GOD IS GOOD. TO SUCH AS HAVE NOT THOUGHT ABOUT HIM. ALL that your eye sees, or your ear hears, display, as in a picture, and proclaim, as with a living voice, "GOD IS GOOD." Yes: let careless, or foolish, or wicked men say what they may-God is good. Just think of yourself, my reader, and your every-dayexperience. Who keeps you in health, without which you could not work? Who, every night, gives you rest in sleep, and who, every morning, as by a new creation, awakes you to life again? Every day-every night, God does this for you; and if he did not do it you could not live. Did you ever think of this before? Who provides for you? "I work for my living," do you say. Yes: but who provides the food you buy when you have worked for money to buy it with? Who makes the corn, and fruits, and herbs, to grow? Were he to withhold showers and sunshine would they grow? Not they earth would be barren as a rock. And then, who replenishes the earth, and air, and seas, and rivers, with living creatures for your food and sustenance? Who but the living God? And the living God is good. And then think of your own life, and say not, all your life long, been very good to you. whether God has With more than a mother's care he watched over your helpless infancy, and— When in the slippery paths of youth With heedless steps you ran, His hand unseen upheld you safe, And led you on to man. How many times since you were old enough to know him, and fear him, and love him, have you refused to think anything at all about him? You have forgotten him, but he has not forgotten you-you have neglected him, but he has not neglected you-you have been unkind to him, but he has never been unkind to you. Nay, if you think about this matter at all, you must allow that he has done you nothing but good all the days of your life; far more than you could have expected; and all he did, however little, was more than you deserved GOD IS GOOD. for your forgetful and ungrateful conduct towards him. I tell you plainly what you know to be true, and because I would not have you to treat the good God after this manner any longer. But I must mention one fact to shew that God is good, which is above all that he has ever done; and angels themselves never knew that God was so good till they heard of this. When God saw that all men had forgotten him and gone away from him, and were all doing wrong together, and knowing that if they lived and died in that way he could not let them come up into his holy heaven, in his great and amazing goodness he sent down from heaven his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to shew us how to live and love one another, and when he had done this he bore the punishment due to us for our sins by dying a painful and shameful death. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." to you, After this, then, never let such a thought as that God is not good cross your mind for one moment. Man may not be good but God will, that is if you will let him. And now God waits to be good to you, and to give to you such proofs of his goodness as you have never known or imagined. Like a kind-hearted father he will think nothing that he has too much to give you, if you sincerely, and with all your heart, turn to him and seek him. "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" Now if you wish to get into the right way of thinking and knowing all about God's goodness, read his own book, and hear what he says about himself. You would not be so rude as refuse to hear a fellow creature, and will you refuse to hear him who made you? Let God speak for himself. He does in the Bible. Read it. Spend that one day in seven, which God in his goodness has also provided for you, in getting to know more and more of him, whom to know is life eternal. And rest assured that the more you know of him, the more you will wish to know, and the more you will love him, for SINGULAR CIRCUMSTANCE. SINGULAR CIRCUMSTANCE. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER.-Dear Sir,-The following extraordinary account appeared originally in the Methodist New Connexion Magazine for 1803, with the date and signature as they now appear at the end of the piece. If you consider it worthy of a place in the Pioneer, its insertion will much oblige, Yours truly, Mirfield, Yorkshire, April 11th, 1849. BENJAMIN Oldroyd. A GOOD many years ago there lived a very wicked lad at or near Crossland, about three miles from Huddersfield. This lad's chief business was to carry coals from the coal pit to the town with his ass; and his outrageous conduct in beating the poor animal was notorious to all; for which, and other wicked dispositions, he had become a proverb of reproach. The ass patiently endured, for a long time, all the abuse which this merciless wretch was pleased to inflict. It tugged and toiled in tame submission to every adversity, as if determined at any rate to give satisfaction to its more than cruel master. But all it could do was unavailing; torture, in addition to hard labour, was still its daily portion. At length, when the lad was in the very act of beating as usual, the animal changed its nature in a moment, and the pensive ass became a 10aring lion; raving mad it turned upon him with