"But, my dear friend, I do not find in all God's Bible any thing requiring us to acquiesce in the final destruction of any, for whom we have prayed, pleaded, and committed to him; least of all, our offspring whom he has commanded us to train up for him. Children are God's heritage. I do not say he has given us any promise for the obstinately wicked; but when cut off, he only requires us to be still, to hold our peace. I do not think he takes hope from us. God has set limits to our faith for others; our faith must not rest in opposition to his threatenings. We must believe that the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all that forget God; but he hath set no bounds to his own mercy; in that glorious plan of redemption, by which he substitutes his own Son in the stead of sinners, he has made provision for the chief of sinners, and can now be just and consistent while he justifies the ungodly who believe in Jesus. Short was the time between the thief's petition and the promise of salvation; nay, the petition was the earnest of it. The same was the case with the jailer; I think, too, the publican had the earnest in his petition. Now, instead of laboring to bring my mind to acquiesce in the condemnation of my child, on the supposition of its being for God's glory, I try to be still, as he has commanded: not to follow my child to the yet invisible world; but turning my eyes to that character which God has revealed of himself--to the plan of redemption--to the sovereignty of God in the execution of that plan--to his names of grace, 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin,' while he adds, 'and that will by no means clear the guilty;' I meet it with his own declaration, 'He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.' I read also that 'mercy rejoiceth against judgment,' and many other like scriptures, which, although I dare not ground a belief of his salvation on them, afford one ray of hope after another, that God may have made him a monument of mercy to the glory of his grace.