“On Monday a meeting for prayer was instituted in Hetty-street, and another in Mulberry-street, with which the Presbyterian ministers have agreed to meet in rotation.  It is the Lord.  We have heard of revivals all around, but feared lest the aggravated sins of New York might provoke the Lord to pass by, leaving our fleece dry, while the dew wet all around.  Great have been our privileges; the gospel trumpet has sounded in every corner of our city.  The Lord’s servants have set before us life and death, assuring us, from God’s word, that ’though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished;’ beseeching us to flee from the wrath to come, and lay hold on the hope set before us.  God in his providence has visited us with mercies and with judgments:  stricken us, and healed us; scattered us, and gathered us:  but alas, alas, we were ’eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.’  Many, very many, wasting their time, health, and substance, in all manner of immorality, and our rulers caring for none of these things; yea, many of them practising the same things; and Oh, God’s own saved people sitting still, restraining testimony before men and prayer before God.  What were we to expect but that God should say, Why should they be stricken any more? they will revolt more and more:  they are joined to idols; let them alone.  Such, O Lord, would be the case didst thou not deliver us out of our own self-destroying snares.  If thou turn us not, we shall never turn; it is in our nature to backslide for ever.

“But is not the time come to pass when before thy people call thou answerest, and while they are yet speaking, thou hearest?  Art thou not calling with power, ’Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings?’ and hast thou not prepared their hearts to answer, Behold, we come unto thee, for thou art the Lord our God? truly, in vain is salvation looked for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains; truly, from the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.  Hast thou not, O God, prepared the hearts of thy people to pray, and thine ear to hear?  Is not this Bible Society, and are not these associations for prayer, tokens from thee for good?  More and more, Lord, may thy people give thee no rest, until thou make Zion a praise in the earth.  O the Hope of Israel, and the Saviour thereof, be not as a wayfaring man, that turneth aside for a night.  May thy people constrain thee to abide with us for ever, to form us a people for thyself, to show forth thy praise.

“I have just conveyed dear Mrs. A——­le to the confines of the eternal world.  I trust the dear Redeemer received her spirit.  I have a good hope that she is now in possession of the mansion purchased and prepared for her by that dear Saviour whose name she professed, and I think, in an humble, steady, quiet way, faithfully followed.  She loved the word of God, the house of God, the people of God.  She spoke little, but said she had a good hope:  asked me to read the Bible different times, and also to pray; said the invitations of the gospel were sweet to her:  observed that the Lord had been very merciful to her in her affliction.