with the work_. I have been the sole
director of the work, under God, from its smallest commencement. Now
this is not an every-day case. No committee member of a society, no
president or vice-president of an institution, except they had been
situated as myself, could have this experience. Coupled with this is the
measure of gift which the Lord has been pleased to give me for such
work, and for the exercise of which I am responsible to him. These
things, in connection with the former reasons, it appears to me, are a
call from God to go forward in a greater degree than ever in this work.

6. The spiritual benefit of still more orphans is another especial
reason with me why I feel called to go forward. The orphans who have
been under my care hitherto were almost all the children of parents who
were naturally weak in body, if not consumptive. The very fact of a
child being deprived of _both_ parents when four, five, six, or seven
years old, shows that, except the parents lost their lives by casualty,
they were constitutionally weak. On this account young orphans,
generally speaking, require particular care as to their health. In this
respect I desire to care for them; but there is more than that to be
attended to. I further heartily desire to keep them from the corrupting
and demoralizing effect of the lowest sort of children in the streets
and courts and Unions. But I desire more for them than mere decency and
morality; I desire that they should be useful members of society, and
that the prisons of the United Kingdom should not be filled with poor,
destitute, and homeless orphans; and we bring them up therefore in
habits of industry, and seek to instruct them in those things which are
useful for the life that now is. But I desire more than this for the
orphans. I cannot be satisfied with anything concerning them short of
this, that their souls be won for the Lord. For this reason I long to
have them from their early days, yea, the younger the better, under my
care, that thus, under the care of godly nurses and teachers, they may
be brought up from their earliest days in the fear of the Lord. Now, as
this is the chief and primary aim concerning the dear orphans, even the
salvation of their souls through faith in the Lord Jesus, I long to be
more extensively used than hitherto, even that I may have a thousand of
them instead of three hundred under my care.

7. But there is one point which weighs more strongly with me than ev