Stories for the Young; Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI.More, Hannah
Religion
Stories for the Young; Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI.
More, Hannah
Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
In the meantime the pawnbroker to whom she had sold the silver cup,
which she had stolen from poor Sally's master, impeached her; and as
the robbery was fully proved upon Rachel, she was sentenced for this
crime to Botany Bay; and a happy day it was for the county of
Somerset, when such a nuisance was sent out of it. She was transported
much about the same time that her husband Giles lost his life, in
stealing the net from the garden wall, as related in the second part
of Poaching Giles.
I have thought it my duty to print this little history, as a kind of
warning to all young men and maidens, not to have any thing to say to
cheats, impostors, cunning women, fortune-tellers, conjurers, and
interpreters of dreams. Listen to me, your true friend, when I assure
you that God never reveals to weak and wicked women those secret
designs of his providence, which no human wisdom is able to foresee.
To consult these false oracles is not only foolish, but sinful. It is
foolish, because they are themselves as ignorant as those whom they
pretend to teach; and it is sinful, because it is prying into that
futurity which God, in mercy as well as wisdom, hides from men.
God indeed _orders_ all things; but when you have a mind to do a
foolish thing, do not fancy you are _fated_ to do it. This is tempting
Providence, and not trusting him. It is, indeed, "charging God with
folly." Prudence is his gift, and you obey him better when you make
use of prudence under the direction of prayer, than when you madly run
into ruin, and think you are only submitting to your fate. Never fancy
that you are compelled to undo yourself, or to rush upon your own
destruction, in compliance with any supposed fatality. Never believe
that God conceals his will from a sober Christian who obeys his laws,
and reveals it to a vagabond gypsy, who runs up and down, breaking
the laws both of God and man. King Saul never consulted the witch till
he had left off serving God. The Bible will direct us what to do,
better than any conjurer; and no days are unlucky but those which we
make so by our own vanity, folly, and sin.
THE HAPPY WATERMAN
A gentleman and lady walking on the bank of the river Thames, spied a
small ferry-boat, with a neatly-dressed waterman, rowing towards them;
on his nearer approach, they read on the stern of his boat these
words, THE HAPPY WATERMAN. Without taking any notice of it, they
determined to enter into conversation with him; and inquiring into his
situation in life, they found that he had a wife and five children,
and supported also an old father and mother-in-law by his own labor.
The gentleman and lady were upon this still more surprised at the
title he had given himself, and said,
"My friend, if this is your situation, how is it that you call
yourself 'the happy waterman'?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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