RELIGIOUS REFLECTIONS. 85 



a good picture. As copied and improved by my sugges- 

 tions, it is my own blessed mother at fifty-seven to fifty- 

 eight years old, almost returned to life again. She has the 

 same smile and glow of maternal love in her bright face, 

 with which she was wont to meet us (my brother and my- 

 self), when we came home from college. 



Religious reflections, to which he was never a 

 stranger, become more and more frequent in his 

 Diary : 



1848, April 21st. This is Fast-day, and brings a wel- 

 come day of repose and reflection, amidst the agitations of 

 a busy world. We have always occasion enough for humil- 

 iation and penitence, especially when we realize how insuf- 

 ficient are our resolutions, how imperfect our obedience, 

 how frequent our transgressions. The decided conviction 

 of my own mind is, that we cannot depend upon ourselves 

 for salvation. All our obedience is due from us, as much as 

 if it were to be the ground of our acceptance, and it is the 

 only proof which we can present to ourselves or others that 

 we are really Christians ; but it falls so far short of the 

 standard of God's moral law, that we must rely upon a 

 righteousness not our own for our justification, and that 

 righteousness is Christ's. This is a good custom of our 

 ancestors to call the people off one day in a year from their 

 ordinary employments to consider in a more thorough man- 

 ner than usual their great spiritual interests. 



On entering upon his seventieth year, he wrote as 

 follows : 



August Sth, my Sixty-ninth Birthday. It is a solemn 

 period of life when one enters his seventieth year. This is 

 now my case. But I cannot say with old Jacob, that my 

 days have been few and evil. Upon the reduced scale of 

 human life, my days have already been many, and they 



