Morning very fine. My Wife was more quiet and better today. I am in hopes she will be making progress now. Worked on my coins until time for divine service which I attended and heard Dr. Frothingham preach from John 9. 41. “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” The discrimination between the ignorant and the wilful guilt is an ingenious one to draw and perhaps the most useful question of practical morals which can be agitated.

Afternoon Job 29. 2. “Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me.” A very beautiful moral discourse upon regret for the past, showing that it is inconsistent with the desire for progress which should animate men and can never be supposed to have existed in Jesus Christ the great exemplar of our faith. But this is no parallel for the consciousness of trial made life to him a suffering experience whereas to man generally the pleasures balance the pains.

Walk with my boy John, and Mr. Walsh dined with me. Read a discourse of Buckminster’s upon the epistle of Philemon, illustrating historically the character of Paul. Evening at home. Wrote a short letter 3to my Mother,1 and read attentively the seventh book of Politics of Aristotle.