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WARWICK ASSOCIATION.

up to this hell, in conscience, for my many sins of omission and commission. What a mercy it is to enjoy a hope in Christ, and the drawings of the Holy Spirit! Let me experience them now, sensibly and abundantly, that I may humbly walk before God in the light of the living.'

In the month of May, Mr. Stanford visited Warwick, for the purpose of attending an Association of Ministers, at whose particular request he preached the annual sermon, to a large and attentive congregation. The text was "Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God: and the Lord do that which seemeth him good." 2 Sam. x. 12. The Circular Letter, which, at a former meeting, he had been appointed to prepare, was referred to a committee, and being approved by them, was ordered to be printed. This interview proved not only refreshing to his, at that time too much dejected mind, but afforded him the opportunity of enlarging his acquaintance with ministering brethren from distant parts of the country, most of whom continued his personal and affectionate friends until death. In reference to this meeting he made the following remark in his diary" If such seasons be so truly interesting, how great will be the happiness of The General Association of all the redeemed, when they shall meet in the resurrection of the just!"

From this period until August, nothing special occurred. The customary parochial and pulpit duties were regularly performed, and not without success. Various family trials, as well as many mercies received, stand recorded in his journal for June. During the month of July he appears to have suffered considerable mental depression, but the Lord sustained him.

His next excursion was to Peekskill, where he delivered several discourses, which there is reason to hope were not in vain in the Lord.

On Saturday, the 5th of August, a serious affliction commenced. Mr. (now Doctor) Barrow, who resided in the family of Mr. Stanford, (from the year 1790, until 1806, and of whom he makes frequent mention in his diary, with all the affectionate tenderness of a father,) was early this morning taken so extremely ill, as to render the attendance of a physician necessary. About three o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Stanford also was seized with violent pains, first in the neck, then in his ancles, and afterwards in his knees; as though they were girt with a hot wire. This rendered him incapable of walking, and he was compelled at length to lie down on the bed. In the evening, when the doctor came to visit Mr. Barrow, he found Mr. Stanford in an alarming condition, and a vein was accordingly opened, but only a very small quantity of blood could be produced. The disease was pronounced to be the yellow fever, which but a few days before had commenced the work of death in this city. The following day being the Sabbath, on which the Lord's supper was to have been administered to the church, the people convened as usual, and many of them came to visit their afflicted pastor. During this trying dispensation of Providence, the Lord not only preserved his mind in a state of serenity, but granted him a spirit of filial resignation to the will of his heavenly Father. It has been said by the visitors, that he conversed on the subject of religion with more vivacity and solemnity than they had ever before witnessed. He experienced no rapturous emotions, but his soul was delightfully resigned to the Lord, and in the spirit of the apostle Paul, he seems at this time to have been able to exclaim: "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." This was the more remarkable, as his temporal concerns were at that time by no means in a desirable state of arrangement. The next day, his four children were removed from the house in Fair-street, and placed under the

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DEATH OF MRS. STANFORD.

care of a friend, in a part of the city as yet uninfected.

His fever increased, and raged with such violence, that he became perfectly deranged, and in this state he continued until the next Saturday. This was indeed one of the days of darkness in the history of Mr. Stanford; but even here the light of salvation beamed upon him, and he realized the fulfilment of that gracious promise-" At evening time it shall be light." On this memorable day, the hearse waited nearly two hours in expectation of his death, and for the purpose of conveying him to "the dark and silent vestibule of departed souls." Early the next morning some of his friends came to inquire at what time he died, when, to their astonishment, they found that the Lord had "rebuked the fever," and that there was a strong probability of his recovery. On the next Friday, his wife was taken ill of the same fever, but on the following Wednesday she was so far recovered as to obtain the physician's consent to visit her mother. This apparently favourable change was succeeded by a relapse, which she survived only four hours, and then bowed in death. This additional and very painful affliction, produced a serious effect upon his emaciated frame; nevertheless, he was assisted with Christian resignation to say-" The will of the Lord be done!" The body of Mrs. Stanford was interred in the southwest side of Trinity Church yard; but from the many burials which occurred at that time, it is to be lamented that the particular spot could never be identified.

