Paramatta; pursuing, as she had time and opportunity, the same course of Christian usefulness, and winning similar esteem in every circle on which her influence was brought to bear. During her husband's residence in New South Wales, it may be said of her, (as Paul said of certain women in the Philippian church,) that she "laboured with " him "in the Gospel ;" and she was truly useful as a nursing-mother to the rising church of that day. By those who survive, her memory is undoubtedly cherished, as that of a Christian and a friend.

The five years following she spent at Hobart-Town. In no place did the excellence of her Christian virtues exert a more favourable influence on society. Being longer at this than at any other foreign station, she obtained a wider circle of friends. God blessed her sincere and well-directed efforts to promote the happiness of others. Frequent meetings, united exertions of benevolence, and the harmony of love, formed strong mutual attachments. To sever herself from this place in March, 1830, in order to proceed to England, was one of the severest trials of her life. It was the severing of tenderest heartstrings. The only relief was found in the thought of a joyful re-union, where all tears shall be for ever wiped from the eyes.

After a tedious voyage round Cape-Horn, in which she endured many weeks of almost uninterrupted sickness, she mercifully reached in safety the house of her beloved parents at Charlestown, after an absence of ten years and ten months. The scene of the first evening's meeting was affecting in no common degree. The weeping mother, now infirm, who had not expected to look on her Deborah any more, and had never thought of her, while absent, but with tears; the sisters, who loved and revered her; and the noble, firm, and excellent father, so beloved and venerated by his long-absent daughter;-all, in each other's ardent embraces, presented a group of no common interest for the painter's pencil. Then came, pouring in, the members of her class, her spiritual children, the poor from the cottages that she had visited, mingling with her old friends and acquaintances. The spectator could not but observe what an impression of her goodness Mrs. Carvosso had left, not only on her family, but on her friends and neighbours also; and how highly and lastingly they loved and esteemed her.

A numerous family imposed constant domestic duties, which now restrained her from undertaking so much as she wished, to promote the highest happiness of circles beyond. Her children's welfare lay near her heart; and, in a great degree, all their concerns, minute and momentous, were committed to her management. For everything belonging to them, temporal and spiritual, she naturally, incessantly, and wisely cared. Her foresight and fore-arrangement were happily displayed in the duties of her household. But, while unwearied and skilful in attending to subordinate things, it was the eternal welfare of her children that lay nearest her bosom. Her prayers, counsels, and tears will never be forgotten. Of these the moral influence was not to be resisted.

When her eldest son joined the little class of

serious boys at Kingswood-school, was clearly converted to God, and wrote home a particular account of this happy change, closing an exhortation to his brothers and sisters with an expression of his earnest wish and purpose, if he was spared, to be a Missionary; she felt joys unutterable, and exerted all her powers in praising God for His goodness. Her firstborn was now also "born from above," and she hailed, with a mother's rapture, this answer to her prayers. At Sherborne, fourteen years after, her husband entered the sitting-room one evening, and found her in tears. They were tears of joy. She exclaimed, "I am a happy mother: my youngest child has just been here to ask permission to go to class. O how thankful am I that this night the last of my family joins the church of God!" But it was not in the church militant that her eight children were now found. Benjamin, her second son, had died in the Isle of Wight, June, 1836, in his twelfth year. He was an intelligent, aspiring boy, who had given some uneasiness by early development of a sinful heart. But, for more than a year before his death, he had been seeking the salvation of his soul. He found peace with God in his affliction, while his mother was reading by his bedside Legh Richmond's beautiful tract, entitled "Little Jane, or the Young Cottager." The sensation of joy was so great that he suddenly rose in bed, exclaiming, "Mother! I am healed, body and soul!" Her most ardentlyloved William died at Barnstaple, March, 1842, in his twenty-first year, triumphant in death, as he had been exemplary in life.

Who can adequately estimate a mother's power and responsibility? But one of the greatest evils of Heathenism is, that it has destroyed this benign influence. Christianity restores it. The "one wife," the friend, the companion of her husband, assumes again her just domestic rank. The coming world is at her feet. It is hers to bless it. And, if she blesses it, it shall be blessed. God being her helper, the Christian mother can "train up a child in the way he should go." For this she is responsible. "Much" is given to her, and "much" is required of her.

Mrs. Carvosso was, to an encouraging extent, successful. She lived to see all her family walking in the fear of the Lord. The promise, "All thy children shall be taught of God," which had been solemnly applied to her believing soul in an early period of her domestic life, and which had cheered her in her maternal solicitudes and exertions, was verified. She rejoiced in the retrospect, praising God with joyful lips, because "not one good word had failed of all that the Lord had spoken."

While thus engaged with her large family, Mrs. Carvosso did not suspend her efforts to make herself otherwise useful. At Penzance, Redruth, the Isle of Wight, Liskeard, Barnstaple, Sherborne, and Kingswood, she laboured to do good, and was blessed in her deed. Her active imagination was ever suggesting something new, to be adopted by the benevolence of her heart, and accomplished by the diligence of her hand. A leisure half-hour was sure to find her planning or executing something for the good of those among whom

she dwelt. Some one whom she had marked in the chapel as a likely subject to be invited to Christian communion, must be visited at home, or some contrivance must be made to secure the end by the instrumentality of another; some sick child must be seen, whose anxious mother had sought advice; some member had been absent from class, and must be sought out; some poor neighbour, or some friend, in sickness, claimed her sympathetic care; or some part of her Tract-district called for special attention. The principle of Loan Tract Distribution was much to her mind, because it brought her at once into contact with those whom she wished to benefit by personal intercourse. Up to the day of her last illness, she was engaged, according to her ability, in imitating her Master "who went about doing good." The last eighteen months of her life, spent at Kingswood, were among her happiest, because of her opportunities of this kind, and because of the "excellent of the earth" who were there her coadjutors in "good works."

