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who feared lest, after all, his religion should be found to be nothing more than a cloak of hypocrisy, the Interpreter presented a paper with this motto; Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead -me in the way everlasting.' Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24. And, as he presented it, he said, Take this, my friend, and make it the subject of your daily inquiry before God. See whether you can pray with the same earnest desire as David did; or appeal to the Great Searcher of hearts, as Paul did, 'God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son.' Rom. i. If the approbation of God, and not the applause of man, be the desire of the heart; if the mind hates sin as sin, and not for its consequences; if you can bless a taking God, as well as a giving God; if you feel your soul humbled with a sense of unworthiness, while God is showering down upon you the abundance of his grace; if Jesus be loved for his own sake, more than for his gifts; these are all so many marks and touchstones of character, which never can belong to hypocrisy, and therefore may be considered by you as evidences of a well-founded hope.'

9.

Young man, (said the Interpreter to a very

hopeful and promising youth that was in the circle,) the best motto I can present you with, is the declaration which the Lord commanded the prophet to make in the ears of Jerusalem;

Thus saith the Lord, I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness in a land that was not sown.' Jeremiah ii. 2. Keep this precious text of Scripture in your bosom,, as an infallible antidote against all the poisonous influence with which you may be surrounded in the long pilgrimage through which you have yet to pass. The man that hath many days to count, hath many wintery dispensations to be exercised with. Nothing can serve more effectually, through divine grace, to bear up the mind under all its pressures, than the recollections of early notices of God and from God; and so sweet a promise of being remembered through all.'

And as for you, my brother, (the good man said, addressing himself to me,) there is no passage of scripture more suited to your case and circumstances, than that which is contained in the prayer of the Lord Jesus, in the conclusion of his ministry upon earth; (John xvii. 11.) Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me.' Ori

ginally given, as all the faithful are, by the Father to the Lord Jesus, before the Redeemer manifests the Father's name unto them; evidently the property of the Father at the time of the donation, for thine they were, and thou gavest them to me;' fully proved to be redeemed by Jesus, by having the Father's name manifested unto them, and having kept his word; strongly and powerfully recommended to the Father's keeping, by one whom the Father heareth always, and whose joint interest in the believer is one and the same with the Father's, for all mine are thine, and thine are mine :' how is it possible that such 'can ever perish, or that any should pluck them out of his almighty hand?' Keep this sweet Scripture therefore, I charge you, always in your bosom, and carry it about with you whithersoever you go; that its influence may be perpetual, and that the will of the Redeemer, corresponding with the gift and grace of the Father, may never escape your recollection; Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold the glory which thou hast given me.' John xvii. 24.

The Interpreter conducted me to the door, and as I stepped over the threshold, I turned about once more to express my thankful ac

knowledgment of the affectionate manner in which I had been entertained

Since we part,

Adieu, kind friend, Interpreter from God,
Sent from whose sovereign goodness I adore.
Gentle to me, and affable, hath been

Thy condescension, and shall be ever honour'd
With grateful mem❜ry.

But it was an event which the coincidence of circumstances in a Pilgrim's life, like mine, could only produce, that soon after I left the house of the Interpreter, I met the poor man, of whom such honourable testimony is made by me in the former part of these memoirs, accompanied with my moral neighbour, at whose instance I attended the elegant preacher's sermon, who is also mentioned in the first days of my inquiry for the way to Zion. Struck with astonishment at what I saw, that such an one should come on pilgrimage, I was going to express my surprise, when he anticipated all my inquiries, by accounting for the change. To this dear friend,' he cried, taking the poor man by the hand, 'I am indebted, under God, for the gracious conversion of my mind from the error of its ways. I felt no small confusion from the strength of your observations respecting the ineffectual tendency of morality to justify before God; and particularly from the

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manner in which you stated it in your conversation, as instanced in the conduct of brethren towards one another, while deficient in love and obedience towards their Father. But the remarks of this poor man at the church porch, after the sermon we had heard, were such as threw to the ground, through God's grace, all the building of self-confidence which I had been rearing up from the supposed rectitude of my life. And since that time, I have been so thoroughly convinced, from the frequent instructions of this dear friend, whom I have made my constant companion, of the utter impossibility of man's being justified by any thing of his own before God, that all my astonishment now is, not that I have for ever relinquished the vain pretension, but that I ever should have imbibed it. I am now most fully satisfied, I bless God, that so far is the highest moral virtue, from affording any ground of justification before God, that unless divine grace keep the soul humble under all its attainments, it is apt to produce pride in our hearts, and thereby to subject us to the greater condemnation. It may very safely be granted, that all moral excellencies will be the necessary result of true religion, as good fruit will be the natural production of a good tree; and that

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