"How much am I obliged to you for your two kind letters, and more especially for the repeated offers of your ministerial assistance. They will be most gratefully accepted, and, I humbly hope, be remarkably succeeded by Him who hath promised to be with us always, even unto the end of the world. Blessed be His name, we have been favored with most delightful passover feasts. The shout of the King of kings is still heard in the midst of our Methodist camps; and the shout of, Grace, grace! resounds from many quarters. Our almighty Jesus knows how to build his temple in troublous times. His work prospers in the hands of the elect countess, who is gone to Bath, much recovered from her late indisposition. Worthy Lady Fanny Shirley proposes soon to follow, in order to reside there. Some more coronets, I hear, are likely to be laid at the Redeemer's feet. They glitter gloriously when set in and surrounded by a _crown of thorns_. "'Subjects of the Lord, be bold; esus will his kingdom hold; Wheels encircling wheels must run, Each in course to bring it on.'" That the friendship of Dr. Franklin towards Mr. Whitefield was sincere, cannot be doubted; there is, however, somewhat painful in the thought, that even in this connection Franklin could not conceal his scepticism. In 1769 both these eminent men were in London, and every one knows that the state of our country was very trying. Franklin thus wrote to Whitefield: "I am under continued apprehensions that we may have bad news from America. The sending soldiers to Boston always appeared to me a dangerous step; they could do no good, they might occasion mischief. When I consider the warm resentment of a people who think themselves injured and oppressed, and the common insolence of the soldiery, who are taught to consider that people as in rebellion, I cannot but fear the consequences of bringing them together. It seems like setting up a smith's forge in a magazine of gunpowder. I _see_ with you that our affairs are not well managed by our rulers here below; I wish I could _believe_ with you, that they are well attended to by those above: I rather suspect, from certain circumstances, that though the general government of the universe is well administered, our particular little affairs are perhaps below notice, and left to take the chance of human prudence or imprudence, as either may happen to be uppermost. It is, however, an uncomfortable thought, and I leave it."