Most gracious and holy, good and merciful God! we have heard, we have seen, we have experienced thy love. Blessed, for ever blessed be thy name, that instead of being known to us by the judgments our sins have deserved, thou art manifested to us as the God willing to forgive all our iniquities. Thou hast delivered our eyes from tears, and our hearts from anguish. Thy servant, whom thou hast lately afflicted, is now a monument of thy sparing mercy. Thou hast chastised and corrected him, (_or her_) but thou hast not delivered him over unto death. Thou hast turned our mourning into joy, and our fears into songs of praise. O may this thy servant have been spared in order to live hereafter to the glory of thy name.--We beseech thee, perfect all that concerns his recovery; and grant that this gracious interposition may properly effect both him and every one of us in this family. From henceforth may we all more entirely depend upon thee for the continuance and preservation of our dearest earthly comforts: may we consider them as thy free gifts, O Lord, and know that they alone makest every earthly blessing be to us what it is. And give us grace so to use and enjoy all our temporal comforts, as those who know that the fashion of this world passeth away. Grant we may learn, from this late affliction in our family, to live more like persons who are soon to be separated by death, and to give all diligence to grow rich towards God, that we may be better prepared for a breach in our family whenever it shall come. And whensoever, O God, thou shalt be pleased to call any of us away, though for a season our family may thus be separated, may we all be united again in heaven, and be for ever with the Lord and with one another. That we may none of us fall short of so glorious an end, O give us a clear knowledge of the excellency of our God, and a firmer dependence upon the word of thy grace. Grant us a strong love to the Lord Jesus Christ, and a greater resemblance of him; that each of us in our particular station may be zealous for God, full of mercy and justice towards men, and possess every temper whereby God can be glorified in us. Fill our minds with a more cheerful and lively sense of our obligations to thee, especially for this late additional mercy: write it, we beseech thee, on our hearts, so that no temptation from without, or corruption from within, may make us ever act as if we forgot it. And now, O Lord, we again present both ourselves and family, all we have and all we are, a lively sacrifice unto thee for all our remaining days. Be with us when we are passing through the valley of the shadow of death; may we then fear no evil, nor have cause to fear any. Guard us through the gloomy passage, and bring us safe to thine eternal kingdom and glory. We humbly ask all these blessings, though utterly unworthy ourselves of any notice, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who ever liveth to make intercession for us. Amen.