eminently instrumental in leading your children to piety. If God shall so overrule this great affliction, you will yet find in it causes of gratitude. How poor the world is without Christ! Each of us has a number of loved ones, the removal of any one of whom would be quite sufficient to darken our entire horizon. We are, by the inexorable law of our being, destined to a succession of such bereavements, each wringing the heart with an intensity of misery many times greater than that of our highest enjoyment. Our latter days, if we do not die young, are to be a growing desolation. This single fact in the common history of men demonstrates better than a thousand arguments a future state of compensations. We must take refuge here, or, as it seems to me, in atheism.

I beg to be remembered to your children in this season of their affliction. I have not neglected to pray for them and for you, that God may overrule your temporary affliction to your eternal good.

I have just sent to the press a sermon on death-its consolations and import, of which I intend to send you a copy when it comes out. It may interest you, perhaps, at this

time.

My family are quite well, as, indeed, they always are. They have not been ill a day for several years. Henry is now three and a half years old-a large, boisterous, bright boy. Lynch is fourteen months old, smaller, and so far quieter. Mrs. Olin joins me in assurances of regard.

CCII. TO MR. J. R. OLIN.

Middletown, October 24th, 1850.

My health has been somewhat better than it was when I was at your house. Indeed, I was just then disturbed by the excitement of being at Commencement, which I was a week or more in getting over. I have been able to attend to my business without interruption since my return home, as I have, indeed, ever since my long illness in

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New York, which ended on the 8th of May last. excess, however, the slightest additional effort or excitement, overpowers me, and brings me quite to the verge of serious illness. I have, perhaps, no right to expect any greater exemption from this ever-pressing weakness, and ever impending liability to absolute prostration. These are the conditions under which I have held my office here for eight years, which have thus been made burdensome and unsatisfactory, in spite of the domestic and other blessings I have enjoyed. What an unspeakable boon would it be to be able to work. How gladly would you and I exchange our comparative repose for labor, for toil, if the Master should permit! And how little qualified am I to determine what would be best for me! How should I? I may say, I trust, how do I rejoice that my changes are in the hands of God, who is of an infinite wisdom as well as compassion! Were my convictions of duty as decided as my inclinations, I should certainly free myself from the responsibilities of a public situation, and retire to some quiet retreat, where I might do, whether in writing or preaching, what my health would permit. I should hope to get clear of a painful suspicion, now always hanging over me, of being out of my proper sphere. As it is, I am conscious of not being actuated by ambition or lucre, but solely by a desire to do my duty. I am kept in a place which my health does not allow me to fill properly, solely by the opinions and urgent advice of friends of the Church, and by a consequent dread of deserting my providential position, and thus doing harm. With good health I should like my actual position, and should not despair of being somewhat useful in it.

My family are in good health, as, indeed, they always are -a mercy from Heaven for which such an invalid as I am can not be sufficiently thankful. Henry is now just three years and a half old, and he is an endlessly talkative, boisterous, restless boy, as bright as a seraph, though not always

as mild and gentle. Lynch is not quite fourteen months old. He has lately learned the use of his feet, which carry him, with singular velocity, to every point where mischief can be done. We have given him credit, undeserved, I begin to fear, for being of a temperament rather less mercurial than his brother. Between them they keep up the most satisfactory evidence of life and motion within doors. I often look upon them with prayerful solicitude, in view of my own advancing years, and of their need of a strong hand to guide them on to manhood. God, I know, can do for them better than their father. To Him I can only commend them, from whom I receive them as signal mercies, lent us to promote both our comfort and piety.

CCIII. TO THE REV. DR. FLOY.

Middletown, October 31st, 1850. I felt exceedingly pained, as well as disappointed, at hearing this afternoon that Mrs. Floy is still far from having recovered her health—that she is hardly better than when I saw her last June in New Haven. We had heard, for several months past, that her health was decidedly improvedthat it was daily improving, and I have thought of her with much satisfaction, as being able to walk and ride out at pleasure. I now learn that she has not been able to leave the house since you got into your present dwelling. What a comfort it is to know that our friends, in their times of trial, have access to the highest sources of consolation-to feel assured that God is dealing graciously with them, under all the sorrowful aspects which He permits their affairs to assume. You and Mrs. Floy, I am sure, feel the supporting hand to which you have directed so many afflicted ones, who have felt soothed and profited by your counsels, prayers, and sympathy. It is, probably, because I have had a good deal. of communion with you in my hours of weakness, that I feel in reference to your family affliction as I seldom feel for my

fellow-Christians. My thoughts revert to your prayers and genial converse, which cheered many an hour of dim prospects. To me and my dear wife these recollections are very pleasant. I might truly say, they are affecting, and I hope you will not suspect me of departing from a sober style in saying that I remember them thankfully, and that I feel specially led to sympathize with you and yours in your time of trial. I pray that God may cause the cloud to pass away, and that our dear friend may again rejoice in sound health. And may you both be graciously sustained through this and all other trials of your faith and patience!

I had hoped that we might have the pleasure of a visit from you. I wrote to Dr. M'Clintock three weeks since, to ask you to accompany him in a trip he had promised to make to see us. I fear that you would hardly be able to leave home, but if that should become practicable, and you could afford yourself the indulgence of so much recreation, I can not tell you how glad we shall be to see you.

My health has rallied since my long illness, and settled down at about the point I attained to after I had adopted the hydropathic practice. But for the painful conviction which I always feel, that I am responsible for duties which I can not perform, I might enjoy life tolerably well, since the most of my unpleasant sensations are occasioned either by this humiliating sense of unprofitableness, or from attempts to do something in the way of study or official work to which I am not equal. I have always the consolation of feeling that I am willing to do or suffer God's will. I hardly know whether to apologize for the tone of this letter. I did not intend it, but my feelings prompted it.

CCIV. TO MRS. J R. OLIN.

Middletown, Dec. 23d, 1850.

I received your note of the 18th instant last Saturday. I hardly expect to hear more favorable accounts of

my brother's health than your letter contains, though nothing could have given me greater pleasure than to be informed that he was better, and had some good prospect of being restored to health. For this, however, I no longer look; and if he is not worse, and remains tolerably free from pain, and retains his blessed cheerfulness and his strong faith in God, his friends have cause for gratitude; and I trust that we shall and do give thanks to the Author of all good for so many alleviations of such protracted, deep afflictions. How sweet the hope of heaven to one so far excluded from participation in worldly pursuits and excitements. Freedom from sickness, and repose from cares and responsibilities, to which I am wholly unequal, through the feebleness of my health, usually form no slight portion of the staple of my anticipated heaven. I mean, that such exemptions from the physical ills which press upon me ever rise to my view as specially desirable, and as good compensation for all that I should lose by exchanging worlds; not that freedom from sin and temptation, and communion with Christ and with the glorious things to be revealed to us, are not chief ingredients in my anticipated paradise. I think my brother must share with me in such hopes of the future. It will, indeed, be a wonderful contrast with his present condition to be able to put forth the untiring energies of a disembodied spirit in that world where the inhabitants never say "I am sick"-where he who never sees the inside of a church, and scarce the expanse of earth and sky, may rival the halleluiahs of angels and apostles. I am wont to slide away into such comfortable musings when I think of my dear brother, stretched upon his bed month after month, with, I fear, little prospect of restoration. For a mere worldling, how cheerless is such a prospect! Yet for a child of God it is not desolate. It is infinitely more desirable than to have health, and prosperity, and honor, and not to have Christ. I am sure it yields more of even present enjoyment than many of fortune's favorites attain. Blessed assurance