not exactly thus she would have communicated them to a person for whom she meant to express her high complacency and respect. She would have infused a certain engaging spirit through all that would have charmed away the possibility of offence, and made an intrusion ever dear to memory.

Well, madam, but do accept the intentions of this strange letter, from a person who wonders that a sympathetic interest in excellence, though unseen, should be strange.*

XXIX. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES.

Chichester, April 29, 1799.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-Some days spent from home have combined with other circumstances to delay what ought to have been an immediate answer to your last. My acknowledgments are due for the service rendered me in waiting on Mr. Wathen, and transmitting his advice. It will be followed,-not indeed without a strong suspicion that there is some disorder in the globe of the eye, to which this treatment alone will not reach. I now see, or fancy, a slight amendment in the lids. For the greater part of the time since I wrote, the eyes altogether have been in a state somewhat more favorable in respect of feeling, than I then described. That any progress has been made towards removing the principal cause of disorder, whatever it may be, I can scarcely allow myself to hope. My wishes join with yours, that this and every other painful visitation may have a purifying effect.

Lately I have felt a degree of gratitude which I had before scarcely believed possible, for the discipline of suffering, while a merciful hand applies it to correct the mind.

I proceed to the substance of your letter. I shall not conceal that the first impression was much of the painful kind. I said to myself, walking pensively in a field, "Here, while I speak of the miseries of human guilt and impotence, assert the inanity of human merits, and the presumptuous impiety of reposing in any degree on self-while I refer everything to divine grace, assert the infinite value of the Saviour, say that he is all in all,' exhibit him as the blessed and only hope of the world-I encounter a cold and discordant sympathy among the principal persons of the connexion. I am called Calvinistic, Methodistic, and cast out of the synagogue. I address myself to minds of happier light, whose intelligence I admire, whose piety I love, and they see nothing in the emotions which have prompted my sighs, my prayers, my ardent hopes, more than the illusions of imagination, but thinly and partially concealing an 'enmity against God,' which still lies black and immove

"The consumptive complaint of which this young lady died, at the age of twenty-one, has in two or three years carried off her mother and six sisters."-Note by Mr. Foster.

able at the foundation of all! 'Tis thus I am for ever repelled from every point of religious confraternity, and doomed, still doomed, a melancholy monad, a weeping solitaire. Oh world! how from thy every quarter blows a gale, wintry, cold, and bleak, to the heart that would expand!"

These were the feelings of the instant; but I soon recovered calmness enough to recognize the faithful friend in the sharp inquisitor, and to thank him both for his benevolence and for the mode of evincing it. Had he discovered less penetration or less faithfulness, I should have respected him less. I am constrained to feel you are worthy to be my Preceptor still; and, while I hope to extract some good from every one, I trust to receive it in copious communications from you.

Perhaps it may be salutary for myself to entertain some of the same apprehensions which you have expressed, and certainly a severe investigation of the state of my mind discloses so much that is unworthy, or equivocal, as to warrant suspicion to extend still further than I see.

I know it too well, that for a long course of time, during which I have felt an awful regard for religion, my mind has not been under the full, immediate impression of its most interesting character, the most gracious of its influences, its evangelic beams. I have not with “ open face beheld the transforming glory of the Lord." I have, as it were, worshipped in the outer courts of the temple, and not habitually dwelt in that sacred recess where the God of love reveals all himself, in Jesus Christ. And is it difficult to conceive, that in aspiring and advancing towards a better state, I may be accompanied for a while by some measure of the defects and the shades contracted in that gloomy sojourn, which I must for ever deplore?

It is much to affirm, and I think I may with great confidence affirm, that all my cherished, warmest desires and intentions are consonant to the pure evangelic standard. May I not allege it as some proof of this, that I at present wish to commit myself to the full extent of the apostolic profession; nay, more, that I do habitually commit myself here, at the expense of the feelings which regard the coincidence or opposition of those I am connected with?

You doubt whether my heart has really given the fulness of its affection to the Saviour. As far as my heart itself feels this doubt, it is filled with trembling; it assuredly can never rest till no doubt on the subject remains.

