that character be holy, and that state happy, truly, rationally happy. In fact, we desire and expect too little from a God who is reconciled to us, and reconciling us to him. We 'faint,' because we do not 'believe to see the goodness of the Lord, in the land of the living.' If we expected more, and acted up to such sublime expectations, 'what angels we should be!' While I write this, I feel reproved, and my conscience whispers, 'Physician, heal thyself.' I know the truth, and in my heart I desire to reduce it to experience and practice; but I am too much in the state described by Paul, in Romans vii. Like him, I am often compelled to cry, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Death it appears to be—a living spirit in a lifeless corpse—shut up in chilling destitution and darknesss—a man alive in his coffin, with six feet of clay and a heavy tomb pressing upon its lid: these are the images by which I sometimes express my unhappy and unprofitable states of mind. Not that it is always so. If it were, I must cease to hope and live. And not that I expect that it will always be so in the same degree as at present. 'Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory,' &c. . . . With sincere affection and esteem, I remain, my dear friend,
On the 1st October of this year, he received an invitation, pro forma, from the church at Howard-street, Sheffield, to become their pastor, at the close of his academical course. His acknowledgment of this communication might almost be regarded as a model of right feeling and conduct under cirumstances so truly important. Nothing could be further, in his estimation, from what belonged to the momentous engagements
