ON THE DEATH OF MRS. SAVAGE, MISSIONARY TO AFRICA. "What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." "Shalt know hereafter!"-Father, wilt thou wait "Shalt know hereafter!”—Tender, faithful friend, And touch with healing faith, thine agonizing prayer? "Thou know'st not," Afric!-sad of heart and blind REPENTANCE AND HOPE. (Translated from the Italian of Petrach.) In tears I trace the memory of the days, And seek, (as heaven designed) a nobler praise. Unto my weak and erring soul be given And when at length thy summons sets me free, A. FOSTER, PRINTER, KIRKBY LONSDALE, FRIENDLY VISITOR. No. 291. DECEMBER, 1842. VOL. 24. THE DISPENSARY PATIENT. It is an old saying, and a correct one, "that one half of the world does not know how the other half lives;" and it is also true, that one half of the world does not know what the other half suffers. There is daily in the streets and lanes of a crowded city a mass of human misery and want, which, were it known to the thoughtless men of fashion, would make them stand aghast in the midst of their merriment, and reflect, with becoming seriousness, that they also are mortal. Happy is it for the sons and daughters of affliction, whether among the higher or the lower orders of society, when, convinced of the vanity of all earthly enjoyments, they have been led by the Holy Spirit to the Cross of Christ; and surrendering their hearts and affections to Him who died for them, and who rose again, have resolved to rest on nothing as a source of pleasure or future hope, but his great salvation. For such persons, the bed of sickness has no thorns, the valley of the shadow of death no terrors. Even amidst hunger, and thirst, and rags, their confidence in the kind providence of God suffers no loss; and when called to leave their helpless offspring behind them in this vale of tears, they obey the summons with resignation and fortitude. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" says the Christian, under such circumstances as I have mentioned, "and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God." "The Lord will strengthen me upon the bed of languishing; thou wilt make all my bed in my sickness." "I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." "Is not M the life more than meat? and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet my heavenly Father feedeth them. Am I not much better than they"? Who is he who has said, and is still saying, "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me?" Is it not the same kind and compassionate God, who is a "Father of the fatherless, and a Judge of the widows, in his holy habitation"? "Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt." But the writer of this article has been called to witness the death-beds of many, who, delaying to "a more convenient season" the solemn thoughts of death, judgment, and eternity, have lived "without hope, and without God in the world;" and though he has met with some who have been brought to a knowledge of the Saviour, and have found acceptance through him "at the eleventh hour;" and though he has met with others who, after exhibiting all the horrors of an awakened conscience, have departed in the midst of darkness, confusion, and despair; yet the result of his experience is decidedly this, that the bulk of mankind really die as they live, ignorant of God, ignorant of themselves, ignorant of the only foundation of a sinner's hope. Some vague confidence in the mercy of their almighty Judge is perhaps expressed-some wish that they had minded religion more; and on these indefinite ideas their surviving relatives found a delusive hope of their spiritual safety, and talk of their departed friends as having died penitent, and at peace with God! Very different is the scene which the Christian's sick-chamber and death-bed present. There all is light, resignation, and peace-peace founded on the faithfulness of a present God, and the atonement of a present Saviour. Nor are these tokens of devout submission to the Divine will exhibited only when, at the close of a long life of usefulness and respectability, the follower of Christ is about to be gathered to his fathers. The summons to meet the last enemy may have been received in the bloom of youth, and in the midst of many fond and pleasing anticipations; and bright as the triumph of our faith over that enemy is in every case, it is brightest of all when the youthful Christian is seen to enter the lists with the muchdreaded foe, undismayed. In truth, I know not a more interesting or a more elevating spectacle, than that which is presented by the young disciple, when, amidst the pain and languor of a lingering disease, he preserves his mind unruffled, and his heart at ease; and contemplates his fading strength and wasted limbs, without a murmur or a sigh; anticipating with vivid. joy that glorious period when, this "corruptible putting on incorruption," and this "mortal putting on immortality," even "death" itself" shall be swallowed up in victory." Nor does the interest fail to be greatly enhanced when the sufferer belongs to the lower classes of society; since his deportment serves to prove, in the clearest manner, that faith in the Lord Jesus is the true patent of nobility, conferring, as it does, on its humblest possessor, a title to a crown of glory, and an inheritance in the heavens; and enabling him, as it does, to encounter death with a fortitude to which the great and the wise ones of the earth too often are strangers. Armed with this faith, even the youthful female displays, in the hour of death, a strength and a heroism which, were they exhibited under any other circumstances, would gain the praise and admiration of the world; but the world has neither praise nor admiration to spare for the follower of Christ. Mary N was, when the writer became acquainted with her, about thirty years of age. She was the offspring of humble parents, and had lost them both at an early period of her life. Her education, however, had not been neglected: she read well; and expressed herself in conversation with the greatest propriety. She had been, for ten years, a servant in a respectable family, to whom she endeared herself so much by her faithfulness and affectionate conduct, that they ever afterwards continued to regard her as one of their own children. About two years before the time she was introduced to the notice of the writer, she began to feel her strength unequal to the duties of a servant; and having engaged and contrived to furnish a small apartment in the neighbourhood of the family with whom she had lived, she sought to support herself by her needle. Up to this period she maintained an outward respect for the ordinances of religion, and her character in the eye of the world was blameless. The solitude, however, of her little apartment, and the absence of that bustle to which she had been accustomed in the numerous family she had left, afforded room for reflection, to which the weakness of her frame-though at this time she had no marked symptom of diseasehelped to give a serious cast. She thought it probable that she might die young; and this idea, which frequently recurred, gave rise to the important enquiry, Was she prepared to die?—a question which she was unable to answer to her own satisfaction. She felt that although she had neither neglected secret prayer, nor the reading of the Scriptures, yet God had not been in all her thoughts, and his glory had not been the chief end of her being. She remembered that although she had seldom been absent from church on the Lord's day, yet the desire of shewing off a new gown, or bonnet, had sometimes got the better of her feelings of devotion. In her own eyes, therefore, she stood condemned; and knowing that the Judge with whom she had to do was "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," she felt that in his sight also she must stand condemned. This thought wrung the prayer of the publican from her heart, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" She saw that she had been building on the sandy foundation of her own righteousness, and that she must now look beyond herself for a ground of acceptance with God. What that ground of acceptance was she speedily learned from her Bible, which she now read with intense and prayerful interest. It revealed to her that Saviour of whom |