You will reflect, I am persuaded, with gratitude, on the great number of years your dear father was spared to you; you will remember the moral impossibility of his continuing to enjoy, at so advanced [an age,] many additional years of happiness on earth; and, what will afford you the truest consolation, you will follow him within the veil, and contemplate him resting from his labours, and sitting down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God. How infinitely indebted, my amiable friend, are we to that gospel which gives us everlasting consolation, and a good hope through grace! May He who alone has immediate access to the heart calm every agitation, and solace every disquietude of your breast! My excellent friend will not, I am persuaded, abandon herself to immoderate sorrow. I trust, at least, you will be extremely upon your guard against indulging that luxury of grief, as it has been termed, which, however congenial to the extreme sensibility of your temper, would disqualify you alike for happiness and duty. Your domestic station will, happily for you, afford that occupation and diversion to your thoughts which will have a powerful tendency to moderate the excesses of grief.

My dear Friend, Shelford, March 11, 1804. I deeply sympathize with you in the great loss you have sustained by the decease of your most excellent wife. It is a stroke which will be long felt by all her surviving friends; how much more by a person with whom she was so long and so happily united! There are many considerations, however, which must occur to your mind, in alleviation of your distress. The dear deceased had long been rendered incapable by the severity of her affliction of enjoying life; and a further extension of it would have been but a prolongation of wo. Much as her friends must regret her loss, to have been eagerly solicitous for her continuance here would have been a refined selfishness, rather than true friendship. She was spared for the kindest purposes; to exemplify the power of religion in producing a cheerful resignation to the will of God, through a long series of suffering, to a degree which I never saw equalled in any other instance. There was the faith and patience of the saints. Her graces were most severely tried, and surely never did any shine brighter. The most active and zealous services in religion could not have yielded more glory to God than the dignified

composure, the unruffled tranquillity, and the unaltered sweetness she maintained amid her trials. O, my dear friend, let the image of her virtues be ever impressed on your heart, and ever improved as an incentive to that close walk with God which laid the foundation of all her excellence. To have had an opportunity of contemplating the influence of genuine religion so intimately, and under so interesting a form, is a privilege which falls to the lot of few, and is surely one of the most inestimable advantages we can possess. That she was spared to you so long-that her patience continued unexhausted amid so severe a pressure and, above all, that you have so well-grounded an assurance of her happiness, must fill you with a grateful sense of the Divine goodness. This state is designed to be a mingled scene, in which joy and sorrow, serenity and storms, take their turns. A perpetuity of either would be unsuitable to us. An uninterrupted series of prosperity would fill us with worldly passions. An unbroken continuity of adversity would unfit us for exertion. The spirit would fail before him, and the souls which he hath made. Pain and pleasure, scenes of satisfaction and sorrow, are admirably attempered with each other; so as to give us constant room for thankfulness, and yet to remind us that this is not our rest. Our dear and invaluable friend has entered into the world of perfect spirits, to which she made so near an approach during her continuance here. To a mind so refined, and exercised in the school of affliction, so resigned to the Divine will, and so replete with devotion and benevolence, how easy and delightful was the transition! To her to live was Christ, and to die was gain. Let us improve this dispensation of Providence by imitating her example; let us cherish her memory with reverential tenderness; and consider it as an additional call to all we have received before to seek the things that are above. I confess the thought of so dear a friend having left this world makes an abatement of its value in my estimation, as I doubt not it will still more in yours. The thought of my journey to London gives me little or no pleasure: for I shall hear the accents of that voice which so naturally expressed the animation of benevolence—I shall behold that countenance which displayed so many amiable sentiments-no more. can we wish her back? Can we wish to recall her from that blissful society which she has joined, and where she is singing a new song? No, my dear friend!—you will not be so selfish. You will, I trust, aspire with greater ardour than ever after the heavenly world, and be daily imploring fresh supplies of that grace which will fit you for an everlasting union with our deceased friend. I hope her amiable nieces will profit by this expressive event. And as they have (blessed be God for it!) begun to seek after Sion with their faces thitherward, that they will walk forward with additional firmness and alacrity. I shall make little or no stay in London on my first journey; but, as I long to see you, will spend the 11th instant (that is, the evening preceding my engagement to preach) at your house, if agreeable. I shall be glad to see Mr. Dore, but pray do not ask strangers.

I am your sympathizing friend,

ROBERT HALL.

But

XII.

TO DR. GREGORY.

ORIGIN AND OBJECT OF THE ECLECTIC REVIEW.

My dear Friend,

Foulmire (near Cambridge), Oct. 30, 1804.

Mr.

You have probably heard of the project of a new Review, called the Eclectic Review, which is intended to counteract the irreligious bias which seems to attach to almost all literary journals. Whether a sufficient number of persons of real talents can be procured to give it permanent credit and support, appears to me very doubtful. Greathead has written to request my assistance, and I intend occasionally to write in it. I have at the same time taken the liberty to mention Mr. Gregory, as a person admirably adapted to conduct the mathematical and astronomical department, if he can be persuaded. Mr. Greathead has accordingly requested me to write to you on this subject, and to assure you that your assistance will be most welcome, and the terms your own. I really think a review of the kind proposed would be a public benefit: as the cause of piety and moderate orthodoxy stands no chance at present. Will you permit me to inform Mr. Greathead, to whom it is left to treat with writers, that you are willing to contribute to it in the line of mathematics and natural philosophy?

