LORD REMEMBER ME. THOMAS HAWEIS, 1792. O THOU, from whom all goodness flows, When groaning, on my burdened heart My pardon speak, new peace impart, In love remember me! Temptations sore obstruct my way; O, give me strength, Lord, as my day; Distressed in pain, disease, and grief, This feeble body see! Grant patience, rest, and kind relief; Hear and remember me! If on my face, for thy dear name, The hour is near; consigned to death LOVE-SONG OF THE ANGELS. Ir came upon the midnight clear, Still through the cloven skies they come They bend on heavenly wing, And ever o'er its Babel sounds The blessed angels sing. Yet with the woes of sin and strife And yo, beneath life's crushing load, For lo! the days are hastening on, REST IN JESUS. HENRY FRANCIS LYTE, 1833. LONG did I toil, and knew no earthly rest; Yes! he is mine! and naught of earthly things, Not all the charms of pleasure, wealth, or The fame of heroes, or the pomp of kings, [power, Could tempt me to forego his love an hour. Go! worthless world, I cry, with all that's thine. Go! I my Savior's am, and he is mine. The good I have is from his stores supplied; The ill is only what he deems the best; Ile for my friend, I'm rich with naught beside And poor without him, though of all possesse Changes may come; I take, or I resign; Content, while I am his, while he is mine. Whate er may change, in him no change is seen; He stays me falling, lifts me up when down, I hope to love him better, praise him more; ROCK OF AGES. A. M. TOPLADY, 1776. Angustas Montague Toplady was an English clergyman of the last century, of the school of Calvin. Rev. H. W. Beecher, in his lecture talks, says of the "Rock of Ages," that it expresses jointly the feeling of longing, the sense of personal helplessness, and the sense of the divine sufficiency CONSOLATION IN SICKNESS. A. M. TOPLADY, 1′′ WHEN languor and disease invade Sweet to look inward, and attend Sweet to look back, and see my name Sweet to reflect, how grace divine Sweet to remember that his blood to a degree scarcely equaled in any hymn within his knowl- Sweet on his righteousness to stand, edge. Another exquisitely-beautiful hymn, by the same Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Not the labors of my hands While I draw this fleeting breath, Which saves from second death; His spirit's quickening breath. Sweet in the confidence of faith And know no will but his. Sweet to rejoice in lively hope, That, when my change shall come, There shall my disimprisoned soul And grieve and sin no more; Shall see him wear that very flesh On which my guilt was lain; Soon, too, my slumbering dust shall hear These eyes shall see him in that day, If such the views which grace unfolds, Weak as it is below, What raptures must the Church above in Jesus' presence know! If such the sweetness of the stream, O, may the unction of these truths Till, from her sinful cage dismissed, NEARER MY GOD. SARAH FLOWER ADAMS, 1848. NEARER, my God, to thee, E'en though it be a cross Though like the wanderer, There let the way appear Then with my waking thoughts So, by my woes, to be Or, if on joyful wing, Still all my song shall be, THANKFULNESS FOR WORLDLY BLESSING. IZAAK WALTON. [Izaak Walton, two hundred years ago, was an old man. living in the heart of London, who, in the midst of close and successful application to business, retained a childike simplicity of character, and an unusual fonduess for country life. He was passionately devoted to slong, and his +E+ plete Angler" is one of the curiosities of literature. Ang the variety of natural objects dwelt upon in this rare, quaint book are singing birds, "those little nimble mine sicians of the air that warbie forth their curious dittees, with which nature has furnished them, to the shame of art." And, then, having described the cheerful, re oxing notes of his favorite songsters, he concludes with the antiful thought: "Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad neu such music on earth." In the extract which we here make, he is supposed to be talking to a companion as they are going on a fishing xcur sion. Fishing he regarded as a very happy employment. He took especial pride in the fact that four of Christ! apostles were fishermen, and that our Savior never reproved them for their employment, or calling, as he did the Scribes and money-changers; for "He found that the hearts of such men were, by nature, fitted for cont› m:plation and quietness; men of mild, and sweet, and peacela spirits," such as honest Izaak himself was, as the reader will see from his talk here given.] And "WELL, scholar, having now taught you to paint your rod, and we having still a mile to Tottenham High Cross I will, as we walk toward it in the cool shade of this sweet honeysuckle hedge, mention to you some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we met together. these thoughts shall be told you, that you, also, may join with me in thankfulness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift for our happiness. And that our present happiness may appear to be the greater, and we the more thankful for it, I will beg you to consider with me how many do, even at this very themselves with corroding cares to keep what they have, probably unconscion ably got. Let us, therefore, be thankful for health and competence, and, above all, for a quiet conscience. time, lie under the torment of the when, as God knows, the cares that are stone, the gout, and toothache; and the keys that keep those riches, hang this we are free from. And every often so heavily at the rich man's gir misery that I miss is a new mercy; dle, that they clog him with weary and, therefore, let us be thankful. days and restless nights, even when There have been, since we met, others others sleep quietly. We see but the that have met disasters of broken outside of the rich man's happiness; limbs, some have been blasted, others few consider him to be like the silkthunder-stricken; and we have been worm, that, when she seems to play, is freed from these and all those many at the very same time spinning her other miseries that threaten human own bowels and consuming herself; nature; let us, therefore, rejoice and and this many rich men do, loading be thankful. Nay, which is a far greater mercy, we are free from the insupportable burden of an accusing, tormenting conscience-a misery that none can bear; and, therefor, let us praise him for his preventing grace, and say, Every misery that I miss is a new mercy. Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty times our estates, that would give the greatest part of it to be healthful and cheerful like us, who, with the expense of a little money, have eat, and drank, and laughed, and angled, and sung, and slept securely; and rose next day, and cast away care, and sung, and laughed, and angled again, which are blessings rich men can not purchase with all their money. Let me tell you, scholar, I have a rich neighbor that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; the whole business of his life is to get money, and more money, that he may still get more and more money; he is still drudging on, and says that Solomon says, "The hand of the diligent maketh rich;" and it is true, indeed; but he considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy; for it was wisely said, by a man of great observation, "That there be as many mis-. eries beyond riches as on this side them. And yet God deliver us from pinching poverty, and grant that, having a competency, we may be content and thankful! Let us not repine, or so much as think the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riches, Let me tell you, scholar, that Diogenes walked on a day, with his friend, to see a country fair, where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nutcrackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks; and, having observed them, and all the other finnimbruns that make a complete country fair, he said to his friend, "Lord, how many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath no need!" And truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex and toil themselves to get what they have no need of. Can any man charge God that he hath not given him enough to make his life happy? No, doubtless; for nature is content with a little. And yet you shall hardly meet with a man that complains not of some want, though he, indeed, wants nothing but his will; it may be nothing but his will of his poor neighbor, for not worshiping or not flattering him; and thus, when wo might be happy and quiet, we creato trouble to ourselves. I have heard of a man that was angry with himself because he was no taller, and of a woman that broke her looking-glass because it would not show her face to be as young and handsome as her next neighbor's was. And I knew another to whom God had given health and plenty, but and, at last, come to the kingdom of heaven, but, in the mean time, he, and he only, possesses the earth, as he goes toward the kingdom of heaven, by be ing humble and cheerful, and content with what his good God has allotted him. He has no turbulent, repining, vexatious thoughts that he deserves better; nor is vexed when he sees others possessed of more honor or more riches than his wise God has allotted for his share; but he possesses what he has with a meek and contented quietness, such a quictness as makes his very dreams pleasing both to God and himself. a wife that nature had made peevish, and her husband's riches had made purse-proud; and must, because she was rich, and for no other virtue, sit in the highest pew in the church; which being denied her, she engaged her husband into a contention for it, and, at last, into a lawsuit with a dogged neighbor, who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other; and this lawsuit begot higher oppositions and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for, you must remember, that both were rich, and must, therefore, have their wills. Well, this willful, purse-proud lawsuit lasted during the life of the My honest scholar, all this is told to first husband, after which his wife incline you to thankfulness; and, to invexed and chid, and chid and vexed cline you the more, let me tell you, till she, also, chid and vexed herself that though the prophet David was into her grave; and so the wealth of guilty of murder and adultery, and these poor rich people was cursed into many other of the most deadly sins, a punishment, because they wanted yet he was said to be a man after God's meek and thankful hearts, for those own heart, because he abounded more only can make us happy. I knew a with thankfulness than any other that man that had health and riches, and is mentioned in Holy Scripture, as may several houses, all beautiful and ready- appear in his book of Psalms, where furnished; and would often trouble there is such a commixture of his conhimself and family to be removing from fessing of his sins and unworthiness, and one house to another; and being asked such thankfulness for God's pardon and by a friend why he removed so often mercies, as did make him to be accounted, from one house to another, replied, "It even by God himself, to be a man after was to find content in some one of his own heart; and let us, in that, labor them." But his friend knowing his to be as like him as we can; let not temper, told him "if he would find the blessings we receive daily from content in any of his houses, he must God make us not to value, or not praise leave himself behind him; for con- him, because they be common; let not tent will never dwell but in a meck us forget to praise him for the innocent and quiet soul." And this may ap- mirth and pleasure we have met with pear, if we read and consider what our since we met together. What would s Savior says in St. Matthew's gospel; blind man give to see the pleasant rivers, for he there says: "Blessed be the mer- and meadows, and flowers, and fountains iful, for they shall obtain mercy. that we have met with since we met Blessed be the pure in heart, for they together? I have been told that if a shall see God. Blessed be the poor in man that was born blind could obtain spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of to have his sight for but only one heaven. And blessed bo the meck, for hour during his whole life, and should, they shall possess the earth." Not at the first opening of his eyes, fix his that the meek shall not also obtain sight upon the sun when it was in his mercy, and see God, and be comforted, | full glory, either at the rising or setting |