Coelebs In Search of a Wife

by Hannah More

Through the good Doctor I received a message from Mr. Tyrrel, requesting me to make him a visit of charity before I quitted the neighborhood. I instantly obeyed the summons. I found him totally changed in all respects, a body wasted by disease, a mind apparently full of contrition, and penetrated with that deep humility, in which he had been so eminently deficient.

He earnestly intreated my prayers, adding, "though it is presumption in so unworthy a being as I am, to suppose his intercession may be heard, I will pray for a blessing on your happy prospects. A connection with such a family is itself a blessing. Oh! that my nephew had been worthy of it! It is to recommend that poor youth to your friendship, that I invited you to this melancholy visit. I call him poor, because I have neglected to enrich his mind: but he will have too much of this world's goods. May he employ well what I have risked my soul to amass! Counsel him, dear sir; admonish him. Recall to his mind his dying uncle. I would now give my whole estate, nay, I would live upon the alms I have refused, to purchase one more year, though spent in pain and misery, that I might prove the sincerity of my repentance. Be to Ned what my blessed friend Stanley would have been to me. But my pride repelled his kindness. I could not bear his superiority, I turned away my eyes from a model I could not imitate." I now intreated him to spare himself, but after a few minutes' pause he proceeded: "As to Ned, I trust he is not ill-disposed, but I have neither furnished his mind for solitude, nor fortified his heart for the world. I foolishly thought that to keep him ignorant, was to keep him safe. I have provided for him the snare of a large fortune, without preparing him for the use of it. I fell into an error not uncommon, that of grudging the expenses of education to a relation, for whom I designed my estate. I have thus fitted him for a companion to the vulgar, and a prey to the designing. I thought it sufficient to keep him from actual vice, without furnishing him with arguments to combat it, or with principles to abhor it."

Here the poor man paused for want of breath. I was too much affected to speak.

At length he went on. "I have made over to Dr. Barlow's son two thousand pounds for completing his education. I have also given two thousand pounds apiece to the two elder daughters of Mr. Stanley in aid of their charities. I have made a deed of gift of this, and of a large sum for charitable purposes at the discretion of my executors. A refusal to accept it, will greatly distress me. Ned still will have too much left, unless he employs it to better purposes than I have done."

Though deeply moved, I hardly knew what to reply; I wished to give him comfort, but distrusted my own judgment as to the manner. I promised my best services to his nephew.

"Oh, good young man!" cried he, "if ever you are tempted to forget God, as I did for above thirty years; or to mock him by an outward profession as I have lately done, think of me. Think of one who for the largest portion of his life, lived as if there were no God. And who, since he has made a profession of Christianity, deceived his own soul, no less by the religion he adopted, than by his former neglect of all religion. My delusion was this, I did not choose to be good, but I chose to be saved. It was no wonder then that I should be struck with a religion which I hoped would free me from the discipline of moral rectitude, and yet deliver me from the punishment of having neglected it. Will God accept my present forced submission? Will he accept a penitence of which I may have no time to prove the sincerity? Tell me—you are a Christian."

I was much distressed. I thought it neither modest nor prudent for me to give a decisive answer. He grasped my hand. "Then," said he, "you think my case hopeless. You think the Almighty can not forgive me?" Thus pressed, I ventured to say, "To doubt his will to pardon, and his power to save, would, as it appears to me, sir, be a greater fault than any you have committed."

"One great comfort is left," replied he, "the mercy I have abused is infinite. Tell Stanley I now believe with him, that if we pretend to trust in God, we must be governed by him, if we truly believe in him, we shall obey him; if we think he sent his Son to save sinners, we shall hate sin."

I ventured to congratulate him on his frame of mind; and seeing him quite overcome, took leave of him with a heart deeply touched with this salutary scene. The family at the Grove were greatly moved with my description, and with the method poor Tyrrel had found out of eluding the refusal of his liberal-minded executors to accept of legacies.

The day fixed for my departure too soon arrived. I took a most affectionate leave of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, and a very tender one of Lucilla, who gratified my affection by the emotion she evidently felt, and my delicacy by the effort she made to conceal it. Ph[oe]be wept outright. The children all hung about me, each presenting me some of her flowers, saying they had nothing else to give me; and assuring me that Rachel should be no loser by it. Little Celia was clamorous in her sorrow, when she saw me ascend the curricle, in which neither she nor Lucilla was to have a place. I took the sweet child up into the carriage, placed her by me, and gently drove her through the park, at the gate of which I consigned her to the arms of her father, who had good-naturedly walked by the side of the carriage in order to carry her back. I drove off, enriched with his prayers and blessings, which seemed to insure me protection.