THE HISTORY OF HENRY MILNER. PART THIRD. CHAP. I. Containing an account of Henry's Return to his own home, after an Absence of rather more than a Year. SEVERAL years are elapsed since I closed my communications respecting Henry Milner, and, during this interval, various and multiplied have been the applications made to me concerning what more I might chance to know relative to our young friend. Some persons have expressed anxiety respecting the farther progress of this dear boy, through the dangerous years of advanced youth, remarking, that the pure Christian principles with which Mr. Dalben had inspired him, (through the divine blessing,) might have served him well during the years of infancy, and might, indeed, carry him, (though not without much quizzing,) with tolerable cre PART II. B dit through a private school-for after all, Clent Green was nothing more than a private school-but as to their being practicable in his intercourse with society in more advanced life, this was a question not easily solved; that is, could Henry Milner retain so large a share of Christian simplicity as he had hitherto possessed, without appearing in the world as a first-rate quiz, an amazingly odd fellow, and a vast bore. This question, under various forms, has been put to me a thousand times; and I have remarked, that it has been generally made by persons who have naturally a strong tendency in themselves to that sort of peculiarity of manner, which would lay their religion, if they had happened to have had any, particularly open to the scoff of the infidel, a sort of person who is always delighted with the opportunity of setting down any particular human infirmity to the account of religion; whereas this is certain, that whereever any peculiar absurdities are remarkable in a professor, it is always owing either to some misconception in his own mind of the Christian character, or to some hitherto unconquered defect of temper, which, in the contrast with his better principles, produces those contradictions in his deportment, which are so particularly amusing to the enemies of religion, and which |