ed constantly morning and evening, but I cannot say I did
it always with the same efficacy. However, my imperfect devotions were
not without good effect; and I am confident, wherever this course is
pursued with a right view, sooner or later the issue will prove the
same to others as I found it to myself; I mean, that mercies will be
remembered with more gratitude, and evils be more disregarded, and
become less burdensome; and surely the person whose case this is, must
necessarily enjoy the truest relish of life. As daily prayer was my
practice, in answer to it I obtained the greatest blessing and comfort
my solitude was capable of receiving; I mean my wife, whose character I
need not farther attempt to blazon in any faint colours of my own after
what has been already said, her acts having spoken her virtues beyond
all verbal description.

After we were married, as I call it--that is, after we had agreed to
become man and wife--I frequently prayed before her, and with her (for
by this time she understood a good deal of my language); at which,
though contrary to my expectation, she did not seem surprised, but
readily kneeled by and joined with me. This I liked very well; and upon
my asking her one day after prayer if she understood what I had been
doing (for I had a notion she did not)--"Yes, verily," says she, "you
have been making petitions to the image of the great Collwar."*--"Pray,"
says I (willing gently to lead her into a just sense of a Supreme
Being), "who is this Collwar? and where does He dwell?"--"He it is,"
says she, "that does all good and evil to us."--"Right," says I, "it
is in some measure so; but He cannot of Himself do evil, absolutely and
properly, as His own act"--"Yes," says she, "He can; for He can do all
that can be done; and as evil can be done, He can do it."--So quick a
reply startled me. Thinks I, she will run me aground presently; and from
being a doctor, as I fancied myself, I shall become but a pupil to my
own scholar. I then asked her where the great Collwar dwelt? She told
me in heaven, in a charming place.--"And can He know what we do?" says
I.--"Yes," replied she, "His image tells Him everything; and I have
prayed to His image, which I have often seen, and it is filled with so
much virtue that it is His second self; for there is only one of them
in the world who is so good: He gives several virtues to other images
of Himself, which are brought to Him, and put into His arms to breathe
upo