dust, whose breath is in his nostrils, and who with all the skill and efficiency of his plans, is the sport of every breeze, and as transient as the vapour which appeareth for a little time, and then Vanisheth away.

When our hearts are inordinately occupied with our enjoyments, and plans, and prospects, it is evident we are boasting of to-morrow. We should not allow ourselves to be enraptured with sublunary joys, and counting on long years of pleasure while eternal realities are shut out from the scene, if we were not boasting of to-morrow. When we manifest an envious spirit, and cannot bear that others should participate in the ease, or wealth, or honour, which does not fall to our lot; when we repine at the providences of God, and are dissatisfied with our condition, it is evident that we have made improper calculations concerning the future. Could we envy the prosperity of others, or murmur in affliction, if we bad our minds justly impressed with the fleeting nature of earthly good? It is a forgetfulness that time is short, that life is fluctuating and uncertain, and that we are strangers and pilgrims on earth, which occasions our envy ings and regrets.

We boast of to-morrow when our plans cause us to put off religion to a future day. Perhaps there is not one of our readers, who does not admit the importance of religion, and the necessity of an attention to the concerns of the soul. Perhaps there is not one, who does not intend on some future to-morrow to begin in earnest to seek after God. But at present you are young, and you think it would be unwise to deny yourselves of the pleasures and amusements of youth. At present, you are making arrangements to be settled and es

tablished for life, and you cannot neglect these arrangements to attend to religion. At present, you are amassing wealth, and you cannot allow your attention to be diverted by eternal things, from things which are seen and temporal. Now, is it not obvious, that these very excuses for not attending to the concerns of the soul, are built on a vain confidence in to-morrow? If you knew, that to-morrow you would be visited with a disease that would terminate in your death, if you knew that death itself would knock at your doors, and demand, and gain admittance, and seize you as his victim, would you now put off the things which make for your eternal peace? Would you still prefer the vanities of a moment, to the sublime realities of eternity? And yet, how do you know, but that tomorrow you may be summoned into the eternal world? Tomorrow you may be called to appear before your offended Judge, and your state be irrevocably fixed. Many, as young and vigorous as any of our readers, and as full of hope and promise, have been suddenly cut off by death. He, then, who puts off religion, with the resolution, that he will attend to it on some future day, is guilty of the presumption against which we would caution all our readers. He is trusting to a period which may never arrive. Between him and that period death may intervene to blast his hopes forever.

We harbour an improper confidence in to-morrow, if we vainly imagine, that it will find our hearts more favourably disposed towards religion than they are to-day. Religion is now neglected, because you are unwilling to give up your sinful pleasures, your gay associates, and your love of the world: And when conscience

lifts up its voice, and becomes your accuser, you still its murmurs by promises of amendment to-morrow. But what strange virtues will to-morrow possess, that you expect so much from it? Will it not exhibit the same round of pleasures? will it not introduce you to the same gay companions? will it not hold up to your view the same glittering, fascinating world? will it be more easy to relinquish sinful pleasures, when by repetition they have become confirmed habits? will it be more easy to tear yourselves from your friends, after you have long associated with them, than it is now? will it be less difficult at some future period than at present, to to hate that world which has grown upon your affections with each returning day?-your calculations are presumptuous. You are rejecting religion to-day, because you expect to-morrow will perform miracles. O! then

"Be wise to-day-'tis madness to defer,
Next day-the fatal precedent will plead
Thus on-till wisdom is push'd out of life,
And to the mercy of a moment leaves
The grand concerns of an eternal scene."

Our ignorance of what shall happen on the morrow should deter us from boasting.

To-day, perhaps, we are enjoying all that our hearts can wish, we are firm in health, our spirits are active and vigorous, and our prospects in life are flattering. Perhaps, some are ready to say to their friends, "Come ye, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink: and to-morrow shall be as this day and much more abundant." But to-morrow may bring with it evils of which you have no conception. It may lay all your hopes prostrate in the dust. Your bodies may be racked with pain, and your property consumed to ashes. The next post that arrives, may bring with it the heart rend

ing intelligence, that your stay and support, the dearest earthly object of your affections is no more. To-day, perhaps, you may be living in the neglect of relig ion, with the hope, that to-morrow you shall repent. But, your reason may be taken from you, or you may be given up to hardness of heart. Having despised the blessings of the gospel, the Lord may swear, "you shall not enter into rest."

