instruct me admirably how to overcome, that I may once make application of the text, (') and raise such hopes as cannot miscarry. The great thing is to acquiesce with all one's heart to the good pleasure of God, who will prove us by the ways and dispensations he sees best, and when he will break us to pieces, we must be broken. Who can tell his works from the beginning to the end? But who can praise his mercies more than wretched I, that he has not cut me off in anger, who have taken his chastisements so heavily, not weighing his mercies in the midst of judgments! The stroke was of the fiercest sure; but had I not then a reasonable ground to hope, that what I loved as I did my own soul, was raised from a prison to a throne? Was I not enabled to shut up my own sorrows, that I increased not his sufferings by seeing mine? How were my sinking spirits supported by the early compassions of excellent and wise Christians, without ceasing, admonishing me of my duty, instructing, reproving, comforting me! You know, doctor, I was not destitute; and I must acknowledge that many others like yourself, with devout zeal, and great charity, contributed to the gathering together my scattered spirits, and then subjecting them by reason to such a submission as I could obtain under so astonishing a calamity: and further, he has spared me hitherto the children of so excellent a friend, giving them hopeful understandings, and yet very tractable and

(1) Rev. iii. 12.

sweet dispositions; spared my life in usefulness I trust to them: and seeing I am to linger in a world I can no more delight in, has given me a freedom from bodily pain to a degree I almost never knew; not so much as a strong fit of the head-ach have I felt since that miserable time, who used to be tormented with it very frequently. This calls for praises my dead heart is not exercised in; but I hope this is my infirmity; I bewail it. He that took our nature, and felt our infirmities, knows the weakness of my person, and the sharpness of my sorrows.

LETTER CXXIX.

LADY RUSSELL to LADY

RUSSELL.

If ever I could retaliate with my sister Russell, it would be now, on the subject of death, when I have all this my saddest month been reflecting on what I saw and felt; and yet what can I say more, than to acquiesce with you, that it is a solemn thing to think of the consequences of death to believers and unbelievers! That it is a contemplation ought to be of force to make us diligent for the approaching change, I must own; yet I doubt it does so but on a few. That you are one of those happy ones, I conclude, if I knew no more reason for it than the bare conclusion of yours, that the bare meditation is sufficient to pro

voke to care; for when a heart is so well touched, it will act; and who has, perhaps, by an absolute surrender of herself, so knit her soul to God, as will make her dear in his sight. We lie under innumerable obligations to be his entirely; and nothing should be so attracting to us as his miraculous love in sending his Son: but my still smart sorrow for earthly losses makes me know I loved inordinately; and my profit in the school of adversity has been small, or I should have long since turned my mourning into rejoicing thankfulness, that I had such a friend to lose; that I saw him I loved as my own soul take such a prospect of death, as made him, when brought to it, walk through the dark and shaded valley (notwithstanding the natural aversion of separation) without fearing evil : for if we, in our limited degrees of goodness, will not forsake those that depend on us, much less can God cast us from him, when we seek to him in our calamity. And though he denied my earnest and repeated prayers, yet he has not denied me the support of his Holy Spirit, in this my long day of calamity, but enabled me in some measure to rejoice in him as my portion for ever: who has provided a remedy for all our griefs, by his sure promises of another life, where there is no death, nor any pain or trouble, but a fulness of joy in the presence of God, who made us, and loves us for

ever.

LETTER CXXX.

ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON to a FRIEND.

I find daily more and more reason without me, and within me much more, to pant and long to be gone. I am grown exceeding uneasy in writing and speaking, yea almost in thinking, when I reflect how cloudy our clearest thoughts are: but I think again, what other can we do, till the day break, and the shadows flee away,-as one that lieth awake in the night must be thinking; and one thought that will likely oftenest return, when, by all other thoughts he finds little relief, iswhen will it be day?

LETTER CXXXI.

REV. DAVID BRAINERD to his brother JOHN, then a student at Yale College, Newhaven.-His spiritual perplexities.

I live in the most lonely melancholy desert, about eighteen miles from Albany; for it was not thought best that I should go to Delaware river, as I believe I hinted to you in a letter from New York. I board with a poor Scotchman: his wife can talk scarce any English. My diet consists mostly of

hasty-pudding, boiled corn, and bread baked in the ashes, and sometimes a little meat and butter. My lodging is a little heap of straw laid upon some boards, a little way from the ground, for it is a log-room, without any floor, that I lodge in. My work is exceeding hard and difficult: I travel on foot a mile and a half, the worst of ways, almost daily and back again; for I live so far from the Indians. I have not seen an English person this month. These, and many other circumstances, as uncomfortable attend me; and yet my spiritual conflicts and distresses so far exceed all these, that I scarce think of them, or hardly mind but that I am entertained in the most sumptuous manner. The Lord grant that I may learn to "endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."

But however, I see, I needed all this chastisement, already: “it is good for me" that I have endured these trials, and have hitherto little or no apparent success. Do not be discouraged by my distresses. I was under great distress at Mr. Pomroy's, when I saw you last; but God has been with me of a truth, since that: he helped me sometimes sweetly at LongIsland, and elsewhere. But let us always remember, that we must through much tribulation enter into God's eternal kingdom of rest and peace. The righteous are scarcely saved: it is an infinite wonder that we have well-grounded hopes of being saved at all. For my part, I feel the most vile of any creature living; and I am sure sometimes there is not such another existing on this side hell. Now