see ́an individual just bending his footsteps into the vestibule of heaven, and yet fresh and verdant with the most generous human sympathies.

It was affecting to see Mrs. Bise give her sympathies to the welfare, temporal and eternal, of all around her; while a voice was heard, saying, "Come up hither," from a door opened in heaven. Our master in this, as in every thing else, gave us the most perfect example. Amid the agonies of death upon the cross, the workings of natural affection were yet unbroken, and, guided by their impulses, he provided a home for his widowed mother.

In conditions of great debility, when the cloud of death hung full upon her view, she summoned up energy to go over a great deal of reading. The Bible and religious biographies were her chosen books. When others would have considered themselves excluded by debility from almost every occupation, she cultivated every department of industry which did not require much physical strength.

Some females of distinguished piety have been represented by their biographers in their last seenes as being so entirely overshadowed with an approaching eternity, that the intellectual

and social pleasures, all the sweet and endearing charities of home, were banished from their thoughts; that they could not participate with any enjoyment in any train of conversation which did not directly partake of eternal realities.

The biographer of Miss Mary Jane Graham has said, that for a long time previous to her death this eminently intellectual and gifted lady took no pleasure in listening to the wrapt conceptions of Romaine and Leighton.

But this was unlike Mrs. Bise. Her unabated taste for every description of mental improvement and enjoyment was not impaired by the progress of disease. Over the development of all these qualities the mellow light of eternity seemed to throw its soft and solemn radiance; over all her words and deeds there seemed to be a mystic charm borrowed from the neighborhood of a brighter world.

But the chief interest in the declining days of her probation was of a decidedly spiritual nature. It is with her religious character that we are now chiefly concerned, as it is that in its diversified workings, lighting down upon human happiness and salvation, and lighting up through Jesus Christ upon God's glory, that is of value to her now.

It had been evident to those who knew her, that the Lord had for several years been rapidly preparing her for himself, and that she was destined soon to unfold her sympathies in a milder and higher abode.

Her life had been one of deep and singular consecration to God, and her confident and joyous feelings on the near approach of death, were not the forcing up of a sudden flame of devotion, or the brilliant reflection of a new-born light shining in upon her from an opening eternity, but they were the advancing and advanced stages of the settled habits of her soul.

She slid down gradually and peacefully to the tomb. She had so long held converse with death at a distance, that she welcomed him as a friend while yet afar off. She had so long familiarized herself with everlasting objects, that she seemed to live in the very neighborhood of eternal scenes, and breathe the fervid atmosphere of heaven.

Most Christians cultivate so little spirituality of feeling and devotion, that they habitually contemplate death as being at a great distance, and only in moments of wrapt inspiration step across the threshold of the celestial temple. They cul

tivate no intimacy with death, and it is necessary for them to rouse up all their energies and burnish up the armory of their faith when they enter the territory of the king of terrors. When they are arrested in their worldliness by the fear of sickness and the prostration of disease, the rude grasp of death sends a chill to the heart; they are unprepared and unwilling to die. If torn away suddenly, they experience little support and no triumph as the turbid waters begin to gather around them; they go down the bank with trembling steps, and we can only hear thein breathe the faint notes of submission as they launch out upon "the swellings of Jordan." If they linger through the stages of protracted disease, their familiarity with these tremendous scenes, constant struggles of faith and prayer, aided by the consolations of pious friends and the stimulating promises of the word of God, all consolidated by the supports of the Holy Ghost, with their combined energies, often inspire them with a strong hope that they shall outride the storm, and hail from the deep, as they plough the rough billows of eternity's ocean, "the Star of Bethlehem."

But such confidence can hardly be termed

Christian triumph. It seems to be the creature of circumstances, called forth by exigencies of the crisis.

Christianity wreathes her brightest laurels around the brow of veteran piety. The Christian who has long held intimate converse with God, and gathered fresh strength from a thousand combats with "the world, the flesh, and the devil," is clothed with an armory which he has worn off from a thousand victories, impenetrable to all the shafts of death. The subject of this memoir often anticipated the prostrations of sickness and the struggles of dissolution. She had accumulated the treasures of godliness, and acquired gigantic strength to march forth upon "enchanted ground." She had so often tested her strength with inferior enemies, that she was well nerved for her combat with her last. The stream of death, which undermines the dissoluble fabrics of so many hopes, passed without injury by the adamant of her own. She was not intimidated by the insignia of death, as its monarch trailed his dark pinions across her dying pillow. She needed no convulsive effort to prepare for dissolution, for her house had a long time "been set in order." Submission had vanished from