You do not know that you shall live till to-morrow Have you made a covenant with death, or an agreement with the grave, so as to be sure you shall live a single day? If you have not, why should you boast of to-morrow, as though you were certain that you shall live to see it? why should you put off to the future what is of eternal importance, when you know that before that future arrives, you may be numbered with the dead?

It is probable, that at the commencement of the last year some of our readers said, "We will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain," and return home laden with spoils. But the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and rageth at noon day, pervaded their frames, and they sunk in death. Instead of parents and friends giving them a cordial welcome home, nothing has been received, but a solitary letter, written by some unknown hand, announcing the tidings of their death.

Let us then request our readers to consider their latter end. To-day, while it is called to-day, harden not your hearts, lest, while you are saying, peace and safety, sudden destruction come upon you. We would entreat our fellow christians not to act as though they boasted of to-morrow. This year, to some of you,.

may probably be the last. Work then while it is called to-day, for the night cometh in which no man can work. Endeavour to find out in what way you can most glorify God; and whatsoever your hand findeth to do, engage in it with all your might. The apostle urges the shortness of life as a powerful reason why christians should be diligent in the discharge of every social and religious duty. Rom. xiii. 11, 12. "And that knowing the time, that now it is

high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." Happy will it be for us, if, when our divine Master comes, he shall find us acting like the children of light. He will then say to each of us, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." [Editors.

THE subject of the present Memoir was born in Middleborough, (Mass.) May 18, 1761, of pious and respectable parents. His father dying when he was young, his advantages of education were small. He has often been heard to say that he was indebted for all the learning he acquired in his youth, to Mr.

a gentleman of liberal education, who had married his sister, and who sometimes taught a school, and in whose family he occasionally resided after his father's death. The want of an early education, such as was adapted, and suitable, to the duties of the sacred station to which he was destined by Providence, was a subject of deep regret to him, after he became a public speaker. It was then that a painful sense of the want of education made him more fully realize its value and importance.

No man could more duly appreciate or more highly recommend the advantages of learning to the young and rising generation, considered as having an im

mediate bearing upon their future characters and usefulness, both as members of civil and religious society. He was a zealous patron and promoter of the literary and theological institution established at Waterville; of which he was one of its Trustees from the time of its institution until his death.

In the year 1783, he came into the District (now State) of Maine, and became a resident in the town of Bristol.

The next year, which completed 23 years in his life, constitutes an important epoch in his biography. It is the date of his conversion-the first year of grace and spiritual life in his soul.

Saul of Tarsus (after receiving a pharisaical education at the feet of Gamaliel) when on his way to Damascus, to execute a cruel commission against the unoffending christians, was, according to human probability, a very unlikely candidate for the renewing grace of God and the honour of apostleship.

John Newton, after his long and dreadful apprenticeship to ir

religion, profaneness, and every species of hardened wickedness, usually practised on ship board, and in distant, foreign countries, was a very unpromising candidate for the new birth of grace, and admission into the gospel ministry. So Mr. Fuller, after the impressions he had received, and the habits he had contracted during 7 years spent within the contagious and contaminating influence of a camp, was a very unpromising candidate for that station which he has since filled to such general acceptance. But" God's ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts." It pleases sovereign grace, now and then, to arrest one of the chief of sinners, a veteran in the ranks of satan's emissaries, in his career to hell, and to make him a subject of the all-quickening Spirit of God, an everlasting monument of mercy, an heir of the glories of heaven. Such an affecting instance of the power of sovereign grace we have now presented to our view. Mr. Fuller, at the period just referred to, was hopefully and savingly converted from the error of his former ways, to the wisdom of the just. The whole of his subsequent life has uniformly borne testimony to the genuineness of the work which he then professed to experience. He was always ready, on proper occasions, to "give a reason of the hope that was in him;" in giving an account of his first experience of religion, he mentioned no extraordinary external circumstances, no remarkable providences, in short, no human means or agency, as instrumental in bringing about the great revolution in his mind.

