THE INHUMAN MOTHER.

THE following is related by the Rev. J. Bernau, a missionary in British Guiana, as having happened in one of the Carabeese families.

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Some time ago a father, who had been impressed by hearing the word of God, brought his daughter to school. The mother tried her utmost to induce her to return, but the father peremptorily forbad it. After some time, he determined to come himself, with the rest of his family, to reside with us; and from that time the mother did not give him any rest. She remonstrated, she quarrelled, but to no avail; and, at last, seeing that she could not dissuade him from his purpose, she annoyed him in every possible way. The father bore the ill-treatment for more than a year. When seeing that she was not inclined to follow him thither, he left it to her choice, either to accompany him, or to go and live with her friends in the bush. She was confined shortly after she left him; and when, after some time, the father went to welcome the little stranger, he was informed she had buried the child alive soon after its birth. After her

delivery, she left the helpless babe, and, notwithstanding the remonstrances and entreaties of her mother and friends, who at the time surrounded her hammock, would `not be prevailed on to take him up. No sooner, however, had she recovered sufficient strength, than she dug a hole and threw the helpless infant into it, which was heard to cry faintly as the earth covered it over. This circumstance the father himself related to me; and the truth of the sad story has been proved again and again by others whom I have questioned upon it. The father asked, with grief and tears, whether I had ever heard of such a thing being done by a mother; "for," said he, "do not even beasts love their young?" I should hope, indeed, that the circumstance is unparalleled; for although infanticide is not altogether unknown, yet it is extremely rare. On asking him, the other day, whether he thought he could again be reconciled to the woman, he solemnly declared that, in this instance, I asked him too much. As soon as I shall have found one worthy of

a man,' he replied, I will be married to her: how could you suppose I could live with one who has proved herself worse than a beast?'

How truly was our Lord's saying verified in this case: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” If this poor man had been anxious to secure a worldly peace, he would have taken his daughter away from school; but he preferred the keen edge of the sword of his wife's tongue to such peace as that. He loved God above his wife, and preferred taking up his cross and suffering for his Saviour's sake rather than dwelling in sinful peace with a heathenish wife.

The Gospel of Christ came as a sword into that Carabeese family. It divided mother from daughter, and husband from wife. It allows no worldly compromise. It requires a cutting asunder of the dearest earthly ties when the religion of Christ is concerned. But at other times it comes garbed in the soft mantle of peace. It says to the weeping penitent-" Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee." It said to the self-condemned thief: "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." It assures the sorrowful child that its pious mother is safe in the bosom of God, and declares to the bereaved parent that her babe is a cherub in the redeemed throng of heaven.

Reader, may the Gospel be known to you in this twofold character. As a sword, to cut you off from every unhallowed object; and, as the messenger of peace, to breathe words of peace into your soul, troubled with the burden of your sins.

B.

TIME.

WHAT is the past? The memory of woe

Endured in vain ;

And which it were, again to undergo

Unutterable pain:

The painful past our memories avoid,
Till from the chequered plain it is destroyed.

What is the present? "Tis a stunted flower,
By none esteemed-

The frost nipped blossom of a happier hour,
When sunbeams brighter gleamed:
Which hope, by gentle fostering doth strive,
For yet a little space to keep alive.

What is the future? 'Tis a cloudy vast,
Upon whose face

The dim reflection of the harrowing past

We sorrowfully trace:

We pause upon the brink with anguish, dread,
And shudder in the fearful void to tread.

J. C.

ANSWER TO THE PRECEDING LINES.

As Marah's wave, young kinsman, dost thou deem

All that hath been, and is, and yet shall be ?
Dost thou so early halt, heart-worn, and dream

Over sad memories, when the cross we see

Upon thy forehead, for a token sure,
That Christ has laid his binding yoke on thee,

Which, whoso takes, must to the end endure,-
Through summer heat, through winter's driving rain,
Through furnace fires, that leave the gold all pure?

I would not gladly tread the past again;
And, for the present, it doth on me lay
As it is meet-my Master's cross of pain :

But, for the future, I can see the day
Dawning behind earth's bleak and gloomy hills:
The wreathing clouds are rolling fast away.

Light shall spring up: e'en now the spirit thrills
To dream of that pure glory, calm and fair,
That our far home, the golden city fills.

Look to the hills! for home is surely there:
Waste not a thought upon the mournful past:
The burden of the present meekly bear.

Look to the hills! a gleam is often cast
On watchful eyes, an earnest of the light-
That is, when earth's dim twilight yields at last.

What is the future? Onward with the might
That Christ shall give thee! it shall be a morn
Such as was not, when the cold depths grew bright,

For God had spoken; and the golden dawn
Shone at the word athwart earth's formless face,
Ere the young flowers that love it best, were born.

What is the future? Slacken not thy pace,
And it shall be a glory passing speech,-
To thee a glory,-faint not in the race!

H.T.

MARY'S GLEANINGS.

RELATIONSHIP, whether natural or acquired, is a means of usefulness. The parent, for instance, possesses an influence over his offspring more powerful than the mightiest monarch ever swayed over his subjects. His voice is the first music they hear; his smiles their bliss; his authority the image and substitute of the divine authority. So absolute is the law which impels them to believe his every word, to imitate his every tone, gesture, and action, and to receive the ineffaceable impressions of his character, that his every movement drops a seed into the virgin soil of their hearts to germinate there for eternity. His influence, by blending itself with their earliest conceptions, and incorporating with the very elements of their constitution, and by the constancy, subtlety, variety, and power of its operation, gives him a command over

their character and destiny which renders it the most appropriate emblem on earth of the influence of God himself.

Now, there is not a member of the human family who does not sustain some relation, original or acquired, public or private, permanent or temporary-nor is there any relation which does not invest the person sustaining it with some degree of influence. The particle of dust which we heedlessly tread beneath our foot propagates its influence beyond the remotest planet, and is felt through all space. And though a man may be apparently standing on the outermost verge of the social system, he forms a vital link in the great chain of dependence which runs through the universe, linking man to man, age to age, and world to world. The connexion, indeed, may not be visible to us to any great distance, yet does it exist as really as if he found himself standing in the centre of the universe, with visible lines of relation drawn from himself to every one of the congregated myriadsnor is it possible to detach him from the mighty whole. And, what is of importance to remark, not only is there no relation of life which does not invest the person sustaining it with some degree of influence, but which does not afford him the power of exerting an influence in it which no other being on earth possesses. Here, then, is an important talent which the Christian is supposed to occupy for Christ. As if the relations which he sustains had been appointed now for the first time, and appointed expressly to give him a sphere of Christian influence, he is to hold them chiefly for Christ. Is he a parent? As he is related to the first Adam, his children receive from him nothing but an inheritance of guilt, degradation, and death; but as related to the second, he is to aim to cut off the dreadful entail, and to train them to be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, as if they had been Isent down to him in angel arms from heaven with a divine command to train them for Christ. He is to radiate on them nothing but hallowed influence. Their first lispings are to be of Christ; their first imaginings of His love; and their earliest steps to His footstool. The influence of his Christian character is to surround them like the atmosphere of a temple, that, by being