to his threatenings.  We must believe that the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all that forget God; but he hath set no bounds to his own mercy; in that glorious plan of redemption, by which he substitutes his own Son in the stead of sinners, he has made provision for the chief of sinners, and can now be just and consistent while he justifies the ungodly who believe in Jesus.  Short was the time between the thief’s petition and the promise of salvation; nay, the petition was the earnest of it.  The same was the case with the jailer; I think, too, the publican had the earnest in his petition.  Now, instead of laboring to bring my mind to acquiesce in the condemnation of my child, on the supposition of its being for God’s glory, I try to be still, as he has commanded:  not to follow my child to the yet invisible world; but turning my eyes to that character which God has revealed of himself—­to the plan of redemption—­to the sovereignty of God in the execution of that plan—­to his names of grace, ’The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin,’ while he adds, ‘and that will by no means clear the guilty;’ I meet it with his own declaration, ’He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.’  I read also that ‘mercy rejoiceth against judgment,’ and many other like scriptures, which, although I dare not ground a belief of his salvation on them, afford one ray of hope after another, that God may have made him a monument of mercy to the glory of his grace.

“Thus God himself consoles his own praying people, while man ought to be very cautious, if not silent, where the Scriptures are silent, as it respects the final state of another, whose heart we cannot know, nor what God may have wrought in it.  God hath set bounds to our faith, which can nowhere find solid ground to fix upon but in his own written promise.  Yet, as I said above, he has set no bounds to his own mercy, and he has made provision for its boundless flow, as far as he shall please to extend it, through the atonement and merits of his own Son, ’who is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him,’ Now, my dear friend, you have my ideas of our situation; if they be correct, I pray that our compassionate Father may comfort you by them; if otherwise, may he pardon what is amiss, and lead you, my dear friend C——­, and myself, to such consolation as he himself will own as the work of his Spirit, and save us from the enemy and our own spirit.

“Since writing the foregoing, I feel afraid of what I have said; it is dangerous seeking comfort where the Scriptures are silent; yet while we plead with God to be preserved from error, and try to be still before him, he will save us from the subtlety of the serpent, as well as from the rage of the lion.  I am, with love,

“Your sympathizing friend,