ependence which still clings to it, when I
see how it would shut me out from these manifestations of my Father's
loving care. Oh! how hard it is to persuade the rebellious will and
proud heart, that to depend on your Father's love for your constant
support, is more for the soul's health, than to be clothed in purple
and fare sumptuously every day--or at least, as we would say, on bare
independence; and yet how plain it is to spiritual vision.

We met together in the evening to bless the Lord for the past, and
supplicate his continued blessing for the future--that he would
accomplish what he had begun, that our hearts may never cease to
praise and bless him. My soul was much comforted, especially with a
text to which one of our dear correspondents called my attention,
Zeph. iii. 17. "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, he
will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy, he will rest in his
love; he will joy over thee with singing." All the letters amounted to
twenty-six, which, after so long an interruption of all intelligence,
was an especial source of joy. And now we can think of our dear
friends definitely as absolutely at Aleppo, only waiting for the
termination of disturbances to join us.

To-day, a Chaldean, from near Julimerk, came to see us, and we expect
him again, with his brother, who, he says, can read, when I hope to
obtain from him a fuller account of the state, numbers, and
disposition, of his wild countrymen.

A Mohammedan Effendi was with me to-day; a very amiable young man, who
sees many things in the customs of his people bad, arising out of the
Mohammedan laws. He came to borrow an Arabic bible for, he said, a
poor schoolmaster, which I gladly lent him. Whether it be really for a
schoolmaster, or for himself, I do not know.

_March 4._--Read this morning, with peculiar pleasure, Hawker's
Evening Portion: "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange
land:" heightened as it was by the localities of our situation; but
above all, by the unity of our experience with the sentiments of the
writer; for we have indeed found the love of our Father, the pastoral
care of our Elder Brother, and the consolation and visits of our
Comforter, that which has enabled us to sing the Lord's song in this
strange land, even the song of the redeemed.

_March 13._--The time is now fast approaching when we expect the
struggle for the Pashalic to commence, at the conclusion of the
Ramazan. Yet it may all pas