These letters, which to so familiar a friend evidently lay open the heart, and show the ideas and affections which were lodged deepest there, are sometimes taken up with an account of sermons he had attended, and the impression they had made upon his mind.  I shall mention only one, as a specimen of many more, which was dated from a place called Cohorn, April 15: 

“We had here a minister from Wales, who gave us two excellent discourses on the love of Christ to us, as an argument to engage our love to him.  And indeed, next to the greatness of his love to us, methinks there is nothing so astonishing as the coldness of our love to him.  Oh that he would shed abroad his love upon our hearts by his Holy Spirit, that ours might be kindled into a flame!  May God enable you to trust in Him, and then you will be kept in perfect peace!”

We have met with many traces of that habitual gratitude to the blessed God, as his Heavenly Father and constant friend, which made his life probably one of the happiest that ever was spent on earth.  I cannot omit one more, which appears to me the more worthy of notice, as being a short turn in as hasty a letter as any I remember to have seen of his, which he wrote from Leicester in June, 1739.  “I am now under the deepest sense of the many favours the Almighty has bestowed upon me.  Surely you will help me to celebrate the praises of our gracious God and kind benefactor.”  This exuberance of grateful affection, which, while it was almost every hour pouring itself forth before God in the most genuine and emphatical language, felt itself still as it were straitened for want of a sufficient vent, and therefore called on others to help him with their concurrent praises, appears to me the most glorious and happy state in which a human soul can find itself on this side heaven.

Such was the temper which this excellent man appears to have carried along with him through such a variety of places and circumstances; and the whole of his deportment was suitable to these impressions.  Strangers were agreeably struck with his first appearance, there being much of the Christian, the well-bred man, and the universal friend in it; and as they came more intimately to know him, they discovered more and more the uniformity and consistency of his whole temper and behaviour; so that whether he made only a visit for a few days to any place, or continued there for many weeks or months, he was always beloved and esteemed, and spoken of with that honourable testimony, from persons of the most different denominations and parties, which nothing but true sterling worth, (if I may be allowed the expression,) and that in an eminent degree, can secure.

CHAPTER IX.

INTIMACY WITH THE AUTHOR.