DIALOGUE I. MISS NEWMAN. Good morning, Mrs. Dormer; I am glad to find that you are able to take advantage of this fine day after your late indisposition. MRS. DORMER. I thank you, Miss Newman, I am much better than I was, when you so kindly favoured me with a call; and this clear morning seems to brace my nerves and cheer my spirits, which have suffered by my long confinement. Pray how is your neighbour, Mrs. Philmund? for I hear that she has been ill as well as I. B MISS NEWMAN. Yes; she has been very unwell indeed; but I am happy to inform you that she is much better. She is a woman of a very amiable temper; but I wish I could see more spirituality of mind in her. I indulged a hope that this indisposition (since affliction is the frequent means which our heavenly Father employs for the cure of our spiritual maladies) would have produced a salutary effect; and have proved as beneficial to her soul as the prescriptions of Dr. Pearson have done to her body. MRS. DORMER. But why, Miss Newman, do you express so much solicitude about Mrs. Philmund's state of mind? Have you heard any thing that reflects disgrace on her moral character? I have long observed with pleasure the constancy of her attendance on the ministry of the Gospel; and that, not only on the Lord's day, but also at our weekly lecture. I have found by conversation with her, that her mind is well in formed, and that her views are evangelical. I am also assured that an altar for God is erected in her house, where she has family-prayer morning and evening; and when I have called on her, the Bible has lain on her table, which I supposed she had been reading. If a judgment may be formed from occasional intercourse with the young ladies, her daughters, she has taken great pains with them, and devoted much of her time to them; for their conversation, though sprightly, is sensible, and frequently tinctured with a religious hue. Mrs. Philmund's charities seem to bear a proportion to her income; and when she cannot relieve, she always pities circumstances of distress, wishing that her means were larger, that she might have the pleasure of more diffusive benificence. 1 MISS NEWMAN. All this is true and much more of the same kind; which made me say that Mrs. Philmund is a very amiable woman. The traits of her 1 See note A. in Appendix. character which you have mentioned, have won my esteem to a great degree; and thence arose the wish I just now expressed when you inquired after her. That wish, I can assure you, was not uttered in a spirit of censoriousness, nor was it the result of a proud self-righteous disposition; for I do not know one individual in the catalogue of my acquaintance, at whose feet I cannot sit, knowing myself to be less than the least of all saints; if indeed the name of a saint can, with any propriety, be applied to one so unworthy of divine favour as I am. But my dear Mrs. Dormer well knows that one thing is needful; and that this ONE THING is a spirituality of mind, which, though it may vary in its degree of perfection, is a certain consequence of a true conversion to God: for to be carnally-minded is death; but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace.1 1 Rom. viii. 6. |