opposers, and allow themselves to think, and to speak, in direct opposition to what God has revealed, and what is supported by plain fact. Let them duly consider, that the tendency of divine truth, when supported by fact, is sufficiently manifest; and that hereafter they will be constrained to admit what they are now disposed to deny; when it may be forever too late, either to invalidate the force of their convictions, or to avoid the fatal consequences of their unbelief. JUVENTUS.

LETTER FROM A SON TO HIS MOTHER.

My dear aged mother,

I HAVE just received the painful intelligence of our common heavy affliction. While I write, the cold clods of the valley, press upon his lifeless breast, who was lately an affectionate bosom companion,and a kind father. No more, in this world, shall the language of Canaan flow from his lips, or the ejaculations of piety ascend from his heart. This affliction is trying to me;but I know it is necessary. I hear the voice of eternal truth addressing me, in connexion'with this providence; Be still, and know that I am God. I hope my heart responds this language; (though but feebly;) The cup which my Father giveth me, shall I not drink it? If the ingredients, which he infuses into it, are sometimes bitter, they are always salutary to his children; and why should I complain? Let me then humbly and patiently meet this chastisement of God, that it may be numbered among the all things, which work together for good to his people.

I feel, y dear mother, that I owe you an expression of my condolence on this occasion. I know that the death of my father falls heaviest on you. God has put this lamentation in your lips: "Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness I would attempt to offer you support and consolation from the Scriptures; but I trust He, "who comforteth them that are cast down," has already supported and comforted you by kis gracious presence and holy word.

To this faithful God I still commend you, my mother. It is true his own and has written you a widow; but He has styled himself the God of the widow in his holy habitation."

You have lost an earthly husband; but I rejoice that thy Maker is still thy husband and thy God. I rejoice in the confidence, that you can address this prayer to your covenant God: "Thou hast taught me from my youth; and now when I am old and gray headed, O Lord, forsake me not." You doubtless feel, that you have cause for lively gratitude, that you are not called to mourn, as those who have no hope for their deceased relatives, and are without hope themselves. You have strong confidence that our loss is his gain; that while we drop the tear of affection over his memory, God has wiped all tears from his eyes. He came to his grave as a shock of corn fully ripe. His heary hairs were a crown of righteousness. His work is done. The acute pains, which he bore with so much

Christian patience, are terminated. We trust he is entered into that rest, which remaineth for the people of God. He is only called home a few moments first, that he may welcome you to the joy of his Lord.

May God Almighty spare your useful life, my dear mother, until you have performed his whole will, and th grant you an easy death, and an abundant entrance among the saints in light. As your children, and their partners for life, have all named the name of Christ, may they all, through free grace, be so unspeakably blessed, as to be numbered among the faithful, when the Lord makes up his jewels. This is the ardent desire of your affectionate son,

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE CONVERTED NEGRO.

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The following narrative was written by the same hand, which furnished the ascount of the converted Algerine, published in our last number.

UPWARDS of forty years ago, there was a meeting-house in Henrico County, Virginia, in which the Rev. Mr. Davies used to preach apart of his time, while he resided in Hanover county, and where, for a few years, I officiated after his departure. Near this meetinghouse lived a captain William Smith, one of the ruling elders of the congregation. Capt. Smith was a valuable member both of civil and religious society; of a lively active disposition, and a benevolent heart. He paid uncommon attention to the religious instruction of the negroes in the neighborhood, many of whom were serious professors of Christianity. He performed this act of charity to the poor slaves, while their owners, for whom they constantly labored, seemed quite careless about their eternal interest. It was customary for Capt. Smith and his pious neighbors, when they had no minister to preach to them, to assemble at the meetinghouse on the Sabbath, and spend some part of sacred time in reading and other acts of social religious worship; of which exercises Capt. Smith had commonly the chief direction.

