84 Prayers and Meditations.
I purposed to have gone in the evening to Church but missed the hour.
Edwards observed how many we have outlived '. I hope, yet hope, that my future life shall be better than my past.
From the year 1752, the year in which my poor dear Tetty died, upon whose soul may God have had mercy for the sake of Jesus Christ, I have received the sacrament every year at Easter. My purpose is to receive it now. O Lord God, for the sake of Jesus Christ, make it effectual to my salvation. My purposes are
To study Divinity, particularly the Evidences of Christianity.
To read the New Testament over in the year with more use than hitherto of Commentators.
To be diligent in my undertakings.
To serve and trust God, and be cheerful 2 .
Almighty and most merciful Father, suffer me once more to commemorate the death of thy Son Jesus Christ, my Saviour and Redeemer, and make the memorial of his death profitable to my salvation, by strengthening my Faith in his merits, and quickening my obedience to his laws. Remove from me, O God, all inordinate desires, all corrupt passions, & all vain terrours ; and fill me with zeal for thy glory, and with confidence in thy mercy. Make me to love all men, and enable me to use thy gifts, whatever thou shalt bestow, to the benefit of my fellow creatures. So lighten the weight of years, and so mitigate the
you to him. If your company does but shook his head with impatience.'
not drive a man out of his house, Ib. p. 306.
nothing will."' Life, iii. 316. 2 Inservi Deo et laetare Serve
1 'EDWARDS. "Ah, Sir! we are God and be cheerful is the motto
old men now." JOHNSON (who round the picture of Hacket, Bishop
never liked to think of being old), of Lichfield and Coventry. Life, i.
" Don't let us discourage one an- 344, n. 4.
other." ' Ib. p. 302. ' Mr. Edwards, Perhaps Johnson was reminded
when going away, again recurred to of the duty of cheerfulness by Ed-
his consciousness of senility, and wards who had said : ' You are a
looking full in Johnson's face said philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have
to him, "You'll find in Dr. Young, tried too in my time to be a philo-
O my coevals ! remnants of your- sopher ; but, I don't know how,
selves." cheerfulness was always breaking in.'
Johnson did not relish this at all ; Ib. p. 305.
afflictions
�� �
