Saviour whom you had unhappily adopted as a substitute
for virtue, must be received as a propitiation for sin. If you recover,
you must devote yourself, spirit, soul, and body, to his service. You
must adorn his gospel by your conduct; you must plead his cause in your
conversation; you must recommend his doctrines by your humility; you
must dedicate every talent God has given you to his glory. If he
continue to visit you with sickness, this will call new and more
difficult Christian graces into exercise. If by this severe affliction
you lose all ability to do God actual service, you may perhaps glorify
him more effectually by casting yourself entirely on him for support, by
patient suffering for his sake who suffered every thing for yours. You
will have an additional call for trusting in the divine promises; an
additional occasion of imitating the divine example; a stronger motive
for saying practically, The cup which my Father has given me, shall I
not drink it?"

"O, Doctor," said the unhappy man, "my remorse arises not merely from
my having neglected this or that moral duty, this or that act of
charity, but from the melancholy evidence which that neglect affords
that my religion was not sincere."

"I repeat, sir," said Dr. Barlow, "that your false security and
unfounded hope were more alarming than your present distress of mind.
Examine your own heart, fear not to probe it to the bottom; it will be a
salutary smart. As you are able, I will put you into a course of reading
the Scriptures, with a view to promote self-examination. Try yourself by
the strait rule they hold out. Pray fervently that the Almighty may
assist you by his Spirit, and earnestly endeavor to suffer as well as to
do his whole will."

Dr. Barlow says, he thinks there is now as little prospect of his
perfect recovery as of his immediate dissolution; but as far as one
human creature can judge of the state of another, he believes the
visitation will be salutary.

CHAPTER XLIV.

As we were sitting at supper, after Dr. Barlow had left us, Lady
Belfield, turning to me, said, "She had had a governess proposed to her
from a quarter I should little expect to hear." She then produced a
letter, informing her that Mr. Fentham was lately found dead in his bed
of an apoplexy. That he had died insolvent; and his large income ceasing
with his life, his family were plunged into the utmost distress. That
Mrs. Fentham experienced the most mortifying negl