XIII.

TO WILLIAM HOLLICK, ESQ. OF WHITTLESFORD, NEAR

CAMBRIDGE.

ON HIS OWN RECOVERY FROM A SEVERE MALADY.

My dear Friend, Leicester, Feb. 26, 1805. I thought it would be some satisfaction to you to hear that I continue, through the blessing of God, perfectly well. My health, through Divine mercy, was never better; nor can I be sufficiently thankful to that good Providence which has recovered me from the gates of death. Motives for gratitude crowd in upon me on every side; and the most I have to complain of is, that my heart is so little alive to their impression.

When, my dear sir, we look back upon past life, what a series of evidences present themselves of a presiding and parental care! With what propriety may we adopt the language of David: "Bless the

Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name; whơ forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and with tender mercies!" I am more and more convinced that nothing deserves to be called life that is not devoted to the service of God; and that piety is the only true wisdom. But, alas! how difficult it is to get these lessons deeply impressed on the heart, and wrought into the whole habit of the mind! I have not yet been at Arnsby, but shall go there in a day or two, and propose to spend about ten days there; and shall probably visit Cambridge in little more than a fortnight. My spirits are rather low; but my mind is composed, and in some measure resigned to the leading and conduct of Divine Providence. The narrow bounds of my experience have furnished me with such a conviction of the vanity of this world, and the illusion of its prospects, that I indulge no eager hopes. If God enables me to do some little good, and preserves me from great calamities, it will be enough, and infinitely more than I deserve; for I have been, in the most emphatic sense of the word, "an unprofitable servant."

*

My dear Friend, Foulmire, Sept. 4, 1805. Let me beg you will not impute my long silence to a diminution of esteem or affection. It arose simply from my being conscious of my utter inability to make any such reply to your letter as should be in the least degree satisfactory. The subject on which you have touched in your last is so unspeakably intricate, that the more I have reflected upon it, the more I have seemed to feel myself lost and perplexed. Of all the problems proposed to the human understanding, the inquiry respecting the certainty of the objects of human knowledge seems the most difficult of solution. If the ideal theory of Locke be true, and there be no resemblance between the impressions made on the senses and the inherent qualities of external objects, we cannot be said to have any absolute knowledge of things without us. In things of an abstract nature, such as the relations of quantity, the consciousness of a distinct agreement and disagreement of our ideas lays a sufficient basis of science, though the objects themselves to which the science is referred be supposed to have no existence. It matters not whether there be a circle in the world, in regard to the certainty with which we accede to the propositions which explain its properties. It is

entirely an affair of the mind-an arrangement of its internal conceptions. When we transfer our ideas to religion, they appear to attain as much certainty at least as satisfies us in the common affairs of life. We must at once abandon all reasoning, or admit the proofs of design in the works of nature; and design necessarily implies a designing agent. Thus the being of a God appears to rest on the firmest basis, though it may be impossible to determine, from the light of reason, what that being is. When we advance to revelation, the evidence of testimony is as clearly applicable to the supernatural facts of Scripture as to any other species of facts whatsoever; and we seem capable of knowing as much of God in his works and ways as of any other subject. I concur with you entirely, that the phenomena of religion are perfectly on a level in this respect with any other phenomena; and cannot but think that there is a very exact analogy subsisting between grace and force, together with other principles, whose existence we are obliged to admit, though we know nothing of them but in their effects. We can never penetrate beyond effects; we can never contemplate causes in themselves, at least in our present dark and benighted condition: so that the skeptical tendency of metaphysical science ought to come in aid of our religious belief, by showing that religion labours under no other difficulties than those which envelop all the fundamental principles of knowledge. The profoundest metaphysician will, in my opinion (cæteris paribus), be always the humblest Christian. Superficial minds will be apt to start at the obscurities of religion, and to conceive that every thing is plain which relates to the objects of science and the affairs of common life. But the profound thinker will perceive the fallacy of this; and when he observes the utter impossibility of tracing the real relations of impressions and phenomena to the objects out of ourselves, together with the necessity of believing a First Cause, he will be ready to conclude that the Deity is, in a manner, the only reality, and the truths relating to him the most certain, as well as the most important. Common minds mistake the deep impression of the phenomena of worldly affairs for clearness of evidence with respect to the objects themselves; than which nothing can be more distinct.

You perceive I can do nothing more, on this subject, than echo back your own sentiments, which are such as I have long maintained.

I wish it were in my power to throw some additional light on these intricate points, but I am utterly unable to do it. How far you can' introduce any speculations of this sort into your philosophical works, with advantage, you are most competent to determine. It may, probably, have the good effect of admonishing sciolists that the pursuits of science, when conducted with a proper spirit, are not inimical to religious belief.

My health is, through unspeakable mercy, perfectly restored, excepting a good deal of the pain in my back. It will give me much pleasure to see you at Foulmire. Please to remember me affectionately to Mrs. Gregory.