uncleanness, despair would be our portion. How sweetly are justice and mercy combined! When feeling that conflict within, that we cannot do the things that we would; when deploring that want of simplicity in intention, that languor, that backwardness, in every labour which love should animate; when most feeling that weakness in spiritual things, which seems to blight the fondest hopes; the voice of the Husband, the Shepherd, the Physician, rouses the drooping heart, and says, Fear not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength shall be perfected in thy weakness.'+ 'Then will I tell to sinners round, And say, That it was no slight or passing conviction that was wrought in my beloved sister, in reference to her state as a sinner before an *Isaiah xli. 10. + 2 Cor. xii. 9. infinitely holy and heart-searching God, might easily be shown, not only from the general tenor of her life and conversation, but from the universal strain of her writings. Truly may it be said, that her spirit testified with the Spirit of God, that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."* The "stout-hearted"+ and unawakened men of this world may stamp with terms of contempt and reprobation those who are ready to cast themselves, as undone and "miserable sinners," simply and solely upon the full and free mercy of God in Christ Jesus. But, independently of the scriptural assurance that the leading work of the Holy Spirit is to convince of sin,‡ we have the concurrent testimony of even the most holy of God's servants in all ages, that, in themselves, and of themselves, they are nothing, and can do nothing. Such was the genuine and abiding ex * Jer. xvii. 9. + Isa. xlvi. 12. ↑ John xvi. 8. perience of her now under our notice. "How awfully dangerous," she writes, 66 are faint conceptions of our natural depravity! Fatally insensible to our lost estate, we neglect to flee from the wrath to come; secure and thoughtless, we are on the brink of everlasting death and destruction, and find not, (but by the grace and teaching of God,) our need of a spiritual Physician. Too loudly does my own heart proclaim to me that there is no righteousness in me; that nature would suggest the saddest motives for action; that nature would worship all but God himself. Gracious Lord, thou knowest (and, blessed be thy name, I now know) that I was neither willing nor able to turn unto thee; that I was not only frail and infirm, but lost and helpless; that my religion was but a selfsatisfying cloak, which self-love was ever ready to patch up. Having nothing, then, of which I may boast, I can only cry for mercy, for that mercy which came to seek and save the lost." Strangers indeed are they to the religion of the Gospel of Christ, who charge it with infusing melancholy into the heart, and overspreading the brow with gloom and sadness. True it is, that those who are seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, not unfrequently have their hearts and their countenances made sad, while they view the vain and thoughtless, if not the wicked and profligate career of those among whom they live. True it is, that while they have a cup of joy to drink, which the world knoweth not of, and a peace which passeth understanding, they have also their trials and afflictions, from within and from without, with which others, who seek their portion in this life, are unacquainted. Nevertheless, the followers of the meek, and suffering, yet now risen, Saviour, can say, even in their darkest seasons, "Thou hast put gladness into my heart more than in the time that their corn and wine increased."* * Ps. iv. 7. "Boast not, ye sons of earth, Our saddest hours we prize; For though our cup seems fill'd with gall, And while from their religion they derive their purest happiness,—their only sure and satisfying support and consolation,—they feel that, instead of its being the parent of gloom and dreariness, they should, indeed, without it, be heirs of sorrow, and children of despair. Alluding to some trying and afflicting circumstances, through which she had been called to pass, and on account of which, it seems that it had, in some measure, been charged upon her religion, that it made her sorrowful, the subject of these pages thus writes:- "Late events have been most painfully and distressingly interesting. They have weighed down spirits, whose elasticity would have spurned common burthens; they have clouded a heart which used to laugh for joy. But let not this sor b |