£500 out of my business, they must still be very poor and miserable, while I could hardly spare so much without wronging my other children; this made my young man cool, but I have great reason to fear the disappointment has very much injured my daughter's health, and made her look upon me as her enemy; whereas, I am sure I should very much rejoice to see her settled in life with any one who I thought would be a good and kind husband, and who had a fair prospect of keeping her and her children from want.

I dont know Sir, whether you will not think me very tedious, but I hope this history of the troubles I have fallen into by a little imprudence may be a warning to others. Had I my time to come over again, I should always look out for a house or a lodging in a place where the gospel is preached in the establishment; and if I could not find such a place I would stick to my old custom of coming in every Saturday night and going to my own church at least once on the Sunday. Indeed when I reckon up the additional expence of seats at two or three places of worship; the being called upon for subscriptions for the ministers and charities belonging to those places, &c. I find that if I had hired a coach

every Sunday from my country house to town and back again, it would have cost me very little more than I have now paid; but if it had cost me £10 a year more, I am sure it would have been money well laid out, for I fear that my oversight has brought my family into a state which bodes nothing but trouble and vexation as long as I live; especially as I perceive my two younger children have learnt that they are to think for themselves, and have picked up some arguments against the church to which I belong, and which I find are taken from a book that the dissenting minister secretly put into

the hands of my wife the second summer she was in his congregation, and which was carefully concealed from me.

I hope Sir, I know that we ought to obey God rather than man; and if my wife or children could tell me of any one false doctrine preached by our minister, I should think it right to attend to them; nay, if I found they really profited by going to other places I should think less of it; but Sir, they and their favorite ministers all allow that our old pastor preaches the truth.-I find many holy walkers in his congregation, and his people are serious and loving Christians. Whereas I cannot but fear that my family are making religion consist in hearing sermons, rather than walking according to them; in disputing about doctrines, rather than practising duties; in singing hymns rather than in prayer, the study of God's word, and a meek and loving spirit and temper. Sure I am that neither my sons nor daughters are so diligent as they used to be, nor so dutiful to me or their mother; nay I think they behave worse to her, though she is of their sentiments, in general than to me; and I am clear that they are far more proud, more self-indulgent than they once were, and less willing to go out of their own way to do good than formerly; if therefore it is true that by their fruits ye shall know them, I cannot help fearing they are deceiving themselves. May God show them where they are wrong, and make them repent.

If, Sir, my case should make any person cautious how for the sake of ease and pleasure they allow themselves or families to go to places where they are in danger of contracting an itching ear, I shall hope that my trials and misfortunes have not been in vain. I am Sir,

yours at command,
JOHN FAIRLY.

THE following simple relation of facts is recorded with a view to magnify the riches of divine grace, and to encourage Christians to lose no opportunity that presents itself, of warning the sinner of his danger, and of directing him to that Saviour who died for sinners and whose blood cleanseth from all sin. Unpromising and hopeless as our attempts to benefit the souls of others may appear to the eye of sense, let us sow in hope, and water the seed sown with our prayers, and we shall not fail of reaping in due time.

LOUISA J-s-· .

In the month of February last I was informed by my servant, that a person had called on me to request the favour of a recommendation to the public dispensary. On my entering the kitchen, I saw a lovely young woman, gaily dressed, but affording every external mark of deep consumption. She did not appear to be above eighteen years of age. On making some inquiries into her state and circumstances, I found that she was a married woman, with two children. Her countenance bore testimony that the disease under which she laboured had made very serious ravages, and that it was too deeply rooted to admit any hope of a cure. I therefore, after promising her the aid she had solicited, proceeded to a subject far more important, namely, the probable and almost certain result of that disease which had brought her to my notice, This I did in plain, unequivocal terms. She immediately appeared affected, and wept at the prospect of death, confessing she was a sinner. I was myself much affected at this interview: I saw that Death was making rapid strides towards this interesting young woman, and was equally certain of the unpreparedness of her soul to meet this great enemy. However, I was encouraged to speak

