“The bell strikes one— we take no note of time
But from its loss— to give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an ⟨Angel⟩ spoke
I feel the solemn sound; if heard aright
It is the knell of my departed hours.
Where are they? With the years beyond the flood,
It is the signal that demands dispatch.
How much is to be done. My hopes and fears
Start up alarm’d, and o’er life’s narrow verge
Look down— on what? a fathomless abyss,
A dread eternity.”
Conviction seized the youth. Alarmed and terrified, he instantly left the dissipated throng, and retired to his closet. The result was a saving change, and he is now a Christian indeed in whom there is no guile.
Reader, art thou an admirer of the fashionable follies of the age? Remember they lead to the chambers of eternal death. Leave then— Oh leave these deluding phantoms of an hour, and employ the uncertain moments left thee, in seeking for those realities, unfading pleasures, and eternal joys.
Conversion of a Farmer, by a circumstance rather uncommon.
John Dickson, a farmer in the parish of Ratho near Edinburgh, was long a stranger to the inexhaustible riches of grace. He paid no regard to the sacred ordinances of the gospel, or, if ever on the Lord’s day he entered the church, it was more from a desire of ridiculing than profiting by what he had heard. The word preached did not profit him, not being mixed with faith. In this dreadful situation was he, when, on the 10th of March 1790, his wife died, after bringing into the world an infant daughter.
The good providence of that gracious God, who calleth the weak things of this world to
