inheritance. So a Christian is often more elated by some frame of heart than by his title to glory."

"A dutiful child is ever looking forward to the holidays, when he shall return to his father; but he does not think of running from school before."

"The Gospel is a proclamation of free mercy to guilty creatures-an act of grace to rebels. Now, though a rebel should throw away his pistols, and determine to go into the woods, and make his mind better before he goes to court and pleads the act; he may, indeed, not be found in arms, yet, being taken in his reforming scheme, he will be hanged."

"Man is made capable of three births: by nature, he enters into the present world; by grace, into spiritual light and life; by death, into glory."

of

of

"In my imagination, I sometimes fancy I could make a perfect minister. I take the eloquence the knowledge of, the zeal and the pastoral meekness, tenderness, and piety of - then, putting them all together into one man, I say to myself, This would be a perfect minister.' Now there is one, who, if he chose it, could actually do this; but he never did. He has seen fit to do otherwise, and to divide these gifts to every man severally as he will.”

“I feel like a man who has no money in his pocket, but is allowed to draw for all he wants upon one infinitely rich: I am, therefore, at once both a beggar and a rich man."

“I went one day to Mrs. G➖➖➖'s, just after she had lost all her fortune. I could not be sur

prised to find her in tears: but she said, I sup

pose you think I am crying for my loss, but that is not the case: I am now weeping to think I should feel so much uneasiness on the account.' After that, I never heard her speak again upon the subject as long as she lived.Now this is just as it should be. Suppose a man was going to York to take possession of a large estate, and his chaise should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way; what a fool we should think him if we saw him wringing his hands, and blubbering out all the remaining mile,My chaise is broken! My chaise is broken!".

"I have many books that I cannot sit down to read they are, indeed, good and sound; but, like halfpence, there goes a great quantity to a little amount. There are silver books; and a very few golden books: but I have one book worth more than all, called the Bible; and that is a book of bank-notes."

I conclude these remarks, not because my me morandum-book is exhausted, but lest the reader should think I forget the old maxim, ne quid nimis. No undue liberty, however, has been taken in publishing Mr. N.'s private conversation, since all the above remarks were submitted to him as intended for this publication, and were approved.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

THE difference of mental improvement among men, seems very much to depend on their capacity and habit of gathering instruction from the objects which are continually presented to their observation. Two men behold the same fact: one of them is in the habit of drawing such remarks and inferences as the fact affords, and learns somewhat from every thing he sees; while the other sees the same fact, and perhaps with a momentary admiration, but lets it pass without making so much as one profitable reflection on the occasion. The excursions of the bee and the butterfly present an exact emblem of these two characters.

I have present to my mind an acquaintance, who has seen more of the outside of the world than most men: he has lived in most countries of the civilized world; yet I scarcely know a man of a less improved mind: with every external advantage, he has learned nothing to any useful purpose: he seems to have passed from flower to flower without extracting a drop of honey; and, now, he tires all his friends with the frivolous

garrulity of a capricious, vacant, and petulant old-age.

I wish the reader of these Memoirs may avoid such an error, in passing over the history here laid before him. An extraordinary train of facts is presented to his observation; and if

"The proper study of mankind is man,"

the history before us will surely furnish important matter of the kind to the eye of every wise, moral traveller.

I would here call the attention of three classes of men to a single point of prime importance; namely, the EFFICACY AND EXCELLENCY OF REAL CHRISTIANITY as exhibited in the principles and practice of the subject of these Memoirs.

1. Suppose the reader to be so unhappy (though his misfortune may be least perceived by himself) as to be led astray by bad society, in conjunction with an evil heart of unbelief. I will suppose him to be now in the state in which Mr. N. describes himself formerly to have been, and in which also the writer of these Memoirs once was. I will suppose him to be given up to believe his own lie; and that he may be in the habit of thinking that God, when he made man, left him to find his way without any express revelation of the mind and will of his Maker and Governor; or, at most, that he is left to the only rule in morals, which naturę

may be supposed to present.-What that way is, which such a thinker will take, is sufficiently evident from the general course and habits of unbelievers,

But there is a conscience in man. Conscience, in sober moments, often alarms the most stouthearted. When such an unbeliever meets an overwhelming providence, or lies on a death-bed, he will probably awake to a strong sense of his real condition, He will feel, if not very hardened indeed, in what a forlorn, unprovided, and dangerous state he exists. Life is the moment in which only this sceptical presumption can continue; and when it is terminating, where is he to set the sole of his foot? He wildly contemplates the book of nature, in which he may have been persuaded that man may read all he needs to know; but the forlorn outcast sees nothing there to meet his case as a sinner. Infinite power, wisdom, contrivance, general provision, alone appear; but nothing of that further and distinct information which a dying offender needs. He wants footing, and finds none. He needs the hand of a friend to grasp, but none is seen. Possibilities shock his apprehension, He may, perhaps, discern that the present system has a moral government, which frowns upon guilt; and, for aught he knows to the contrary, the next scene may present a Judge upon his throne of justice, this world, his present idol, vanished like smoke, and quick and dead

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