Of the justice of this testimony, which I had so often heard from a variety of persons, I myself began to be a witness about the time when the last mentioned letter was dated.  In this view, I believe I shall never forget that happy day, June 18, 1739, when I first met him at Leicester.  I remember I happened that day to preach a lecture from Psalm cxix, 158, “I beheld the transgressions, and was grieved because they kept not thy law.”  I was large in describing that mixture of indignation and grief (strongly expressed by the original words there) with which a good man looks on the daring transgressors of the divine law; and in tracing the causes of that grief, as arising from a regard to the divine honour, and the interest of a Redeemer, and a compassionate concern for the misery which such offenders bring on themselves, and for the mischief they do to the world about them, I little thought, how exactly I was drawing Colonel Gardiner’s character under each of those heads; and I have often reflected upon it as a happy providence which opened a much speedier way than I could have expected to the breast of one of the most amiable and useful friends whom I ever expect to find upon earth.  We afterwards sang a hymn which brought over again some of the leading thoughts in the sermon and struck him so strongly, that on obtaining a copy of it, he committed it to memory, and used to repeat it, with so forcible an accent as showed how much every line expressed his very soul.  In this view the reader will pardon my inserting it, especially as I know not when I may get time to publish a volume of these serious though artless compositions, which I sent him in manuscript some years ago, and to which I have since made very large additions: 

  Arise, my tenderest thoughts arise,
  To torrents melt my streaming eyes! 
  And thou, my heart, with anguish feel
  Those evils which thou canst not heal!

  See human nature sunk in shame! 
  See scandal poured on Jesus’ name! 
  The Father wounded through the Son! 
  The world abused—­the soul undone!

  See the short course of vain delight
  Closing in everlasting night! 
  In flames that no abatement know,
  The briny tears for ever flow.

  My God, I feel the mournful scene;
  My bowels yearn o’er dying men: 
  And fain my pity would reclaim,
  And snatch the firebrands from the flame.

  But feeble my compassion proves,
  And can but weep where most it loves;
  Thine own all-saving arm employ,
  And turn these drops of grief to joy!