to her, and to recommend that Saviour who had overcome death, and brought life and immortality to light by the gospel, and who was ready to receive the returning, repenting sinner. To this she listened with marked attention, and, after accepting a few tracts, left me. A strong interest for her eternal welfare was excited in my mind, and I endeavoured to promote this grand object by taking another opportunity of speaking to her, when a deep attention was visible, and I think she again shed tears. Soon after I left the neighbourhood, and the only help I could afford her during my absence was, the requesting some Christian friends to visit her, not expecting she would be alive after my return. This kind office they complied with; and some pious persons, with whom I was unacquainted, saw her also, and prayed with her. After an absence of two months I returned and found that this afflicted young woman was still a sojourner among us, and that she was about a mile distant from her house with her parents. I learned, however, that she had requested her husband to inform her of our arrival, as soon as it occurred; and that on being informed of it she had determined to leave her mother and to return to her own house. This circumstance encouraged me to hope that a desire of spiritual instruction had taken possession of her mind; because her removal to her own habitation was attended with the loss of much temporal comfort, and deprived her of the attentions of an affectionate mother. I saw her soon after her return: she was much altered; and I perceived that her days were hastening to a close. She was deeply affected at seeing me. I spoke to her again with plainness respecting her soul: the admonition met with a reception similar to that she had given to my former addresses on the same im

portant subject. Before I left her she requested permission to come and sit occasionally in our kitchen. This was cheerfully granted; and the next day she was led with difficulty to our house, where she remained until the evening. During the day a Christian friend visited us, and I took him into the adjoining room where I had laid her on the sofa, as she was unable to sit in a chair. He very affectionately spoke to her about her state, exhibiting to her the all-sufficiency of Christ as a Saviour. To this she listened with deep attention-wept much—and expressed her sense of her extreme sinfulness. This afforded me a hope that the Holy Spirit had begun a good work on her soul. Still I wished to hear something more indicative of repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The next day she was led again to our house, evidently weaker, and, after remaining a few hours in a state of great suffering, was conveyed to her own habitation, from which she was never again removed. Mr. H. and I visited her, and found her mind in a very pleasing state, earnestly listening to the Holy Scriptures, and apparently feeling what they expressed, in the beginning of the viiith chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. She was unable to talk much, but the few words she uttered were expressive of the deep sense she entertained of her state as a sinner. The following day we saw her again, when she addressed us in the following words; "I am very happy-my sins are pardoned-my Saviour has come to me and told me so!" Indeed her countenance bore testimony to the happy change that had taken place in her mind. I said, Then now you are not afraid to die. She answered, with an animating look which I shall never forget, “O no, I am not! I have had a great burden here," laying her hand on her heart,

"6 but it is

gone." This pleasing declaration confirmed our hopes that the Lord had been graciously pleased to give her a real conviction of sin, and vouchsafed to her the knowledge of salvation by its remission. I saw her again the same evening, when her mind was greatly agitated, and her bodily pains greatly increased. The dying hour, indeed, was now arrived.-She was sitting up in her bed in severe agonies, being unable to lie down. She seemed to have lost that comfortable assurance which, three or four hours before, she had so happily experienced, in a sense of pardoned sin. I reminded her of her late confession of faith in Christ, and endeavoured to convince her that His mercies endure for ever. To this she answered, with much feeling, which indeed always accompanied all she said, “I have had some glimpses of His mercy.” Her sufferings were too severe to admit of my saying more to her than to direct her again to the only foundation of a sinner's hope, when I left her for the night. Early the next morning I found her in increased agonies, suffering beyond what I had ever witnessed. She had had the restlessness of death all the preceding night, and was then too much affected by what she was passing through, to allow the exercise of much thought;

but I found she had, in the course of the night, called to her husband, and told him she was happy, and that her sins were pardoned. I saw her again in the afternoon, when Mr. H. read and prayed with her; and it was most satisfactory to hear her devout breathings added to his petitions on her behalf. Soon after we left her, she desired to be laid down on the bed, and without another struggle exchanged, I trust, a state of severe sufferings, for that of victory over sin, death, and hell, through the blood of that Lamb of God who came to seek and to save that which was lost. РНЕВЕ.

SIR.-Among the lamentable consequences of the loss of the divine image in the soul of man, the heart is not only become deceitful above all things, but it is desperately wicked, it is altogether evil by nature. And, alas! even in the regenerate, how much of the remains of the old Adam still cleave to us. Hence it is found, that when some right feelings have taken place within us, as connected with any particular species of guilt or misery, if we do not bend, and even force our attention very frequently to the consideration of those evils we yesterday saw and deplored, a state of apathy will gain on us before to-day has passed by; and every succeeding hour will diminish our sympathies, until those feelings that once were all alive and influential, become extinct, or lie dormant and cold as the seed on a flinty rock, or as the fields of ice around the northern pole. Convinced of this truth, and aware that the danger crossed my own path as well as that of others, I lately, when in London, made a point of going, with a zealous and active friend of sailors, to see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears, a part of that moral desolation which reigns about the neighbourhood of the banks of the river Thames. With this object in view we directed our course towards the water side and took a glance at some of those horrid streets and lanes, and courts and alleys in that part of the metropolis, where Satan reigns almost triumphant, and where our seamen are wrecked and destroyed in their property, their bodies, and their souls, by thousands and thousands every year. Years, Sir, have passed away, and many cheering and many afflictive providences have marked my lot, since I last witnessed the uncontrolled and awful reign of Satan SEPT. 1826.