open mouth and horrid noise, seized him and threw him down, and worried him dead on the spot; and had it not been prevented by the violent exertions of some men present, it would have torn even the dead carcase into morsels. Two or three days afterwards, when the lad's funeral was passing over Crossland Moor, where the ass was grazing, on its way to the place of interment, the ass ran towards the coffin and bearers with all the raging fury which possessed it when it killed the lad, nor was it without the utmost strength and resolution of several men, prevented from wreaking its vengeance a second time on the lifeless object of its hatred. Previous to the lad's interment, the coroner's inquest sat on his body, when, as might be expected, it was soon agreed that he had been killed by an ass. The award of the jury respecting the ass, was, that it should be worried to death by dogs. The apparent design of this sentence was, that the punishment might correspond with the crime. Accordingly after the lad's interment the ass was brought to Huddersfield, and in the back yard of the George Inn a plot of ground was railed out into which the ass was put. A great many people were 66 SINGULAR CIRCUMSTANCE. present; many dogs were then set at the ass, but the animal, resuming its terrible spirit, fell upon them as it had done upon the lad, and presently made every one of them scamper away, many of them yelling piteously; nor was it in the power of any present to prevail with the dogs to renew the attack. The ass, therefore, like an invincible champion, stood triumphantly in the midst of the inclosure, and seemed to bid defiance both to the laws of the land, and the pitiful punctilios of refined humanity. It was then proposed to shoot it; accordingly a loaded gun was brought. When the gun was pointed over the rails, the ass turned its head towards the muzzle, and posted itself somewhat like a ram when going to run at its adversary; and then seemed willing to meet its fate in that more honourable way. It was instantly shot through the head, and died on the spot. It is no more than two days since the above account was related to me in substance by one of our local preachers at Huddersfield, who was a boy when the tragical event happened, and remembers seeing the ass after it was shot, and putting his finger into the bullet hole in its head. The circumstance of the ass running furiously at the coffin which contained the lad is certainly of a marvellous nature, and cannot be accounted for on natural principles; but the fact is incontestable, it not resting upon the evidence of a whimsical individual, but on the united testimony of a funeral congregation. But if we lay aside sceptical philosophy, and recollect that He who empowered Balaam's ass to speak, still reigns, and can work wonders as well in these days as in the days of Balaam, we shall not wonder at the Almighty for making, for once, an ass his minister of justice, and by its instrumentality taking summary vengeance on a wretch, who had stifled every tender sentiment of the human heart, and outraged every principle of nature. Besides, the hand of God was more clearly perceived in the latter onset than in the former, it being little, if anything, less than a miracle. Of all the animals with which we are acquainted, there are few more inoffensive than the ass. Its natural history is remarkably pleasing on account of the agreeable qualities ascribed to it, and yet it is of all other animals the most contemptuously treated. Its sable garb, its moderate stature, and its pensive look, which ought to excite our respect and pity, from a too often perversion of natural sentiments, cause many to treat it with cruelty and speak of it with contempt. It is frequently made the butt of sport and torture by wanton and wicked POETRY. boys, both in the lanes, and in the fields, and on the commons; and all this too very often under the notice of unfeeling and ignorant men, who seem to think that they would waste their time and lessen their dignity, were they to use their authority and exert their strength in rescuing a poor ass. Whereas they ought to know, that it is far more honourable to defend an ass than a horse for this reason, because the horse is more capable of defending himself, and on that account is very seldom an object of abuse.-Besides all these things there are some circumstances in sacred history which make the ass more estimable than almost any other animal. It was an ass that reproved the wicked prophet Balaam in the language of man. Since the world began no other brute creature has been known to speak rationally. It was an ass that carried the virgin mother and the infant Saviour down into Egypt and back again; and it was on the same despised creature that the Redeemer of the world made his last and notable entry into Jerusalem, just before his crucifixion, when the people spread their garments and palm branches, and the children cried Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." 66 Leeds, August 24th, 1803. Poetry. THE GREAT DELUGE. G. BEAUMONT. THE deluge, at the Almighty's call Yet Noah, humble, happy saint, And sang the grace that steered him through. While fiery storms around me fall; |