you will feel pleasure, when I inform you again how much I have to praise the LORD for on my own account. You have heard of my safe delivery, which I esteem more now than ever an unspeakable mercy. My life seemed doubly precious to me on account of my other dear babes and this additional tie.

I remain your affectionate

M. C.

LETTER XI.

My dear, my words have flowed freely hitherto; but now I know not where to begin, or what to say to you, or whether I shall be able to say any thing, when I reflect on what has passed since I received your last kind and affectionate letter. What shall I then say? Shall I not justify the LORD in all his ways? Yes, I would, and I trust I

do. What he has done is in love, and I have found him an all-sufficient GOD, more emphatically lately than ever.

I will not make your heart ach with a repetition of my sorrows in the death of my sweet babe, or what I endured in the extreme illness of my dear first-born, which immediately succeeded the decease of his brother, and seemed to be exactly of the same nature. You will give but too good a guess at my feelings, without my endeavouring to paint them; but I will attempt to turn your thoughts with my own to the brighter side of the subject. The LORD has done wonders for us both. I admire the fresh display I have had of his goodness: he has supported me beyond any thing I could have imagined. My will was so immediately brought to acquiesce with the LORD's dispensation, that I am surprised and astonished when I reflect upon it. My dear

I hope continues to enjoy

the presence of her GOD, carrying her through the many intricate perplexities with which, I am concerned to hear, she is exercised. I would not, much as I love to hear from you, put you to the pain of writing; but if my dear will drop me a line saying when I may expect them, I shall be obliged, With kindest love to them and yourself, believe me truly

Your affectionate

M. C.

LETTER XII.

Margate, Dec. 4, 1799.

Though it is some time since I last wrote, I hope, my dear , you have never thought me unmindful of you; one great reason has been, that I would not lay any tax upon you with respect to the answering of my letters: and when I reflect on the pain that writing occasions you, I do beg you will

never flatter me so much as to think yourself in my debt, by the receipt of such an unmeaning scrawl as I am well aware mine too often proves. But this I know--what I say is in sincerity; it is the dictate of my heart, and never more so, than when I am expressing the real interest I feel in the welfare of you and yours.

Do me the credit to believe, that I recollect with sympathetick sorrow, that the day on which you are to receive this is the second anniversary of the death of that truly dear and justly esteemed friend, whom the LORD had, in his kind providence, seen fit to unite to you by the tenderest and closest ties of affection. In calling to mind that event, may you be enabled to raise your Ebenezer, and commemorate the mercy and kindness of that God, who has been known as peculiarly near at hand to support you under the heaviest stroke his rod has ever inflicted on you. He has done much. Oh, praise him

for the past! He will do more, and give you cause to bless him for all that is to come. What a blessed life is the life of faith! Oh, what a mercy to have an interest in covenantlove and favour, to know and believe that all we meet with here is the result of infinite wisdom and kindness! To how many adverse dispensations will this reconcile us! What can afford that sweet calm and composure of soul, which some have experienced under bereaving dispensations, but such a persuasion as this? How pleasant and profitable the recollection of such seasons, when our spirits have seemed broken at the foot of the cross, when we have been ready to say,

Only let this be the blessed instrument of the crucifixion of my rebellious lusts and corruptions, and hence let me not remove (supported by thine hand) till such a valuable end is accomplished.' Perhaps at such times we have, more emphatically than ever, viewed the sufferings of our Blessed SA