of nature without, render most irksome to active prattling childhood. The stillness of the house lay like a vast burthen on my spirits. And when this stillness was broken, it was not often for my relief; for I heard but the dismal monotony of some solitary reader, which fastened the oppression still more painfully on my heart. I probably suffered more in this way, than most children; for having no fit conveyance to the distant meeting-house, I could not accompany the family to public worship, for the first four years of my life. I was obliged to remain at home, generally in company with one individual, whose turn it was to keep the house from harm, and myself from mischief and danger. Alas! I had no little brother or sister to share and sympathize in the durance. Even an answering look and fellow feeling in another, would have been a welcome alleviation. It was a task to exist through the day. I hardly knew why I was kept within doors, and so still. I was told that I must not play, because it was wicked. What this word meant, I was not informed. I do not recollect to have received hitherto any particular instructions concerning God, excepting, perhaps, that he made me, and every body, and all things. I had, moreover, the impression that the Sabbath had some peculiar connexion with this Being, and that he was the occasion of this pause in the ordinary pursuits of people, and of my wearisome restraint. Of course, my ideas of God, though very vague, were as unpleasant as my cheerless Sabbath associations could make them.

At length these indefinite notions were changed to a terrific distinctness-to conceptions which filled my mind with unmingled dread. I think that I was between four and five years of age, when a youth of eighteen living with my father, undertook to give me a few hints for my religious edification. He was staying at home with me on the Sabbath, but was hardly so strict a keeper as my affectionate relatives. I wandered about the house to escape from time and solitude; but the echoes of my pattering footsteps, and the creaking of doors, gave me an awful sense of lonesomeness, and I fled to an unfinished upper chamber, and crept upon a bed, where lay the aforementioned youth, enjoying that lazy luxury vouchsafed to the laborious on the day of rest. What prompted him I know not, for his character was rather the opposite of pious. Perhaps, as a penance, he might have been

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reading the Scriptures, or something else which made him feel particularly serious. However it might be, he then gave me a lesson which haunted my soul with horror for years; and it will be an everlasting remembrance to my mind. I recollect nothing of his communications, but the following appalling intelligence. He told me, that if I did wrong-if I was wicked, God would put me, after death, into a place burning with fire and brimstone, called hell, where I should suffer the pain of the flames for ever and ever. I shuddered with emotions I never knew before. I supposed that it was wicked to laugh and play on the Sabbath, and to disobey my parents; and I knew that, in these particulars, I was very much inclined to wickedness, if not absolutely very guilty; and I was struck with consternation at the thought, that I was liable to die at any time, and be plunged into the hell which had been described. The effect was probably greater, on account of my pre-disposition to gloom. The solitude of the house now seemed pervaded by an all-seeing, but invisible eye, watching my minutest actions. Thenceforth, the Sabbath, and every thing of a religious nature, seemed doubly dismal. When the idea of God recurred to my mind, he was ever imaged in the character of vengeance.

Not long after I had imbibed the preceding notions, my father presented me, one Sabbath morning, with a copy of the New Testament, enjoining on me to read it every Sabbath. I did as was desired, glad to find something to do, if not positively to enjoy, on the wearisome day. I had read in the Scriptures before, but had not thought much more of their meaning, than if they had been the untranslated Greek. I had recited the Assembly's Catechism; but a child, of course, could not understand what is hardly intelligible to the mature. A new book, and that the property of the child, has a new interest to him. And now, moreover, my mind was excited to things contained in the Scriptures, in consequence of the recent information I had received concerning the character of God.

I soon found a terrible delight in the perusal of my Testament; for my curiosity was not long in finding that most wonderful of all the books, the Revelation of John. Its narrative character was alluring, and its supernatural and awfully sublime incidents and imagery, fastened my whole soul, as if I had been an immediate spectator of the miraculous scenes.

I looked upon every particular in the description, as the literal truth, to be fulfilled in the future. My conceptions of what I read, were exceedingly vivid. Some circumstances in the awful representation seemed almost as distinct to my mind's eye, as if I had seen with the vision of the Evangelist. I saw the sun become black, the moon become as blood, the stars fall to the earth, the heaven departing as a scroll, and the mountains and islands moving out of their places, and the men of the earth calling on the mountains and rocks to fall on, and hide them from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. I saw the great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books opened, and the dead judged, and those whose names were unrecorded in the book of life, cast into the lake of fire. And then, when I beheld the new heaven, and the new earth, and the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, for the blessed to dwell in, I tremblingly wondered whether my name would be written in the Lamb's book of life. All was to me a most fearful reality.

