nd touched with the feeling of our infirmities--Jesus wept--and
God, the almighty God, to support, overrule, deliver. Therefore my
heart rejoiceth always."

"MAY 16, 1796.

"'If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments,
if they break my statutes and keep not my commandments, then will I
visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with
stripes: nevertheless, my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from
him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail; my covenant will I not break,
nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.' Psalm 89: 30. Amen;
blessed promise. Oh, it is a well-ordered covenant, and it is sure. Of
all the provisions of the covenant, this has been to my soul among the
most comfortable. Thanks be to God for the discipline of the covenant;
often has it been administered: thou knowest, and I know in part, how
necessarily, although I shall not know nor understand all, until that
blessed rod shall have perfected its correction, and shall never more
be lifted up.

"Many ups and downs has thy servant experienced in this vale of
tears; many tears have watered these now aged cheeks; in a variety of
ways hast thou stricken, and at times stripe has followed stripe, but
mercy and love accompanied every one of them. I bless thee, Oh, I
praise thee, that I have seldom received a stripe but I had with it a
token of love. Sin was imbittered, a Saviour endeared, and grace given
to kiss the rod, and cleave to him that had appointed it. And now I
can read in legible characters where, in many instances, thy check met
my wandering steps, stopt me short of huge precipices, and preserved
me from destroying even my worldly comfort. In some instances--I thank
thee they have not been many--thou hast been pleased to let me alone,
to let me pursue my own way, ways so wise in my own eyes that I have
either not sought counsel at all, or sought it as Balaam did, with my
heart set on my own will.

"In some cases thou hast let me eat of the fruit of my own
doings, and let me weary myself in my own way, until I found it not
only vanity and vexation of spirit, but sometimes a labyrinth from
which I could find no escape: then did I cry unto the Lord; then did I
remember my backslidings; then did I seek unto the cleansing fountain
and to the appointed Mediator, the maker up of the breach: then did I
experience afresh the Lord's power to sav