I continue to read Butler, also two sermons by Conybeare[178] on angels; looked at the miniature which my wife has of the dear girl, a most striking likeness by Plymer;[179] wept over it with feelings easier imagined than described. I will have a copy of it; ’twill serve, at least, as a melancholy remembrance, and, I hope, recall my mind should it ever wander from the lamented original. _28th._—Finished Butler’s ‘Analogy.’ It does not quite answer the idea I had formed of him, though a powerful work; but he demands a second perusal, but does not even then promise to be perfectly clear. Read also Mr. Locke’s ‘Reasonableness of Christianity,’ which is a luminous convincing work, and must have done great good. Watered dear Bobbin’s garden and read over her letters. She had, for her early years, a most uncommon understanding and a penetration into character wonderful for the age of fourteen. On reviewing her last illness I am filled with nothing but the most poignant regret and self-condemnation for putting so much reliance in the medical tribe, for she had the personal attendance or correspondence of five physicians and none agreed. I did for the best and spared nothing, but had she been a pauper in a village she would, I verily think, have been alive and hearty. Such are the blessings of money; it has cost me 100_l._ to destroy my child, for I do not think one shilling was bestowed which did not in one way or other do mischief. Whilst I was in much anxiety about my child’s health I bought Mr. Wilberforce on Christianity.[180] I read it coldly at first, but advanced with more attention. It brought me to a better sense of my dangerous state; but I was much involved in hesitation and doubt, and was very far from understanding the doctrinal part of the book. This was well, for it induced me to read it again and again, and it made so much impression upon me that I scarcely knew how to lay it aside. It excited a very insufficient degree of repentance, and a still more insufficient view of my interest in the Great Physician of souls. It is rather singular that a trifling circumstance at this time first brought me acquainted with Mr. Wilberforce, whose book I had been again perusing for the fourth time with increased pleasure, and to whom I had more than once thought of writing for his opinion on the intermediate state and original sin. On arriving at Boston, what was my surprise on receiving a letter from him relative to Parkinson’s subscription to some book on agriculture, and apologising for the application to a stranger. I seized the pen with eagerness to reply, writing largely about his own book, praising it greatly, and telling him of my wish to apply to him. Should this (I thought) be productive of a connection that might confirm my pious resolution, I might, perhaps, be justified in attributing it to the interposition of God.