trimony, to strangers. I doubt not he enjoyed some solace in writing his book; and I admit, that, considered in itself, it was a rational employment, an ingenuous and agreeable mental occupation-and for a heathen I can think of nothing better-but it must have been often a bitter task, as, in the midst of an interesting discussion, the thought rushed upon his mind—he will never read it. And here it is that the Gospel shines preeminently in its consoling power: it is never out of place any where, but in scenes of sorrow it seems most endeared and endearing. A secular topic grates upon the spirit in affliction, but the page that tells us of a High Priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, soothes it. A rhetorical disquisition would be chilling and repulsive; but Jesus visiting Mary and Martha, and weeping over Lazarus, tranquillizes the throbbing emotion, and binds up the broken heart. If a Christian were obliged to cancel from his Bible for one day the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, he would not choose the day on which he saw a beloved child taken from his arms or carried to his grave. The Bible is ever the most precious of books, but most precious is it when every thing else palls and offends. Literature may be often a part of our duty; it is also, as time and opportunity serve, a reasonable and valuable recreation; and we have reason to bless God for even the secondary amenities of life, so far as they are not sinful but to speak of oratory and a dying child in the same breath, is heathenism, is stoicism, is affectation; but it is not true feeling, much less Christianity.

But I must go back to my immediate purpose in quoting the above passage, which was to shew that the tears of a Christian parent may have a bitterness which heathenism knew not of, though that bitterness is salutary, and therefore infinitely better than living and dying in the dark. When David wept over Absalom, his tears were not merely a natural effusion of grief, but, as I before urged in detail, were doubtless rendered tenfold more poignant by apprehensions concerning the soul of his child. Of any cause for such apprehensions Quintillian was ignorant; so that had his children been as profligate as Absalom, instead of being, as he relates, ingenuous and virtuous, he would have had no pang as regarded their future destination. But what affliction can be so great as, believing the Bible, to see a child perish apparently beyond all hope! I will quote as an illustration a passage from the life of the late Mr. Andrew Fuller, whose highly valuable works, recently collected and published-especially his Socinian and Christian System compared-make me grudge that he did not pray under the same roof with us; though well will it be if we are permitted to praise eternally in the same temple with him. Mr. Fuller had a son of many prayers and many tears. I copy the following notices respecting this unhappy youth from his father's diary, as introduced by his biographer, doubting not that the incidents will be new to you, and that you will account them as affecting an exhibition of the tears of a Christian parent as can be found upon record. The particular point which I adduce the narrative to illustrate is, the poignancy of that grief which has for its object spiritual apprehensions respecting the character or end of a beloved child. It is not often that the secret feelings of a religious father's heart for an irreligious child become thus fully known to the world; I will therefore quote somewhat largely, for the sake of the important instruction conveyed in the passage. Mr. Fuller writes, May 12, 1796, This day my eldest son is gone to London upon trial at a warehouse belonging to Mr. B. My heart has been much exercised about him. The child is sober and tender in his spirit: I find too he prays in private, but whether he be really godly I know not. Sometimes he has expressed a desire after the ministry, but I always considered that as arising from the want of knowing himself.

About a year and half ago, I felt a very affecting time in pleading with God on his behalf. Nothing appeared to me so desirable for him as that he might be a servant of God. I felt my heart much drawn out to devote him to the Lord, in whatever way he might employ him. Since that time, as he became of age for business, my thoughts have been much engaged on his behalf. As to giving him any idea of his ever being engaged in the ministry, it is what I carefully shun; and whether he ever will be is altogether uncertain; I know not whether he be a real Christian as yet, or, if he be, whether he will possess those qualifications which are requisite for that work; but this I have done, I have mentioned the exercises of my mind to Mr. B., who is a godly man, and, if at any future time within the next five or six years he should appear a proper object of encouragement for that work, he will readily give him up.

'I felt very tenderly last night and this morning in prayer. I cannot say, 'God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk;' but I can say, 'God, who hath fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lad.'