When assembled for these purposes, one Lord's day, negro, who lived at the distance of about ten or twelve miles from the place, came to it; and, applying to Capt. Smith, requested him to teach him the way to heaven. The account he gave of himself to the captain was as follows.

"I was born on the other side of the big water. In my own country I know but very little of God, or how to serve him. At length I was brought across the big water to this country, where I have learned to be more wicked than I was before. Though I understood that the Sabbath was appointed for the service of God, yet I have not spent it in that way, but in working for myself. A few Sabbaths ago, while I was working in my patch, there was something in my heart, like some body catching me by the clothes, and pulling me back, and saying, "You must not work to-day." I did

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not mind it, but worked on. Presently it came again the same way, and said, "You must not work to day; this is God's day." Neither did I mind this, but worked on still. At length it came the third time, and said, " You must not work to-day; this is God's day; you must serve God to day." Upon this I dropped my hoe and worked no more. Soon terwards, one night in my sleep, I dreamed I had a journey to make to some place at a great distance, but was an entire stranger to the road. However, being obliged to go, I set out and travelled on until I came to a place where the road forked. Here I stopped, and stood for a considerable time in great perplexity, not knowing which to take, the right hand or the left. At length Isaw a man standing at a considerable distance; who called to me, and told me to go to such a place, take such a road and follow it, and it would lead me to a place, where I would find a man, who would give me proper directions for my long journey.'

The next Sabbath, being the first day he had at his own disposal, he went to the place to which he was directed in his dream, took the road he had seen in his vision, and following it for about twelve miles, it brought him to the aforesaid meeting-house in Henrico county. There he found Capt. Smith and his neighbors assembled as usual, for social worship. In his dream he said he saw the road which led to the meeting-house, the meeting-house itself, the place where it stood, and Capt. Smith; and that he knew them all to be what he had seen in his dream: that he knew the captain by his size, his clothes, his features and complexion; and knew him to be the man who was to give him directions for his long journey.

Captain Smith encouraged the negro to come to his house; and took much pains to instruct him in the knowledge of man's ruined state by sin and the way of his recovery through Jesus Christ. The negro repeatedly came, and manifested an earnest desire to obtain instruction in these important points. After Capt. Smith had enjoyed repeated opportunities of performing this labor of love, he found the negro to be deeply convinced of sin, and guilt, and especially of the great depravity of his nature: this latter consideration so deeply affected his mind, that it seemed almost to swallow up every other consideration. Capt. Smith labored, by every easy method of communication in his power, to explain to the negro's untutored mind the Gospel plan of salvation. But the poor negro was so unacquainted with the English tongue, and especially with the terms. commonly used on religious subjects, that he could not understand his instructor. The captain, finding himself laboring under a difficulty, and supposing two might be better than one, informed me of the above circumstance, and requested me to come to his house on a certain Saturday night, to meet the negro there; and that I would try to make him understand the plan of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. I complied with the captain's request, and the negro met me according to appointment. His mind appeared to be in the distressed situation described above: he was groaning under a body of sin, and had the sentence of death in his breast. He

expressed his sense of these things with the greatest apparent solemnity, and in terms of the deepest humility and self-abasement. I endeavored in several ways, the easiest I could devise, to explain to him the doctrines of redemption: but this for a considerable time without effect. At length, I fell upon an easy similitude, taken from his station and manner of life, which he understood, as was immediately evident by a remarkable change in his countenance. When I found he was taking up my meaning, I proceeded with pleasure to show him, by my plain similitude, the astonishing condescension and love of God to guilty fallen man, in giving his only begotten Son for our redemption; the unparalleled compassion of the Redeemer, the completeness of his atonement, and the abundant sufficiency of divine grace for the whole work of man's redemption. The poor, lately miserable, but now happy man kept himself tolerably conposed, appeared to be in no wild transport of joy, nor made any nineaning exclamations, but seemed to be filled with reverence, greatly astonished, and almost sunk to the floor, under an adoring sense of these amazing displays of condescension and love. When in this situation, he would raise himself up, clap his hands together with an air of composed solemnity, and cry out, "The Lord have mercy upon me; all for poor sinner!" This evening and the next morning he appeared to be almost overwhelmed with a deep sense of the tender compassion of God and his own extreme unworthiness of the smallest expression of mercy.

