our duty, and to be useful in our day and generation, that we may be ready to depart, to render up our account at last with joy, to obtain the favour of our Judge, and be admitted to spend an eternity of bliss in bis presence, whenever he shall be pleased to call our spirits to himself. Meanwhile, whether in trouble or in joy, may we say, with the patience of afflicted Job, 'All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come!' Thus, my dear brethren, have I endeavoured to improve this truly awful event, and this providential deliverance. May the appalling effects of ungoverned passions and evil company be deeply impressed on our memories, and inscribed on the tablets of our hearts? Can we listen to the recital without being struck with horror, or yearning with benevolence? Should we not all unite in opposing and stemming the torrent of infidelity, which hurries men forward to such depths of madness and guilt, and overwhelms them in the floods of despair? I have esteemed it my duty to exert all my powers against Infidelity-the growing and gi gantic monster of the present age-the parent of vice, misery, and black despair-the blaster of man's brightest hopes, the murderer of his immortal soul, the robber of his crown of glory. 77 CHAP. III. THE CONTRAST; OR, THE HISTORY OF THOMAS ROYLE, A RECLAIMED PROFLIGATE; AND OF MR. S. AND A LADY, BOTH AT PRESENT LIVING. 'Behold from realms of light descend Royle's abandoned Youth-Voyages-Sickness-Temptation to Self-Murder-Preventions-Reformation-Happy Death -Moore's Penitent.—Mr. S. his Profligacy-Distress-Attempt at Self-Destruction-The Bible his Preservative.—A Lady-Her unhappy Marriage-Attempt at Suicide-Preserved by her Child. I CANNOT but here introduce the history of one who sought to God in trouble, and was thus preserved from despair and suicide: Mr. Thomas Royle was born in the parish of Lymm, in the county of Chester, in the year 1780. Mr. and Mrs. Royle were respectable farmers, and gave their son a competent education. It was about nine months before the death of Mr. Thomas Royle, their eldest son, that I became first acquainted with him; his parents having for several years resided in Latchford, near Warrington, the chapelry of which I was the Perpetual Curate. He had been frequently mentioned to me by his friends as a profligate and violent young man, whose excesses had occasioned them great expense, and given them much pain and trouble. One day I met his mother, who had a tale of a very different kind to tell me of her son-he was the prodigal returned ! In one of our interviews I requested him to give me some account of his life, and particularly of that part of it in which so great a change had been effected in his mind and character. He complied with my request, and gave me the following particulars, in nearly the same words and order, as far as I can recollect: 'I grew up a headstrong and rebellious youth, and, when arrived at the age of eighteen, nothing would satisfy me but going to sea. To see different parts of the world was the chief object of my desires. My father accordingly obtained for me the situation of steward on board a slave-ship at Liverpool, in which capacity I made three voyages to Africa and the West Indies.' Here he entered He had into a minute detail of his conduct, which corresponded with the corrupt state of his heart; and, with the exception of some instances of kindness to the poor slaves and his shipmates, his life was a continued scene of profligacy, drunkenness, and forgetfulness of God. To use his own expressions respecting himself and his comrades, The greater our dangers, and the more signal our deliverances, the more wicked and hardened we were.' been in imminent dangers, and had obtained surprising escapes. In some storms the billows had swept several of his comrades overboard, and the lightning had struck some dead, and knocked down others, who rose only to jeer and blaspheme, instead of thanking God. Shipwrecks, imprisonments, perilous enterprises in accomplishing his escape, great straits through want of food, clothing, and friends, had made him familiar with trial and distress. The yellow fever, also, had in one voyage sent him home almost a skeleton, and, as he conceived, fast hastening to the tomb. But all these dangers and trials,' he said, failed to bring me to repentance; when I returned to Latchford I was the terror of my friends and the corrupter of the neighbourhood. 6 After my third voyage I remained at home for eighteen months, an useless burden to my friends; when I left Latchford, and soon after enlisted for a soldier in the Royal Artillery, and, upon joining the regiment, I was speedily promoted to the rank of sergeant, and sent to Warrington on the recruiting service. Here I remained some time, during which my friends had the mortification to hear of and witness my conduct, which was so notoriously bad as to give them all much pain. 'I was ordered to join the regiment at Woolwich, and there, in the midst of my career of folly. and wickedness, the hand of God overtook me, and threw me on the sick bed in the hospital, with many others as wicked as myself. However we might in health have cheered and elevated each other's spirits, none of us knew how to administer consolation to a sick or dying comrade. Here, in an irksome and painful leisure, I ruminated on the desperate and forlorn state to which I was reduced, and soon discovered myself to be a vile outcast, abhorred by all the world. If my thoughts were turned to my relations, I knew my conduct had ensured their hostility, and that my death must with them be rather a cause of rejoicng than of sorrow or trouble. When I looked to my companions, many of whom I had led into sin, my imagination could not produce me one person of whom I could think in the endearing character |