the sincerity of his practice. If he be under the influence of faith in common life, he never fails shew his faith by its influence on his actions.

It is exactly the same in religion. You preten to believe that you shall give an account hereafte of your actions that there is a heaven to rewar and a hell to punish them, as they are good bad. You say you believe all this: but still it do not produce a christian life.Away with suc hypocritical pretences. Would any man lea from a precipice if he really believed a bottomles pit would receive him? Those who pretend to n faith, and those who pretend to faith, but leave holy life out of the question, are both infide alike."

Some of those ungodly pretenders to christian ity are so very ignorant of its doctrines, as to thin that because Christ died for sinners (which is th only part of the gospel they ever attended to hav God will, however wicked their lives may been. pardon them, provided they do but repen as they call it, on their death-bed. Old Baxte tells us of a shocking wicked man who persistedi a very profligate way of life, because he was sur that if he could but say three words, "God pardo me," before he died, he was sure to be forgive It seems he even forgot those three words, f his horse leaping over a bridge with him, he sai "Devil take all." I have conversed with ma ny who have much the same notion; they not know that repentance is a change of heart an life, but think it consists in a few expressions sorrow, and calling God to pardon them fo

Christ's sake. Gilpin, in his excellent sermon on Christ's promise to the thief on the cross, says, "I have seldom seen sickness draw on a change of life. The sinner has generally returned, after his recovery, to his old habits. All therefore that a minister of the gospel can say, is only this, that God has no where promised in the covenant of grace, forgiveness to any repentance, but what is followed by a holy life; and if men are saved, after a course of wickedness, on death-bed repentance, they are not saved according to any known conditions of the Gospel. Gilpin's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 122, 24 edition.

-Fatally he errs

Whose hope fore-runs repentance, and who presumes
That God will pardon when he's tir'd of sin,
And like a stale companion casts it off.

Oh! arrogant, delusive, impious thought,
To meditate commodious truce with heaven,
When death's swift arrow smites him unprepar'd, ̧
And that protracted moment never comes,

Or comes too late: Turn then, presumptuous man,
Turn to the sinner,-

Who died reviling, there behold thy doom.

CUMBERLAND'S CALVARY.

I have also met with many who keep a shorter account with God; they mistake the means for the end. When they can find time to go to church, it is not with any view to obtain grace and strength to enable them to forsake their bad practices; they have not the least inclination to alter their wicked course of life; but think that by going to church and begging pardon, their old score is

wiped off; if to going to church, they add the reading a chapter or two in the bible, on Sunday, they rest quite satisfied, and suppose their ac counts fully balanced.

To reckon any of these people among the believers of the gospel of Christ, is an abuse of words. But it is time to conclude this long epistle.

I am,

Dear Friend,

Your's.

LETTER XV.

Consider man as mortal, all is dark, "And wretched; Reason weeps at the survey."

DEAR FRIEND,

WHILE Dick and I were conversing after dinner on the important objects mentioned in the last chapter, we were astonished at the declaration of a lady in company, who seriously and deliberately assured us, that she had often wished her soul was mortal, that it might die with the body; that the idea of annihilation was so far from being frightful to her, that it would afford her very great satisfaction, if she could but be sure that when she had paid the debt of nature, she should no longer have any kind of conscious ex istence, as she thought it was now

"A serious thing to die! My soul!

"What a strange moment must it be, when near Thy journey's end thou hast the gulf in view ! "That awful gulf no mortal e'er repass'd

"To tell what's doing on the other side !"

But if she was but sure of being annihilated, it would take a weight off her spirits that sometimes oppressed her much.

I am well informed that this lady is very amiable. She is about forty. During thirty years which she lived with her father, she was a very dutiful daughter; the ten that she has been a wife, she ever has been, and still is,

"Blest with temper, whose unclouded ray
"Can make to-morrow, cheerful as to-day;
"She never answers till her husband cools,
"And if she rules him, never shews she rules.
"Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
"Yet has her humour most when she obeys."

Her life has been a life of innocence; the continued ill-treatment which she for years received from some of her relations, could never put her out of temper, or cause her to utter an ill-natured word; or to be guilty of an unkind action. She possesses an uncommonly sympathising, feeling heart, is very kind and charitable to the poor. That so charming and virtuous a lady this should wish that existence might terminate with this short life, is, I believe, not a common circumstance. On our expressing our surprise, and requesting to be made acquainted with her reasons for so unnatural a wish, she said, that "she 155555

was not satisfied with herself, she thought her disposition was not so piously disposed as she found the Almighty required; she had no desire to go to church, and when she was there she was not as devout as she should be. She seldom prayed much in private. She did not know that she had ever said or done any thing wrong. But then she was ignorant of divine things, and felt an indifference towards them; and having doubt on her mind, rather than run the hazard of being eternally miserable, she had many times wished to be annihilated." She said, these melancholy thoughts were not lasting, she was in general happy. Mrs. Rowe thus describes a state of mind nearly similar.

-Starts at the awful prospect of the deep, Still fears to explore the dark and unknown way, Still backward shrinks and meditates delay; Spins out the time, and lingers in debate, Displeas'd to try an unexperienc'd state.

If the righteous are scarely saved, where shall the sinner and the ungodly appear? And if so virtuous a woman has very uneasy thoughts, as to heracceptance with God, what must, or rather, what ought the generality of our fashionable ladies to feel.

Dick took up his favorite book the Night Thoughts, and read to her the following lines:

O thou great Arbiter of life and death!
Nature's immortal immaterial sun!
Whose all prolific beam late call'd me forth
From darkness, teeming darkness, where I lay,
The worm's inferior, and, in rank, beneath