God hath surely requited me. Therefore I will not look any longer on any other cause or occasion of this misery, but look unto my sin, and give glory unto God whose hand hath done all this unto me.' He then concludes, after citing the example of the sons of Jacob, tersely and pithily, Verbum sapienti; one word is enough to him that is wise, and one example is sufficient for him that is willing to follow it.'

It is thus a truth, almost capable of strict demonstration to any Christian mind, that whatever other sins may have helped to fill up our guilt, the special cause of this judgment is that great and detestable sin, the national countenance of nationally denounced idolatry ; in the eye of reason, a most flagrant inconsistencyin the light of God's truth, a most hateful iniquity. We are punished in kind. We would not discriminate between wholesome doctrine, and the pestilent blight of superstitious idolatries. We would conciliate Ireland, by feeding its millions with spiritual poison, and the food of millions is poisoned with an utter blight, and they perish with hunger. We would not spend one penny of the public funds in supplying sound scriptural instruction, though schools and Bibles and scholars were all at hand, and now we have to spend millions in supplying bread to those, whose usual sustenance has been blighted and turned to rottenness. We determined to propagate nationally, as the consolations of religion, what the State declares nationally to be superstitious and idolatrous, and what the Church pronounces nationally, to be fables and dangerous deceits; and the main harvest of Ireland has been made, in God's just retribution, a snare and deceit, promising one week all abundance, and the next week, blighted and withered, till our whole nation reels under the effects of the blow.

Ireland was the especial scene of our sin, and Ireland is the chief, though not the only scene of the judgment. The numbers of Ireland were the fatal reason with the disciples of expediency, for rejecting the truth, and adopting and abetting idolatry; and hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of the Irish, are now dying of fever and famine. The time of the sin was just two years ago, and two years ago, within a few months, the stroke began first to be felt, which has now been repeated more heavily, and filled a nation with sorrow. Seldom in modern times has a sin been plainer, when a nation has been more openly condemned by its own mouth. Seldom has a judgment followed more speedily, with a more full and marked correspondence in time and place, and in the very character of the whole infliction.

What, then, Christian sisters, is our duty at such a time? When the hand of God is on us, we must be doubly careful, each one of us, to abide in our own calling, and not to add the further sin of transgressing the proprieties of life, and the peculiar graces which become the daughters of God, to those under which our country is groaning already. But still, none can safely be iņdifferent at such a time. Some may instruct the young in the great truths of the Gospel, and those laws of God's holy Providence which too many have forgotten. Some may speak a word of affectionate counsel and a word spoken in season, how good is it !—to a husband, a brother, or even a father. Some may labour for the spread of the Gospel in unhappy Ireland, and some may bind up the sores of her children, and staunch a few of those deep wounds which their own sins, and ours, and the sins of our rulers, have brought upon them. Some may relieve the helpless orphans, whom this judgment of God has bereaved of every earthly stay. Some

may help to support those scriptural schools, especially those Female Schools of Ireland, where many have been fed, in this time of calamity, with the food of this life, and the better food of life eternal. Most may labour in the cause of Christ, in this hour of trouble; and all may pray. The earnest prayer of one daughter of God availeth much. Yes! it avails far more than all the schemes of that vain policy where God is forgotten. It avails more than hundreds of thousands, lavished from the public treasury, can ever avail without His blessing. Who can tell, as in the case of Nineveh, but that God may yet hear the prayers of His believing people, and raise up for us Christian senators, full alike of wise love to man, and of true zeal for the honour of God's truth, and who may be called hereafter repairers of the breach, and restore our nation to the way of righteousness and peace.

Since these lines were written, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Mr. O'Connell, have both fallen under the stroke of death. It seems to be a direct message from God, both to the British Government, and to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, whose public representatives have thus been removed almost at the same moment. We cannot here dwell on the striking lesson. May both the Protestants of England, and the deluded victims of spiritual delusion and seditious agitation in Ireland, learn to "hear the rod, and Him who hath appointed it."