These were most eminently the happy years of his life; for he had learned to estimate his happiness, not by the increase of honour, or the possession of wealth, or by what was much dearer to his generous heart than either, the converse of the dearest and worthiest human friends; but by nearness to God, and by opportunities of humble converse with him, in the lively exercise of contemplation, praise, and prayer.  Now there was no period of his life in which he was more eminently favoured with these, nor do I find any of his letters so overflowing with transports of holy joy, as those which were dated during this time.  There are indeed in some of them such very sublime passages, that I have been dubious whether I should communicate them to the public or not, lest I should administer matter of profane ridicule to some, who look upon all the elevations of devotion as contemptible enthusiasm.  And it has also given me some apprehensions lest it should discourage some pious Christians, who, after having spent several years in the service of God, and in humble obedience to the precepts of his gospel, may not have attained to any such heights as these.  But, on the whole, I cannot satisfy myself to suppress them; not only as I number some of them, considered in a devotional view, among the most extraordinary pieces of the kind I have ever met with; but as some of the most excellent and judicious persons I any where know, to whom I have read them, have assured me that they felt their hearts in an unusual manner impressed, quickened, and edified by them.

CHAPTER VI.

LETTERS.

I will therefore draw back the veil, and show my much honoured friend in his most secret recesses, that the world may see what those springs were, from whence issued that clear, permanent and living stream of wisdom, piety, and virtue, which so evidently ran through all that part of his life which was open to public observation.  It is not to be imagined that letters written in the intimacy of Christian friendship, some of them with the most evident marks of haste, and amidst a variety of important public cares, should be adorned with any studied elegance of expression, about which the greatness of his soul would not allow him to be at any time very solicitous, for he generally (as far as I could observe) wrote as fast as his pen could move, which, happily both for him and his many friends, was very freely.  Yet here the grandeur of his subject has sometimes clothed his ideas with a language more elevated than is ordinarily to be expected in an epistolary correspondence.  The proud scorners who may deride sentiments and enjoyments like those which this truly great man so experimentally and pathetically describes, I pity from my heart, and grieve to think how unfit they must be for the hallelujahs of heaven, who pour contempt upon the nearest approaches to them; nor shall I think it any misfortune to share with