Page:Memoir of the Reverend David Wilson (2).pdf/3

 ledge we may mention, as a striking illustration of his early piety. He and another young man, in intimate companion bf his own, built a turf house in the fields, in which they often met for religious conversation and prayer, and often spent whole nights in these pious and improving exercises. Under the disorder which terminated in his dissolution, he looked back on these exercises with great pleasure, and sometimes said, that if he had been then called to put off his earthly tabernacle, he thought that he would have died in the full assurance of faith and hope. Thus feeling the power of divine love, and experiencing the joy, the peace and the hope which spring from faith in Christ, he felt a strong and a growing desire to engage in the work of the ministry; and, after much meditation and prayer, entered, in that course of learning and study, which is preparatory to preaching and defending the gospel of Christ and persevered, till, wider the miles of Divine Providence, he reached the object his devout wishes. That his desire to engage in the ministry was a matter of deep and curious concern to him, is manifest from a letter which lately came into Our hands, and which, it appears, he had written to the friend above-mentioned during the first year of his residence at college. We make the following extract, as all illustrative of his Christian attainments at that period.

"Indeed, my brother, the more that I enjoy my God, the less do I think of my books, far for latter, compared with the former, are taste's and insipid; but yet my soul feels pleasure and delight in these words, “Go feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own