It was the "still, small," but irresistibly powerful "voice of the spirit," which addressed the known truths of God's word to

VOL. III.

his conscience and heart, and made him feel, as a sinner in his circumstances ought to feel, both towards his Maker and himself.

In giving a detailed account of his conversion, he was wont to dwell mostly on the new views which he had of the transcendent excellence and purity of the divine character and law, of the infinite evil of sin, of the manifold abominations of his own heart, and the aggravated transgressions of his life-views which stript him of the covering of his own righteousness, stopped his mouth with conscious guilt, and silenced every sin extenuating, self-justifying plea Views, in short, which placed God on the throne, and brought him, with shame and confusion, to take his place at the footstool.

When brought to this state of mind, he said that the opposition of his heart to the divine character, and to the demands and sanctions of the divine law, in a great measure ceased; and that he felt reconciled to the divine government, and willing that God should sway the sceptre of the universe, and dispose of him, and al! his, creatures, just as his infinite wisdom and goodness had predetermined to do. This view of the divine law and government prepared his mind to behold a new and transcendent beauty and glory in Christ, and the mediatorial scheme of redemption and salvation, which had till then wholly escaped his notice and attention.

However characteristic such views may be of a real change of heart, Mr. Fuller was at the time, far from drawing the happy conclusion, that he was born again.

Some space of time intervened between his first experiencing this deep humiliation of soul and submission to the justice of God, and his receiving the full mani

festation and evidence of the special love of God to him. The time came, however, when the mighty change was made sensible to himself, by the inward sealing, and witnessing of the Spirit, by the love of Christ shed abroad in his heart; and, perhaps, thro' the course of his christian pil. grimage and warfare, he enjoyed as much assurance and as much sensible communion with his blessed Head and Master as usually falls to the lot of christians of the first eminence in modern times.

The great alteration which converting grace made in him, was strikingly visible to all who were conversant with him, and at once arrested their attention. The mighty change was por trayed and visible in his countenance-in his language-in his whole deportment.

"Great is the change, his neighbours cry'd,
And own'd the power divine."

It was not long after this happy event, that he formed a matrimonial connexion with Miss Hannah Richards of Bristol, who still survives to lament the loss of a most faithful and affectionate friend and companion, her associate and guide in the paths of religion, and her sympathetic counsellor and pattern in sustaining those heavy domestic afflictions, with which it pleased God, in his wise and holy providence, to try them.

Mr. Fuller, on entering upon the duties and cares of domestic life, settled, as a farmer, on an island belonging to the town of Bristol, where he lived nearly 7 years. A few other families resided on the same island with him; and such was the influence of his example, his counsel and persuasions, that a religious society was soon formed amongst them, and social worship, on Lord's days, instituted and regularly and statedly maintained by these islanders, who by their situa

tion were secluded from attending upon public ordinances elsewhere. Their sabbatical exercises consisted of prayer, singing the praises of God, and reading his word, or some well selected sermons, or pious and practical treatises, in all which Mr. Fuller was wont to take the lead.

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Ever after his own experience of religion, he felt a deep interest in every thing which related to the welfare of Zion, and the honour and glory of Zion's King. Arrested, as he had lately been, in his career to ruin, "plucked as a brand from the burning," brought out of darkness into God's marvellous light,” and from being plunged in the horrible pit and the miry clay," mercifully delivered and made to rest on Christ, the rock of salvation; his soul overflowed with love and gratitude to his heavenly Father and dear Redeemer, and at the same time with the most inexpressibly tender and ardent love to the souls of his fellow sinners and concern for their salvation. Notwithstanding his own spiritual views and enjoyments might be interrupted, and, at intervals, suspended; yet, his travail of soul for poor, graceless sinners, that "Christ might be formed in them the hope of glory," and his earnest desire to be instrumental in some way or other, in bringing them to that serious consideration, and anxious inquiry what they should do to be saved, which might finally issue in their saving conversion, became habitual and abiding. He often felt that the narrow limits of a small island were too circumscribed for the exertions which he wished to make, as a private christian, to promote the salvation of his perishing fellow

creatures.

At first, however, and for several years after his conversion, he had no idea of attempting to