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HRIST'S disciples are required not only to pity suffering, and relieve it, but to

reach and cure the hidden malady from which it arises. The skillful physician

searches down through the manifested symptoms of disease for the cause of physical derangement, and, removing that, will hardly fail to restore regularity and health to all the bodily functions. So the various ills of humanity spring, directly or indirectly, from some abnormal spiritual condition. If we can but ascertain and cure this, new life will animate the whole being.

How easily, often, is this effected! One expression of encouragement may be the only stimulus needed to sustain a fainting, exhausted spirit. A cheerful smile may bind up the broken heart. A well-timed,

judicious suggestion may restore feeble hands to activity and usefulness. A word of counsel may arrest disease, and bring convalescence which shall grow at length into health and joy.

I would rather, when I am laid in the grave, that some one in his manhood should stand over me, and say: "There lies one who was a real friend to me, and privately warned me of the dangers of the young. No one knew it, but he aided me in the time of need: I owe what I am to him." Or would rather have some poor widow, with choking utterance, tell her children: "There is your friend and mine: he visited me in my affliction, and found you, my son, an employer, and you, my daughter, a happy home in a virtuous family:"—I would rather that such persons should stand at my grave than to have erected over it the most beautiful sculptured monument of Parian marble. The heart's broken utterance of past counsels and kindness, and the tears of grateful memory shed upon the grave, are more valuable, in my estimation, than the most costly cenotaph ever reared.

Dr. Sharp.

HOWARD.

Great and transcendent virtue is of rarer exhibition than great talents. Hence the almost solitary eminence of Howard. It is a curious road through prisons to greatness, and lazar-houses to immortality, -a road never before traveled by a mere mortal, and which furnishes no stimulants but such as an angel might feel. The muffled tread of legions at his heels, and the blast of trumpets, did not urge him on. The shout of gazing nations, and the triumphs of power, did not await him. He saw no expectant crowds in advance, eager to welcome him with honors, — no wreaths, no wealth, no ease. Nothing, nothing hurried him through the damp dungeons and pestiferous air of the lazaretto but the warm impulses of a noble heart and the approving smile of Heaven. Not up above the heads of men, but deep down amid their graves and rejected haunts, he moved. He might have labored for man's welfare, - relieved the sick, helped the poor, delivered the oppressed, nay, devoted his whole life to doing good,—and still lived among his friends, surrounded with all the comforts of life. But he chose not only to renounce these, but to brave the loathsome vapors of the dungeon and

the air of the pest-house; to move amid the arrows of death, and tread for ever on the crumbling edge of his own grave.

While England is ringing with the fame of the greatest man it has ever produced, and Europe is shaking to the tread of armies, this solitary man, laying aside the comforts of his home, forsaking all the paths of ambition, renouncing the enjoyments of wealth, goes meekly and alone into the silent prisonworld. Unasked, unwelcomed, unrewarded, he moves into that dark abyss of crime and pestilence and death, from which few expect he will ever return, impelled onward by the boundless benevolence of his own nature and those exalted views of religious duty which have made the martyr in every age.

J. T. Headley.

MRS. FRY.

Would that I could bring before you, as vividly as it gleams in my own remembrance, the image of the late benevolent Mrs. Fry entering the dreary cells of Newgate! A class of female convicts awaited her there. Some were large and brawny, with coarse faces bronzed by guilt and hardship. Some, with sharp

ened features, and quick, stealthy glances, surveyed us two or three ladies, who, by permission of the di

Methought they earnestly apparel, or appendages of

rectors, were seated near. scanned those portions of ornament, to which the hand of a thief would have been habitually attracted. A few were young, and of not unpleasant physiognomy,-girls whose mistresses, it was said, had given them up to the stern infliction of justice, for purloining some slight article from the wardrobe or household.

It was acutely painful to contemplate this group. The proximity of crime is repulsive, and, in some degree, fearful. We felt sensible relief when Mrs. Fry, who held such power over those depraved and unfortunate beings, appeared. She was tall, of a plain countenance, and in the neat garb of her sect, the Friends. Every movement was in the quiet majesty of goodness. As if a tutelary spirit had descended among them, every fierce eye was fixed and softened. She read, in the sweetest, most distinct enunciation, a portion of Scripture, and knelt with them in prayer. The peculiar melody of her tones fell on their tossing, turbid spirits with tranquillizing power, as if an echo of His divine compassion who said to the storm-wrought billows," Peace! be still."