PAGE 380:
CHAPTER IX

FROM HIS REMOVAL TO NEW-BRUNSWICK,
UNTIL HIS DEATH AND BURIAL.

"There is something singularly affecting," says an elegant writer, speaking of Abraham's departure, at the seventy-fifth year of his age, from his country and kindred, and father's house, to go unto a land which God had promised to show him. - "in the idea of an old man giving up the scenes of his youthful days; scenes endeared to the mind by the fond recollection of past joys; foregoing his kindred and friends; and becoming an exile and a wanderer, at a period when nature seeks repose, and when the heart cleaves to those objects to which it has been long accustomed. But that man goes on cheerfully, who knows he is following God; he can never remove far from home, who has made the Most High his habitation; he who falls asleep in the bosom of a father, knows that he shall awake in perfect peace and safety."

This passage has not been quoted, with a view to compare the subject of these memoirs to the venerable

PAGE 381:
CHAPTER IX

patriarch of old, or because it is supposed that the removal of the one, in its attending circumstances, bears much of a resemblance to that of the other; but simply for the purpose of observing, that the affecting impression, which such a removal as it describes is represented to make upon the mind of a reflecting person, must be in a degree produced by every other that is so far similar as to combine the two circumstances of advanced age, and preeminent piety, or that takes place at a late period of life, from a desire to obey what is believed to be the divine will, and to promote the glory of God. There is, indeed, a moral grandeur in the fact, which cannot fail to excite mingled emotions of admiration, veneration, and love, in all who witness it, of a man who is bending under the weight of years, and tottering apparently upon the verge of the grave, bidding farewell to objects long and tenderly loved, and departing to a new place of residence, there to begin, in a manner, life over again, purely out of a sense of duty to the Master whom he serves. Such a fact evinces too plainly, to admit of their being questioned, the power of faith, and the love of Christ; and the individual in whom grace has this ascendant, constraining influence, must be regarded with affectionate respect, as an eminent follower of Abraham, and all them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.