"A man

short pause, he continued as follows: who has committed theft, would be glad to believe, that there was no judge on earth; for then he could not be tried here; and a man, who has committed all sorts of crimes, would be glad to believe, that there is no God in heaven; for then he could not be tried hereafter, and to him the JUDGMENT never cometh. In

my hours of intoxication I was more than ever disposed to justify the doctrines of infidelity; and, when listening to lectures upon infidelity, I was the more ready to justify the practice of intoxication, and of all other crimes. I believe the leader, who lectures upon infidelity, to be an unprincipled villain, and that he preaches these doctrines, because they are so much more comforting to a hoary headed impenitent wretch, than the doctrines of the cross. May God of his infinite goodness forgive me my offences, and an abandoned and profligate old man for leading me to destruction."

“The whole of his physical and intellectual power appeared to be exhausted, by this last effort. He dropped his head on one side, and there followed a slight convulsion. I went

instantly to his bedside ;—his eyes were glazed; he was fast locked in the arms of death; the spirit of the penitent infidel had fled."

The foregoing example has been selected, not because the subject of it is one of singular occurrence, for, alas, it is not so; but because the story is told, and so well told, ready to our hand. It strikingly illustrates the process of probation. It shows the effect of a change of circumstances, and of new temptations, upon an unpractised mind. It exhibits the snare into which many an incautious youth has fallen, and the melancholy, awful end to which he has come.

NOTE E.

The inefficacy of mere suffering to soften. and subdue the heart is well illustrated in the experience of the excellent Dr. Vanderkemp, Missionary to South Africa, as recorded by himself. "To me," says he, "Christianity once appeared inconsistent with the dictates of reason-the Bible, a collection of incoherent opinions, tales, and prejudices. As to the person of Christ, I looked, at first, upon

him as a man of sense and learning, but who, by his opposition to the established ecclesiastical and political maxims of the Jews, became the object of their hate, and the victim of his own system. I often celebrated the memory of his death, by partaking of the Lord's Supper; but some time after, reflecting that he termed himself the Son of God, and pretended to do miracles, he lost all my former veneration!

I then prayed that God would prepare me, by punishing my sins, for virtue and happiness, and I thanked him for every misfortune; but the first observation I made was, that though I was oftentimes severely chastised, it did not make me, wiser or better. I therefore again prayed to God, that he would shew me, in every instance, the crime for which I was punished, that I might know and avoid it; but finding this vain, I feared that I should never, perhaps, be corrected in this life by punishment; still, I hoped I might be delivered from moral evil after death in some kind of purgatory, by a severer punishment. Yet reflecting that punishment had proved itself utterly ineffectual to produce even the lowest

degree of virtue in my soul, I was constrained. to acknowledge that my theory, though it seemed by a priori reasoning well grounded, was totally refuted by experience, and I concluded it was entirely out of the reach of my reason to discover the true road to virtue and happiness. I confessed this my impotence and blindness to God, and owned myself, as a blind man, who had lost his way, and waited in hope that some benevolent man would pass by, and lead him into the right way. Thus I waited upon God, that he would take me by the hand, and lead me in the way everlasting.

"I could not, however, entirely get rid of the idea of being corrected by means of punishment, and I still looked on the doctrines of Christ's deity and atonement, as useless and blasphemous, though I carefully kept this my opinion secret.

"Such was the state of my mind, when on the 27th June, 1791, sailing in a boat, with my wife and daughter, for amusement, suddenly a water-spout overtook us, and turning the boat in an instant upside down, we were sunk before we apprehended any danger. Both my dearest relations were drowned, and

I was carried down by the stream above a mile, and must soon have infallibly been lost also, as from the violence of the storm no person could attempt to approach the wreck, and it was supposed we must all have perished together but now the Lord stretched forth his hand to deliver me. A stronger vessel lying in the port of Dort, was by the storm rent from its moorings, and blown out of the port towards me, till the men on board thought they discovered a person floating on the side of the wreck, and rescued me from the jaws of death.

"I considered this terrible event as the severest punishment that could be inflicted on me; and saw the next day as clear as the light, that it had no more power to correct me than all the former providences, and hence concluded my state to be desperate, and that God abandoned me as incurable by correction."

NOTE F.

"It is well known," to use the words of another, "that many of the German Divines