they may assure themselves of the divine presence in all, which will issue in their deliverance, in their exaltation, sometimes in distinguished honour and esteem among men, and, it may be, in a long course of useful and happy years on earth; at least, which shall undoubtedly end in seeing, to their perpetual delight, the complete salvation of God, in a world where they shall enjoy length of days for ever and ever, and employ them all in adoring the great Author of their salvation and felicity.  It is evident that these natural thoughts on such a Scripture were matters of universal concern.  Yet had I, as a minister of the gospel, known that this was the last time I should address Colonel Gardiner, and had I foreseen the scenes through which God was about to lead him, I hardly know what considerations I could have suggested with more peculiar propriety.  The attention, elevation, and delight with which he heard them, were very apparent, and the pleasure which the observation of it gave me, continues to this moment.

Let me be permitted to digress so far as to add, that this is indeed the great support of a Christian minister under the many discouragements and disappointments which he meets with in his attempts to fix upon the profligate or the thoughtless part of mankind a deep sense of religious truth; that there is another important part of his work in which he may hope to be more generally successful; as, by plain, artless, but serious discourses, the great principles of Christian duty and hope may be nourished and invigorated in good men, their graces watered as at the root, and their souls animated, both to persevere and improve in holiness.  When we are effectually performing such benevolent offices, so well suiting our immortal natures, to persons whose hearts are cemented with ours in the hands of the most endearing and sacred friendship, it is too little to say that it overpays the fatigue of our Labours; it even swallows up all sense of it in the most rational and sublime pleasure.

An incident occurred that evening, which, at least for the oddness of it, may deserve a place in these memoirs.  I had then with me one Thomas Porter, a poor but very honest and religious man, (now living at Hatfield Broad-Oak in Essex,) who is quite unacquainted with letters, so as not to be able to distinguish one from another, yet is master of the contents of the Bible in so extraordinary a degree, that he has not only fixed an immense number of texts in his memory, but, merely by hearing them quoted in sermons, has registered there the chapter and verse in which these passages are to be found.  This is attended with a marvellous facility in directing readers to turn to them, and a most unaccountable talent of fixing on such as suit almost every imaginable variety of circumstances in common life.  There are in this case two considerations that make it the more wonderful; the one, that he is a person of very low genius, having, besides a stammering which makes his speech almost