But which of the principles of that devotion are wanting? Certainly none of the solemn reasons of it are wanting, and none, I think, unfelt. Whatever is appalling in the aspect of the king of terrors, whatever is affecting in the welfare and prospects of a soul guilty, immortal, and my own; all that is interesting in the pursuit of happiness, that is commanding in the opening visions of Eternity, or awful in the contemplation of God the Judge,-all these concur with the infinite worthiness of that

Saviour, to constrain me into the sacred union, and to seal it. Can a more urgent and immense interest, can stronger bonds, make him the Lord of my heart or of yours? Are these not precisely the reasons why he should be dear? Yes, he stands forward to my view in a most momentous connexion with all these; and in whatever degree these mighty objects are affecting to me, in that degree he is become estimable and beloved.

But you fear I do not fully meet the most important office and character of the Saviour, that of a deliverer from the miseries of sin; that I do not receive Jesus in the deep abasement of conscious guilt. Perhaps you imagine me approaching him in the spirit of one who should say, “I have sat in judgment on thy claims, and I find that thou art worthy that I should be thy friend; I choose, therefore, to wear the honors of thy cause, and rank among thy dignified followers." Indeed you are mistaken. It is at the audit of conscience, while guilt weighs heavy on my heart, that I learn the true and unspeakable value of a Redeemer. But I have ever felt this internal world of iniquity, and the endless griefs that accompany it, a mournful theme. Surely I might have been excused, though I did not disclose in detail all the sentiments that excruciate or melt a soul, contemplating and lamenting its deep depravity and aggravated guilt. I might have been forgiven a reluctance to expatiate on the subject as personal to myself, before any being but Him only who can pardon. Is it not enough that I am awfully sensible how presumptuous and hopeless this advance to Him would be, without a frequent reference to the work of Jesus Christ?

Why would my friend attribute the confidence with which I have expressed my intentions and expectations to a vain self-sufficiency, when it could be assigned to a much more generous cause, the force of resistless conviction? It is impossible to feel what I sometimes feel, and not indulge at the time (inconsiderately, it may be) a persuasion, that the effect of such emotions must be eternal. 66 My heart presumes it cannot lose, The relish all my days." I scarcely ever read the New Testament without feeling all that I now describe; and I love to cherish this ardor. Indeed this enthusiasm often subsides into the recollection of past ardors, convictions, confidence, hopes, and their fate! I then wonder I can ever indulge confidence again. But again it swells and rises —and should it not rise?—at the view of that gracious economy of divine influences and strength from heaven which Jesus has proclaimed and still administers. I am verily persuaded that no man embraces this part of the Gospel with a firmer belief or a warmer joy than I do. I solemnly aver that all my habitual confidence, as to what I shall become or accomplish, rests exclusively here. The alternative is such a hope, or flat despair.

"Mortifications, censures, injustice, failures, await the Christian zealot." Yes, it is impossible I can have observed the world so long, and not be apprised of it all. I perceive the thorns and briars tangled

across his path, and-to fill up the picture-the spiders that harbor among them the causes of disgust added to the causes of pain. The most sanguine fires of zeal and benevolence should not, and cannot long delude his judgment out of the certain, sad, and permanent estir ate of mankind. Human society, compounded as it is with ignorance, prejudice, and conceit, furnishes ungracious materials to work upon. It is but to a comparative few that the Christian missionary can hope to be useful. Melancthon soon had cause to "smile in bitterness" at his fond youthful expectations of convincing and reforming all mankind. There are many whom, as Dr. Young says, "you cannot love but for the Almighty's sake." Oh, what a humiliation of all that was aspiring, what a blast of all that was tender, have I sometimes experienced on making the transition from the exaltation of prayer, and the fervors of charity in the closet, to the praxis-in the actual sight and intercourse of mankind. A reflecting man's expectations will indeed be moderate, and it will be difficult for him to combine with his zeal and efforts that enthusiasm which is forbidden to mingle its fire with his hopes, But what then? What happy energy has sustained and impelled Watts and Doddridge? What energy does fire Pearce, Hinton, or yourself? And cannot I be kept constant to the righteous cause by the voice of the Eternal? Cannot I feel the solemn claims of a duty that leaves me no choice? Cannot I consider Him who endured the contradiction of sinners against himself? Cannot I have respect to the recompense of reward? As to "disappointment in the expectation of applause," as to "the sacrifice of philosophic fame," if you will believe me, I hold these considerations very light. I have lately thought on this subject intensely, and not in vain. Philosophy itself unites with religion to pour an utter contempt on the passion for fame. I have been laboring a good while to fix my mind firmly on this principle-namely, to persist in what I judge the most excellent, resolutely, zealously, and unalterably, and only for unalterable reasons, and then regard neither praise nor censure, admiration nor contempt, caresses nor abuse, any otherwise than as they may affect my power of doing good.

