lege though the possession of it is not unmingled with mortification at the consideration of my deserving it so little, and my perfect conviction, that did they know me more, they would esteem me less. It ought to humble most persons to reflect, that for a large portion of the respect in which they are held, they are indebted to ignorance; to the necessary unacquaintance with each other's hearts. The Great Supreme is the only being from whom nothing is to be feared on this head; the only one who may be safely trusted with the worst secrets of our hearts: "His mercy endureth for ever." He also is able, and only he, to correct the obliquities he discovers.

LETTER CLV.

ALEXANDER KNOX, Esq. to REV. J. JEBB.

The mind of the sincerest, I will not venture to say of the maturest, for that I am not competent to speak of, will be sometimes, to a certain degree, less luminous, it may be, beclouded; the question will be then, what is the path to comfort? I say, and say with all my soul,-prayer. Prayer, persevered in, until the mind is sensibly reinstated, and the former light renewed. They who live in this experimental way, will not need

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speculative appliances ; when the δυναμείς μελλοντος avoc are actually felt, dubious, inexplicable consolations, need not be resorted to: but if there be not a competency of the one, and religion still thought of and adhered to, there must be the other. This is the simple truth. If feeling decline, religion must be abandoned, or speculation must supply the place of that which feeling has lost.

I do not know how I could make myself more plain, than in this last paragraph. I have no quarrel with any thing, which does not abate the intensity of prayer, for the graces, or degrees of graces, yet wanted. I know, by experience, that this intensity is essential to the " peace of God which passeth all understanding." I am therefore jealous of all that could chill it; and, if I think the first names on earth, are, however unconsciously and unintentionally, instruments in this bad cause, I must, when called to it, withstand them, as Saint Paul withstood Saint Peter, were they " bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." In truth, there is a much nearer tie; and this tie has existed, and I trust will exist, between you and me.

Adieu! May God bless, direct, and make you happy, and if it be his holy will, keep your heart and mind, ever in close union with the mind and heart of

Yours, more than language can express,

ALEX. KNOX.

LETTER CLVI.

ALEXANDER KNOX, Esq. to the REV. J. JEBB.

MY DEAR FRIEND, Bellevue, Delganney, July 4, 1819. Your kind note, received yesterday, ought not to remain one day unacknowledged, when a post-office is at hand, and when I can, I hope, venture to give you a somewhat more comfortable account of myself than that which has reached you, and which occasioned your kind endeavour to cheer me. The fact is, that my general health is not worse, but I trust a good deal better. I certainly feel it so for the present, and am still dubious, only because disagreeable symptoms have not wholly gone off. At all events, the will of Providence must be right; therefore, whether I continue an invalid, as I have been now for a length of time, more or less, or have a more comfortable afternoon (rather evening) of life, than I have been looking forward to, I hope God will bless the one state, or enable me to make some good use of the other. I should be unreasonable and ungrateful in the extreme, if I were inclined to distrust that Providence, which has so mercifully guarded, guided, and sustained me, through the part of life already passed; I am anxious only that my all-wise and all-gracious Benefactor may keep me pliant as wax to his moulding; and enable me to retain every impression, which he is pleased to give me. Then, all will be well, let the course be that of continued restraint,

or of increased liberty and corporal comfort. know, from experience, that it is easier to bear the one, than to improve the other: but the strength which was made perfect in St. Paul's weakness, continually taught him to be full, as well as to be hungry, to abound, as effectually, as to suffer

need.

I certainly have had trying moments, during the last three months; not really from my actual state, but from my false reckoning of the symptoms which occurred. I have thought my uneasiness implied a fatal organic derangement. I have feared that what I felt in my head, would destroy my power of thinking. This was all pure misconception; but, for the time, it required inward support; and of this, I thank God, I never remained wholly in want. I know little, except in a very few now remote instances,-I might say, nothing at all, of illapsive communication; and I hope I am not in error, when I say, that I have no desire for this. I prize incomparably more, an intelligible power (such, however, as divine animation and attraction could alone give) of fixing the mind and heart upon Him, who is, at once, the parent of spirits, and the fountain of comfort. To be able, not only to aim at this, but so to do it as to find rest and satisfaction in doing it, and to feel all the faculties of the soul rectified and tranquillized, by this central action of the inner man, this vital union of the human spirit with its God and Father, as, on the most rational principles, it is, at happier moments of the kind to which I refer, consciously

felt to be,-this, I confess, is the species of consolation, in bodily distress, which I should be most anxious to obtain'; and a dawning I trust of which was my only relief, when I thought I had nothing else to fly to.

I

What, however, I am presuming not to desire for myself, I am far from regarding as spurious, in the case of minds cast in a different mould. believe God is infinitely condescending, and therefore minutely discriminating. His ways I conceive to be as various as the subjects on which he acts. I consequently can read the substance of what I find, in the accounts of Puritans, Methodists, Roman-catholic spiritualists, without ceasing to think that there is a 66 more excellent way;" a way differing from what those various classes experienced, in some measure as the spiritual intercourse with our Lord, through the Comforter, differed from the sensible intercourse during his abode on earth.

The adverting to God's discriminating conduct, leads me to mention, what probably you have already considered, the beautiful illustration, in Isaiah xxviii. 23, &c., of the minute attention to time and circumstance, observed by divine Providence in its corrective dispensations. The argu-ment evidently is, has God so instructed the husbandman, and will he himself be less exquisite in. his own special operations? The full close in the 29th verse, brings us to this delightful conclusion.. I need not point out to you the consummate fitness of the two-fold expression, "wonderful in