He answered me and said, This present life is not the end where much glory doth abide; therefore have they prayed for the weak. 43. But the day of doom shall be the end of this time, and the beginning of the immortality for to come, wherein corruption is past 2. Esdras 7.42–43.
This passage of the second Apocryphal book of Esdras carries with it internal evidence of its composition since the advent of Christ.
The influenza, better denominated in the French language La grippe has recently become epidemic in this neigbourhood—and has severely exercised several members of my family— It has the last three days been gradually creeping upon me, and at 10 last night I went to bed with a hoarse voice, and a burning sore throat— About one this morning it had become so intense that I was compelled to request my wife to rise and get for me some hot balm tea which she did and sat up with me the whole night, to the imminent danger of her own health. The severity of the stricture upon the throat passed off before morning day-light, and I rose at half past five I rose much relieved but still hoarse, and with the paretytic shaking of the hands totally disabled for writing— I can yet read, and did read four chapters of the second book of Esdras, and took comfort from the verse which I have made out to extract from it at the top of this page— The hope of a future life is the only solace for the infirmities of age, and for all the ills that flesh is heir to, as I am to the condition of an aspen leaf—
I attended meeting as usual morning and afternoon at the Temple. Mr Lunt
preached in the forenoon from Galatians 5.6 [“]For in Jesus Christ
neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith
which worketh by love”— The whole sum of the Christian Religion is
contained in this text— Circumcision was a religious painful and bloody
operation upon the body of every male child first instituted by Abraham under the express command of God,
for himself and all his descendants but for which no reason was
assigned, except that of distinguish them from all the rest of mankind—
It was emblematic of nothing but submission against the cry of physical
nature itself to the will of God— It is practiced by the posterity of
Abraham to the present day— It was abolished not by express command of
Jesus Christ, but by the substitution of the rite of baptism in its
place, an emblem, of purification from the pollution of nature, and of
washing away every impurity from a body born in the image of God, and
bound in sympathy to all mankind and to hold a Faith working by love— In
the afternoon the Revd. Lemuel Capen
- Capen Rev
dLemuel - Degrand P. P. F.
of South Boston, preached from Romans 15.4. a panegyric upon the
Scriptures of the old Testament. Mr Capen
took tea with us, as also did Mr. Degrand who came out this
afternoon from Boston.