Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

sins of children, teach him all that your reason and duty

shall direct you.

Marg. I will do my endeavour, sir; and I think it is every servant's duty to do what you say.

Capt. I know you will make a conscience of doing it, Margaret; and remember God will require the soul of this child at your hand: I have hired you for God, you see, and you have taken his wages,-look you do your duty. [Margaret trembles and looks pale, and the tears run out of her eyes.]

Marg. Sir I beg of you take your money again, I am dreadfully frighted.

Capt. No, no, Margaret,-do not be frighted, you have a master now that will enable you to do all that he expects from you: I told you I would hire you to a good master, and if you do but your endeavour, Margaret, he will both bless your desires, and succeed your endeavours, and therefore do not be discouraged, Margaret,-if ever this child live to be a man, he will both honour and reward you for it.

Marg. I will do what I can, sir; but pray do not expect great things of me: for as soon as this poor lamb comes to be a little bigger, he will fall auto such dreadful hands, sir, have his ears so tuned with abominable words, and have such sad examples, that it is impossible, sir, but he must be ruined.

Cous. No, Margaret, it is not impossible: that child cannot be ruined.

Marg. Truly, madam, it is next to impossible; a child brought up in such a family, seems to be brought up for the devil; for my part, it grieves me so for the poor innocent famb, that I think verily I shall break my heart for him.

Capt. No, Margaret, you shall not break your heart about him; but it shall be the comfort of your heart hereafter, that you were sent hither to be a blessing to this child; and this child shall, with your help, be a reproof to the whole family.

Marg. I have often thought, sir, if it had been lawful, I would have run away with him; though I had bgged with him at my back, or worked for him as long as I had lived, so I might have but carried him out of this dreadful house, where he is sure to be ruined soul and body.

Capt. No, Margaret, you shall have no need to do that; do you but do your part, and instruct him privately and early, I tell you the wickedness of the family shall have no power over him; he shall rather be an instrument to reclaim them.

Marg. I wish it were in your power, sir, to prevent it; I see your good will enough; but you discourage me a little, sir, in being so positive.

Capt. Why does that discourage thee, Margaret? I think it should be quite the contrary.

Marg. Because, sir, I think you cannot be sure of the thing I hope you will pardon me, sir, we may be too rash in speaking, though we mean well, where there is no immediate knowledge of the thing.

Capt. Well, Margaret, you say true, I acknowlege I am no prophet; but I think God has discovered that he has some great work in store for him, and I believe it; let us not dispute the rest, do you do your duty, Margaret, and lay up these things in your heart: 1 am going a long voyage, and if I live to return, I shall inquire of you, what observations you have made upon this little discourse. Marg. I will give you the best account 1 can, sir. Cous. Pray go and fetch little Jackey to me. [Margaret goes away to fetch the child, and brings him dressed up in a little gown and cassock, and every way dressed in the complete habit of a clergyman.]

Marg. Here, sir, is my little master; 1 think they do not call him doctor for nothing.

Capt. What does 'his mother mean by this jest? Does she intend the child for a clergyman?

Cous. I dare say she would as soon breed him up to be a chimney sweeper; she has an aversion to the employ

ment; she abuses all the ministers of every sort, as if they were the scum of the earth.

Capt. No wonder that they who have no taste for gospel truths, should have no respect for gospel ministers: they that scorn the message, will hate the messengers.

Marg. I am sorry to see my mistress is such an enemy to all that is good: I believe she has made this habit for my little master in derision; but I am persuaded he will be a minister for all that.

Capt. Why do you think so, Margaret?

Marg. Why, sir, I am but a silly creature; but I will tell you a passage of my observation, and the occassion of it: I have taught my little master to know his letters; and spell a little, as well as I could, out of my own bible; for they have given him neither horn-book or primmer; and one day, when they had dressed him up in this new habit, and made as much game of him as they though fit, they sent him up to me to undress him: I happened to have a little time, and I said to him, come, my dear, will you say your book now? Yes, Margy, says he, (so he calls me.) So I took the book to look his lesson; but the book opening accidentally at another place, the child claps both hands upon the leaves, as if he had been at play, and began to look upon the book; No, my dear, says I, that is not the place; let me look your lesson. No, says, be, I will learn my book here. I would have turned it over again, but he would not stir away his hands: here, Margy, here, says he. What just here, my dear, said I? Yes, says he, just here, just here; and put his finger to a line, as if he had known it: I was a little surprised, because I know he could not read a word, nor know any thing of what was before him; but it came into my thought, that I would see what it was the child pointed so at: for I see him so positive, that I say it a little surprised me: but I was more surprised, when I found the words were in the 1 Cor. ix. 16. Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel: well, thought I to myself, this child will certainly be a minister.

Capt. It is a very remarkable thing indeed, Margaret: nay I think it is something wonderful.

Cous. Indeed it is: I never heard this before.

Marg. I never mentioned it to any one before, madam, for I laid it up in my thoughts as I have done many other things.

Cous. It is a wonderful passage indeed.

Marg. Truly, madam, I think every thing this child does is wonderful.

Capt. Well Margaret, lay up this in your heart too, till you see the event, as I desire you would what I said to you before; and take care to do your part with him till I come again.

Cous. She will have every day now things to lay up in her heart, as well as these: for the child is every hour saying something or other extraordinary.

Capt. Well, madam, there is something yet stranger to me than all this: and that is, that such passages as these, in a child so young, do not work some great alteration in the family; why such a child is enough to make a whole house serious, if they were the most profane wretches in

nature.

Cous. Really, sir, it is so; but it has a quite contrary effect here: the mother of this child is so effectually hardened against all manner of conviction, that nothing affects her and while it is so, how should it touch any of the rest of the family?

Capt. Certainly it will first or last.

Cous. I see no signal of it: she ridicules it all, and they by her example: and if at any time some of them are a little concerned, it wears off again, as I told you of one of the sisters and the mother laughs them out of every thing that is serious.

Capt. It is a sad thing: but I cannot but think it will be otheswise at last if this boy proves such a preacher of righteousness to them, as he seems to be, it will certainly have some effect upon some of them, one time or other,

though it may not just now: pray what says the father to it?

Cous. Why really, sir, the father is master of more sense, and more modesty, than the mother, or than any of the children, and he is not so hardened as they are, to banter and make a jest of religion.

Capt. I think so of him, and that made me ask what he says to it.

Cous. But then, sir, you know his infirmity, that he is almost always in drink.

Capt. Why, he is obliged to keep company with these great men, there is admiraland captain and he cannot get

and the commissioners of the away from them.

Cous. No, indeed, his servants are generally fain to fetch him away, as if he was dead.

Capt. He can have no room for serious things, in such a constant course of wicked life, if he were never so well inclined.

Cous. Truly the man has a sense of religion upon his mind at other times, and he hates mortally to hear his wife talk so profanely as she ordinarily does, and will often reprove her for it.

Capt. And how does she take it?

Cous. Take it! truly she does not take it at all,-she rallies him with his drunkenness, and his fits of repentance between it, and then talks the more profanely for his admonition.

[ocr errors]

Capt. Why that is the just consequence of a man reproving sin, that is not reformed himself.

Cous. So she tells him; and asks him how long his fit of repentance will last?

Capt. Then I fancy he is apt to talk penitently when it

is over.

Cous. Exceedingly indeed; he will call himseif ani me drunken sots, and wicked, cursed wretches that ne can think of, the next morning after he has been drunk; and

« ElőzőTovább »