A month of the new year glided rapidly away, when one mild Sabbath morning, a thin pale man, prematurely aged, entered Halbert Melville’s church. The exertion of walking seemed very great and painful to him, and he tottered, even though leaning on his staff, as he passed along to a seat. A sickly hue was still upon his wasted features, and the hair that shaded his high forehead was white, apparently more from sorrow than from years. When he had seated himself, he cast around him a humble wistful glance, as though he felt himself alone and begged for sympathy; and people of kindly nature who took their places near him, felt themselves powerfully drawn to the lonely stranger who looked so pale, and weak, and humble, and wondered who he was; and many of them who watched him with involuntary interest, noticed the quick flush that passed over his face as Mary Hamilton entered, and how he gazed upon the other Mary, and lingered with glistening eyes on every little one of the two smiling families, as though their childish grace rejoiced his heart; but the observers wondered still more when their minister had entered the pulpit to see the big round tears which fell silently upon the stranger’s open Bible, and the expression of almost womanly tenderness that shone in every line of his upturned face. Mr. Melville, they said afterwards, was like a man inspired that day--so clear, so full, so powerful was his sermon. His text was in one of Isaiah’s sublime prophecies. “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and besides me there is none else.” And as he drew with rapid pencil the glorious character of the divine speaker, in all the majesty of the original Godhead, and also of his Mediatorial glory, his hearers felt that he that day spoke like one inspired. Vividly he described them lost in natural darkness, groping about the walls of their prison-house, labouring to grasp the meteor light which flitted hither and thither about each earthly boundary, hopeless and helpless, when this voice rang through the gloom, “Look unto me and be ye saved.” Vividly he pictured the entering light, which to the saved followed these words of mercy, steady, unfailing, and eternal, that sprung from point to point of these desolate spirit cells, illuminating the walls with heavenly radiance, and making them prisons no longer, but changing them into temples dedicate to the worship of the highest. “My brethren,” said the eloquent preacher, bending down in his earnestness, as though he would speak to each individual ere he concluded. “There are those among you who know the blessedness of being thus plucked from the everlasting burnings--there are among you those who have worn out years in a fiery struggle before they found rest;” and the voice of the preacher trembled; “and there are those whose anguish has been compressed into a little round of days; but I know also that there are some here who can echo the words of one who knew in his own dread