how fruitful my wicked imagination was in framing wicked words. I remember, as well as if it was but yesterday, sitting under a hedge with my companions, and betting wagers on who should out-number the other with the lists of oaths and curses that he knew, and we took a square stick which we marked with chalk and clay with the number we each uttered-I remember biting my tongue with passion when I thought I should stick fast, but as if the devil himself helped me, a new and dreadful oath came from my lips, and I triumphed as though I'd won a hero's laurel, when it was confessed that I'd beaten.

I now became an open profane swearer; and when I sometimes uttered a string of such things before my father, he used only to say, "Hey Hey, man! not so fast, not so fast!"-whilst my poor mother used to look as if she thought she'd a fine valiant son growing up, who would protect her in her old age.

One day I was at play with my companions, and going on in the usual way, when an elderly gentleman stopped to watch us. After waiting a little time, he beckoned us to him-Here lads; tell me if you go to school? We all an

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DITLANE Swearer au presumptuous tre Gog › nor name, was held with but we'd no fancy

- things, and made our escape ne boys were coupling to go down

to Church. Thus God was good to let me hear so much, and to put it so deep in my memory; but I was wicked and would none of his reproof and warning; so that I even turned it into another form of dreadful oath.

So I went on corrupted and corrupting, till it was time to put me to learn a trade. My brother mean time had been taken by our uncle, and I chose to be a flaxdresser. This was not a trade likely to break me of my sin; for I was put in a shop where twenty men worked, and where I heard language suited to my wicked taste. The men look'd with some astonishment, when they heard how seasoned my tongue was to their awful dialect; and one man clapping me on the back, said, You're welcome, my lad; you speak out like a man, we shall be jolly friends. I was as much puffed up by this commendation, as though it had been to my honour; and a serious looking elderly man came up to me, and said, Poor boy! remember, the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain.

Again God was gracious. This word was not repeated to my ears without recalling the Sunday school to my mind,

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and a kind of sickness came over me for a minute I know not why, but as the testimony that God has given to every man a conscience, accusing or else excusing," and it passed off in the moment that the other winked and said, O, he's an old saint, we should all sit down and mope if we listened to him. This raised a din of murmuring and abuse from all against the old man; and the number of the party against him, as well as my own sin, made me join hands with the blasphemers, and cast in my lot with them.

After I had been about two years in this situation, I remember well a remarkable storm of thunder and lightning with heavy rain. I was a good deal frightened, and not the less so, when I saw all the men trembling and stopping work. But the old saint, I observed, went on calm and quiet, sometimes looking out of the window, and exclaiming, how beautiful the flashes were!-and when one of the peals came very loud, he stopped his hand a moment, and in a devotional expression, said, "The voice of the Lord is in the thunder!"-he might have preached then and none would have mocked. But a gentleman came hastily into the shop, and asked if we would give him shelter

till the violence of the rain was over. All were quiet and civil, and the gentleman asked if he was known to any of us: we all said, No. I'm sorry for it, he said, for you ought to know your Minister, and I fear you know as little of the house of God.

He gave us a real sermon upon all the sins which he had reason to think we were guilty of, and said, I hope you will some of you listen to me as to a friend, and that God's goodness may be hereafter shown by thus providentially bringing your Minister to you. I see you are all alarmed by this thunder storm; it is very awful; but you will have to see another, which will awake the dead, and consume the earth, and call sinners before the judgment seat of Christ, to give an account of the sins done in the body.

He then addressed himself to me in particular; whether it was that I was the youngest, or because he saw sin in broadest characters on my face, I know not, but he warned me solemnly against all sin, and the contamination of evil communications. Alas, he did not know that I was one who could give more contamination than I could receive; and he concluded all by saying, "Beware of blas