and was not God long-suffering he would never bear with such an one as I am.

For, being informed that the house I then dwelt in was to be sold, and being desired by my landlord to admit any person into it that came, unsettled my mind exceedingly, interrupted me in my studies and in my writing, and made me as peevish and as fretful as one chained to a galley. However, sold it must be, and sold it was; and I, being a tenant at will, must prepare my stuff for removing. Some of my friends attended the sale on my behalf, but the price ran too high. As it was but a leasehold, a person in the neighbourhood, a possessor of much money and a professor of religion, who was resolved to have it, bought it for himself and family. I had expended a few pounds in paving the walk to the door and the yard behind the house, which the auctioneer said should be paid to me, but that pay never came.

Some few days were spent in looking after a house, and at length one presented itself, which was empty, and had stood empty for some time; the rent was double to that which I was leaving, that being twenty pounds per annum, this forty. Nevertheless I took it, longing to be settled somewhere. I got the keys, and immediately began to move, though it was six or seven weeks before the time expired of my other house, for the which I must pay rent, having entered upon that quarter. When I had removed all my goods I lent the gentleman who had bought the premises the keys of the house,

that he might get it in order for his own reception, for which he was much pleased, and kindly thanked me; but he soon requited me for my kindness, by sending me an attorney's letter for taking up a little favourite tree which I had planted. Satan, upon this, tempted me to take out my knife and cut off another of my own planting close by the ground. But vengeance belongeth to God, and he will repay and so I found it, for in less than nine months my successor and his wife were both in their graves, and the house sold again. They removed me, and God removed them. But time calls me elsewhere. Beloved, farewell.

Ever thine,

W. H. S.S.

LETTER III.

TO THE SPARROW ALONE.

Dear Friend,

I CONCLUDED my last with my old habitation, and shall begin this new epistle with my new house. My new habitation being so much larger than the other, my little furniture was almost lost in it: "That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be num

bered," Eccl. i. 15. However, the unerring and never-failing providence of God, which has, in uniformity with his word of promise, incessantly followed me and presided over me all my days, most conspicuously appeared at this time also. A lady in the country sent me in a letter a forty pound bank note. A gentleman in the city gave me a handsome new bureau and two mahogany elbow chairs. Another gentleman sent me a new handsome chamber chair with stuffed back and sides, and a handsome cover and cushion. While another, who came to see my new habitation, said, My friend, I think you want a carpet for this large room,' and left me a ten pound note to purchase one. And here I must set up mine Ebenezer, and say, with a pious prophet of old, "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us."

But this stream of prosperity must not continue. I must be tried, I must learn my doctrine in the furnace of affliction, and fetch my sermons from God's powerful application and my own soul's experience; that I may be at a point and speak with authority, and that my hearers may see God's fatherly goodness and severity follow me and work in me, as well as hear an account of it from me. Elijah's sons must see the spirit of Elijah rest upon Elisha, before they can receive and revere him as his successor. I fell sick, and lay for some time; and for three or four years, one after another, I had much sickness in my family, and my doctor's bills of course came heavy. Besides one young

child at wet-nurse, I had five more at school, and three, one after another, lately dead. I had my eldest daughter at a school at Greenwich, and her governess gained the applause of many persons for her liberality to me; who averred that she educated my child for nothing, though I paid her sixteen guineas per annum for her all the time she was there, with one guinea earnest at her going, which was two guineas per annum more than she had for one half of her scholars. A little boy, which I had at wet-nurse at Walworth, was much desired by a gentlewoman in that neighbourhood, as soon as it was proper to wean him; which desire I granted, and she dry-nursed him, and had him for three or four years. She also gained the esteem of many of my friends for keeping one of my children gratis, because of my large family: but God knows that I paid her after the rate of twenty pounds per annum for every day she kept him. Thus some made the miraculous providence of God to favour me where it never appeared, while others denied the whole of it, and some burnt the relation of it where it really did. "I am as a wonder unto many, but thou art my strong refuge," Psalm

lxxi. 7.

About this time I called upon my dear and unwearied friends Mr. and Mrs. Baker, of Oxford street, who, from the time God first made me manifest in their consciences to the present moment, never failed me, forsook me, nor turned their

backs on me. For while the chapel was building, when money was continually demanded, if there was one shilling in the house I was sure to have it. God never suffered their souls to get one morsel of the bread of life but under me; and it is seldom that one quarter has rolled over my head, for these sixteen years, but what I have stood in need of some assistance from them: thus God tied us together. As they had no children of their own, God kept them caring and travailing many years for me; for whenever I was, like Issachar, couching down between two burdens, my constant haunt was there for condolence, sympathy, and succour; yea, when sorrow has quite driven sleep from my eyes, I have often called them up at three or four o'clock in the morning, either to bear a part of my burdens, or to unite with me in prayer to God that he would. These friends, at that time, were my largest or principal creditors; but I knew I was safe enough in their hands, and that they would suffer themselves to starve in a ditch before they would see me die in a jail.

At the same time God sorely tried them, by various losses in business, by bankruptcies and bad debts continually; and, to add a little more fire to the furnace, a very near relation in the flesh fell into insanity, who has been confined in a private madhouse at their expense for many years, and is still on their hands, as I and my concerns were many years on their backs: but still God supported