snatched me as a brand from the burning, will not, I humbly yet firmly trust, cast me back into the furnace. I now know the meaning of words that before I repeated, but did not comprehend. I am no Burley of Balfour, but I have been, as I thought, on the very verge and brink of his disease; but I prayed to God to save me, and not to suffer me to fall a prey to the arts and wiles of Satan, at the very moment I was seeking his reconcilement. I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak the words of truth and soberness. I have thrown myself, reeking with sin, on the mercy of God, through Jesus Christ his blessed Son and our (yes, my friend, _our_) precious Redeemer; and I have assurance as strong as that I now owe nothing to your Bank, that the debt is paid—and now I love God, and with reason. I once hated him, and with reason too, for I knew not Christ. The only cause why I should love God is his goodness and mercy to me _through Christ_. But for this, the lion and the sea-serpent would not be more appalling to my imagination, than a being of tremendous and indefinite power, who made me what I am—who wanted either the will or the ability to prevent the existence of evil, and punishes what is inevitable. This is not a God, but a Devil, and all unbelievers in God tremble and believe in this Devil that they worship—such worship {462} as it is, in his place. I have been looking over some of my marginal pencilled notes on Gibbon, and rubbing them out. I had thought to burn the book, but the Quarterly Review and Professor Porson have furnished the antidote to his poison, whether in the shape of infidelity or obscenity. See Review of Gibbon's posthumous works. Chains are the portion of revolted man, Stripes and a dungeon: and his body serves The triple purpose. In that sickly, foul, Opprobrious residence he finds them all. _Cowper's Task_. God hath called me to come out from among them—worshippers of Mammon or of “Moloch-homicide,” or “Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's son,” “Peor his other name:” “Lust hard by Hate,” and I will come, so help me God! Is it madness to prefer your new house in fee simple, to a clay cottage, of which I am tenant at will, and may be turned out at a moment's warning, and even without it, and out of which _I know_ I must be turned in a few years certainly? It is now midnight. May God watch over our sleep—over our helpless, naked condition, and protect us as well from the insect that carries death in his sting, as from the more feared but not so obvious dangers with which life is beset; and if he should come this night (as come he will) like a thief, may we be ready to stand in his presence and plead not our merits, but his stripes, by whom we are made whole. J. R. of R.