in heart and life; multiplying pardons while I have multiplied transgressions:  still he has been last with me, healing my backsliding; restoring my soul; leading me to the open fountain; giving faith to wash, and joy and peace in believing; not only so, but in this land of drought, this waste howling wilderness, this vale of tears, where ‘man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards,’ my cup with temporal comfort is full and running over; all his creatures minister to my comfort; and as days and nights roll on, his daily providence adds, and diminishes not.

“I had hardly hoped to see the faces of my children again; for he commanded, and raised the stormy winds and lifted up the waves of the sea; they mounted to heaven and sunk again to the deep; death with all its natural horrors surrounded them; the deep yawned to devour them; but God, their own God, was at hand, their anchor of hope, their ark of safety, their hiding-place till the calamity was past:  they cried to him, and he saved them out of their distresses; he made the storm a calm, and the waves thereof still, and brought them to the desired haven.  This trouble was not unto death, but for the glory of God and the exercising of your faith, for the manifestation of his power and goodness, and the enriching of your experience.

“O then let us praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men.  Let us exalt him in the congregation of his people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders.”

“OCTOBER 23, 1801.

“Surely, surely my heart feels grateful for the time, though this, like every other good motion, will, like the morning dew, soon pass away.

“My children not only preserved through the tempestuous storms that threatened death with circumstances shocking to nature, but my poor sick child preserved during a long and fatiguing journey; that journey made comfortable, yea, delightful, by the warm reception of many kind friends, dear to nature, and many doubly endeared by grace:  among the last, the mother and sisters of the kindest and best of husbands; they receiving her as their own flesh and blood, as well as their fellow-member in Christ; blest with a measure of health to enjoy all, and a measure of grace to profit by all; eyeing by faith the dear invisible hand of a covenant God, preserving, leading, guiding through every step—­his love the marrow of the whole, and their charter for safety, even amidst the dangers of prosperity.

“Is not godliness gain? profitable for this life as well as that which is to come?  What is the portion of the worldling? even in this life ‘shadowy joy or solid woe,’ without a balance to the first, or consolation in the last; no sure footing in the one, nor support in the other; distanced from the fountain of happiness by nature, prosperity incrusts their hearts and increases their carnality; nestling in their worldly comforts, they forget they