THE PRINCE WITH HIS FAMILY IN DANGER.--Suppose a king's son should get out of a besieged city where he hath left his wife and children, whom he loves as his own soul, and these all ready to die by sword or famine, if supply come not the sooner. Could this prince, when arrived at his father's house, please himself with the delights of the court and forget the distress of his family? or rather would he not come post to his father, having their cries and groans always in his ears, and before he ate or drank do his errand to his father, and entreat him if he ever loved him that he would send all the force of his kingdom to raise the siege rather than any of his dear relations should perish? Surely, sirs, though Christ be in the top of his preferment and out of the storm in regard of his own person, yet his children, left behind in the midst of sin's, Satan's, and the world's batteries, are in his heart, and shall not be forgotten a moment by him. The care he takes in our business appeared in the speedy despatch he made of his spirit to his apostles' supply, which, as soon almost as he was warm in his seat at his Father's right hand, he sent, to the incomparable comfort of his apostles and us that to this day--yea, to the end of the world--do or shall believe on him. _John Flavel_ was greatest in metaphor and allegory; but in the matter of anecdote his preaching is a fine example. It was said of his ministry that he who was unaffected by it must either have had a very soft head or a very hard heart. He had a fund of striking incidents, and a faculty of happy illustration, and as he was a man in whose manner cheerfulness was blended with solemnity, he was popular in the highest degree both at home and abroad. He sought out words which might suit the sailors of Dartmouth and farmers of Devon, and therefore he has left behind him his "Navigation Spiritualized," and his "Husbandry Spiritualized," a legacy for each of the two orders of men who plow the sea and the land. He was a man worth making a pilgrimage to hear. What a crime it was to silence his heaven-touched lips by the abominable Act of Uniformity! Instead of quoting several passages from his sermons, each one containing an anecdote, I have thought it as well to give a mass of stories as we find them in his prelections upon PROVIDENCE IN CONVERSION.--A scrap of paper accidentally coming to view hath been used as an occasion of conversion. This was the case of a minister of Wales who had two livings but took little care of either. He, being at a fair, bought something at a peddler's standing, and rent off a leaf of Mr. Perkins' catechism to wrap it in, and reading a line or two of it, God sent it home so as it did the work.