Morning cooler but fine weather. I went to the Office and was engaged in rectifying my Accounts which I finally succeeded in doing-225So that instead of finding myself nearly two hundred dollars deeper than my Accounts show for, I find a few dollars against me which exceed my actual expense. This is far the best error. It is not worth going over the accounts again to correct it, but I intend after new year to begin upon a new and a more accurate system.

Had one or two visitors. Mr. Walsh, an Applicant for the Office opposite and Mr. William Spear from Quincy. Walk. Afternoon Bacon. Virgil. Received a long political letter from my father and a short business one from T. B. Adams.1 Quiet Evening. Finished Byron’s Corsair to my Wife, and began an answer to my father.2

Cloudy and raw. I read some of Mr. Chalmers in the morning prior to attending divine service. Mr. Gilman of Charleston, S.C. preached1 in the absence of Mr. Frothingham to New York. Ezekiel 97. 2. “Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitations of his throne.” The inexplicable character of the Deity, yet the impossibility of reasoning from the creation to any other than the attributes here ascribed to him. 16. Luke 31. “And he said unto them, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” The argument against the authenticity of the scripietal scriptural account of Christ. The discourses were remarkable for nothing, but were clear expositions of the more ordinary views of Christianity.

Read a discourse by Atterbury, delivered at the period of the Anniversary of the Restoration. Ezekiel 37. 3. “And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.” The wisdom of providence manifested in Revolutions of Government, subject divided in four parts, 1. as displaying marks of his attention to the affairs of the world, 2. as ordering a sort of justice by distributing reward and punishment in this world which could not be done in the next, 3. as discovering the folly and vanity of men, 4. as inciting to national piety. I had heard Mr. Frothingham some time since on the same text to a different purpose. I hardly consider the Restoration as so great a blessing. Evening quiet. Read Chalmer’s.