a clear view of God's Sovereign, absolute, free, and unmerited salvation affords in the near prospect of eternity, I am very desirous to make my poor testimony to these truths public, in the hope that God will bless it to others. For I know that success "is not of him that planteth, nor of him that watereth, but of God that giveth the increase."

their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness."'1

After adducing some of the most convincing Scriptural evidence, she proceeds forcibly to illustrate the subject by the case of Infants.

2

Would we know the reason of this indelible pollution, which fallen man has transmitted to his latest descendants? let that given by Scripture suffice-"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one. But is not the new-born babe innocent? yes, from the commission of actual sin, but not from the pollution of a nature altogether sinful; for "who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."3 Why then is death so often commissioned to snatch away the babe in the first hour of its existence ?—why, but because that babe is a sinful creature? Sin, that root of bitterness, has already shot its fibres into the inmost soul. That infant "born of the flesh, is flesh;"4 and “as such cannot please God" 5—cannot bring forth any other than the accursed fruits of the flesh. As surely as the cockatrice' egg will hatch into a viper, so surely will the babe born of unclean parents, be itself unclean;- -so surely it will be "by nature a child of wrath, even as others."6 And therefore it is as the Apostle tells us, that "Death reigneth over all, even over all them that have not sinned after

3 Rom. v. 12.

2 Job xiv. 4. 5 Rom. viii. 8.

6

Eph. ii. 3.

Prov. xxx. 12. pp. 4, 5. 4 John iii. 6.