dying soldier will bless you for your tender concern for his recovery, and the suggestions you have given about the health of his soul. You will return home, I trust, before your constitution be much injured, and you become unfitted to enjoy the comforts for which you have so long laboured. I anticipate the banquet of pure rational family delight on your return, and the prospects which will open to the minds of your excellent parents, in the enjoyment of your affectionate and dutiful services for many, many years. In their joy my heart shall be glad.

"Are you in a situation in which you can aid our missionaries at any of their stations, or give us any information or counsel connected with the sacred cause? If so, I know you will do it. The bearer, the Rev. Donald Mitchell, goes out to Bombay as a missionary, under the patronage of the Scottish Missionary Society. He was for many years in the army in India, a lieutenant or captain, and came home on the score of his health, but after a Divine change had been produced on his mind. He has been regularly licensed and ordained by the Presbytery of Nairn, in the communion of the Kirk of Scotland. I scarcely know a more pious and tender-hearted young man. He is prepared to esteem and love you, should Divine Providence bring you into contact with each other. I think, after you know him, you will introduce him yourself into the warmest nook of your heart, and I know he will keep his quarters.

"Now, my dear William, I must, for the present, say farewell. The everlasting arms be underneath and around you. May every purchased and promised blessing be in your cup! Write me a long letter; and I will try to be a better correspondent than I have been. Mrs. W. and the young folks unite in affectionate solicitations to be remembered with your sincere friend and faithful servant."

The reader will be glad to be favoured with another letter to the same young man, on account

of its excellent counsels, and the particulars in Dr. Waugh's situation to which it refers.

MY DEAR DOCTOR,

"Salisbury Place, July 18, 1825.

Many a time have I come up to the study to put down a few thoughts for you, and, by some intrusion or other, have been prevented. Whether I shall get to the end of this sheet, I know not; but I shall go on. There is no counsel I can give you with which your excellent and religious education hath not amply furnished you. But perhaps the repetition of things you already well know may not be unacceptable from an old man, who has known and loved you from your infancy, and who has the privilege of numbering your father's family among his friends..

"You are in a land of strangers, and exposed by your profession to peculiar dangers, both to animal and spiritual life. You can best judge of the means of protection from danger to the former; and my reading, experience, and habits, enable me, and my heart strongly urges me, very affectionately and humbly to suggest to you, as I would to my own son, a few plain and useful, because scriptural, thoughts on the latter.

"The spiritual health of the soul is closely connected with the daily perusal of the Holy Scriptures, and the conscientious observance of the duties of the closet. The mind of a good man, thus engaged, rises into a purer atmosphere than that which ordinary men breathe: the soul becomes invigorated, in her confidence in the holiness, wisdom, and goodness of the Divine government; in her elevated hopes of the future grandeur, sanctity, and blessedness of her redeemed nature; and in all the kind affections which soften the path of our intercourse with man,- -a path which our own unsuitable tempers frequently make hard and rough. Those hopes of the future

will give a holy elevation to your thoughts and pursuits, and induce you to connect every action with its bearing on your final destiny, and make your mind alive to render all the good in your power to the bodies, fortune, character, and, above all, to the souls, of those within the sphere of your influence. While you thus move in the path that leads to honourable independence, you will be laying up for yourself treasures of pleasing recollections in the evening of your age,-recollections which gold and silver cannot purchase.

"Amid the cares and bustle of a camp, and the horrors of warfare, you will be able, I hope, to find time for retirement, for the reading of the blessed Bible, and the pouring out of your heart, and all its wants, and woes, and wishes, into the bosom of your Father and your God. These exercises will bring sound composure and strength into the mind, and give dignity to your deportment, even in the ordinary business of your profession, to which they will make you a credit and bright ornament.

'I shall only add, my dear young friend, that when I get near the Throne, I will remember you-separated from your father's house, and exposed to a thousand temptations, from whose malignant influence no arm but God's can shield you.

My own health has suffered much for these last two years, in consequence of an accident I met with by the giving way of the platform at the laying of the foundationstone of the London Asylum. I am, however, gathering strength, and able to go into the pulpit every Lord's day. But when a man reaches seventy-one years, and after he has spent more than forty-three of these years in London, recovery of lost strength is sad up-hill work. I bless God, however, that I am not entirely laid aside, and wish to close my career in the service, however much interrupted, of my divine Lord and Master.

"When you can spare half an hour, you will, I trust, gladden my heart by a few lines from your own hand, tell

ing me of the health of your soul,—the highest gratification to your affectionate friend."

These letters were beautifully fitted to recall to remembrance the counsels of the pulpit, and to give to the lessons of religion all the interest which they could derive from association with long-venerated piety. Many of our young men who go abroad are destined to places where they have no opportunity of attending on Gospel ordinances, and where serious impressions are in danger of being effaced by the influence of worldly scenes, from whose vanities no monitor detaches, and against whose temptations no holy guardian The pious friends of such youths should be stimulated by the example of this excellent man to convey to them the lessons of wisdom in love; and the bread thus cast on the waters they shall find after many days, in seeing the salutary influence of such pious counsels, and in experiencing new excitement and energy in the prospects they have opened, and the obligations they have described.

warns.

In further illustration of the parental anxiety with which he watched over the spiritual welfare, and encouraged the worthy aims of such of his friends as were called by Providence to reside in distant lands, we shall quote a passage or two from his letters to a gentleman who, with a little band of his relatives and countrymen, emigrated in 1820 to South Africa, in pursuance of the plan at that time set on foot by Government to plant a British population on the eastern frontier of the

Cape colony. This party of emigrants, being not only Scotch, but chiefly from that part of the country of which Dr. Waugh was himself a native, and to which he was attached by so many tender ties, it may be conceived with what affectionate interest he entered into their feelings, and with what active zeal (although his personal intercourse with most of them was necessarily brief and hurried) he exerted himself to further their views, by furnishing them with letters of introduction to missionaries and other good men at the Cape; and by procuring them, through his influence with the Bible and Tract Societies, abundant supplies of the Scriptures and of religious publications, in English and in Dutch, both for their own use and for distribution among the uninstructed people around their future residence. The individual introduced to the leader of the party by the following note, joined them as a settler, but subsequently became a missionary, and is still in South Africa, zealously labouring in the great cause which Dr. Waugh had so much at heart.

"Vestry of Wells Street Chapel, Feb. 7, 1820.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,

"The bearer (Mr. Elliott) comes recommended to me by the Rev. Mr. Smith, a worthy dissenting minister, on whose testimony you may repose entire confidence. I enclose for your perusal his letter to me; and beg, when you have read it over, that you will put it into the letter to Dr. Philip. I hope Mr. Elliott will prove a valuable accession to your society, and from his habits of reading and religious character will relieve the ennui of a long