TO HIS DAUGHTER IN INDIA.

February, 1848.

Has He not often washed ours?

ONCE more, my beloved C, in the best and tenderest hopes that will be for ever true, I take up my pen to answer your last, received yesterday. If the answer should prove rather dull, it will be because the writer is so, it having been the day of my Bible class, and the day having proved on the whole a fatiguing one. But it refreshes me to talk with you, and to assure you of my ceaseless love, and to speak by my pen of Him who is, I believe, far dearer to our hearts than all earthly things and persons, dear as some of them are and ought to be. Is it not touching, dearest C, that our Master should be our servant? He says so to His disciples:-" I am amongst you as one that serveth." Did He not become incarnate, and live and die in our service? Does He not intercede for us now that He is in heaven? Did He not take a basin and wash His disciples' feet? (John xiii.) cleansing us by His precious blood from the pollutions of our daily walk; yea, will He not gird Himself even in heaven, in a sense, to serve us, while we sit at meat, if we are found watching when He cometh? alluding, I suppose, to a practice common in some nations, where the bridegroom waits upon the guests. What a Master is He, then! Seek often to dwell upon Him in this and in all His endearing characters. It is when the Spirit helps us to do it, one of the great secrets for obtaining holiness. (2 Cor. iii. 18.) There are many of God's saints, conscientious, upright, tender in spirit, but this is greatly wanting in them. There is honest desire of walking with God, honest aim to do so, honest grief for their shortcoming in this. But there is little of Christ in their creed, and far too little of Him in their hearts to give them much strength in the inner man. To use a common form of speech, there is not enough of Him to give them heart. Perhaps, my love, you, with myriads of others, whose names are in His book, may have suffered from this. I have, scores of times. To live on Christ, and especially on Christ crucified, is the great truth of Exodus xii., and it is in

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order that they may journey on through the wilderness. Living on Christ and walking with God is the secret of all happiness. But I must live on Christ in order to walk with God. A settled peace in the conscience, through the peace-speaking blood, is absolutely essential to the true serving of God, (Heb. ix. 14,) serving Him in love without slavish fear (1 John iv. 18); and what filial love is there where this is not? But I must finish my sermonlet. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.—But in the truest affection, your ever affectionate father and friend, J. H. EVANS.

TO HIS DAUGHTER IN INDIA.

Cowes, March 17, 1848.
in the same room, in the

HERE I am, my own beloved Csame place, in the same family, with the same pictures before me-(the spirit of a mother and her two children ascending to the heavenly regions of bliss,) the same sea surrounding me, the same narrow streets to walk through as ever. All things the same except myself; my own grey head; spectacles upon my nose that were not wont to be there; my writing not quite so good. This place has a sort of talismanic effect on my mind. It brings the past in such vivid colours before me, that I almost seem unconscious of the lapse of time and the intervention of circumstances, and almost fancy myself as I then was. I do not doubt but that there are some advantages in the possession of such a sort of mind, while I am quite sure that there are many dangers attending it. I call it a springiness of mind, an ideal sort of mind, that in the recollection of the past forms a sort of new world and lives in its own creation.

On Wednesday last I went over from this place to see old A-; her surprise was as great as her pleasure was unbounded at seeing me. It is quite surprising to see how little she appears altered by age. Would that I could see as healthy a state of soul as she is well in health of body! But that I fear is not the case. Still, however, I cannot but think that she is building on the rock, although her spiritual house is not so wide nor so high as many a humble saint.

I hope that I am not lowering the standard of the Gospel, but I cannot but think that while much happiness stands connected with much spirituality, and growth in joy hangs upon our growth in grace and in the knowledge of Christ; yet that the least true evidence of grace is saving, that some of God's children are very small, and little ones, and so remain even to the end. If you have any doubt of this, controvert it without hesitation and with all freedom. At the last gasp of life I shall avow myself a learner still. As I sow I reap, and in that proportion ; but whosoever soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting, whether he sow little or much. If I have faith as a grain of mustard seed, I shall be saved; but it is strong faith that glorifies God. (Rom. iv. 20.)

