both. I felt that this wonderful history was calculated both to sift and to comfort the spirit of the dying woman. I told her of what I had just seen; of her mercies and blessings, and the other's misery and sin. I tried to show her that both were debtors; though, in the world's reckoning, to so widely different an extent. I tried to bring her soul face to face with Him to Whom she was so soon going to give account. I tried to show her that she was incapable of paying the smallest portion of her debt, and that she whom God's providence and grace had kept from gross moral evil, must owe her pardon to the same frank forgiveness which blots out the very largest debt. I endeavoured to show her the way of that forgiveness, though He spoke not of it Who afterward procured it by paying the inconceivable debt Himself, not with "silver and gold, but with His own precious blood." Her eye was fixed on me as I spoke. The expression of her face was deep, calm, realizing, intelligent. She drank in every word, and "loved much because she had much forgiven." When I next called, she was gone; she had felt that she was dying, but the fear of death had quite passed away. "She knew on whom she believed, and was persuaded that He was able to keep that which she had committed to Him against that day." Those who were with her said that she seemed as one that saw the Saviour, so calmly, so peacefully, so joyfully, did her spirit pass away. 117 "THE PROPORTION OF FAITH." Ir has been quaintly said, that "every Englishman is an island," surrounded by influences of his own, divided from the rest of the world by a certain stream of prejudices, pride, and personal independence, which cuts him off from others. Perhaps this is in a measure true. Certain it is that an island cannot be a continent; that those who are shut up within the narrow limits of a small space, whether mental or material, cannot have very enlarged views, and that those who compare themselves only with themselves have not a good or true standard of comparison. The only child must learn his real standing by being thrown with other children. The best boy of a small school must be taught how little he knows by being placed among others, the greater part of whom know more than himself. The man, whose own family has been his only world, must learn of how large a world he is a unit, in order to do his part in the great world, of which however, if he be a true son, his own family will ever be the beloved centre. The dweller in some city, who has never been out of it, can only learn effectually by visiting other cities, that there are rivers greater than that which he has ever known as "the river,"-towers higher than that which has been, in his estimation, "the tower" of the world. And while he should be capable of admiring everything that is beautiful, and honouring everything that is good and great, wherever he may find it, yet, if he be a true man, he will still turn towards the land of his birth, the city of his habitation, the home of his childhood and all its associations, with a love which no reasonable man will ever blame. Our mind must get contracted when it is shut up within a small space and to a few things. The man that is ever sitting in one room, where he can see nothing but the top of an opposite house and the weathercock of a neighbouring spire, has a narrow horizon of actual vision, and will get a contracted horizon of mind as well as eye. The shepherd, who is shut up in his deep shady valley, where he measures time by the appearing of the sun above the tall mountain-top, can have but limited ideas of the general country. His mind indeed may be employed, perhaps we should say must, since mind, even in its humblest phases, is an active thing; but it can only be engaged on the things he sees and knows. If he be observant, every part and corner of his valley will be thoroughly known to him. He will be acquainted with the face of every sheep of his flock; he will remark their tempers and their characters; he will tell you which are gentle and which quarrelsome; he will show you the strongest and the weakest; for he has seen which has attacked and butted off every assailant, and which, after a few strokes, has shaken its head and wisely retired from the arena. Still, this is all that he will be able to tell you; for this is all he knows. The hills that shut up his valley close in his mind. The mountaineer, on the other hand, who drew his first breath high up in the hills, in some châlet that nestled in its sheltered nook, has a mind as distinct from others as are his habitation and the scenes of his childhood. He has loved to climb the crags like a mountain-goat; to lead his flock to the green alps among the hills; he has drunk in the pure elastic air, which has given buoyancy |