balls passed over my head in about as many seconds, so close, that I
threw myself off in expectation that the next might hit it or me; at
times I almost determined to go down, but the danger of being shot did
not appear so dreadful as the suffocating heat down stairs.

_August 4._ _Thursday._--We have received accounts to-day of another
messenger from Bussorah, with letters for us, having been stripped.
How trying these dispensations are--how necessary for our peace that
our eye should only rest on God, ordering in love every event
concerning us, even to the arrival of a letter, so that he will allow
nothing to fail us that is for our good. I have to-day finished
reading through again Martyn's Memoir, by Sargent. How my soul admires
and loves his zeal, self-denial, and devotion; how brilliant, how
transient his career; what spiritual and mental power amidst bodily
weakness and disease. Oh, may I be encouraged by his example to press
on to a higher mark. When I think of my own spiritual weakness,
contrasted with his spiritual power, it brings a striking warning home
to my heart to seek a fuller and more abiding union with Jesus, from
whom alone flows the living waters that make the branches fruitful; I
am not now troubled about that intellectual difference between us,
which might seem to make it impossible for me to do what he did: the
Lord has made me, blessed be His holy name, contented in this respect
with any difference I may feel between myself and his more exalted
members; but my sorrow is caused by my want of that likeness to him,
who is my Lord and King, which is alike the common inheritance of all
the members of his mystical body. May I, however, henceforth make the
most of my talent, that I be not numbered among the slothful servants
at my dear Lord's most glorious and blessed appearing. The mild
seriousness that pervades dear H. M.'s soul has for my heart a great
charm. There is not a trait of eccentricity--all is like his Lord in
its measure--he was solemn and serious as became his work, yet full of
zeal and affection, which shewed itself, however, rather in the steady
power of a course of action than in expression. It is astonishing what
the world will endure from a child of God, whose manner gives them
excuse for calling him an interesting eccentric madman; because then
all he says they feel at liberty to laugh at; whereas, if the very
same truths were declared to them in the calm seriousness of our
Lord's