But how can I endure the thought of looking on you, my son, only once in the year, on whom I have gazed these one and twenty years with so much delight. My eyes will be dim with sorrow before the first year is up." "But I will write, mother, once a month." "But letters can't speak as I have heard you talk for nearly twenty years. I wish the gentleman had never come amongst us. He has broken down the fence of our union, and taken away the first-fruits of our wedded happiness, and what have we left to make up for our loss? But I know I must be resigned-but I have not Abraham's faith. The Lord bless you, and keep you, and bring you back to your father's house in peace, that we may bless you before we die." Henry set off in company with the gentleman who had taken him under his patronage, and though he felt the pang of separation to be violent, yet he bore it with firmness, and, turning away from the scenes of parental grief, he began to amuse himself with the sportive visions of his own fancy. His journey was long and tedious; the fellow-passengers, with whom they travelled, were kind and accommodating, and they reached London without meeting with any disaster, except the loss of a little box, which contained his small but select library, consisting of his Bible, Hymn Book, a few volumes of Mr. Westley's Works, Fletcher's Check to Antinomianism, Mason on Self-knowledge, Watts on the Improvement of the Mind, and some Magazines. This loss, which gave him great distress, was immediately repaired by the benevolence of Mr. Fortesque, who, in addition to the books already mentioned, added the following; Cowper's Poems, Beattie on Truth, Doddridge's Sermons on Regeneration, and Robinson's Plea for the Divinity of Jesus Christ. He took a private lodging in the City Road, very near Mr. J. -'s, at whose house Mr. Llewellin resided upon his first settlement in London, and where their intimacy commenced. Having received his first religious impressions amongst the Wesleyan Methodists, and imbibed all their peculiar opinions, he very naturally chose to attend their chapel, which was not more than ten minutes walk from his place of abode. They received him with their usual kindness, and for several years he grew in their esteem and confidence, as a young man who united in his character superior intelligence and decided piety, and whose manners were not less pleasing than his spirit was affable and catholic. Within the he married a young lady of five space years of respectability, but who made no decided profession of religion. She attended the chapel because she had been accustomed to it from the earliest days of childhood; and felt attached to the people amongst whom her parents lived and died; and venerated the spot where their sacred remains were mouldering to dust; but she had no clear perceptions of the nature or design of the gospel, nor had she ever felt its enlightening or renovating power. She was handsome, amiable, and intelligent, but she did not possess the one thing needful; and though her habits and associations were of a religious nature, yet being destitute of its pure and heavenly spirit, she became a snare to her husband, by drawing off his mind, by imperceptible degrees, from things that are unseen and eternal, to those that were visible and temporal. His income arising from the situation which he filled, which was one of great responsibility, was large; which, together with the fortune he had with his wife, enabled him to live in a style far above his early expectations; but he had too much good sense to involve himself in difficulties, and too much regard for his parents to allow them to suffer want, while he had all, and abounded. He often used to say, when a poor man in his own native village, "I covet wealth that I may enjoy the luxury of doing good;" and when a mysterious providence granted him his desires, he partook of this source of gratification to a very large extent. His regular and liberal remittances to his aged parents exceeded their wishes, and his profuse liberality to the poor, and every religious institution with which he stood connected, raised him very high in the esteem of his Christian brethren. But, alas! alas! his spirituality did not keep pace with his prosperity; nor did the fervour of his devotional spirit equal the degree of his diligence in business. In obedience to custom, he spent the first few weeks : after his marriage amidst scenes of gaiety and pleasure -in receiving and returning the visits of his friends and associates and though he found an apology for this course of life in the example of others, yet he felt it to be injurious to the religious tone of his mind, and often longed to return to his more settled religious habits. And had Mrs. Beaufoy possessed a similar spirit, this incursion into the land of the enemy would not have been productive of any essential injury: but as she was now treading on her native soil, and breathing in an element congenial with her taste, she succeeded in corrupting her husband from the simplicity of a religious life, and induced him to adopt habits of a worldly nature. The prayer-meeting, in which his voice had often been heard, leading the devotions of the humble Christian, was now deserted for the conviviality of a select party. The sacredness of religious conversation, with those who loved and feared the Lord, was exchanged for the vain conversation of the elders of the temple of fashion and though on the Sabbath-day they were seen in their pew, yet the marked seriousness, and peaceful serenity of his countenance was supplanted by the knitted brow, or