illness and death of a child. It is communicated in a letter to one of his family.

"The last time I saw your dear father was on the 2d of April, 1827. Affliction had entered our dwelling; he heard of it, and came to administer consolation. Looking on my dear dying babe for some moments with much interest, he said (for I shall never forget the affecting scene), 'We will approach the Throne:' and, amongst many, many striking thoughts, in his most impressive prayer, the following sunk deeply into a mother's heart: -'Our Father and our God, if it be thy will, spare this beloved child, and restore him to his now sorrowing mother; but if thou hast not so willed, may the unspeakable happiness be hers of knowing and believing that he is removed from her afflicted bosom into the sympathising bosom of his Father and his God.' After concluding a prayer which might have dropped from the lips of him who leaned on the bosom of Christ, he turned to me with one of those looks of kindness which, I had almost said, he only could give, and said, 'Take comfort, my dear lassie; for if this dear boy be spared, I feel assured it will be for a blessing; and if he be removed, yours will be the unspeakable happiness of knowing that you were honoured to nurse an heir of glory. Yes, my beloved friend, he has a father on earth, and a Father in heaven; but you will be his only recognised mother in heaven, to all eternity.'

He writes to another friend who had lost an only son in India, in a manner which shews how fully he entered into all the circumstances by

which such a trial was aggravated. Though the parents of Mr. H. were denied the melancholy consolation of following their only son to the grave, Dr. Waugh regarded the Lord Jesus as present with them, when, in heart and in fancy, they visited that scene, as exercising the feelings of condolence, and expressing the assurance of hope. He thought with gratitude and awe of that mysterious, but, to him, kind Providence, which had spared to him all his ten children, and had required his friend to surrender his only son to death. It was by this sympathy that he was armed for the stroke which soon after fell on his son and associate in the Gospel; and for it he was rewarded in the tears which were mingled with his as he laid the head of that accomplished youth in the grave.

"MY BELOVED AND AFFLICTED FRIEND,

"At length I have been able to sit down and write to you; and what shall I say? May that God, who is the Father of all mercies, and knows the avenue that leads to divine consolation, himself do the work which I am utterly unable to do! I have carried you and your dear Mrs. H. to his throne of grace, in secret and in the family, and humbly hope that, through the great and gracious Advocate, my unworthy prayer will not be despised nor rejected. There is not a view you can take of the Divine character which may not be brought to bear upon your hearts for consolation and submission. Our God is sovereign, and we ought to shut our mouths, and, in silence, bow down before him. He might see the storm of temptations arising in the East, and, in fatherly kindness, hide the tender plant in the earth, to be brought forth in the peaceful morning of the resurrection, unbroken and unblighted by the tem

pest. He might see in the hearts of his beloved parents, affections and partialities growing which were encroaching on his right to the supreme place in the soul, and, to save the parents, find it necessary to take the son to himself. He is now making trial whether you can live on God alone, as your all-sufficient portion, and saying, 'Am I not to you in place of ten sons? Did I freely give my only-begotten and best-beloved Son, at the call of your necessities, and will you grudge your dear son, at the call of my sovereignty and wisdom, and to answer an important and gracious purpose connected with your eternal welfare, which you cannot now see? Suffer your beloved child to come unto me, and forbid him not. The gracious temper of his renewed heart will flourish better in the heavenly Paradise than in India. You have now an additional argument to set your hearts on things above. Prepare to meet him, elevated to a more stable throne than that on which the aged patriarch was called to meet his darling son at Memphis.'

"Beware, my dear friend, of suffering your mind to succumb, and sink into a state of tender melancholy. This will greatly weaken you for bearing with becoming firmness the pressure of the heavy calamity, and prevent that usefulness in the church and in society for which the frame of your active mind happily qualifies you. If you could get a small farm of 607. or 801. a-year, which would give employment to your industry, though you did not make a shilling of profit by it, it would gently agitate, without fatiguing your powers, and leave you leisure to do good, in the way of encouraging pious and humane institutions, on which I well know your heart to be greatly set. It would give suitable employment to Mrs. H., and make the evening of your united lives tranquil and useful.

"I need say nothing to you of the importance of reading, with devotion and application, the blessed Book of God, or of unceasing prayer and supplication. Cultivate religious intimacy with the good men around you, Messrs.

Primrose, Fleming, Brown, and others. Send to Edinburgh for Cecil's Visit to the House of Mourning, a small tract, but of inestimable worth.

Now, my beloved friends, dear to me ever since I knew you, but now, in the night of your sorrow, doubly dear to me, I commend you to the care, sympathy, and succour, of the God of all comfort, -the God (and he is your own God) who comforteth them who are cast down. May the aid of his good Spirit descend, as the dews of the evening, on your broken hearts, to refresh, invigorate, and strengthen them. Mrs. Waugh, my son Alexander, and the girls, unite in tenderest sympathy to you both. I scarce know how to cease, and must leave it to the good Spirit of God to supply, in his all-sufficient and effectual manner, my deficiencies. Ever and most affectionately yours."

To a friend from whom God had taken the desire of his eyes, he addresses, among others, the following solacing counsels:

"To say, my beloved friend and brother, that you have the sympathy and meltings of my heart, is to say little. You have a deep and imperishable interest in the sympathy of the Advocate before the Throne, whose bosom is the dwelling-place of divine pity, and whose tender pleadings for his suffering people the Father heareth always. Into his bosom you will pour all your wants, your woes, your wishes to him is intrusted the administration of the concerns of all his redeemed people. He can do nothing that is wrong, nothing that is unwise, and nothing to his own which is eventually unkind. He may do what he will with his own; and he hath called to himself the wife of your youth and the guide of your children. You can no more clasp her to your bosom, but you will take to the firm grasp of your sanctified affections a living Redeemer. Live on your covenant God; repose unshaken confidence in his sure and precious promises. Arouse

your mind from the tender and dangerous melancholy into which it may probably settle, to holy activity in the education of the dear children whom he has intrusted to you, and in the vigorous discharge of the duties you owe to the purchase of Christ, the people of your charge. Court the company of lively Christians, especially of those who have drunk of the same cup with yourself. Avoid solitude, unless when you are with God. There is a soft melancholy in your mind against which you must pray and struggle. Arm yourself with the patience, the submission, the fortitude, and the confidence in God, of the Captain of your salvation. Fix your eye on the matchless example of religious excellence which his unknown bereavements brought into light. Breathe after conformity to him. Let no present attainments satisfy you. Anticipate the future dignity, holiness, and felicity of the heavenly state; and the restoration of the friendship and love, and that in every heightened form, which death hath suspended, but can never destroy. Study to form the hearts and hopes of your dear children in such a manner as you conceive their beloved mother would have formed them; let the hope of her approbation strengthen the more sacred principles of paternal care and solicitude: this will keep her lovely image before your eyes, and turn the remembrance of her virtues to a valuable account, and will also enable the dear children to form a just estimate of their mother's worth."

To Mrs. Young, of Jedburgh, he writes, after the death of her husband, -a man whose dispositions were singularly mild and benevolent, whose ministrations were characterised by affectionate earnestness and simplicity, whose unremitted exertions for the spiritual welfare of his widely-spread charge entitled him to the praise that he was in labours most abundant, and who