A LETTER, &c. MY DEAR LORD, In ordinary times it is best and simplest to be silent amidst misrepresentations, and to commit our innocence to GOD, leaving it to Him to bring it out when to Him seems good; "As for me, I was like a deaf 66 man and heard not, and as one that is dumb, who "doth not open his mouth; I became even as a man "that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no re"proofs: for in Thee, O Lord, have I put my trust; Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord my God1." Extensive good to the many must always be purchased by the suffering of the few: it is a portion of the Cross which our LORD has bequeathed as a precious gift to His disciples, and they must take it humbly and thankfully; glad if they may indeed think that they have a portion of it, yet scarce venturing to decide for themselves whether it be in truth His Cross, or the chastisement of their own 1 Ps. xxxviii. 13-15. infirmities, yet taking it at all events quietly and joyously, that so, sanctified by that meritorious Cross, it may turn to their joy and consolation; and to those, to whom it is indeed His Cross, to their crown. These, however, are not ordinary times; the waters, which stagnated during the last century, are being stirred vehemently; we trust, for the health of those who shall be cast into them; but amid the first troubling, people seem to be tossed this way and that, not knowing whither themselves shall be borne, and more curious about the fate of others, than anxious to secure their own. It is not among the least strange circumstances of the times, that tracts, written for a temporary purpose, by persons unknown, or those who were known, but little known beyond their own University, should within a few years have been made, against the will of their writers, into a sort of touchstone of opinion almost throughout the land; it is stranger yet, that the greater part of those who make these tracts a test of soundness or unsoundness of faith, should be ready to confess not even to have seen them, but have gleaned what little they know of them from the report of one or two periodicals; stranger yet, that publications devoted to politics, should, at a time of great political expectation, break off their speculations, or books of gossip' "cut off their tale, to 1 "Travels in Town." |