Eastern Times

Variety.

Please Forgive me, Dear Mother.

It was a touching sight. The little creature had been naughty, after the manner of wilful children, and now in her night dress, with her loose curls hanging over her shoulders, and her dark eyes swimming in tears, she fell upon my friend's neck, crying softly—'please forgive me, dear mother.'

My heart swelled as the young matron, clasping the repentant little one to her bosom printed the kiss of forgiveness on the white brow. Then indeed the child's innocence returned, and the glistening eyes darted forth the pure light of peace. "O!" thought I, "if thus we would go to our God, falling in utter abandonment upon his mercy, flinging ourselves as it were, within his loving arms, and with tears of contrition, crying out 'forgive, dear Lord.'— His sweet smile would make our rebellious hearts leap with joy, and our eyes glisten as the tender eyes of childhood. His whisper, 'go and sin no more,' would clothe the heavens with sunnier blue, and carpet the barren plain with flowers."

The child came to me for a good-night kiss. I felt the thrill of her innocent embrace through every fibre of my frame. "You are a good little girl, now," I said, holding her close to my heart.

"Yes, I good now, I never be naughty again," she whispered, lifting her little body on tip toe to play with my curls.

"I never be naughty again"—yes, so do we children of a larger growth, often resolve, and so often the resolution is broken. But God, no doubt, listens with pleasure to these sudden upspringings of the soul. He knoweth our weakness—He 'remembereth that we are but dust.'

And oh! to feel that sweet trust in Him that the child feels in its mother!—to feel that he looks with the eye of a judge upon sin, yet like a tender parent forgives as soon as we ask him with true contrition—exalts life and crowns it with a glory that no exaltation, no fame-kindled breath of the world, as it sweeps over the heart, no satisfied aspiration, born of genius—no perishable love, be it ever so pure and ever so tender, hath the power to restore.—Mrs. Denison.