doubts and partly from a long and lingering illness which the change of climate had brought upon me, I passed the greatest part of a year without receiving the Sacrament. Had I, as far as it was my own fault, abstained much longer from that appointed means of grace, I fear I should have fallen a second time from the faith; but, by God's mercy, I examined myself upon that point, and finding that my conscience did not charge me with any true impediment to the reception of the Holy Sacrament; and that, as to the doubts on my mind, they were involuntary, and accompanied with a sincere desire of finding the truth, I presented myself at the Sacramental table with feelings, similar to those which I conceived I should have, if, as it was then probable, death had sent me with my doubts, before the judgment seat of Christ. I threw myself, in fact, wholly upon his mercy. My trust was not in vain; for calm was soon restored to my soul; and I found myself stronger than ever in the faith and profession which I made when I became a member of the Church of England. You see, my friend, that I disguise not my weakness from the world. You may suppose, that for a man who has spent his whole life in the pursuit of learning, it must be very mortifying to publish so many errors, so many doubts, in a word to shew the utter feebleness of his mind and soul, when unsupported by Divine Grace. But I conceive this to be a duty which I owe to the truth of the Gospel, and to the spiritual welfare of my fellow creatures. How happy should I be if the humblest individual, when tempted, should take courage from the knowledge of my case,

and cling to prayer whilst he examined, like the noble Bereans, "whether these things were so *.'

R. Sir, I pity what you have suffered; but I must say it comforts me to find that doubts and errors upon religious subjects are not confined to the unlearned.

A. They are not, indeed; on the contrary, the pride of human knowledge is often the rock on which the faith of the higher classes of society is wrecked. It is the true character of the Gospel to be" hid from the wise and prudent, and to be revealed unto babes †;" not that true learning or knowledge is in opposition to spiritual truth, but because the best dispositions for faith, are humility and singleness of heart. The appointed ministers of the Church of Christ are indeed commanded to "be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers" but, though this direction of the Apostle Paul does not exclude the laity from religious learning, and every man, according to his ability, should make himself acquainted with the unanswerable reasons on which the truth of the Gospel is founded, the saving faith of Christianity requires no book-learning to have its full effect on the heart. Happy indeed are those millions of humble Christians, who, from the publication of the Gospel to our own times, have received the doctrines of the Bible by the simple means of their Catechism, and the instructions imparted by their Christian Pastors, and so ordered their lives as not to wish those Tit. i. 9.

1

Acts xvii. 11.

+ Luke x. 21.

doctrines to be false! How infinitely more happy is the lot of these humble Christians, than mine! After spending my whole life in reading; after trying, by ten years incessant study, to obtain a complete assurance that Christianity was a fable, and finding out, at last, by great attention and labour, that such books as engaged to prove it, had deceived me; I have to thank God that by his grace, I find myself, as to Christian faith, upon a level with the humblest and most illiterate disciple of Christ, who trusts in his redeeming blood for salvation.Yet the ways of God are wonderful; and it is not presumptuous to hope that the bitter struggles of my mind may be made the means of confirming the faith of many.

Without flat

R. I feel assured they will. tering you, Sir, or supposing that your talents or knowledge are above the common run of gentlemen of your class, it stands to reason, that the religion, which, after being so many years an unbeliever, you have embraced so earnestly, must have a very strong evidence in support of its truth.

A. So strong, my friend, that whoever takes proper pains to examine it, if he really acknowledge that there is a living God, a being who concerns himself in the moral conduct of mankind, will never be at rest, till he has either believed in Christ; or succeeded in making himself completely blind and careless upon spiritual subjects, allowing himself to be drifted by the rapid stream of life, without ever giving a thought to the unknown shores on which he is sure soon, very soon, to be cast. The greatest part of

those who pretend to believe in a God, and yeti reject the Gospel where it is publicly taught without the errors of Popery, do not mean by the name of the Deity, any thing like the Su preme Being, the living God, the intelligent Creator of mankind revealed in the Scriptures but some unknown cause of what we call Nature, to which the good or bad conduct of men is equally indifferent. If it were not so, they could never suppose that a religion like the Christian, supported by proofs so superior to those of all the other religions of the world, so infinitely above them all in the purity of its laws, and so effectual in allaying the storms of evil passions, and bestowing peace and happiness on the breast that fairly gives it room to act; it is impossible, I say, that a man who really believes in an all-seeing, and all-wise God, could at the same time believe that religion equally a cheat with all the other superstitions of the world; and that it is indifferent to Him, whether men, who can make the comparison, receive or reject it: This consideration was, my dear friend, my sheet anchor, in the fierce tempest of doubt, which, for a time, threatened to sink my faith after my conversion to Protestant Christianity.. When nearly overcome by a multitude of little infidel arguments, (for they are all like a swarm of puny insects, and can never form a wellconnected band, as the proofs of Christianity do), I turned, in the anguish of my soul, to seek for a resting place, out of the "rock of ages," Christ the Saviour. The view around me was dismal indeed; a dark gulph, with small spots, every one of which had tried, and found

unable to support me, and from which the fall, I well knew, would inevitably plunge me into the bottomless abyss of Atheism. It was in this distress of mind that I exclaimed with the Apostle Peter, To whom shall I go? and clung to the Cross of Christ.

R. Your reasons appear to me very strong, and such, that no man who feels a real concern for his soul, can shut his eyes to them. I clearly understand that a living God-a God to whom the man who murders, and he who feeds the hungry; the man who oppresses, and he that protects the orphan and the widow; the man who promotes virtue in his house and neighbourhood, and he who spreads vice and misery for the gratification of his brutal passions, are not equally acceptable, or indifferent; cannot be supposed to have allowed a religious cheat, to appear so beautiful and desirable as true Christianity shews itself to every honest and upright heart. But what have you, Sir, to say to the existence of so many false religions as there are in the world? Would God permit them to exist, to the spiritual ruin of millions of men, if these matters were of real consequence in his eyes?

A. Suppose yourself obliged to penetrate through a dark forest, full of wild beasts and precipices, and crossed by innumerable paths. On the side by which your entrance lies, there stands the son of the king of the country, who with the greatest kindness offers to a great multitude of the new comers a little map, with a clear view of the paths, which, he tells them, must lead to certain ruin; while others are distinctly marked, which if they carefully follow,