1725. MR THOIVZAS BOSTON. 521 emblem of my lot; viz. difficulties "ventured on at the Lord's call, which I know not how to get through ; ,carried through, mean- while, in the greateft difficulties ; and then the clouds returning again after the rain. When I came home, I found J. A.'s child, whom he had got baptized by a curate brought in by him to this parifh, had died while I was from herne, and was buried thatfame day, a little before my arrival. Now for the remaining part of that year, to Dec. 12. I did, for my ordinary, handle the f'ubjeót of forfaking the fountain of living waters, and hewing out broken cifterns, &c. from Jer. ii. 13. *. The parifh of Selkirk having now for thine time been vacant, through the death of iVlr Macghie ; and my wife's cafe allowing my going abroad in the winter, rather than the fumrner ; I went thither, and preached Jan. 2. 1726. On the morrow after, I vifited a tick perfori without the town ; and from thence came to Faldhop in my way home, and vifited another; but was . taken ill there ofa fit of the gravel. Mounting my horte, I rode from thence in great agony to Newhoufe, in a cold frolty day : reaching which place with great difficulty, I juft fell down ; but getting into a bed a while, I recovered tome eafe. Wherefore I mounted again : but by the way it feized me anew, and in great ,diftrefs I came into Upper Delorain. There I staid all night, and turned eafy again. On the morrow coming homeward, it again feized me, that I was obliged to go to Calcrabank ; where recovering after a while, I came home, and it went off. This I reckon to have been owing to the unclearnefs of the drink I hadgot in my quarters at Selkirk : the which fince that time has made me more cautious ; drinking no ale while new, or very old, or muddy. A confiderable time after this beingat.Midg - hop, where was a little wench fromNewhoufe, who had find them, that at fuch a tithe, viz. the forefaid, I carne in there drunk ; Jane Hope, a well -difpofed perfon, wounded me to the heart, telling me, molt limply and imprudently, before not only the wench, as I remember, but another woman whom I was not yet well acquainted with, that the forefaid had fsid fo. Thus was molt unjuftly and cruelly wounded, in that place where I had often comförted, and been comforted : but this happened not indeed in the family molt comfortable tome. But O ! what need of that charity that " thinketh no evil ;" and of due caution as to the café and aótions of others, net to judge rafh ly ! It is dangerous, as my experience in that matter bath taught me. I had, Tome years before that time, encountered, in New- houfe, with a good man, whom I knewnot : him being paralytic in the tongue, and newly come home from a fair, I took to be drunk, fo that I could not endure to converf:e with him, till Walter Bryden, then tenant there cured me of my mifappre- * The fermons on this text were publiíhed in a volume in 1753. Rr`
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