Pleasant day. Services as usual. Evening at Mr. Brooks’.

I passed my time as usual, continuing the History of the Jews by Milman which is my Sundays reading besides one Sermon and the regular devotional exercises. Dr. Frothingham preached in the morning from 1 Timothy 2. 4. “Who will have men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” A discourse upon the probable design of the deity, in signifying the spread of the gospel and the universality of the Christian Religion which had not as yet taken place.

Afternoon Luke 16. 24. “I am tormented in this flame.” Dr. Frothingham is one of the class who draw every thing into the vortex of fancy. I for one am not prepared to pronounce that hell is a place of fire where flesh is burnt, but then on the other hand I am not prepared to maintain it’s impossibility or that after admitting for once the resurrection of the body, there is any sort of improbability in it. After all, the subject is beyond us.

Read a Sermon of Dr. Holland in the English Preacher, Psalm 34. 19. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.” The favourite subject of the action of the Deity 172upon good and bad alike, which is puzzling to many but plain enough to any one who believes in a future state. The one proposition hangs upon the other.

Evening, as my Wife had a cold I went down and paid a visit to Mr. Brooks. Found there Mr. and Mrs. Story and after a pleasant hour walked home with them in company.