'ROCHESTER.'

To his son, he writes: 'You are now grown big enough to be a man, if
you can be wise enough; and the way to be truly wise is to serve God,
learn your book, and observe the instructions of your parents first, and
next your tutor, to whom I have entirely resigned you for this seven
years; and according as you employ that time, you are to be happy or
unhappy for ever. I have so good an opinion of you, that I am glad to
think you will never deceive me. Dear child, learn your book and be
obedient, and you will see what a father I shall be to you. You shall
want no pleasure while you are good, and that you may be good are my
constant prayers.'

Lord Rochester had not attained the age of thirty, when he was
mercifully awakened to a sense of his guilt here, his peril hereafter.
It seemed to many that his very nature was so warped that penitence in
its true sense could never come to him; but the mercy of God is
unfathomable; He judges not as man judges; He forgives, as man knows not
how to forgive.

'God, our kind Master, merciful as just,
Knowing our frame, remembers man is dust:
He marks the dawn of every virtuous aim,
And fans the smoking flax into a flame;
He hears the language of a silent tear,
And sighs are incense from a heart sincere.'

And the reformation of Rochester is a confirmation of the doctrine of a
special Providence, as well as of that of a retribution, even in this