Under these exercises I left him for the present. About three weeks afterwards, as well as I can recollect, he came to Henrico meeting-house, made a public profession of the Christian religion, and was baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Since this time, I do not recollect ever to have seen or heard of him: for soon after this, I removed from that part of the country, and have seldom been there since. But as he was not very young; and this was near forty years ago, it is probable that he is in that state where is fulness of joy and pleasures for ever

more.

REMARKS ON THE PRECEDING NARRATIVES.

I shall conclude the accounts of Salem and the black man,with a few observations.

Had Salem never returned from Africa, it might have been suspected, that he was a dishonest crafty man, who had invented the story of the dream and made an hypocritical profession of Christianity, in order to procure favor with Christians, and from them obtain the means of returning to his native land; but his return to this country, and its attending circumstances, sufficiently remove all suspicions of this kind, and strongly evince the sincerity of his Christian profession, and the firmness of his resolution never to deny Jesus. It appears from the effect his sore trials had upon his constitution, that this firmness did not arise from stoical insensibility nor any uncommon degree of natural fortitude, but from prin VOL. XIII.

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ciple. He is a striking instance to illustrate the powerful influence of the faith of a Christian, where it is real, and how near his religion lies to his heart. Rather than part with it, and the exalted hope it inspires, he will resign all his hopes of temporal honor and happiness, and voluntarily devote himself to a life of poverty and exile. Salem's testimony is greatly strengthened by his close attachment to religion, manifested in his state of derangement.

To me it appears probable, that the dreams related above were præternatural, and that they were ordered by an extraordinary providence of the Almighty. But we observe, that there was no religious truth revealed to either of these men; no duty nor doctrine. They were both directed to the ordinary means of salvation: to Moses and the prophets; to Christ and his apostles. By both of these instances, supposing them to be supernatural interpositions, God seems to have designed to give honor to the written word, and to the ordinary means of grace; that people might be properly guarded against all expectations of extraordinary revelations by dreams, trances, or any such thing; or from being led by the disorderly flights of a strong or disturbed imagination; and might be induced to try all their notions by the sacred oracles. The same thing seems to be taught by the instance of the apostle Paul. At the time of his extraordinary conversion, he might have received the revelation of all the mysteries of the Christian religiou, but it was not so ordered. God sent Ananias to him to instruct him in duty; and God also let Paul know, that Ananias should tell him what to do. What end are these things designed to answer? Are they not intended to discountenance all enthusiastic hopes or expectations of any extraorHinary views, or discoveries, under the Gospel dispensation, and to attach us more firmly to the Sacred Scriptures?

These men were both Africans, who had not the common means of information. Though God seems, in these instances, to have deviated from his ordinary method of dealing with his rational creatures, yet it was with a view to bring them to the use of the ordinary appointed means, and not to teach them in an extraordinary -way. Shall we Christians, then, who have Bibles in our houses, who are favored with a preached Gospel and all God's appointed means of grace, be looking to trances and dreams for directions in the way to glory? We cannot do this without undervaluing and dishonoring the institutions of heaven: and be assured, that if we will not hear Moses and the prophets, neither would we hear, even if one should arise from the dead, to alarm our fears, and teach us the way of life.

If these thoughts are just, they may serve to show the folly and pride of those, who think themselves so far advanced in religious knowledge, as no longer to need the common ordinances of the Gospel; such as the preaching of the word, baptism, and the Lord's supper. These ordinances have ever been highly valued by the people of God, and blessed as the means of preserving and spreading religion in our guilty world. In various ways, God has done honor to them in every age of his church, and is still doing it. Let us then