mean; he studied submission to the will of God *. and spent two melancholy months waiting for an opportunity to depart. At length, on the 10th of March 1758, he left Carnwath once more, and next week embarked on board the Arcturus tender for London. After passing at Surgeons Hall, he received an appointment from the Navy-Office of second surgeon's mate to the Portland, a fifty-gun ship, and set out immediately for Portsmouth on foot. Although he could have reached that place on the evening of Saturday the 29th of April, he preferred halting at a village within ten miles of it till the morning of the following Monday, "not daring," he says, "to join such company on such a day," and judging it more proper to devote the last Sabbath which perhaps for some time he should spend on shore, to those religious exercises which his circumstances particularly required. That he might not be exposed to interruption, he retired into the fields, took his Bible, paper, pen, and ink, along with him, and spent the day "pleasantly, he says, "praying that he might above all things be preserved in his new situation from sin and vice, and committing his friends at home to the guidance of Providence." In these fields he wrote the ninth meditation in this volume, the perusal of which will give the reader some idea of the manner in which he was employed.

Mr Meikle had scarcely entered the ship, when he was confounded at the discovery of a degree of wickedness, of which it does not appear that he had ever before formed any conception. "It exceeded," he says, "all belief, and I soon concluded that here I could not stay." His journals are every where filled ·

* See Solitude Sweetened, Med. vi. ix. xxxix.

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with complaints of the abandoned conduct both of the officers and crew. Their vile habit of profane swearing, their contempt of the Sabbath, their drunkenness, and gross and undisguised debauchery, were a continual source of distress to him during the four years that he continued on board. "I believe," says he, in a letter to the Rev. Mr Horn, "the demoniacs in the gospel were never more under the devil's power than many of these men are, whether we look to their lives or their language." His

righteous soul was so vexed from day to day with their filthy conversation and unlawful deeds, that it preyed on his spirits, and threatened to affect his health. "This day," says he, July 7. 1758, "when I took a serious survey of the wickedness practised around me, when I saw all fear of God cast off, heard them on the morning of the Lord's day swearing, and singing obscene songs, and observed the ship's boats bringing lewd women aboard, no respect being paid to the holy Sabbath, which God has set for a sign between the Christian world and himself, yea, the shame of sin being gone, I was filled with vexation, grief, and, might I say, holy indignation, till my breast aked, and I was pained at my very heart."

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It was not merely compassion for the poor wretches themselves that occasioned Mr Meikle such distress. He trembled for himself. Some of his wicked companions had been educated religiously; when he reproved them, they replied to his reproofs, that ere long he would not be so squeamish, and quoted examples to convince him that he would soon be reconciled to their manners, and adopt them as his own. "These," says he, "were terrifying thoughts to me. They led me to reflect seriously on my own vileness and my own weakness, and to fly to the

divine promise, with resolution to keep out of the way of sin, lest, as they predicted, I should be ensnared, and become as one of them." It did not satisfy his conscience that he abstained from their vices; he dreaded the effect of witnessing their wickedness, in lessening his detestation of sin, and strengthening the depraved inclinations of his heart. "One thing," says he, in a letter to a friend, "which I fear, is, lest the frequent sight of sin diminish that abhorrence of it which I should always entertain. Sin, the oftener it is committed, is the more aggravated, and so the sight of it should become the more grievous to me; and can I say that I have sustained no injury, if I begin, through familiarity with it, to hate it less than before? Sometimes, I reflect how, under the law, the touch of a dead body, or any unclean thing, though accidentally or unwittingly, made the person ceremonially unclean; and hence infer, that the very hearing, seeing, and knowing of sin, considering the corruption that remains within us, renders us unclean, especially if, by grace in vigorous exercise, a real detestation of the sin benot kindled in the soul, and a proper sorrow wrought there for the dishonour done to the Most High. Now, dear Sir, you see my critical situation; pray for me."

Amidst the dangers with which he was surrounded, Mr Meikle put his trust in God. It comforted him, he says, that the Lord, who delivered just Lot, knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations; and that if he should not answer his prayers by delivering him from this situation of danger, he would do it by making his grace sufficient for him, and his strength perfect in weakness. It was to him according to his faith.

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Though the wicked," he says, gave me grief without, yet God comforted me, and was the joy of my soul." And again he expresses himself thus: "Woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips! O the unclean things that the unclean lips convey to us, if not to our heart to defile us, yet to our ear to disquiet us! Yet I have God to bless that I was, as it were, saved by fire, purified even by means of sin,—a mystery I never knew before; for the more of their sin I saw, the more I hated it, and was made to deplore the fountain of all, original guilt."

Had it not been for the wickedness of those on board the Portland, Mr Meikle would have felt no desire for some time to change his situation in life. He kept his health; he was satisfied with his pay; he had a birth to himself and the first mate, who was a quiet, inoffensive, but irreligious lad, and gave him little disturbance; and the officers of the ship treated him with politeness. His character appears, during the whole period of his continuance at sea, to have commanded the respect of his ungodly companions. They sometimes ridiculed him indeed for his strictness; yet he remarks, "Though they were wicked, I had their favour, which my fellow-mate had not." They desisted, on more occasions than one, from sports on the Sabbath which were disagreeable to him; and took it in good part when he reproved some of them very sharply for their vices. In consequence of his honest endeavours for their benefit, some of them even confessed and lamented their folly, and put themselves under restraint for a while. Their fickle resolutions, it is true, were commonly soon broken; "yet," says he, "I never gave oyer now and then

to reprove, though I sometimes had little thanks for it, not knowing when God might give the blessing;" and though he could not boast of being the means of the conversion of any of them, he had the comfort of doing his duty, correcting some abuses, and preserving the esteem even of those who would not be reformed. After he had been three years on board, he could write to his sister thus: "Abstracting from their wickedness, and surely when we see transgressors we should be grieved, my situa tion is singularly happy; for there is not an officer aboard but is ready to oblige me, and to do any thing to serve me.'

The happiness which Mr Meikle experienced when at sea, did not result only or chiefly from the favour of man. He had pleasures of a superior kind; the transcendent happiness of fellowship with God, joy and peace in believing, and assured hopes of eternal life. "Whatever God shall do with me here," he says in his journal, July 28. 1758, "yet I know that I shall praise him among assembled elders, and serve him before the throne among those who are made priests and kings to him for ever and ever.' And about a year after, he writes to his sister in the following words: "I may say from experience, that religion sweetens all places and all conditions; and that the man who sets his love on God need not live alone, though far from all his friends and acquaintances. God rules always best for his people, and a chearful submission to the divine disposal is our duty; and when frank, and full, and from the heart, how pleasant is it !" Indeed, almost every one of the meditations in "Solitude Sweetened" and "the Traveller," which were written at sea, might be quoted in proof of the very flourishing state of religion in his soul..