over our unhappy seamen and their degraded and wretched associates at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Sheerness :-meanwhile the quietude and seclusion of an inland station, and the smooth and even tenor of a village pastor's way' and occupations had much effaced the remembrance and sensibilites from my mind, where once they had been deeply fixed and keenly felt. To regain these recollections, and to feel anew these sympathies, I passed several hours in reviewing the docks of London, the shipping on the Thames, and some of those resorts of sin and wretchedness which abound in Saint Catherine's, Wapping, Ratcliff Highway, &c. &c.— a painful, but a necessary, and I hope a profitable mode of passing half a day, previous to my again resuming my pen in the service of my old and perishing comrades.

Here, I passed through wretched streets, and into courts and corners that no Hogarth could have painted, which no pen can describe ; —all that plunder, poverty, and filth-all that riot and drunkenness and licentiousness-all that an entire absence of the fear of God and of the shame of man could effect, all pro claimed, as with a voice of thunder, This is Satan's undisturbed and favourite kingdom! And yet, when I took my glance at these parts of London, where our tens of thousands of seamen eat and drink, and sin and suffer, and perish, while scarcely a minister of Christ compassionates or attempts to save them, it was the quietest and most orderly time of the day. Had the excursion been in the evening, or in the night, the picture would have been tenfold more dismal. And be it remembered, that in the present state of things, seamen really have not any other places of residence when in London, but amidst these seats

our

2 X

where Satan reigns. The snare is laid before they arrive at their anchorage, and no sooner do they step on shore on their return to port, than publicans, crimps, Jews, and prostitutes, surround them with every 'bait that satanic cunning can devise, or the peculiar habits, wants, and vices of seamen make acceptable. From the landing place they are conducted into these wretched abodes, and are kept in a state of intoxication until they receive their pay; or, if they bring their hard earned wages on shore with them, until the harpies about them can agree as to the sharing of the plunder, and then they are robbed of their money and of their clothes. All this is frequently performed in eighteen hours after their landing, and then the thoughtless and intemperate sailor is shut out of doors.

On quitting these horrid abodes of iniquity, we proceeded to the docks, where all the grand and multifarious transactions of the first commercial city in the world were going on with that regularity and quiet-that sobriety and order which at once manifested that seamen are capable of being rendered as orderly as any class of the community. A view of these great commercial docks is calculated to convince every one of the mighty importance of our maritime tribes, as being under God, the very stamina of the nation's wealth, comfort, and safeguard. Nor could a friend of foreign missions, one would think, go round and survey the different ships taking in their cargoes, and advertising, by boards hung up in their rigging, accommodations for goods and passengers to all parts of the world, and any longer look on their crews with that unpardonable indifference and apathy which so many manifest. It seemed almost impossible to realize these facts as I went round the docks. Is it indeed possible, I said to myself, that all our great Missionary

Societies can from time to time send their officers and agents hither to ship packages to their missionary stations, and to find accommodations for missionaries going abroad, and yet never be struck with the interesting character of these seamen ?-never feel compassion for their ignorant and immoral state of mind-never tremble with fears and apprehensions of their proving a great hindrance to the success of their missionaries when they arrive at their various destinations? Do these officers of our different Missionary Societies hear and believe what their respective missionaries have stated in public and in private, as to the awful conduct of many of our seamen among the heathens, and of the melancholy counteraction they produce in the very heart of their missionary stations? Such reflections as these, Mr. Editor, did then, what they always do when they occupy my mind for a little while, they left me utterly at a loss to account for the conduct of these societies, and for that of many of our leading characters in the religious world, and especially those in London: where the evil is at the greatest advance, and where the remedy is so near at hand. Now, putting entirely out of the question what I have previously suggested, argued, or stated, as to our seamen's ignorance, immorality, and evil conduct abroad, these professed friends and labourers in foreign missions must of late have heard from the lips of their own missionaries, the immense evil resulting from our ungodly seamen's conduct abroad. Why then do they not unite with the friends of seamen in endeavouring to instruct and christianize these men? Do they not credit what their pious and respectable missionaries have again and again, publicly and privately declared? And if they do give ear to their lamentations, and credence to their reports, can they not do something towards lessening