Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/138

128 shown to my bed. He requested I would pray with them, if I had no objection. I asked him, how he could suppose I had any objection to praying? The Quakers, he said, seldom prayed; and there were others, who visited him, who were not in the habit of praying. I never propose prayer, sir, lest it should not meet with the approbation of those, with whom I sojourn; but I am always pleased, when prayer is proposed to me. I prayed, and my heart was greatly enlarged, and softened. When we parted for the night, my kind host solemnly requested, that I would think of what he had said. Alas! he need not to have made this request; it was impossible to banish it from my mind. When I entered my chamber, and shut the door, I burst into tears; I would have given the world, that I had never left England. I felt, as if the hand of God was in the events, which had brought me to this place, and I prayed most ardently, that God would assist and direct me by his counsel. I presented myself before Him, as a man bowed down by calamity; a melancholy outcast, driven by repeated afflictions of body and of mind to seek refuge in private life; to seek solitude amid the wilds of America: Thou knowest, said my oppressed spirit, thou knowest, O Lord, that, if it had pleased thee, I would have preferred death, as the safest, and most sure retreat; but Thou hast not seen fit to indulge my wishes in this respect. In thy providence, thou hast brought me into this new world; thou seest how I am oppressed by solicitations to speak unto the people the words of life; thou knowest, that I am not sufficient for these things; thou God of my fathers, thou God of the stranger, look with pity upon the poor, lonely wanderer, now before thee: O thou, that sittest in the heaven, and rulest in the earth, and who assurest us, that a hair of our head cannot fall, unnoticed by thee; O thou, who kindly directest us, thy poor dependent creatures, to acknowledge thee in all their ways, and to make their requests known unto thee in every time of affliction, behold thy poor dependent, supplicating thee for thy kind direction and protection; if thou hast indeed put it into the heart of thy servant to demand of me, the meanest and weakest of all, to whom thou didst ever give power to believe in the name of thy Son, to declare unto him, and the people of this place, the gospel of thy grace; O God! in mercy prepare me, prepare me for so vast an undertaking, and let thy presence be with me; strengthen me, O Lord, by thy mighty spirit. And if it be not thy pleasure thus to employ me,—for thou, O God, wilt send, by whom thou wilt send,—graciously manifest thy will, that so I may not by any means be drawn into a snare. Thou art the sinner's friend,