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for our unthankfulness are lately loosed from their bands, do repent any thing of my former fervency. No, mother; for a few sermons by me to be made within England, my heart at this hour could be content to suffer more than nature were able to sustain; as by the grace of the most mighty and most merciful God, who only is God of comfort and consolation through Christ Jesus, one day shall be known.” In his present sequestered situation, he had full leisure to meditate upon the various and surprising turns of providence in his lot, during the last seven years; his call to the ministry and employment at St. Andrews, his subsequent imprisonment and release, the sphere of usefulness in which he had been placed in England, with the afflicting manner in which he was excluded from it, and driven to seek refuge as an exile in that country to which he had formerly been carried as a prisoner. The late events seemed in a special manner to summon him to a solemn review of the manner in which he had discharged the sacred trust committed to him, as a “steward of the mysteries of God”. It will throw light on his character, and may not be without use to such as occupy the same station, to exhibit the result of his reflections on this subject. He could not, without ingratitude to Him who had called him to be His servant, deny, that his qualifications for the ministry had been in no small degree improved since he came to England; and he had the testimony of his own conscience, in addition to that of his numerous auditors, that he had not altogether neglected the gifts bestowed on him, but had exercised them with some measure of fidelity and painfulness. At the same time, he found reason for self-accusation on different grounds. Having mentioned, in one of his letters, the reiterated charge of Christ to Peter, “Feed my sheep”, “Feed my lambs”, he exclaims, “O alas! how small is the number of pastors that obeys this commandment. But this matter will I not deplore, except that I (not speaking of others) will accuse myself that do not, I confess, the uttermost of my power in feeding the lambs and sheep of Christ. I satisfy, peradventure, many men in the small labors I take; but I satisfy not myself. I have done somewhat, but not according to my duty.” In the discharge of private duties, he acknowledges, that shame, and the fear of incurring the malignant scandal of the world, had hindered him from visiting the ignorant and distressed, and administering to them the http://www.servantofmessiah.org