defeated.

_To T. H. M._

Christ's College, Cambridge: July 18, 1891.

We have but lately heard that my missionary brother[1] has passed away
into the eternal world. He died in Africa. He gave up all, he gave up
his life for Christ. Terribly as we feel the loss, and shall feel it
still more, I cannot help thanking the Eternal Father that He has
accepted the life-sacrifice, and feeling that He calls upon us here and
now, each day and moment of our lives, to offer up ourselves on the
altar of universal thanksgiving. Life is sacrifice, renunciation: true
life is dependence on God. Sin is isolation, death--a failure to
recognise and act on our dependence. I do feel as I seldom felt before
something of the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, the
communion of the Spirit. We _must_ learn that an individual hope,
aspiration, ambition, is against the law of the universe--the law of
self-sacrifice. We _must_ learn that our wills are ours to make them
God's; that if we have a single hope or thought which He does not
inspire, which true humanity cannot share, the hope and thought are
wrong. God grant that you and I may renounce {57} our individual
lives, and become truly ourselves by martyrdom, by allowing the Christ
in us to live.

I am to be ordained in September. Pray for me. There is no power like
prayer. Let us pray for one another. The great Father longs for
simple lives, simple piety, perpetual thanksgiving. And we have so
much to be thankful for--so much here and now. I do long to offer
body, mind, soul, affections, will, hope, to Him as a thanksgiving.
Self-renunciation, life in a Church, a Body, is the only life. God
grant we may live it!

[1] John Alfred Robinson, formerly a scholar of Christ's College, who
died at Lokoja on the River Niger, on June 25, 1891.

_To T. H. M._

Christ's College, Cambridge: November 17, 1891.

Do you know that it isn't a bad thing to feel a babe? We must all
become simple little children before we enter the kingdom of heaven,
because God, who lives in that kingdom, has the simplest heart in all
the wide universe--the most childlike, for God is Love. He has no
cross purposes. Though He is stronger and better and bigger than we
are, He is simpler. He will love a poor, simple old woman in His
simple way with a wonderful affection. He is so simple, because He
does not know what sin is. God never sins. God is Light, and in Him
is no darkness at a