This extraordinary book had probably more influence on my imagination, than any thing else I ever read. It confirmed what had been told me before concerning God; and it filled my mind with new images, which, for years afterwards, were ever associated with his name.

I found a confirmation of these terrific views in other parts of the Scripture, where judgment was predicted, and woe was pronounced. Those numerous passages which represent the Creator as a father, all love and tenderness towards his children, scarcely attracted my notice, so impressed were my fears with the awful of his character.

My understanding in divine things, was still farther darkened at the house of worship; for I was at length freed from my lonely imprisonment on the Sabbath. It was not, however, by the pastor that I was misled. His countenance was benignant, his manner mild, and the tones of his voice pleasant. The language of his sermons and prayers, I was then hardly old enough to take interest in, as no one particularly directed my attention to their import.

If there was ever any thing unpleasant in his performances, it was when he spoke on those subjects with which

I had the most gloomy associations. His was a religion of light and cheerfulness. The sun of righteousness was never darkened, or the glory of God dimmed and dishonoured by his teaching. My heart would now have me pen an eulogium, but propriety forbids.

It was from Watts' Psalms and Hymns, that my early church edification was chiefly derived. I found a pleasure in reading at random on the two open pages, during the singing of the selected portion. The measurement of the verse, and the music of the rhyme had a charm for me. And here my imagination experienced that seducing though terrible excitement, which it found in the descriptions of the Sacred Volume. The phraseology of Scripture took hold of my mind with a more horrific grasp, when appropriated by the genius of the modern bard, and wrought into easily-remembered verse.

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From the time that I began to peruse the Scriptures more generally and attentively, and to be acquainted with the above-mentioned psalms and hymns, I entertained a most painful fear of God in the mightier and more striking operations of nature. His pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave voice; hail-stones and coals of fire. Yea he sent out his arrows and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings and discomfited them. He made the clouds his chariot, he walked on the wings of the wind. God thundered marvellously with his voice. His lightnings enlightened the world; the earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.

Passages like these had a great effect upon my mind, so that the Creator seemed to make use of nature, only to clothe himself with awful majesty, or to execute the purposes of his wrath. The summer, notwithstanding all its teeming delights, was a formidable season to me. Even in the cold opposite winter, I used to anticipate its alarms. How anxiously did I study the face of the forenoon sky, to divine whether there would be a thunder-shower before night. Most vividly do I recollect the varying aspects of those summer days, and my varying feelings also, as the unfavourable omens gathered or dispersed, or became fulfilled in the dreaded shower. When the light-edged, dark-bodied clouds began to roll into each other in the

western sky, and to lift their bold craggy fronts in closer contiguity, then would my pulse begin to beat quick and heavy, and my frame to quake. But when their towering masses began to lose their individuality in one dark blue expanse, and the ear to catch the far off thunder-roll, and the lightning to crinkle along the portentous obscurity, then would my limbs relax and my strength fail. Oh, how have I been almost paralyzed with terror, when the whole heaven has become arched with the black vapour, and the lightning has darted athwart my vision, seemingly in contact with the very eye-ball, and I have felt like a shattered thing in the immediate thunder-crash.

Well might it be terrific, for it seemed the presence and the power of that awful God, ready, perhaps, to strike my body to death, and snatch my soul to judgment. When the storm was past, and the terror gone, I felt no divine presence in nature's freshened beauty and invigorated life. Death was to me not only the king of earthly terrors, but it was also a tyrant terror, the idea of it so pursued and possessed my mind, and kept it in the trembling bondage of fear.

As long as I might live, I should, indeed, escape that dreadful punishment of the burning lake, of which I had heard. But beyond the grave, all was dark uncertainty, and I was as likely as any, to be plunged for ever into the agonizing flames. Oh that life were in duration as in the days before the flood! The most wretched continuance on earth seemed preferable to an entrance on the world unknown, although there might be a possibility and a hope of heaven. Peculiar circumstances, doubtless, presented the subject with a more appalling aspect to my view.

(To be Continued.)

On the Co-operative System.
(Continued from page 23.)

4thly, Were men to have all things in common, many vices, which now torment mankind, would be either unknown or have very little influence upon their conduct.

Agar, who well knew the evils of affluence and of penury, says, in his address to the Deity, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food convenient for me,