Enervated by the heat of tropical climates, by violent exposures and privations during many travels by sea and land, as well as by more ordinary sufferings, she was for many of her later years the subject of much affliction. She was often brought to the point of death; but strength of grace, and the sustained ardour of her desires to reach the goal, mostly rendered her triumphant on great occasions of pain and peril. The charms of earth seem to have so faded in her eyes, even from her first consecration to God, that her wishes for the heavenly rest incessantly preponderated. Buoyant with hope and heavenly affections, "ready winged for the flight," she now waited without dismay for the harbinger of death. When the waters of Jordan were seen, heaven so opened on her eyes that there was no shuddering about the "cold flood" that "rolled between." But, if the "pillar of a cloud" led her back again into the wilderness, she bore away in her bosom intense longings after "the goodly land which is beyond Jordan." Every kind of tribulation was mixed with "rejoicing in hope." There was no petulant, ungrateful loathing of life nevertheless its snares and dangers were sometimes deeply felt. In her last sickness, fearing, under some favourable alternations, that she should not very quickly escape from the windy storm and tempest, she said she believed that God saw her desire to die was too strong for perfect resignation, and that her stay in the furnace was on that account protracted. Her views of the Divine purity, and of her heavenly Father's discipline, were very clear; and her prayers in affliction were ceaseless, that the refining process might make her meet to see the face of God in the Holy of holies above. Throughout the changes and chastenings, the most joyous duties and the heaviest crosses, of her pilgrimage below, it was obvious to all who knew her that she prayed and panted to "prove the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God."

Her mortal sickness commenced December 17th, 1847. It was the influenza then prevailing. The progress of disease was rapid. She was pronounced in great danger. But, as such an opinion had

been given at different times, the danger was not thought so imminent as it really proved. The family fondly hoped she would be spared to them. Soon, however, this hope was extinguished; and the end too visibly approached. A few days before her escape from the clay tenement, when she was thought to be dying, the whole family at her request gathered round her bed; when, calm, recollected, and with her native earnestness, she addressed them for nearly an hour, individually and collectively, in such strains of holy affection, and of saintly wisdom and dignity, as can never be forgotten.

She revived a little, but still regarded herself as on the brink of eternity. The Sunday preceding her death, though somewhat better, she remarked, "I believe this is my last Sabbath on earth." About four o'clock on the following Saturday morning, the family were rather unexpectedly alarmed by the immediate symptoms of death,— the cold sweat, the failing pulse, the utter prostration of strength. She was perfectly recollected, and intimated that she knew this was death, and that she should not again retreat from the cold stream. Promises, appropriate to the solemn crisis, were gently repeated to her; and especially the one in the fourth verse of her favourite Psalm : "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." To these cheering sentiments she responded, distinctly assuring the deeply-affected members of her family that she then felt Christ "near" and "precious." A few minutes before five she imperceptibly ceased to breathe, leaving the unconscious clay in the arms of her friends, while her happy spirit in peaceful triumph entered into the joy of her Lord.

On the Sabbath following her interment, the Rev. Joseph Wood, of Bristol, improved her death at Kingswood by preaching to a large and sympathising congregation. His very impressive and useful discourse was founded on Heb. xi. 13: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." God owned the word; and, according to the dying prayer of the deceased, her removal was anctified to the good of souls.

Mrs. Carvosso died January 15th, 1848, in the fifty-fourth year of her age. Her remains lie in the burial-ground belonging to the Wesleyan chapel, Kingswood. In the family-vault of Samuel Budgett, Esq., they await their glorious resurrection. "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."

DIVINITY.

LIFE INEXPLICABLE EXCEPT AS A PROBATION:

A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, RHINEBECK, NEW-YORK, AT THE FUNERAL OF MRS. CATHARINE GARRETTSON:

BY STEPHEN OLIN, D.D.,

PRESIDENT OF THE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, CONNECTICUT, U.S.

(Concluded from page 332.)

LET us now seek the fit improvement of this subject, and illustration and support for the principles and arguments set forth in this discourse, in the special, solemn occasion which has called together this great multitude to pay their tribute of respect and affection to the venerable friend whom it has pleased God to remove from our society, and exalt into His own more immediate, glorious presence. After a life of more than ninety-six years, devoted in an eminent degree to the glory of the Saviour, and to the temporal and spiritual welfare of her fellow-creatures, she has now entered upon her great reward, leaving to us, her friends, her brethren, her kinsmen, for our edification and comfort, an example of Christian piety, as pure, beautiful, and attractive, I think, as the church militant in these latter days is wont to exhibit. In the contemplation of such a career, all beautified with holiness, and "shining more and more unto the perfect day," it does not occur to us to think of either the brevity or the trials of life as "evils:" we rather adore the infinite wisdom and grace which overruled its vicissitudes and events to the production of such a character. Christian piety, early, deep, symmetrical, and graceful, effective in life, and triumphant in the hour of death, clearly demonstrates how wisely God has established the conditions, and appointed the means, under which it has found its developments. Such a marked example of holy living and peaceful dying precludes all doubt in regard to the wisdom and goodness concerned in the Divine administration: it might rather suggest the question-Why such a Christian was detained here so long? why kept in a state of discipline, and subjected to the conditions of our frail mortality, a full half century after she had manifestly attained meetness for heaven? Let this suggestive inquiry be our guide in some concluding remarks.

1. A similar difficulty may be felt, and a similar question asked, in regard to all regenerate persons, and even infants, who, as we confidently believe and teach, are entitled, under the Christian economy, to the heavenly inheritance. This statement of the question in its broader comprehension will, to most minds, relieve it of all embarrassments. All well-instructed Christians know that a connexion