The winter sets in with great severity.  The rigour of the season, and the advanced price of grain, are very threatening to the poor.  It is well with those that can feed upon a promise, and wrap themselves up warm in the robe of salvation.  A good fireside and a well-spread table are but very indifferent substitutes for those better accommodations; so very indifferent, that I would gladly exchange them both for the rags and the unsatisfied hunger of the poorest creature that looks forward with hope to a better world, and weeps tears of joy in the midst of penury and distress.

What a world is this!  How mysteriously governed, and in appearance left to itself!  One man, having squandered thousands at a gaming-table, finds it convenient to travel; gives his estate to somebody to manage for him; amuses himself a few years in France and Italy; returns, perhaps, wiser than he went, having acquired knowledge which, but for his follies, he would never have acquired; again makes a splendid figure at home, shines in the senate, governs his country as its minister, is admired for his abilities, and, if successful, adored at least by a party.  When he dies, he is praised as a demi-god, and his monument records everything but his vices.

The exact contrary of such a picture is to be found in many cottages at Olney.  I have no need to describe them; you know the characters I mean.  They love God, they trust Him, they pray to Him in secret, and, though He means to reward them openly, the day of recompense is delayed.  In the meantime, they suffer everything that infirmity and poverty can inflict upon them.  Who would suspect, that has not a spiritual eye to discern it, that the fine gentleman was one whom his Maker had in abhorrence, and the wretch last mentioned dear to Him as the apple of His eye?

It is no wonder that the world, who are not in the secret, find themselves obliged, some of them, to doubt a Providence, and others absolutely to deny it, when almost all the real virtue there is in it is to be found living and dying in a state of neglected obscurity, and all the vices of others cannot exclude them from worship and honour.  But behind the curtain the matter is explained, very little, however, to the satisfaction of the great.

To the Rev. John Newton

Olney, January 26, 1783.  It is reported among persons of the best intelligence at Olney—­the barber, the schoolmaster, and the drummer of a corps quartered at this place—­that the belligerent powers are at last reconciled, the articles of the treaty adjusted, and that peace is at the door.

The powers of Europe have clashed with each other to a fine purpose.  Your opinions and mine, I mean our political ones, are not exactly of a piece, yet I cannot think otherwise on this subject than I have always done.  England, more perhaps through the fault of her generals than her councils, has in some instances acted with a spirit of cruel animosity she was never chargeable with till now.  But this is the worst that can be said.