childbearing, and therefore had never earnestly
prayed about it. Now came this solemn time. The life of my dear wife was
hanging, as it were, on a thread, and, in the midst of it, my conscience
told me, that my state of heart made such a chastisement needful. Yet, at
the same time, I was much supported.--When the child was still-born, I saw
almost immediately afterwards, that this could not have been expected
otherwise, for I had not looked on the prospect of having a child as on a
blessing, which I was about to receive from God, but rather considered it
as a burden and a hindrance in the Lord's work; for I did not know then,
that, whilst a wife and children may be in certain respects, on the one
hand, a hindrance to the servant of Christ, they also may fit him, on the
other hand, for certain parts of his work, in teaching him things which
are important to be known, especially for the pastoral work. The Lord now
brought, in addition to this, very great sufferings upon my beloved wife,
which lasted for six weeks, combined with a partial lameness of the left
side.--Immediately after the eventful time of August 8th and 9th, the Lord
brought me, in His tender mercy, again into a spiritual state of heart, so
that I was enabled to look on this chastisement as a great blessing. May
this my experience be a warning to believing readers, that the Lord may
not need to chastise them, on account of their state of heart! May it also
be a fresh proof to them, that the Lord, in His very love and
faithfulness, will not, and cannot let us go on in backsliding, but that
He will visit us with stripes, to bring us back to Himself!

There was one point, however, in which, by grace, I had continued to be
faithful to God, i.e. in my mode of living, and, therefore, in as far as I
had been faithfully sowing, I now reaped abundantly; for the Lord most
graciously supplied, in rich abundance, all our temporal wants, though
they were many. Another reason for this may have been, that the Lord never
lays more on us, in the way of chastisement, than our state of heart makes
needful; so that whilst He smites with the one hand, He supports with the
other.--We saw it to be against the Lord's mind to put by any money for my
wife's confinement, though we might have, humanly speaking, very easily
saved L20. or L30. during the six months previous to August 7th. I say,
humanly speaking, and judging from what we had received during all these
months, we might have