served to urge upon me a wider circulation.

A single copy of the book, just fresh from the press, had been arranged by the binder in order to have the stamp made for the back. As I left my orders with him the day before sailing for England, he turned to me and said, "I have become a different man." Expressing my pleasure in hearing him speak thus, I asked him whether he was converted, and through what instrumentality. He stated that the false profession of a hypocritical partner had given him a distrust of all religion; but that, on reading these first sheets of our boy's life, he had been led to trust in the Saviour. To a member of my family, a week or two later, he added: "Not only have I thus come to know the forgiveness of my sins, but my only daughter, seventeen years old, followed me in a confession of Christ as her Saviour; and three days afterwards my wife's conversion filled to its brim my cup of happiness. This, too, was followed by the ingathering of a number of my friends and neighbours."

God speed this "RECORD OF A HAPPY LIFE,"-with its example of a true, abiding happiness, to be found only in entire heart-consecration to the Lord,-to many a heart weary of the bondage of the world and of Satan. And may it also cheer and encourage young Christians to that complete self-renunciation and full trust in Christ, in which alone the unhindered joy of the Lord can fill the life.

London, June 1st, 1873.

R. PEARSALL SMITH.

INTRODUCTORY LETTER

FROM MISS MARSH,

AUTHOR OF MEMORIALS OF CAPTAIN HEDLEY VICARS," ETC.

MY DEAR SIR,

Will you let me thank you for your kind gift of this most lovely "RECORD OF A HAPPY LIFE," written by the admirable mother of that precious son from whom you are parted for a season.

It was alike her joy and yours, when his bright companionship was the sunbeam of your daily lives, to gratify all his wishes. And will you not both still let his heart's desire be fulfilled, "to work for Jesus," and allow the sphere of that work to be upon this side of the Atlantic as well as upon that farther shore, where you have laid all that was mortal of him to sleep, "in sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection"?

Who can tell the blessing that God may grant to the boys of Great Britain, as they read of one who was so happily and heartily a boy, and at the same time so bravely and so nobly "a good soldier of JESUS CHRIST"?

But the freshness, and power, and beauty of that brief life -so gay in youthful spirits, so saint-like in humble, watchful holiness, because so child-like in happy, trustful "rest in the Lord”—will have its blessed teaching no less for men and women of riper years.

It is not even every earnest and devoted Christian-would God that it were!-who could write as your son wrote in his eighteenth year:

"I have come lately to a very blessed experience of entire rest in Christ. The life of trust, where one has a fight for

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INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

faith, when each particular sin comes up, is, after all, only a partial rest. But it is blessed to trust for heart purity, and it brings an abiding rest."

And now as he beholds, in the midst of the throne, "a Lamb as it had been slain," does he think that he gave Him too much honour by his trust in "the blood of the Lamb" for continual grace to " overcome"? Or does he deem that the apostle Paul used merely the glowing language of enthusiastic hope when he prayed, "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," concluding with the inspired assurance-"Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it"?

I

There is no assumption of a state of sinlessness either in these words of the apostle, or in the teaching of this "RECORD OF A HAPPY LIFE." Nothing but a constant sense of need keeping the believer in the Lord Jesus constantly at the fountain-head of holiness, nothing but a Christ-honouring boldness in turning His own words into believing prayer-"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." Your own words in another of your books* may surely set any anxiety on this subject to rest. "All is imperfect within and about us, and we every moment need the merit of the blood of Christ, as unprofitable servants."

Yet the words stand fast-"Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling"-in whose power and will so to do, may the Lord increase our faith!

That this sweet record of His grace and faithfulness may be a means of increasing the faith of every reader is the prayer, Dear Sir, of yours most truly,

Norrington Vicarage, Kent.

CATHERINE MARSH.

"WALK IN THE LIGHT."

FRANK.

The Record of a Happy Life.

CHAPTER I.

SI was sitting at the bedside of our boy on the afternoon he was taken ill, although no thought of danger had entered my mind, yet by one of those unaccountable impulses that sometimes lead the Christian into apparently strange things, for which afterwards he sees cause to be deeply thankful, I said to him,

"Frank, this may be typhoid fever, and suppose you should die; you are not afraid?"

"Oh, no," he answered, very cheerfully, "not at all."

Pursuing my own train of thought as to the joys of entering upon the glorious eternity to be spent with Jesus, I added after a moment, "It would be rather nice, would it not, to go?"

"Well, yes," he said, with a smile, "it would; only I would like to live a little longer to work for Jesus." Ten days after that afternoon our Frank had left us

B

to be with Jesus; and now we who are still on earth feel as if we would like, as far as possible, to fulfil the earnest longing of his heart, and to let him "work for Jesus." A sweet work, without any toil or weariness on his part, going on here on earth, while his head is safely pillowed on his Saviour's breast.

It is with this object, and to comfort our hearts with the sweet remembrances of his happy life, that the following account has been prepared for those who knew and loved him. And his parents earnestly pray that, from among his loving circle of relations and friends, many bright stars may be added to his crown through the instrumentality of this book.

Our boy was born in our house on Shoemakers' Lane, Germantown, August 12th, 1854. He was our second child; and three years of his little life were brightened by the sweet companionship of his sister Nelly, whose patronizing love and care for her "little Bud," as she called him, were a pretty sight to see. She seemed to consider herself responsible for his good behaviour on all occasions, and evidently felt as if everything she learned was valuable only as she could teach it to him. One little scene, when he was just three years old, is too sweet to be forgotten. We were spending the summer at his grandfather Whitall's sea-side house at Atlantic City. I had put the two children to bed one evening, and had left the room, when, hearing their voices, I stopped outside to listen. I heard Nelly say, "Franky, do you know that Heavenly Father doesn't hear you when you pray, unless you think about what you are saying?"