I can bring you food and medicines, but have no power to turn them into your relief and nourishment: it is God alone that can do this for you.
Therefore, my child, fear, and worship, and love God. Secure an interest in his favour, by seeking after a living faith in Jesus Christ his dearly beloved Son; and then He, who blessed my father before I was born, will bless you when I am dead.
I shall in a short time die, and leave you to God and yourself; and as I know that my Redeemer liveth, and trust that God has forgiven me my sins, I shall go to my dear Saviour Christ Jesus, and live amongst patriarchs and prophets, saints and martyrs, and wait for your safe arrival at the same place.
Therefore, my child, meditate on these great things, and your soul, through the influences of God’s blessed Spirit, will soon grow great and noble, by so meditating upon them.
Let your thoughts often leave these gardens, these fields, and farms, to contemplate upon God, and Christ, and heaven, to meditate upon angels and the spirits of good men living in light and glory.
As you have been used to look to me in all your actions, and have been afraid to do any thing unless you first knew my will; so let it now be a rule of your life, to look up to God, even a God in Christ, in all your actions; to do every thing in his fear, and to abstain from every thing that is not according to his will.
God keepeth a book of life, wherein all the actions of all men are written; and when you die, my child, this book will be laid open before men and angels; and according as your actions are there found to have been done in, and proceeded from a living faith in Jesus Christ, you will either be received into the happiness of those holy men who have died in faith, or be turned away among those wicked spirits, those hypocrites and unbelievers, that are never to see God any more.
Never forget this book, my son, for it must be opened, you must see it, and you must be tried by it according to the deeds done in the body, whether they have been good, or whether they have been evil.
But above all, my child, learn of Jesus Christ to be meek and lowly in heart, and never do any thing through strife or vain-glory. Resist, therefore, and look up to Christ for a conquest over every thought of self-pride and self-distinction; and accustom yourself to rejoice in all the excellencies and perfections of your fellow-creatures, and pray and study that you may be as glad to see any of their good actions, as your own. For as God is as well pleased with their well-doings, as with yours; so you ought to desire, that every thing that is wise, and holy, and good, may be performed in as high a manner by other people, as by yourself.
When I am dead, my son, you will be master of all my estate, which will be a great deal more than the necessities of one family require. As you are, therefore, to be charitable to the souls of men, and wish them the same happiness with yourself, in heaven, so be charitable to their bodies, and endeavour to make them as happy as you can upon earth.