e happiest that ever was spent on earth. I cannot omit
one more, which appears to me the more worthy of notice, as being a short
turn in as hasty a letter as any I remember to have seen of his, which he
wrote from Leicester in June, 1739. "I am now under the deepest sense of
the many favours the Almighty has bestowed upon me. Surely you will help
me to celebrate the praises of our gracious God and kind benefactor."
This exuberance of grateful affection, which, while it was almost every
hour pouring itself forth before God in the most genuine and emphatical
language, felt itself still as it were straitened for want of a
sufficient vent, and therefore called on others to help him with their
concurrent praises, appears to me the most glorious and happy state in
which a human soul can find itself on this side heaven.

Such was the temper which this excellent man appears to have carried
along with him through such a variety of places and circumstances; and
the whole of his deportment was suitable to these impressions. Strangers
were agreeably struck with his first appearance, there being much of the
Christian, the well-bred man, and the universal friend in it; and as
they came more intimately to know him, they discovered more and more the
uniformity and consistency of his whole temper and behaviour; so that
whether he made only a visit for a few days to any place, or continued
there for many weeks or months, he was always beloved and esteemed,
and spoken of with that honourable testimony, from persons of the most
different denominations and parties, which nothing but true sterling
worth, (if I may be allowed the expression,) and that in an eminent
degree, can secure.

CHAPTER IX.

INTIMACY WITH THE AUTHOR.

Of the justice of this testimony, which I had so often heard from a
variety of persons, I myself began to be a witness about the time when
the last mentioned letter was dated. In this view, I believe I shall
never forget that happy day, June 18, 1739, when I first met him at
Leicester. I remember I happened that day to preach a lecture from Psalm
cxix, 158, "I beheld the transgressions, and was grieved because they
kept not thy law." I was large in describing that mixture of indignation
and grief (strongly expressed by the original words there) with which
a good man looks on the daring transgressors of the divine law; and in
tracing the causes of that grief, as arising from a regard to the divine
honour, and t