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The Grace of God. We thought of John Randolph, with his sway over the minds of others, with a “wit and eloquence that recalled the splendours of ancient oratory,” yet with so little command over himself that his weak frame sometimes sank beneath the excitement of his temper, and gusts of passion were succeeded by fainting-fits; and when the one desire of his heart was denied, when a love mighty as every other passion of his soul failed him, his grief, ungovernable and frenzied as his rage, overwhelmed him, and the “taint of madness which ran in his line,” flooded his brain. But when the atheist became a Christian; when, in his own words, he felt “the Spirit of God was not the chimera of heated brains, nor a device of artful men to frighten and cajole the credulous, but an existence to be felt and understood as the whisperings of one’s own heart;” his prayer of, “Lord! I believe, help thou my unbelief,” was answered in calm and peace to his soul.

“The saddest thought,” said Aunt Rachel, as we turned away from that gloomy edifice, “the saddest thought connected with that building is, that so large a number of its unhappy inmates have brought their misery upon themselves, are the victims of their own irregular and indulged passions.”

As we turned and looked upon her smooth brow, her serious and serene eyes and her sweet, calm mouth, we marked a look of subdued suffering mingled with an expression of Christian triumph; and we knew that she had felt “the ploughings of grief;” that she had learned “how sublime a thing it is to suffer and grow strong;” but, though we wondered deeply, we never knew in what form she had been called “to pass under the rod;” but we heard a voice that said,

“Fear not; when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.”

Nay, fear not, weak and fainting soul,
Though the wild waters round thee roll,
He will sustain thy faltering way,
Will be thy sure, unfailing stay.

And though it were the fabled stream
Whose waves were fire of fearful gleam,
He still would bear thee safely through
The fire, but cleanse thy soul anew.