nounce the world, and devote herself to God without reserve; and from this time until her heavenly Father was pleased to take her to himself, she continued to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. Our lot being this year on New-London circuit, we resided at Bozrah, where I had the pleasure of being. much in the company of my dear departed friend; and as my husband was most of the time from home on the circuit, she was frequently with me, and was one of my most intimate friends. It was pleasing to me to have her often relate the exercises of her mind. We conversed freely on death, judgment, and eternity; and she in general had an impression that her days would soon be numbered. One evening, as we were conversing together, she paused, and after a short silence, assumed her usual cheerfulness, and observed, "I have not a doubt of my acceptance with God; but the thought of death at times gives me pain." I endeavoured, in my feeble manner, to convince her that God would give her grace sufficient for that hour-for he had promised never to leave, nor forsake those that put their trust in him; and blessed be his holy name, she found his promises abundantly fulfilled. Her health gradually declined, and it appeared evident that she was wasting with a fatal consumption; but as her strength failed, her faith in Jesus increased. I often visited her, and it appeared to me more an house of joy, than of grief, To see my young friend, calm and composed, with heaven heaming in her countenance, waiting for the summons of her Lord and master, gave a joy unspeakable. Being too feeble to meet at the usual place of worship, she often requested the people of God to meet at her father's house, that she might join with them in prayer and praise. As she had opportunity, she warned the youth to prepare for death, while she reminded them that a sick bed was a poor situation for so great a work as to prepare for eternity. From day to day she appeared resigned to the will of God. The Sabbath before her departure she observed that "death would be an hour of sweet refease;" and begged for patience to wait her appointed time. In the course of the day, by her request, different portions of the Scriptures were read, which she heard with attention. Near the close of the day her mind was somewhat exercised about her state, and she desired prayer, in which she was unusually fervent; but soon the burden was taken away, and the anxiety removed; after which her faith was unshaken, and her soul continued happy in God. It now appeared that her dissolution was near, and she endeavoured to administer comfort to her mother, earnestly desiring her not to be cast down, and observ、 ed, "I feel resigned to death, I expect soon to go to a better world than this." In this calm and triumphant state of mind, she took an affectionate leave of parents and friends. She cons

tinued in the same peaceful frame through the next day and night. On Tuesday morning she bid us farewell-a long fare. well-till the last trump shall sound to wake the sleeping dead! Several times through the day, she expressed a strong confidence in God her Saviour. A few hours before her dissolution, the grace of God was peculiarly manifested in giving her strength and composure of mind to evidence the triumphs of faith in the blessed Redeemer, through whom she had obtained a glorious victory over death and the grave, and the consolation of hope that she should unite in the society of the blessed above. She called her parents, and embraced them in the most affectionate manner, and again bade them farewell; and in succession her younger brothers and sisters (the two eldest of whom have professed faith in the Saviour, and are members of the society) and charged them to be faithful to God. Being surrounded by weeping friends, she reached out her hand and bid them farewell, with as much composure as if she had been going a journey to return again; and observed that her "faith was strong in God, and that Jesus was precious to her soul." She then called on her father to pray-such a solemn and glorious scene I never witnessed before-language fails to describe it to see a parent giving up a beloved child to God, with a calm resignation to his holy will, and the dear child patiently waiting the moment that should release her from all her sufferings. We experienced the opening heavens to shine around us. Having thus finished her work below, without a sigh or groan she calmly fell asleep in Jesus, Jan. 26, 1819, in the nineteenth year of her age. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." When her eyes were closed in death, her father, in the language of holy Job, was impressed to say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken way, and blessed be the name of the Lord." May it be my happy lot to meet her, with all the dear followers of my Lord, where parting shall be no more. E. N. H.

Miscellaneous.

ON THE SUBLIME.-STEWART.

Or all the associations attached to the idea of sublimity, the most impressive are those arising from the tendency which the religious sentiments of men, in every age and country, have had to carry their thoughts upwards towards the objects of their worship. In some cases, the heavens have been conceived to

be the dwelling place of the gods; In others the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies, have themselves been deified; but, in all cases, without exception, men have conceived their fortunes to depend on causes operating from above. Hence those apprehensions which in all ages they have been so apt to entertain of the influence of the stars on human affairs. Hence, too, the astrological meaning of the word ascendant, together with its metaphorical application to denote the moral influence which one mind may acquire over another. The language of Scripture is exactly consonant to these associations.

"If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand, this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge, for I should have denied the God that is above."

"I am the high and the lofty One who inhabiteth eternity! As the heavens are high above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts, and my ways above your ways.

How closely the literal and the religious sublime were associated together in the mind of MILTON, (whose taste seems to have been formed chiefly in the study of the poetical parts of the sacred writings) appears from numberless passages in the PARADISE LOST.

"Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyrean where he sits

High thron'd, above all height, bent down his eyes."

In some cases it may perhaps be doubted, whether MILTON has not forced on the mind the image of literal height, somewhat more strongly than accords perfectly with the overwhelming sublimity which his subject derives from so many other sources. At the same time who would venture to touch, with a profane hand, the following verses?