Among the friends of Mr. Stanford who attended the funeral of his wife, Dr. Provoost caught the fever, but happily survived. Mr. John Cobby, Charles Hazard, (a student of divinity,) Mrs. Roberts, and her sister, contracted the same fatal disease, by sitting up with him, and died in a few days. The contagion prevailed so greatly in the immediate neighbourhood, that it was entirely deserted by the citizens, and his

EFFECTS OF YELLOW FEVER IN NEW-YORK. 69

friends thought it necessary to move him to Lumberstreet, on the other side of the city, where he continued more than a month, in great weakness, chiefly owing to a painful cutaneous eruption which followed the fever. By this time it was computed that upwards of two thousand persons had become victims to the pestilence. The young and the aged, the pious and the profane, withered and sunk into the grave before the march of the destroyer. Among the fallen were many of the particular friends of Mr. Stanford.

On the 8th of October, he was permitted to return with his family to his own house. Very few of the neighbours had ventured to revisit their deserted habitations, and every thing upon which the eye could rest exhibited a spectacle of desolation. Mr. Stanford found his house in extreme disorder-theft had been committed on his property-the loss of his amiable wife-and a thousand painful reflections rushing upon his mind, produced a temporary depression of feeling. But under all these complicated trials he was enabled to speak of the sparing mercy of his God, and to make a fresh dedication of his soul and body to the service of heaven, and the interest of his motherless children.

To preserve the history of events in divine Providence, with which the name of Stanford is so remarkably identified, we subjoin the following summary :

The first appearance of yellow fever in the city of New-York was in 1791. It has subsequently visited us in 1795, 1798, 1799, 1800, 1803, 1805, 1819, and 1822. It is perhaps impossible, definitely to fix the number of its victims, but from the best sources of information to which we have access, it is probable that about nine thousand persons have died of yellow fever in New-York.*

As to the cause and prevalence of this terrible disease, various opinions exist. It is not our province to examine the relative merits of

70

COMMEMORATIVE SERMON.

By this severe and protracted sickness, the dispersion of the academy, and great extra expenses, Mr. Stanford was brought under much temporal embarrassment. But the Lord, in his kind providence, by persons known and unknown, afforded him supplies, not unfrequently, in a manner almost miraculous.

In the life of this good man, how frequently are our sympathies excited in the contemplation of his numerous afflictions, but not more frequently than our admiration of the mercy and faithfulness of his God, in delivering him out of them all." And should not we learn from these instances of Christian experience, that

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Though all seem lost, 'tis impious to despair;
The tracks of Providence, like rivers, wind ;"

And in their windings prove, that "All things work together for good, to them that love God."

On the 28th of October, Mr. Stanford re-opened his place of worship, with a discourse, commemorative of his recovery from the pestilence, founded on Psalm xxx. 2, 3, 4.

the arguments employed upon this subject by medical men, but the following remarks, from the pen of Valentine Seaman, M. D., are in such perfect accordance with our own views, that we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting them.

6

"The much agitated question of importation or non-importation, as it respects the health of a place,' to use the words of Dr. Smith, sinks into its merited insignificance; the efficient cause, the causa sine qua non, being clearly discerned as depending on local circumstances.'

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To depend, therefore, for our safety from yellow fever, upon the rigours of our port laws, or the vigilance of our health officers, while these pools of putrefaction are suffered to remain, is like building a city with cedar and pine, and confiding in the watch to secure us from fire. But if these pregnant sources of destruction are dried up, we may, like those who case the wooden work of their brick-built, tile-roofed houses with iron, rest at ease in our habitations, equally secure against the deceitful captain's intrusions, or the incautious sailor's blundering into our ports, in the one case, as, in the other, we should be, of the vile incendiary's match or the careless neighbour's spark. As the latter would die in their own combustion, so the former wonld end in the fate of the single sufferer."