There is great force in your remarks on the deceptions of imagination. A strong imagination, expanding and sweeping over ages and worlds in quest of grandeur, will exult in the sight of whatever is great in any department of contemplation, as well the evangelic as any other. It will hail it as an object of taste. It will revel in a sublime romance of religion. It will admire the character of Jesus, and some of the Christian truths and prospects, as magnificent objects, analogous to the heavenly bodies, and stupendous phenomena in the physical universe. These feelings may exist where they do not evince, nor form any part of the influences of, a divine spirit pervading the soul and making it evangelic and heavenly. This is what you mean; I believe it is too true. But what then is the criterion to ascertain the nature of these fervors in any given case? The proof will be found in the consistency or incor

sistency of these feelings with the other movements of the mind, and in their consequences. Let Rousseau be the instance. In his eloquent praise of Christianity, taken by itself, you will hardly detect a proof that it is not dictated by a piety sublime as his genius. Ask then, Does Rousseau zealously endeavor to establish all the proofs of Christianity? Does Rousseau reverently submit his genius and his philosophic speculations to its authority? Does Rousseau receive with equal pleasure the abasing, as the elevating, truths of Christianity? Does he, as a guilty being, rejoice in Christ chiefly as a Saviour? Can he despise philosophic fame for the sake of Christ? Does he zealously proclaim him to his brethren? Is he sensible of the excellence of the Christian consolations? Does he pray fervently? Does he deny himself and take up his cross? Are his morals reformed? These would prove him a Christian, and his eloquence would be that of an apostle. "Tis matter of never-ending regret that Rousseau's character will not bear such a process of trial. I am not claiming any kindred to his sublime genius while I bring myself to the touchstone, and say, "A glow of imagination;"-but certainly that is not all. The gospel is to me, not a matter of complacent speculation only, but of momentous use, of urgent necessity. I come to Jesus Christ because I need pardon, and purification, and strength. I feel more abased, as he appears more divine. In the dust I listen to his instructions and commands. I pray fervently in his name, and above all things for a happy union with him. I do, and will proclaim him. For his sake I am willing to go through evil report and good report. I wish to live and die in his service.

Is not this some resemblance of "the simplicity of the fishermen," on which you insist with emphasis? This spirit, my dear friend, is in a certain degree,—to be, I trust, divinely augmented,-assuredly mine. The Galilean faith has gained the ascendant, and I anticipate, though with humility and intervals of fear, everything happy from its influence. The tide of my mind is really turned, and though it has not yet mounted the desired height, I trust I cannot be mistaken as to its direction.

The hint in your letter respecting scripture diction, was, I remember, in your conversation, a direct accusation of my being philosophically reluctant or ashamed to employ it. No charge was ever more unjust. I acknowledge the defect, but the reason of it is a memory which I can never trust to attempt verbal citations from any book, unless either I have time for recollection, or have the passage written before me; nay, the reason is anything rather than the one you have surmised. Thus far I have written, and with more prolixity than I intended; somewhat in character of client to my pen. But after all, my capital concern is, not to defend what I am, but to be what I ought to be. If some of the evils you have suggested do still adhere to me, my most ardent prayer is for their removal. Will not yours be added? Meanwhile both my feelings and a strong conviction of duty impel me towards action. The reflection on the inutility to which I have been doomed so