r large body of Turks, to
endeavour to recover it; so that even this evil of the sword we should
not have escaped. The Lord, therefore, leaves me nothing to regret,
unless it be that I ought perhaps to have kept myself quite apart from
the rest of the family, after I had been obliged by a sense of duty to
go out during the time the plague was raging. It is easy to be wise
after the events are past. The more I contemplate the circumstances in
which I have of late been placed, the more I see of the trials and
anxieties of the missionary life, and of the mysteriousness of God's
dealings; I feel the more overwhelmed with the importance of the soul
having a deep sense of the love of God in Christ, before it ventures
upon such an undertaking. Our dear Father very often, in love,
explains to us his reasons; at other times, he gives no account of his
matters; in the one case to excite love and confidence, in the other,
to exercise faith. It does seem to me, that no doctrines but those of
the sovereign grace of God, and his love entertained towards the soul,
before the foundation of the world, and the revelation by the Holy
Ghost of the love and fellowship with Christ, and through him with the
Father, so that we have thereby our life hid with him where no evil
can reach us, can happily sustain the soul. There is something so
filthy, so worthless in all our services, when events render it
probable to the soul that soon it will appear before God, that the new
creature cannot endure the deformity and defilement, and turns away
its distressed sight to the love of the Lord, and the garment he has
provided without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. The experience of
my dear dear Mary on this head was most striking. She often said to
me, "They often talked to me, and I often read of the happiness of
religion--but I can truly say I never knew what misery was till I was
concerned about religion, and endeavoured to frame my life according
to its rules--the manifest powerless inadequacy of my efforts to
attain my standard, left me always further removed from hope and peace
than when I never knew or thought of the likeness of Christ, as a
thing to be aimed after; and it was not till the Holy Ghost was
pleased of his infinite mercy to reveal the love of my Heavenly Father
in Christ, as existing in _himself_ before all ages, contemplating me
with pity, and purposing to save me by his grace, and to conform me
to the image of Him whom my soul l