Nature-the trees and the fields were clothed with a brighter verdure. I looked up to the sky and exclaimed with the Psalmist (Psalm viii.), 'When I consider the heavens,' etc., etc. I saw emblems of my Savior every where. I looked at the ocean, and thought of His boundless love; at the rocks, and remembered the Rock of ages cleft for me;' at the sands on the shore, and considered His tender mercies as countless; in short, I was as full of happiness. as I had been of misery; as full of confidence as I had been of doubts; as assured of my interest in Christ, and that my sins had been laid on Him, and that He was the scape-goat, and had fled away with them. The burden of my sins was upon Him, and the robe of His righteousness thrown around me. I wrapped myself in it; and, from that day, I have gone on my way rejoicing. I have often been cold and dead; I have even at times turned aside, as it were, to drink of the waters of Sihon and rivers of Damascus; but He has as often broken the cisterns I had hewed out for myself, and turned me, by His chastising rod, back to the fountain of living waters.

"The communion season being at hand, I insisted on returning to town to be present at it. 'Now,' thought I, 'I can sit down under His shadow with great delight, and His banner over me will be love,' 'because his anger is turned away, and he comforteth me.' My mother and friend not being aware of my extreme weakness, brought me up in a carriage, and I had a dreadful time of it. By the time I reached

home I had relapsed; and my fever, which had been bilious remittent, turned to a nervous fever, which confined me to my bed for many weeks. I was often delirious, and even in dreadful spasms. Still I was happy, and thought that I was going to my Savior, but my mother held me down, and would not let me go. It was long before I recovered, if I ever fairly did; and certainly I had not when I was united to my beloved partner the July following. Now we could take sweet counsel together; and I, in my turn, became a help-meet to him-could understand something of the principle of living by faith; and when the dear saint was tried by Providence, and almost ready to give up, I was made the instrument of comforting him, and of pointing to Him in whom are all things for life and godliness. We sought 'the kingdom of God and His righteousness;' and all things necessary, and many more, have been added unto us. When we were completely emptied of ourselves, He filled us with Himself. We had all things in Christ, and Christ in all things."

The foregoing narrative has been given verbatim from Mrs. Bethune's manuscript, as it affords not only an authentic account of her personal experience, but also as it affords to the reader a most pleasing exhibition of the temper and principles which ruled her life throughout. It is much to be regretted that she did not continue her autobiographical record; but she evidently meant to carry it no farther than to her establishment in the Christian faith, and the pe

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riod when her history became so blended with that of her Christian husband. Should any one suspect, from some passages in the paper, that she was apt to be carried out of the sound judgment of a sober faith by an excited imagination, it is proper to reply that unreal fancies were very far from being characteristic of her mind, which, with all its energy and spirituality, was unusually chastened and scriptural, founding all its convictions on the testimony of God in Scripture, confirmed by the witness of the Holy Ghost with her spirit. It is not difficult for an observer of the phases which the mind sometimes assumes from sympathy with the body, to see that her thoughts were affected by the brain, heated by fever, and swimming midst the undulations of the disease which had shaken her strength; but the fidelity she observed in writing her recollections savor little of an unwarranted enthusiasm, but rather gives us a beautiful exhibition of a living faith shining through and turning to a heavenly glory the infirmities of the flesh.

CHAPTER VIII.

PLANS OF USEFULNESS.

Mrs. Graham's Correspondence.-Origin of the Monthly Missionary Prayer-meeting. -The Mission to the Indians. -Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children.-New York Orphan Asylum.

Ir is now proper that we should go back a little in date, to resume the thread of our own continuous narrative.

Mrs. Graham, notwithstanding the incipient and onerous duties of her school, maintained a constant correspondence with pious friends, her former Edinburgh associates in religion and charity, especially with her dear and most intimate, and, as appears from her letters, her strongest-minded friend, Mrs. Baillie Walker. The interchange of pious sentiments between these devoted and intellectual women was highly valued by them both, and, on Mrs. Graham's part, was accepted as the means of increasing her activity and usefulness. In fact, Mrs. Graham endeavored to transfer to New York the same spirit and method of religious activity which she had cultivated in her native land and with her pious Edinburgh friend, and hence the origination of not a few charities, eleemosynary and religious, whose happy influences are felt to this day. It was about this time that, by the reviving blessing of the Holy Ghost, a missionary spirit began to prevail in the evangelical

churches of Great Britain, which, of course, excited the ardent sympathy of Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Graham. Mrs. Walker lost no time in sending to New York sermons, reports, and other tracts on these animating subjects, which Mrs. Graham eagerly received, and, not willing to confine the pleasure to herself, was accustomed to call together her most intimate Christian friends for the purpose of reading to them, and uniting with them in conversation and prayer in reference to the conversion of the world. These private meetings grew in interest and in numbers. Dr. Rodgers, of the Presbyterian Church, Dr. Mason, of the Scotch Associate Church, Dr. Livingston, of the Dutch Church, and some of the Baptist ministers, whose names have not reached us, were drawn into their sphere, and it resulted in the establishment (February, 1798) of a monthly missionary prayer-meeting, held on the evening of the first Wednesday of each month, in one another's houses of worship, by a union of the three denominations just named.

Was not this the first monthly concert of prayer for blessing on the missionary enterprise of modern times? The first meeting of this kind was held, if I mistake not, in the Scotch Associate Presbyterian Church in Cedar Street, then Dr. John M. Mason's; the second in the Wall Street Presbyterian Church, then Dr. Rodgers's; another in the Middle Dutch Church, Nassau Street.* I can not trace them farther.

*See Letters of Mrs. Isabella Graham, No. xiii., to Mrs. W. Bail