their adaptation to remove all these difficulties, and to obviate all these dangers, I answer, No. Well informed readers, and perhaps some who are not so, will observe defects which have not escaped my own eye; and possibly many which have not occurred to me in a hasty review. But although my expectations of complete success in this effort, are not sanguine, they are sufficient to warrant the trust that it has not entirely failed.

I am persuaded that there are few inquirers who will not find something to meet at least part of their difficulties; and if the details which are given are considered too numerous and too particular by others, they will be the last to complain of them. Or if the nature of this work seemed to require some little repetition, it will be a small objection to one whose mind is eagerly intent on learning all that relates to his spiritual condition; and who must see that the same perplexity or care sometimes arises from different causes.

Part of the subjects which are discussed in this volume, are not thoroughly canvassed. Nor is it necessary that they should be. Designed as the work was for a certain class only, it could hardly be expected that all in which the Christian is interested should be

examined. And yet I would humbly hope that even the child of God may find something in the pages before him of interest to his own soul.

As there are many who once belonged to the former of these classes, and who are now numbered with neither-who have returned. to the world after hours of anxiety for their salvation; to such the recalled feelings of former days, and the reviewed excuses of a melancholy apostasy, may not be without some practical benefit.

It may be that the examples given will be considered too numerous. But I have thought that they might be an advantageous medium through which some ideas would more distinctly appear. There is not one of them fictitious; and, excepting where marked by express quotation to the contrary, they have fallen under my personal observation. And it is of small importance that the language put into the mouths of such examples, was not exactly their own. This could not be recollected. But a faithful adherence to the substance and spirit of utterings by them, has been inviolably preserved.

I have availed myself of any advantage which I could obtain, as far as I knew, from

the works of other authors. And where it has appeared necessary to do so, I have named them. But they have been few. I have attempted to draw for materials rather on the word of God, and on life as I have seen it, than on the writings of others.

One more remark may appear necessary. The following letters are exactly what they purport to be written to a friend with a design to assist him in his inquiries for salvation. If it be thought that they may be of service to some under similar circumstances, I shall be gratified in the concurrence of the hopes of others with my own. If not, there is some consolation, under the failure, in the thought that they were written with a sincere desire to aid the cause of religion. They are sent into the world with few pretensions; but accompanied, as they were in the act of writing them, with prayer in their behalf, to the Great Head of the Church.

THE AUTHOR.

LETTERS

TO AN

ANXIOUS INQUIRER.

LETTER I.

Feelings of privacy commonly accompanying serious impressions-The critical state of an awakened sinner-An instance of abandoned convictions-Advice.

MY DEAR SIR-How shall we account for that secrecy of feeling which you have found it so difficult to infringe, and which is so common to the experience of awakened sinners? That delicacy which guards the threshold of religion, and restricts the conversation of intimate friends to its exterior and general matters? Shall we attribute it to a greater degree of refinement, or to a nicer sense of decorum? But it is as prevalent among the ruder, as among the more polished classes of society. Shall we ascribe it to an unwillingness to ob