the listless and inattentive air. Those of his former friends with whom, in the days of his spring-time enjoyment, he had held communion, were deserted for the society of the more respectable but less devout of the congregation; and while he still retained a name and a place amongst the members of the church, he was rapidly receding from the purity and fervour of their spirit. : One of the earliest symptoms of apostacy from the pure faith of Christ is, a certain fastidiousness of hearing, which few preachers can please, except by the charm of their eloquence, or the beauty or force of their language. The truth, as it is in Jesus, is tolerated on account of the form or the manner in which it is presented, and the messenger is admired more than the message which he delivers. And though we would not condemn a predilection for the more graceful and the more eloquent appeals from the pulpit, nor insinuate that a correct taste is a prima facie evidence of a heart in a state of departure from God, yet it requires no lengthened argument to prove, that when the truths of the gospel are not loved and received for their own sake, and on account of their beneficial tendency, it is a decisive proof that the tone of the mind is injured; and notwithstanding the outward appearance of devotion which may be kept up by a professor, he is not walking in the fear of the Lord, nor in the comfort of the Holy Ghost. He may have his favourite preachers, and he may extol them as the ornaments of the pulpit; but if the truth which they preach is not equally esteemed when it falls from the lips of men equally zealous, and equally devoted to God, though not equally gifted, we are supplied with a melancholy symptom of his being in a backsliding state. It was this spirit of preference for the learning of Paul for the eloquence of Apollos-and for the peculiar charms of Cephas, amongst the members of the church of Corinth, that the Apostle seizes on as a resistless evidence of their indifference to Christ, and which he adduces as the first proof that a corrupt leaven was then working amongst them. For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; is it not a convincing proof, that you resemble, in taste and disposition, the men of this world, who are more delighted with the correctness of the language which a preacher employs, than the purity of the doctrines he preaches and extol his oratory, while they contemn his divinity? Mr. Beaufoy, who, on his first settlement in London, gave a decided preference to the most evangelical and the most experimental preachers in his connection, and listened to their discourses with the most eager and devout attention, now began to admire the most fanciful, and the most florid, to whom he listened as an amateur attends to a piece of music, more for the gratification of his taste than the spiritual improvement of his mind. And, as in a connection in which there is a constant change of ministers, he could not always hear those whom he most admired for the superiority of their style of preaching, he began to absent himself from the chapel when they were not expected; till at length his habit of attendance became so irregular, that some of his Christian brethren, who had watched the progress of decay with great anxiety, felt it their duty to have him admonished, and they deputed an aged elder, in whom dwelt the spirit of wisdom and of grace, to visit him. The manner in which reproof is received often developes the real temper and disposition of the mind, and supplies us with a very good criterion to form a correct judgment of character. Let the righteous smite me, said the Psalmist, when reviewing the imperfections of his conduct, it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head. And it is by the kind admonitions, and the gentle reproof that we timely receive from those of our friends who watch over us, that we are indebted, under the divine blessing, for our spiritual prosperity, and to which we may trace, if we are attentive to the order of occurrences, our recovery from a state of declension in the enjoyment of personal religion, to which we are so fatally prone. "Indeed," said Mr. Beaufoy to his venerable friend, in whose company he had passed away many a pleasant hour, in former times, "I think I am at liberty to attend where and when I please, without being subject to the inquisitorial dictation, or authoritative reproof of others. And though you are pleased to say, that my fate conduct has given my best friends reason to fear, that I am not so spiritual as when they first knew me, yet you will permit me to say, that, in my opinion, I am the best judge on that subject." "You certainly," replied the venerable elder, "are at liberty to go where you please; but I hope you will not go away from Him who hath the words of eternal life;-and at liberty to go when you please, so long as you do not forget the divine injunction which commands us to consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is." "I hope I shall not, Sir," Mr. Beaufoy replied; " but I must be permitted to consult my own taste in the choice of the preachers on whose ministry I attend, without being censured for any decrease in the spirituality of my mind. If I do not talk quite so much on religious subjects as 1 once did, that is no proof that I feel less; as we become reserved on these high and awful considerations in proportion as we are impressed by them." "The Psalmist says,” replied the elder, “ While I was musing the fire burned: then spake Iwith my tongue. I know you are displeased with me, my brother, for the language which |