In the short space of two months after writing the above-such are often the vicissitudes of parental hopes and alarms-we find Mr. Fuller secretly recording, respecting one thus apparently hopeful, "sober and tender in his spirit," "praying in private," " and expressing a desire after the ministry," the following bitter lamentation: "I perceive I have great unhappiness before me in my son, whose instability is continually appearing; he must leave London, and what to do with him I know not. I was lately earnestly engaged in prayer for him, that he might be renewed in his spirit, and be the Lord's; and these words occurred to my mind-' Hear my prayer, O Lord, that goeth not forth out of feigned lips;' and I prayed them over many times."

Other situations were procured for the unhappy youth, but in none of them would he remain. We find his father about this time expressing himself as follows, in a confidential letter to a friend. It opens a heartrending chapter in domestic history.

"My heart is almost broken. Let nothing that I said grieve you; but make allowance for your afflicted and distressed friend. When I lie down, a load almost insupportable depresses me. Mine eyes are kept waking, or if I get a little sleep it is disturbed; and as soon as I awake my load returns upon me. O Lord, I know not what to do; but mine eyes are up unto thee. Keep me, O my God, from sinful despondency. Thou hast promised that all things shall work together for good to them that love thee; fulfil thy promise, on which thou hast caused thy servant to hope. O my God, this child which thou hast given me in charge is wicked before thee, and is disobedient to me, and is plunging himself into ruin. Have mercy upon him, O Lord, and preserve him from evil. Bring him home to me, and not to me only, but also to thyself.

Those

"If I see the children of other people it aggravates my sorrow. who have had no instruction, no pious example, no warnings or counsels, are often seen to be steady and trusty; but my child, who has had all these advantages, is worthy of no trust to be placed in him. I am afraid he will go into the army, that sink of immorality; or, if not, that being reduced to extremity he will be tempted to steal. And oh, if he should get such a habit, what may not these weeping eyes witness, or this broken heart be called to endure ! O my God, whither will my fears lead me? Have mercy upon me, a poor unhappy parent: have mercy upon him, a poor ungodly child."

The former of these fears was realized in 1798 he entered into the army; on which occasion his father thus writes to Dr. Ryland :

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 370.

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"I have indeed had a sore trial in the affair you mention: but I do not recollect any trial of my life in which I had more of a spirit of prayer, and confidence in God. Many parts of Scripture were precious, particularly the following:- O Lord, I know not what to do; but mine eyes are up unto thee.-O Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me.-Commit thy way unto the Lord and he shall bring it to pass.-Cast thy burden on the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.-All things work together for good,' &c. Even while I knew not where he was, I felt stayed on the Lord, and some degree of cheerful satisfaction that things would end well. I know not what is before me; but hitherto the Lord hath helped me; and still I feel resolved to hope in his mercy."

His discharge from the army was obtained on the ground of his being an apprentice, but he subsequently enlisted in the marines; soon after which he appeared sensible of his folly. The influence of early religious education was felt. Shocked at the heathenism of his present situation, and calling to remembrance the peaceful Sabbaths and pious instructions of home, he addressed his father, earnestly entreating him to use efforts for his liberation. This appeal to the piety and affection of a Christian parent was promptly responded to. His father's heart went forth to meet him, and he was once more restored to the bosom of his family. Notwithstanding the influence of his mother-in-law, to whom as well as to every other branch of the family he was fondly attached, a dislike to business, increased by habits recently contracted, once more induced his departure.

"The sorrows of my heart," says his father, "have been increased, at different times, to a degree almost insupportable: yet I have hoped in God, and do still hope that I shall see mercy for him in the end. The Lord knows that I have not sought great things for him, and that I have been more concerned for the wicked course he was following than on account of the meanness of his taste. O may the Lord bring me out of this horrible pit, and put a new song in my mouth!

"My heart is oppressed; but yet I am supported. Yesterday I fasted and prayed the day through. Many Scriptures were sweet to me; particularly Matt. xv. 25-'Lord help me!'-a petition in which a parent was heard for a child, after repeated repulses. And Psa. xxxiii. 22. I believe I shall live to see good, in some way, come out of it. My soul is at rest in God."

