* * * * * About the middle of the year 1814, Mr. Mortimer was joined by a coadjutor in the curacy of Wellington, of a kindred spirit with himself, and one with whom he seems to have taken sweet counsel, walking to the house and service of God as friends. This was the Rev. John King, already mentioned in the preface. In a letter to his sister, on the 3rd of June, 1814, is this short notice of the event just referred to:—“My dear friend King has joined us—he is beloved by all.” In another letter dated the 30th of the same month, he mentions his great attachment to Mr. King, their delightful opportunities of studying together, and that he esteems his coming under his roof as one of the greatest blessings ever vouchsafed. His intimacy with this gentleman was formed at the University; “being introduced to him,” as he mentions in a letter to the writer, “the very first evening of his coming to college, and we have,” he adds, “ever since remained in the closest bonds of union.” TO THE REV. J. ARMSTRONG. Wellington, Sept. 1, 1814. My very dear Friend, I FEEL thankful that a day of comparative leisure enables me to fulfil my engagement as to writing to you. It is the Lord’s goodness; and I cannot help considering it as one out of many thousand other instances in which prayer and simple reliance upon God tend most effectually to forward us in our concerns. I fear to trust my own unstable and treacherous heart, and therefore begged of God that he would graciously assist me; and, were I to do so constantly, how much better would it be for me! how many good plans and well concerted schemes, instead of being rendered abortive, would have been sped and prospered! But, trusting in the goodness of the plan, instead of the blessing of the Lord, and, at the same time, overlooking my own utter insufficiency, I have been manifestly left to learn lessons of dependence, through the unwelcome medium of failure and disappointment. But, after all the pains which a gracious God has been pleased to take with me, how slow I am to learn, how unwilling to become nothing, that God may become all in all. And yet this is the only way in which we can be either extensively or permanently blessed. We are dealt with as children; but on which of his children will a judiciously affectionate parent bestow the greatest honour? Not on the forward and self-sufficient. This is a spirit which he must chasten and subdue by patient and humiliating discipline. It is the child who is modest, distrustful, and unassuming, who is diffident of his abilities, and afraid of leaning to his own understanding, that will meet with the countenance and support of the wise and tender father. But to one of a contrary temper, such a mode of treatment would be ruinous, and, therefore, utterly inadmissible on the part of a parent whose affectionate heart was regulated by a sound and enlightened judgment.