I am quite assured that sanctification of soul is more attained by an habitual sense of the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit than by all other means, as means, put together. Therefore to live upon the righteousness of Christ as righteous in Him, and as such to look up to God as a Father, and walk with Him as such, is the most effectual means of keeping down our manifold corruptions. Our watchfulness, therefore, is chiefly to avoid whatever weakens faith, to pursue whatever strengthens it, and these two points take in the whole circuit of Christian duty; but still faith in Christ is the magnum desiderabile. If I look off Christ I sink; if I look on Him I rise; so thinks your poor, unworthy, but affectionate father and friend,

My love to all.

TO HIS DAUGHTER IN INDIA.

J. H. EVANS.

Hampstead, April 20, 1848. PRECIOUS C-,-Last Saturday I entered upon my sixtyfourth year, and it seems but yesterday that I entered upon my sixteenth. So swiftly passes time away, and so soon will be its termination, and time be no more. There is more necessity than would at first appear in 66 so teach us to number our days," &c. Still we say, when nearest to the close of our journey, a

few years longer may yet be my portion; and when even the last weeks come, still it may be a few days more. Oh, what a blessed state is that soul in, when it can truly say, willing to live that I may glorify Thee, willing rather to depart and be with Christ which is far better. Yet surely were our souls where they ought to be, and as they ought to be, it would be so, nay it must be so. I hear from you, I believe what you write, and it gladdens my heart to hear assurances of your love, but this does not satisfy me, nor ought it, nay, there could not be much love, if it did satisfy. I want to see you, to hear your voice, to be with you. And were we in that posture of soul which we ought to be in, it would be so in all the means of grace: what earnest longings would necessarily arise for His sensible presence in them all, whom we love the best on earth, and what longing to be with Him in heaven! Earth would then appear but as the porch, and death as the gate of the vestibule, but we should want to be in the room, and to be for ever with the Lord. I have been reading "Bonar on Leviticus" this morning. This thought seemed very sweet to me as I read it; the officer laid his hand on the head of the victim, he slew it, and flayed it, and then went home. It was an act of simple penitential faith, that simply took God at His word, and believing, he went in peace to his home, resting on God's faithfulness, and on nothing else, and then went to his duties. And this is every morning's work, and every evening's work, and often through every day, and never too often. It is the best preparation for duty, the best strengthener in duty, the only pacifier after all our manifold defects therein, a stimulant, and a sedative, but no opiate. If through our depravity it ever acts as an opiate, all its virtue is gone. We want Christ to take us to God, not from Him. M- has just left us, that is, yesterday, after a short four days' visit. But they were a pleasant four days, pleasant and profitable. There is something about her that much draws one to her, and to Christ in her. I much love her, I dare say she has her faults, but I have so many that I can scarcely see another's. Oh, what a depth of depravity there is in

our hearts, and how long a time it takes to learn it. Let but a new temptation arise, a train of circumstances present themselves, and what is the morning sacrifice then. If the hand be not on the head of Him (Heb. x. 14), how can we go to our homes? we cannot; Gen. iii. 8, is then our poor refuge, wretched to our own souls, and dishonourable to God. grace to remember this, and to act upon it.

Oh, for

In all the tenderest love to yourself and dear J, and the dear children,

Ever, ever your's most affectionately,

TO HIS DAUGHTER.

J. H. EVANS.

Hampstead, May 1, 1848.

YESTERDAY dear C. S- - preached for me twice, for a severe cold and hoarseness confined me to this room. My thoughts were occupied with "Brainerd's Life." It was a sermon indeed. With some degree of morbid feeling about him, yet altogether, I conceive that he was one of the most seraphic men that ever lived. His principle was this, that God is to be loved, not merely, or chiefly, for what He has done for me, but for what He is in Himself. Perhaps he may carry this principle rather too finely out, for it is only as I see Him first through the cross, that I know Him and love Him. But then, seeing Him in the Son of His love, I see that in Him to love supremely, irrespectively (in a sense) of the debt which I personally owe Him. Howe has the same idea. I see a flower, it does not belong to me, but I admire it, and smell its fragrance. I look at Windsor, and admire the situation and mass of building, though it belongs to the Queen. There is something selfish in the idea that I merely love Him because of His kindness to myself. God is intrinsically good, kind, benevolent, tender, gracious, whatever becomes of me.

This view is a great encouragement to weak faith, when it cannot strongly appropriate His especial love. If I knew that there was such a man as Howard, who lived next door to me, I should feel a regard, though we never interchanged a word.