Finding that he was bent on a sea-faring life, his father procured him a comfortable situation on board a merchant ship, apparently much to his satisfaction. The hopes which this new arrangement raised in the minds of his friends were, however, suddenly destroyed, before he could join his ship, by the operation of what Fuller's biographer justly calls the "savage laws' of impressment. Thus, against his inclination, he found himself once more on board a man-of-war, in the capacity of a common sailor. In a few months an account was received by his friends of his having been tried for desertion, and sentenced to a most severe punishment, after the infliction of which he immediately expired.

"Oh!" says his agonized parent, "this is heart-trouble! In former cases, my sorrows found vent in tears but now I can seldom weep. Α kind of morbid heart-sickness preys upon me from day to day. Every object around me reminds me of him! Ah!...... he was wicked; and mine eye was not over him to prevent it...... he was detected, and tried, and condemned; and I knew it not ... ... he cried under his agonies; but I heard him not...... he expired, without an eye to pity or a hand to help him!......O Absalom! my son ! my son! would God I had died for thee, my son!

Yet, O my soul! let me rather think of Aaron than of David. He

held his peace' in a more trying case than mine. His sons were both slain, and slain by the wrath of heaven; were probably intoxicated at the time and all this suddenly, without any thing to prepare the mind for such a trial! Well did he say, ' Such things have befallen me.'

Said I not, my dear friend, that this was a most mournfully instructive tale? Well might the afflicted father call to mind David weeping over Absalom. As far as regarded natural affection, his tears were probably more bitter than those of David; for whatever were the sins and follies of this youth, his father's biographer attests of him that he by no means evinced an inveterate propensity to vicious and abandoned courses;" that "his disposition was amiable;" that " his wanderings arose from instability of character;" and that he does not appear "to have abandoned himself to any of those gross vices incident to a naval and military life." To his father he seems to have behaved with personal affection, amidst all his wanderings: he was a prodigal son, but not, like Absalom, a traitor and a murderer. There had been nothing, therefore, to alienate the affections of a parent, except as every kind of vice is hateful to a Christian mind, though it does not, of necessity, diminish parental tenderness-nay, from feelings of commiseration, it may increase it. And then there was the choking remembrance that this son had actually begun a new course, when an act of atrocious injustice-for such I scruple not to call the barbarous custom of impressment-tore him away from a peaceful and useful occupation, upon which he had entered, to plunge him into, what I have heard respectable seafaring men call, that "hell on the waters," a man-of-war. My son," he might have thought, "would perhaps have been saved in body and soul, had it not been for that act of legalized atrocity. He had felt the evils of his past conduct, and I had yet hope; but now—————— Absalom perished lifting up his hand against his father; but his death was what men call casual: it was not cruel, it was not disgraceful: but my poor boy died under the lash, perhaps for some offence which the strictness of military law accounts highly penal, but which does not involve high moral turpitude-he might have been overcome with slumber at his post after severe fatigue." Thus a parent's feelings might have gone on to trace new sources of grief, while it invented every possible mitigation of the young man's offences. Besides all which, Mr. Fuller seems to have believed that his son laboured under "a sort of mental derangement," as his poor mother actually did for some weeks before her death *; in which case his feelings must have been

A letter of Mr. Fuller to his father-in-law, respecting the illness and death of his wife, is not only so affecting in itself, but so consonant to the subject of these remarks-being a letter to a father on the death of his daughter under circumstances peculiarly calculated to call forth parental tears, and exhibiting the feelings of a deranged mother at the grave of her children-that I am tempted to transcribe the whole of it. It cannot be read without much sympathy, and I think valuable instruction :

"Aug. 25, 1792.

"Dear and honoured Father,-You have heard, I suppose, before now, that my dear companion is no more! For about three months back our afflictions have been extremely heavy. About the beginning of June she was seized with hysterical affections, which, for a time, deprived her of her senses. In about a week, however, she recovered them, and seemed better; but soon relapsed again: and during the months of July and August, a few intervals excepted, her mind has been constantly deranged. In this unhappy state, her attention has generally been turned upon some one object of distress sometimes that she had lost her children; sometimes that she should lose For one whole day she hung about my neck, weeping; for that I was going to die, and leave her! The next morning she still retained the same persuasion; but, instead of weeping for it, she rejoiced with exceeding joy. My husband,' said she, ' is going to heaven. . . . . . and all is well!—I shall be provided for,' &c. Sometimes we were her worst enemies, and must not come near her; at other times she would

me.

ten-fold harrowed up at the thought of his sufferings, while all that ap peared wrong in him would call forth tenderness instead of displeasure.

