that effected David's deliverance. Such a prayer as this was my best confidence; and I have not yet been confounded.

You say not a word about returning; and I know it is not easy for such friends to part. Let even your friendship afford a motive for securing a joint inheritance, from which you shall never be separated, nor from each other, nor from

Your affectionate Father,

J. BACON.

CONSIDERING the prevailing scepticism of the age; and the various and violent attacks that have been made upon vital godliness, as if uncertain in its nature, and debasing in its tendency; I hope it will not be thought impertinent, if, with a view to expose these misrepresentations, I embrace the opportunity which here presents itself, of adding a few general reflections which have occurred to my own mind in contemplating the character of my friend. Both before and since his departure, he has been the occasion of leading me to think on that Sameness of Principle, and on that Superiority of Sentiment which belong to a religion like his.

I. The IDENTITY or sameness of its principle. What, I have said to myself, is sound religious principle?—if it may be discovered by its effects,

then, bad as the world is, it is still found passing among us, though too often an unacknowledged stranger. Look at Bacon. He is naturally sanguine: and has exquisite sensibility: he is opulent: he can suffer no ennni for want of an object: he has fame to fan his vanity; and a fancy ever on the wing to amuse his taste. What then is it, which, bridling every inordinate propensity, leads him to find his chief enjoyment in administering instruction to the ignorant, and teaching "the young idea how to shoot?"-in conversing with a kindred mind on invisible things, or retiring for the pursuit or contemplation of them? I observe such objects can draw him from scenes of science, and grandeur, and pleasure: I have seen him steal moments from the Royal Academy, though then expecting his assistance, to get one more hint for the religious improvement of his head or his heart.

Perhaps he is an enthusiast. Yes certainly; if by that term is meant one who strongly feels his art, but more strongly feels the object of his heavenly pursuit. But if by the term is meant one who is led on by a heated but delusive imagination, then let us stay a little, and enquire.

Do such enthusiasts as the latter proceed with humility and fear? Are they rational and consistent in their conduct? Do they explore the ground, as they tread; and only advance, as they feel it good? Suspicious of themselves, do they incessantly enquire of the best and wisest they

know, in order to be directed? Are they glad of a hint: and, however contrary to their feelings or interest, do they implicitly bow to the plain precepts of their Maker in his word?-Yet this did Bacon. Let us, if we would be wise, learn to distinguish between the sound and rational deter mination of that man, who, having dug the field and found the treasure, hides it for joy, and parts with every inferior consideration for it: and the man, whose raptures have nothing but the mere figment of a wild imagination for their foundation.

The fact respecting such a strong though rational direction in the mind of man towards heavenly things, however it may raise suspicion in those who have not felt it, is unquestionable among such as have.-To illustrate the subject -I see a small bar of steel in the lid of a box now before me, I see it tremble, as if undetermined, yet keep a certain direction. I can cause it to deviate from its point by impulse; but though I can disturb its natural direction, I cannot give it a new one. Nay, this very disturbance will still more fully discover its inclination: it will put it upon labouring to recover its point: if I cease to agitate, it will soon cease to vibrate; and will return to its proper rest. Of this I am clearly conscious: but I am not more conscious of this fact than I am of another, of which the former may stand as an emblem. Thousands, as well as myself, know that the polar direction of the steel

is not more a matter of fact in the natural world, than the heavenly direction they feel is a fact in the moral world and that a disposition often observed in men who were once the most reprobate, to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world, is the proper effect of this influence.

It is not indeed so easy to describe what passes in the moral as in the natural world.

It would not have been possible for Zaccheus to have fully set forth the feelings with which he as readily quitted the gold in his coffers as the tree from which he descended.-Saul could not make the Pharisees or the Philosophers comprehend the nature of that full conviction, with which he counted all things but as dross for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord; nor the evidence which he had that it was his highest honour to suffer for his master's sake. Nor could my late friend, after having obtained the approbation of his hearers at the Royal Academy by his observations upon the Arts, have clearly conveyed, with those observations, the more interesting ones which he had made, and the perceptions which he had felt, in a superior science.

For the religion, that is vital and experimental, has not only its common faith, but its correspondent feelings-not only its peculiar objects, but its proper taste; which, like that for the Fine Arts, we must actually possess, in order to fully comprehend. From which premises two consequences

will naturally follow: 1. That a pious man will have stronger evidence of the truth and reality of his religion than he can fully demonstrate to others who are of a contrary character: and 2dly, That he can no more doubt the superiority of his choice and taste, because scorned by incompetent judges, than one, who had a taste for proportion or an ear for music, would doubt their existence from their being denied by such as had none.

By this religious principle, therefore, found in all true believers, they not only resemble lines drawn from a wide circumference to a common centre; but, under the operation of an Almighty Spirit, a new and special direction is given to their desires and faculties towards the attainment of their only, their proper, and their appointed rest. By a moral sensation analogous to the natural, they feel the vanity and disorder of their present state-They see one chief good-They hear of one way to it-They savour the heavenly proposal and, after receiving a taste for THAT, they find every other good comparatively insipid.

But is this chief good, or the appointed way to it by a Redeemer, an invention of their own? or a mere tradition of their fathers? On the contrary, they have irrefragable evidence that they were incapable of forming such an expectation—that man could not imagine it—but, that it is a hope set before them by HIM that cannot lie. Now it is this heavenly INFLUENCE under which they are,