few years of his life, the
severity of his controversial tone had been greatly softened; he lamented
his former lack of charity, the circle of his sympathies widened, his
social affections grew stronger with age, and love for his fellow-men
universally, and irrespective of religious differences, increased within
him. In his Narrative, written in the long, cool shadows of the evening
of life, he acknowledges with extraordinary candor this change in his
views and feelings. He confesses his imperfections as a writer and
public teacher.

"I wish," he says, "all over-sharp passages were expunged from my
writings, and I ask forgiveness of God and man." He tells us that
mankind appear more equal to him; the good are not so good as he once
thought, nor the bad so evil; and that in all there is more for grace to
make advantage of, and more to testify for God and holiness, than he once
believed. "I less admire," he continues, "gifts of utterance, and the
bare profession of religion, than I once did, and have now much more
charity for those who, by want of gifts, do make an obscurer profession."

He laments the effects of his constitutional irritability and impatience
upon his social intercourse and his domestic relations, and that his
bodily infirmities did not allow him a free expression of the tenderness
and love of his heart. Who does not feel the pathos and inconsolable
regret which dictated the following paragraph?

"When God forgiveth me, I cannot forgive myself, especially for my rash
words and deeds by which I have seemed injurious and less tender and kind
than I should have been to my near and dear relations, whose love
abundantly obliged me. When such are dead, though we never differed in
point of interest or any other matter, every sour or cross or provoking
word which I gave them maketh me almost irreconcilable to myself, and
tells me how repentance brought some of old to pray to the dead whom they
had wronged to forgive them, in the hurry of their passion."

His pride as a logician and skilful disputant abated in the latter and
better portion of his life he had more deference to the judgment of
others, and more distrust of his own. "You admire," said he to a
correspondent who had lauded his character, "one you do not know;
knowledge will cure your error." In his Narrative he writes: "I am much
more sensible than heretofore of the breadth and length and depth of the
radical, universal, odious sin of selfish