upper part began to slide, and in a second or two 1 should have been engulfed low in the dark waters, between the ship and the pier, with scarcely a human possibility of rescue, but one of the gentlemen flung himself prostrate on the ground, seizing with a powerful grasp the receding plank; while a sailor, jumping on the ship's bulwarks caught me round the knees, to support my tottering steps, and another of the passengers, extending his hands, took mine, and drew me forward!!r.

Isprang ashore, with a careless laugh, my usual mask for a half-broken heart; and while receiving the fervent welcome of those kind-hearted Irishmen, heightened into agitation by my recent peril and escape, what was the language of my secret thoughts? Adoring gratitude? No. Neither the watery grave from which I had that moment been snatched, nor the sense of present safety, health, and comfort, nor the soft sweet moon looking down upon the velvet sod, and marking the church tower, and gleaming on the white head-stones of many a rustic grave, nor the animated warmth of those who had so promptly interposed to rescue me could elicit one throb of right feeling. Dark, as the depths where I might have been sinking, was my ungrateful spirit; and while I courteously thanked my welcoming com+ panions, the breathing of my soul was, Would that your country was in the depths of the sea, and I anywhere else! But there was one thing that exceeded my rebellion; and that was the mercy of my longsuffering God.

With feelings of undiminished gloom and hatred I sat down in the parlour of the hotel, until the morning should be sufficiently advanced to admit

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of our proceeding to Dublin. With two other passengers, I shared a post-chaise; and as we approached the Irish metropolis, even my unwilling looks were attracted, and gratified, by the beauty of many white buildings, the country seats of its inhabitants, scattered among plantations of exquisite verdure, and reflecting the early rays of a cloudless sun. While descending a hilly road, the horses took fright, the postilion was thrown, and with fearful velocity we were borne along by the unchecked animals at full gallop. Let those who understand the peril of my deed judge of the reckless feeling that prompted it: I quietly put my hand out, opened a door, and gathering my long habit about me, threw myself from the carriage. Of course, I fell prostrate, but quite unhurt, excepting a graze on the hand; and, jumping up, exclaimed, as I brushed the dust from my face, Well, I suppose I am to love the soil, after all; for I have kissed it in spite of myself! And did I I not love it?-do I not love it? The Lord knoweth. He who marked my first entrance there by two such awful deliverances, can alone say how deep, how fervent, how all-pervading is the love of dear Ireland, in every vein of my heart. pgd

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The chaise had been stopped immediately after my desperate leap; and I returned to it more amused by the excessive terror that I had occasioned to my companions, than impressed by the manifest interposition of divine power in preserving me. I need not pursue the journey, nor relate the deep waters of affliction through which I proudly and unflinchingly held my way, filled, even from the first, with love for the people whom I had so shamefully pre

judged, but not reconciled to Him whom I professed to serve and adore, until He visited me with strange and agonizing convictions of my lost and sinful state, which I divulged to no human being; and then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through His own precious Word alone, apart from all other instrumentality, showed me the atoning Lamb, filled me with joy and peace in believing, and after months of sweet and blissful communion with him, brought me among His dear children even those who are now suffering persecution and affliction for His sake and the gospel.

Among by-gone days, that is indeed with me a memorable one which welcomed me to the green sod of Ireland. The impatient stamp with which I delighted, as it were, to tread her underfoot, when landing on the northern point of her magnificent bay, contrasted with the heart-broken reluctance that lingered to pick up a pebble from the last jutting little promontory of sand, when re-embarking from its southern side, after several years sojourn-is vivid in my recollection. Deep sorrow was my portion at either period; but, with outward circumstances, nearly similar, oh how changed its aspect! I had come thither under er the impression that human suffering was a suitable atonement for human sin; and while conscience bore me witness that I had, from the earliest dawn of reason, frequently transgressed the known commands of God, I found in the pressure of early and severe affliction not only what I considered a sufficient punishment for those transgressions, but enough even to turn the balance in my favour, and to render me a claimant on the justice of the Most High! Because in the particular trial

of my life I had not perhaps merited at the hand of man what I was called,on to endure, I stood boldly forth as a specimen of injured innocence, often appealing to the Searcher of hearts in the language that even David could not have used, except in a typical character, and prophetic strain. I gathered into one view the sorrows of past years, and many a comfortless anticipation of the future, clouding over with their needless gloom every little interval of sunshine and repose that was graciously permitted for the res freshment of a weary spirit. But this picture is too vile to dwell upon what was the other? A lengthened catalogue of sorrows endured; a darker pros pect of threatened woes; a rending asunder of the sweetest ties that Christian friendship ever formed and sanctified-an exile from the country that I had learned to love, as a Beth-el of spiritual enjoyment, and a return to that which had never afforded me a privilege worth having, apart from the endearments of a home no longer mine. Yet, amid many sinful repinings and unbelieving fears, there was a peace, nay a joy, passing expression. In all these things I saw the natural consequences of inbred corruption and actual sin, to which I had learned to trace every blot upon this fair creation; and in such consequences, I saw the heinousness of that sin, and its eternal wages at the hand of a pure and holy God. I beheld the mighty ransom, which had delivered me from going down into the pit; I confessed the hand that bad led me so far; and while through a mist of tears I looked northward across the beautiful bay, remembering my first arrival, with all its consequences, my soul responded to the language of dear John Newton

Determin'd to save, he watch'd o'er my path,

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When, Satan's blind slave, I sported with wrath,
And would he have taught me to trust in His name,
And thus far have brought me, to put me to shame?

No: the scenes themselves hardly presented such a contrast as the feelings that prevailed. Night, a troubled sea, a dark deep gulf of sullen waters intervening between my ship and the perpendicular side of the pier, with none about me but the casual acquaintances of a day, who knew no more of me and mine than I did of them, and a country that was to me far worse than indifferent-this was my arrival. My departure was on a brilliant summer morning; my path along the shining sand, that seemed gradually to melt and mingle in the blue rippling waters, playing beneath the sunbeam, and bearing on their bosom the light boat prepared to convey us to the steamer, which was moored in the bay. Around were some whose eyes, like mine, overflowed with natural sorrow, while their hearts glowed with the delicious anticipation of eternal re-union in a better land. Not a feeling of my soul but was understood and reciprocated; and the tie formed below could not be broken; for a crucified Redeemer formed the connecting link. One, who even then was preparing to bid a long farewell to his own sweet isle, on a mission of love to the souls of distant heathen, led my reluctant step into the boat and at the moment of seating me there, he repeated, "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee." Yes, I think I was then humbled under the overpowering conviction that such a vile, guilty, proud, thankless, rebellious atom as I, when embarking on that broad and beauteous water, was and had been