sked my soul to amass! Counsel him, dear
sir; admonish him. Recall to his mind his dying uncle. I would now give
my whole estate, nay, I would live upon the alms I have refused, to
purchase one more year, though spent in pain and misery, that I might
prove the sincerity of my repentance. Be to Ned what my blessed friend
Stanley would have been to me. But my pride repelled his kindness. I
could not bear his superiority, I turned away my eyes from a model I
could not imitate." I now intreated him to spare himself, but after a
few minutes' pause he proceeded: "As to Ned, I trust he is not
ill-disposed, but I have neither furnished his mind for solitude, nor
fortified his heart for the world. I foolishly thought that to keep him
ignorant, was to keep him safe. I have provided for him the snare of a
large fortune, without preparing him for the use of it. I fell into an
error not uncommon, that of grudging the expenses of education to a
relation, for whom I designed my estate. I have thus fitted him for a
companion to the vulgar, and a prey to the designing. I thought it
sufficient to keep him from actual vice, without furnishing him with
arguments to combat it, or with principles to abhor it."

Here the poor man paused for want of breath. I was too much affected to
speak.

At length he went on. "I have made over to Dr. Barlow's son two thousand
pounds for completing his education. I have also given two thousand
pounds apiece to the two elder daughters of Mr. Stanley in aid of their
charities. I have made a deed of gift of this, and of a large sum for
charitable purposes at the discretion of my executors. A refusal to
accept it, will greatly distress me. Ned still will have too much left,
unless he employs it to better purposes than I have done."

Though deeply moved, I hardly knew what to reply; I wished to give him
comfort, but distrusted my own judgment as to the manner. I promised my
best services to his nephew.

"Oh, good young man!" cried he, "if ever you are tempted to forget God,
as I did for above thirty years; or to mock him by an outward profession
as I have lately done, think of me. Think of one who for the largest
portion of his life, lived as if there were no God. And who, since he
has made a profession of Christianity, deceived his own soul, no less by
the religion he adopted, than by his former neglect of all religion. My
delusion was this, I did not choose to be good, but I chose to be saved.
It was no wo