Select passages from the diary and letters of the late John Blackader, Esq.

LIFE AND PAFsENTAGE. XV
have been early, and it proved abiding. He was
admitted to the Lord's fupper when he was only
twelve years of age. It may feem ftrange that
a youth thus difpofed mould have chofen a mili-
tary life, but this perhaps may not have been the
effect of preference but of neceffity, or of a fenfc
of duty. In the circumftances of his father's fa-
mily at that time, he might not, poffibly, have
had the opportunity of being educated to any of
the profeflions of civil life which a Chriflian,
a&ing as fuch, would in moll circum fiances aiTu-
redly deem far more eligible. But however enor-
mous the guilt of thofe who excite or maintain
vide for them, and wrote a long letter to his wife from
thtnce in 1697, which has been often printed at Edin-
burgh, with the title of" Faith promoted and Fear? pre-
vented, from a proper view of affliction as God'* rod,"
pp.77 nmo. It contains many excellent and finking
fentiments on this fubjedt, well calculated to maintain
the patience and fortitude of fuffering Chriftians. — Mr
Young died in 1699, and fome account is iubjoined to
the edition of the Letter I have leen (1771) of the beha-
vioui of his widow under this trial. It appears from this
that fire was fupported by the confolations of the gofpel,
and though left with fix children, and pregnant with a
feventh, was preferved from painful anxiety relpefting
their provifion. God raifed up friends to them ; her
prayers were heard, and her hopes fulfilled. She was a
careful obferver, as well as her brother, of the ftate of her
own mind and conduct, and of the providence of God ;
a record of both, from 1700 to 1774, is mentioned in the
preface to the above Letter of her hufband, as extant in
her writing. She i'urvived all her father's family, and
died in 173*1 thirty-three years after her hufband.