Then there was, as doubtless in David's case, intense spiritual anxiety. The youth had been religiously educated; and though the father throws out a casual remark that he seemed to be labouring under a species of mental derangement, yet he did not so seriously adopt this opinion as to abate in the least his feeling of his son's moral responsibility. He greatly feared, and he durst scarcely cherish a hope to the contrary, that the unhappy prodigal was lost for ever; and this, with the accumulated guilt of having rejected all the restraints of a well-informed conscience, and a religious and anxiously guarded education.

The suffering parent's affliction was not, I think, aggravated by feelings of

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speak to me in the most endearing terms. Till very lately, she has been so desirous of my company, that it has been with much difficulty that I have stolen away from her about two hours in the twenty-four, that I might ride out in the air, my health having been considerably impaired. But lately her mind took another turn, which to me was very afflictive. It is true she never ceased to love her husband. I bave had,' she would say, as tender a husband as ever woman had; but you are not my husband!' She seemed for the last month really to have considered me as an impostor, who had entered the house, and taken possession of the keys of every place, and of all that belonged to her and her husband. Poor soul! for the last month, as I said, this and other notions of the kind have rendered her more miserable than I am able to describe! She has been fully persuaded that she was not at home, but had wandered somewhere from it; had lost herself, and fallen among strangers. She constantly wanted to make her escape; on which account we were obliged to keep the doors locked, and to take away the keys.No,' she would say to me, with a countenance full of inexpressible anguish, this is not my home... you are not my husband.... these are not my children. Once I had a good home... and a husband who loved me. . . . and dear children.... and kind friends. . . . but where am I now? I am lost! I am ruined! What have I done? Oh! what have I done? Lord have mercy upon me!' In this strain she would be frequently walking up and down, from room to room, bemoaning herself, without a tear to relieve her, wringing her hands, first looking upwards then downwards, in all the attitudes of wild despair! You may form some conception what must have been my feelings, to have been a spectator of all this anguish, and at the same time incapable of affording her the smallest relief. "Though she seemed not to know the children about her, yet she had a keen and lively remembrance of those that were taken away. One day, when I was gone out for the air, she went out of the house. The servant missing her, immediately followed, and found her in the grave-yard, looking at the graves of her children. She said nothing; but, with a bitterness of soul, pointed the servant's eyes to the wall, where the name of one of them, who was buried in 1783, was cut in the stone. Then turning to the graves of the other children, in an agony, she with her foot struck off the long grass, which had grown over the flat stones, and read the inscriptions with silent anguish, alternately looking at the servant and at the stones.

"About a fortnight before her death, she had one of the happiest intervals of any during the affliction. She had been lamenting on account of this impostor that was come into her house, and would not give her the keys. She tried for two hours to obtain them by force, in which time she exhausted all her own strength, and almost mine. Not being able to obtain her point, as I was necessarily obliged to resist her in this matter, she sat down and wept-threatening me that God would surely judge me for treating a poor helpless creature in such a manner! I also was overcome with grief: I wept with her. The sight of my tears seemed to awaken her recollection. With her eyes fixed upon me, she said.... Why, are you indeed my husband?'' Indeed my dear, I am! '—' O ! if I thought you were, I could give you a thousand kisses!' Indeed, my dear, I am your own dear husband!' She then seated herself upon my knee, and kissed me several times. My heart dissolved with a mixture of grief and joy. Her senses were restored, and she talked as rationally as ever. I then persuaded her to go to rest, and she slept well.

"About two in the morning she awoke, and conversed with me as rationally as ever she did in her life: said her poor head had been disordered; that she had given me a great deal of trouble, and feared she had injured my health; begged I would excuse all her hard thoughts and speeches; and urged this as a consideratian- Though I was set against you, yet I was not set against you as my husband.' She desired I would ride out every day for the air; gave directions to the servant about her family; told her where this and that article were to be found, which she wanted; inquired