"So even and morn accomplish'd the sixth day,
Yet not till the Creator from his work
Desisting, though unwearied, up return'd,
Up to the Heaven, of heavens, his high abode,
There to behold the new created world.

-up he rode," &c.

Is it not probable that the impression, produced by this association, strong as it still is, was yet stronger in ancient times? The discovery of the earth's sphericity, and of the general theory of gravitation, has taught us that the words above and below have only a relative import. The natural association cannot fail to be more or less counteracted in every understanding to which this doctrine is familiarized; and although it may not be so far weakened as to destroy altogether the effect of poetical description, proceeding on popular phraseology, the effect must

necessarily be very inferior to what it was in ages when the no tions of the wise concerning the local residence of the gods were precisely the same with those of the vulgar.-We may trace their powerful influence on the philosophy of PLATO, in some of his Dialogues; and he is deeply indebted to them for that strain of sublimity which characterizes those parts of his writings which have more particularly excited the enthusiasm of his followers.

The conclusions of modern science leave the imagination at equal liberty to shoot, in all directions through the immensity of space, suggesting, undoubtedly, to a philosophic mind, the most grand and magnificent of all conceptions; but a concep. tion not nearly so well adapted to the pictures of poetry as the popular illusion which places heaven exactly over our heads.Of the truth of this last remark, no other proof is necessary than the doctrine of the antipodes, which, when alluded to in a poetical description, produces an effect much less akin to the sublime than to the ludicrous.

Hence an additional source of the connexion between the ideas of sublimity and of power. The heavens are conceived to be the abode of the Almighty: and when we implore the protection of his omnipotent arm, or express our resignation to his irresistible decrees, by an involuntary movement, we lift our eyes upward.*

As of all the attributes of God, omnipotence is the most impressive in its effects upon the imagination, so the sublimest of all descriptions are those which turn on the infinite power manifested in the fabric of the universe; in the magnitudes (more especially) the distances, and the velocities of the heavenly bodies; and in the innumerable systems of worlds which he has called into existence. "Let there be light and there was light," has been quoted as an instance of sublime writing by almost every critic since the time of languages; and its sublimity arises partly from the Divine brevity with which it expresses the instantaneous effect of the creative fiat, partly from the religious sentiment which it identifies with our conception of the moment when the earth was first visited by the Day Spring from on high. MILTON appears to have felt it in its full force from the exordidium of this hymn.—

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Hail, holy light! offspring of Heaven first-born."

The sublime effects of rocks and of cataracts; of huge ridges of mountains; of vast and gloomy forests; of immense and im

*The same account may be given of the origin of various other natural signs, expressive of religious adoration (palmas ad sidera tendens, &c,) and of some ceremonies which have obtained very generally over the world, particularly that of offering up incense,

petuous rivers of the boundless ocean: and, in general of every thing which forces on the attention the idea of creative power, is owing in part, to the irresistible power which that idea has to raise our thoughts towards heaven.

The same very simple theory appears to me to afford a satisfactory account of the application of the word sublimity to eternity, to immensity, to omnipresence, to omniscence: in a word, to all the various qualities which enter into our conceptions of the Divine attributes. It is scarcely necessary to remark the marvellous accession of solemnity and of majesty, which the sacred writings must have added, all over the Christian world, to these natural combinations. If the effect of mere elevation be weakened in a philosophical mind, by the discoveries of modern science, all the adjuncts, physical and moral, which revelation teaches us to connect with the name of the MOST HIGH, have gained infinitely as elements of the religious sublime.

From the associations thus consecrated in scripture, a plausible explanation might be deduced of the poetical effect of almost all the qualities which Mr. Burke, and other modern critics have enumerated as constituents of the sublime; but it is gratifying to the curiosity to push the inquiry further, by shewing the deep root which the same associations have in the physical and moral nature of the human race; and the tendency which even the superstitious creeds of ancient times had to confirm their authority.

In some respects, indeed, these creeds were admirably fitted for the purposes of poetry; in none more than in the strengthening that natural association between the idea of the sublime, and of the terrible, which Mr. Burke has so ingeniously, and I think, justly, resolved into the connection between this last idea and that of power. The region from which superstition draws all her omens and anticipations of futurity, lies over our heads. It is there she observes the aspects of the planets, and the eclipses of the sun and moon; or watches the flight of birds and the shifting lights about the pole. This, too, is the region of the most awful and alarming metereological appearances.—“ Vapours, and clouds, and storms;" and (what is a circumstance of peculiar consequence in this argument) of thunder, which has in all countries, been regarded by the multitude not only as the immediate effect of supernatural interposition, but as an expression of displeasure from above. It is accordingly from this very phenomenon (as Mr. Burke has remarked) that the word astonishment, which expresses the strongest emotion produced by the sublime, is borrowed.

If the former observations be just, instead of considering with Mr. Burke, terror as the ruling principle of the religious sublime,