the use of means-for want of which knowledge much injustice and dishonour are done to the gospel, and much injury to immortal souls. I am, therefore, confident that you will seek to prevent the failure of your faith, and to promote the right and vigorous exercise of it, by endeavouring to enlighten, and strengthen, and quicken it by prayer, meditation, searching the Scriptures, and reading scriptural works suited to your circumstances, while you rely simply on the promised grace of Christ both for the due use of these means and for a never-failing faith, the end of them. As I think Flavel's Token, &c. meets almost all the varied movements of the afflicted mind and heart with uncommon tenderness and scriptural power, you can easily conceive the satisfaction I feel in thinking of you and your afflicted relatives engaged in the agreeable perusal of it; that you will now better understand it and feel its truth and consolatory power, while you acquire a more intimate acquaintance with your own hearts, and the riches of divine grace in furnishing suitable and effectual remedies for their infinitely varied distempers, is my firm belief.-But think not, I beseech you, that all this, or even much of this is to be experienced at once; "for after you have done the will of God" in the use of means, "ye have need of patience" to wait like the husbandman for the harvest of promise fulfilled-" the peaceable fruits of righteousness." Mrs Scott begs to thank you for your letter, particularly as she did not expect you to write. All unite in continued prayer and sympathy with you and all your mourners. I ever am,

With affectionate regard

and tenderest sympathy,

very truly yours,

JOHN SCOTT.

No. VI.

LETTER-DR SCOTT TO MRS DOUGLAS, STEWARTON.

Greenock, April 21, 1825.

MY DEAR MADAM,-The report of the death of your affectionate husband, and my long-approved friend and brother, which reached me at Glasgow, did not surprise me, as I had been hearing from time to time of his declining state of health; but it did afflict me. His death is no common loss to any of his friends; to me it is an uncommon one, and not to be supplied. Ordained within a few weeks of each other, mutual assistants from the commencement of our ministry, united in principle and friendship that suffered no interruption, and increased with experience for near thirty-two years, we could not be separated without the survivor feeling as if no small part of himself were cut off. I shall miss him, and mourn my loss in the study, the parlour, and the pulpit, especially on these endearing occasions when we met to enjoy the pleasures of Christian society and friendship, and unite in celebrating the wonders of redeeming love. Never did I meet with him but with kindness, never part with him but with grateful recollections, never was he forgotten in my daily prayers for my friends in the ministry, and of late was he always remembered among the useful pastors whose lives I desired might be spared. His removal occasions a sorrowful blank in my affections, in my devotions, and among my assistants. The Lord hath done it; I bless his name for the sweetness shed abroad in this sorrow, by the full and delightful persuasion that he is now in a state which more than compensates all his toils, and sufferings, and sorrow of parting with his beloved family, and his endeared flock

and friends. While I and my people remember with mournful pleasure labours no more to be renewed, we cannot but realize him as reaping the fruits of these and all his other acceptable works of faith, and hope that many yet unanswered prayers of his for us will receive the answer of peace in our time of need; and though separated, as to the body, we still have communion in the Spirit. Indeed, I desire to receive this removal, in which I have so deep an interest, as a loud call to me, "Be thou also ready, for the Son of man cometh at an hour thou thinkest not." And I earnestly desire and pray that, by the grace of God, I may be “a follower of him who now, through faith and patience, inheriteth the promises." Much as I have reason to lament my loss, yet mine is not to be compared with that which you and your dear family have sustained. I desire to sympathize with you, lamenting the removal of an affectionate husband, endeared by the sweet and trying experience of many years, of a dutiful father, a faithful and zealous pastor, and to all a Christian friend, exemplary in doing, in enjoying, and in suffering. His excellent character in all these relations, produced by the grace of God through faith in his beloved Master, must just now embitter his loss; in God's time, if not at present, it will sweeten and purify your sorrows, and mingle lively thanksgivings with your lively lamentations. The more excellent he was, the more will you miss him ; but the more excellent he was, the more "meet was he for the inheritance of the saints in light," and the more fitted to live in the affectionate remembrance of his beloved family. It will be impossible for you to escape those meltings of heart, which a thousand recollections of one whose image is interwoven with all your thoughts, with the very being of your mind, and is impressed on every object around you, will from time to time produce. But this image had on it the image of the living God, qualifying to enjoy communion

with God while here, and prepared to enter into his glory hereafter. If he is not here, he is with his Lord, who came and received him to himself, and conducted him into the mansions of his Father's house, that where the Master is, there the servant may be also. Whatever may be the feelings of your affectionate heart, I am sure your enlightened practical judgment would not recall him for a mere earthly and imperfect gratification of your own, to the state of weakness, and suspension of his official duties, and suffering, from which his gracious Lord saw meet to release him. I am sure your love for him, gradually rising above all selfishness, will not grudge him the sight and enjoyment of the unveiled glory of him, whom his soul loveth above all in heaven and in earth-the equality with angels. Joy must mingle with your sorrow, and praise with your lamentations. What higher gratification to sanctified affection or sacred ambition than to be with him in glory? What path will lead you all more certainly thither than the one so well known to you -the one he was enabled to enter on, and to the last to persevere in-even "the way, the truth, and the life ?" And will not your affectionate recollection of what he was, how he prayed and laboured to lead you all into the land of uprightness, and of where he now is, and how employed, draw you towards Jesus in glory by the cords of love? All human unions are liable to be dissolved, as you have painfully experienced in one of the most intimate and endearing; but there was a union you, my dear Madam, enjoy which shall never be dissolved, which shall sanctify all other connexions while they subsist and when they are dissolved. Your union with Christ, and, through him, with God, will console you in your present and heaviest of earthly losses-and in all your future sorrows, and in death itself, which puts an end to the connexions of time, it will bring you into an

heavenly intimacy with your Lord, and with him whom you loved tenderly and now weep for bitterly. Your earthly and spiritual charge of your family becomes heavier far, and cannot but occasion parental anxiety. Instead of weakening your heart or your hands, I trust that God, on whom you cast all your cares, will render this the means of rousing to salutary watchfulness, exertion, and prayer; and that, in the experience of yourself and them, you will know him to be" the Judge of the widow, and the Father of the fatherless." In my daily prayers for those "mourning over painful bereavements" you and your family find a daily place. I would have written Mr James did I not think that he must have left you, and that you would convey my apology to him. I was detained in Glasgow from Saturday the 9th to Saturday afternoon the 16th. When I came home that evening I found his melancholy kind letter. An engagement of some weeks' standing obliged me to cross the water on Monday, and remain till Tuesday evening; and I had public worship yesterday. You will perceive, I hope, that it was out of my power to have been with you on Monday, which I certainly would have been had circumstances permitted; and so hurried have I been ever since I came home, that I could not find leisure to write you till now, which I have done amid a press of business, and amid many interruptions. Offer my kindest acknowledgments to Mr James for his letter, so affectionate and dutiful to the memory of his dear father, and so obliging and friendly to myself. Mrs Scott has been confined for the most part through the winter, but is better. The young people are well. Alexander and Margaret are at Glasgow. When convenient a note from you would oblige us greatly. Mrs Scott unites with me in affectionate sympathy and regards to you and all the members of your family absent or present,