Fine day, though windy. I passed my morning looking over a number or two of the Gallery of Portraits,1 then to Church. Dr. Lowell.2 I. Peter 4. 7. “The end of all things is at hand, be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer.” The Dr. did not exactly explain this hard passage, for he seemed to construe the end of all things as applied to any particular generation of men, to be death, in preparation for which they might be exhorted to sobriety and prayer. Perhaps in all the new Testament, now eighteen centuries old, nothing is more calculated to suggest doubt than the frequent announcement of the end of all things then near.

Mr. Walsh walked and dined with me. Mr. Frothingham in the afternoon. Matthew 10. 16. “Be ye therefore wise as serpents.” Mr. F. 149tried to explain the distinction between wisdom compounded of prudence and knowledge, and cunning but I think he would have more fully illustrated his point if he had followed out the text which evidently qualifies this passage by adding “harmless as doves.”

Read a discourse of Dr. Barrow upon the Incarnation. Matthew 1. 20. “For that which is conceived in her is of the holy Ghost.” A mystery. Evening at home. Goguet, and Tom Cringle.