May the

He who has given it you, can alone support you, as I well know. He has always peculiar supports for peculiar afflictions, and He can and will afford them, because it is not only in His promise that He will do so, but it is in His heart. O how common-place do all the usual topics of consolation seem, at such an hour; they almost seem to mock one. tendency of this, your deep affliction, be with you, as it has been with thousands who are now beyond the reach of all trouble; may it be made use of, and overruled, for the most blessed end of weanedness from the world, rising above the creature, and resting, through a view of that atonement which has taken away all the curse, in the very bosom of God; lead to more prayer, more sanctity, more submission, more love. One deepening of the power of sanctifying grace in our hearts, is cheaply purchased, by the heaviest tribulation. So he found who wrote, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept thy word." I am at the present moment in the furnace too, though another sort of one than your's, but I am Your's, affectionately, in the Brother born for adversity, J. H. EVANS.

TO HIS DAUGHTER.*

Hampstead, February 10, 1849.

MY PRECIOUS CHILD,-I thank God that your dear husband is a little better, and that he bore the fatigue so well; at least, that he suffered no more from it; and that yourself and the precious children are well. I have not enough grace to say that it was not a real disappointment, the not seeing you yesterday or to-day, and still more that it is somewhat uncertain when we may; but I bless my Heavenly Father that He enables me to see Him in it. Trials must and will befall; But, in humble faith, to see, Love inscribed upon them all, This (and not even seeing my beloved child) is happiness to me. I see the wisdom and

It was at the commencement of this year, the year in which he was summoned to his rest, that his daughter was brought back to England. Her return at this time was altogether unexpected, being hastened by the very serious illness of her husband. The following letter was written shortly after their landing.-ED.

tenderness of His hand, in leading you to the mild air of Devonshire before James inhales our shrewder climate, as well as the breaking of the long journey.

My beloved child, may our meeting be in Christ and with Christ. I trust the increase of the life of God within us is more precious than our mere meeting at all, in both our hearts.

You will have a full and particular account of the state of my nerves and general health, and therefore I need say nothing; with regard to the latter, it is perfectly good. I usually walk between four and five miles a day, and am in other respects well. But, as to the former, I am, for the present, completely silent. Yet I am not without hopes, that He who never has a good withheld, or will withhold, from me, may yet raise me up again to some little service in this, my last stages, if it were only the superintending the Bible classes, and general direction of the Church. But with me it requires more grace to suffer than to be active. To be, to do, and to suffer, is the best definition of a verb, and it is the best one of real religion; but the last, with me, is the pinch.

God bless you, and ever think of me as your attached and affectionate father and friend,

J. H. EVANS.

TO THE HON. AND REV. B. W. NOEL.

1849.

MY DEAR SIR AND BROTHER,-Though not more dear to me than before you took the present trying step; for I feel that the bond that binds us together is far stronger than any mere agreement in Church government, or even the ordinances of Christ's house could ever form, my writing to you on the present occasion is simply to say, that, if it at all accords with your future plans to make any use of John-street Chapel, either on the Lord's-day afternoon or any evening of the week, it is most entirely at your service, for as long a period as you think proper. I cannot, however, conclude, having some experience of the pain the present step must have occasioned you, though it is thirty-three years since I was led to take the same myself,

C C

without assuring you that, with all the tender love that I bear towards my Christian brethren in the Establishment, I have never seen cause to regret it for five seconds, and feel assured I never shall. May I add, that I hope no earthly inducement will prevail upon you to refrain, even for a season, from preaching that Gospel in which God has so abundantly blessed you? I am, your's, respectfully and affectionately,

J. H. EVANS.

TO HIS DAUGHTER.-ON THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND.

Brightwell, May 13, 1849.

MY DEAR AND PRECIOUS CHILD,-More dear to me than ever before, because of his removal from you, though it be but for a little moment, who was (and so he deservedly was, for it was by your heavenly Father's gracious appointment) by far the dearest of all earthly beings to you. Well! beloved C, it is but a separation for one brief stage of life's brief journey, and then you will be with him for ever. In the meanwhile, he has already reached the home to which you are journeying on; and though now with sad, and, it may be, with oft-faltering step, yet you, too, and I,-oh! wondrous thought!-shall soon be there also, with him again; and what will be far better, with Jesus Himself. And so happy is he, being there, at this very instant, that all the tears which you have shed, and of all who loved him so upon earth, could not prevail upon him to come down, even if it were only for a moment, for ten worlds. "What!" he would say, "go down to a world of sin, myself a sinner, once more? that be far from me, Lord; for dearly as I love my C————— and my precious children, yet I love Thee infinitely more."

And now, my own precious one, do not-oh! do not forget how very near your own eternity is. Oh, how do we lengthen out time's brief and little span; and how do we shorten eternity's ceaseless and immeasurable duration! The hand that moves this pen shall soon be cold and motionless as his, but the soul, the inward life that guides it, is durable and lasting as Deity. Is it not wondrous that, with this truth written out in God's own Word, as with a sunbeam,-written in every one

around us, and that, too, by God's own hand, and written, too, in every feature of our face, and in every fold of our fluttering tabernacle, that we should think, and act, and feel, as if our prospects were for a moment and our trials for ever? The journeying traveller acts not so; the weatherbeaten sailor acts not so; the wounded soldier acts not so; yea, the very ant, as he toils over his rough and painful path, with his food in his mouth, acts not so. May they, through the Spirit, be our instructors,—your's and mine. Above all, listen to the gentle remembrances of the blessed Spirit, as He reveals to your mind the ten thousand mercies of your past life, as He reminds you of tender interpositions, gentle rebukes, which were but the graver features of a Father's love, sent with this loving remonstrance," My daughter, give me, oh! give me thine heart;" above all, as He speaks afresh to your broken spirit, with "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

Dear and much-loved C, that you should not grieve your ever living Husband does not require; nay, the opposite to this is supposed by Him who has removed him whom you have lost from you, Joel i. 8. But forgive me if I say, do not walk in the footsteps of your poor father, who, when he was bereaved and had his living idol taken away, strove too often and too long to replace the loss by putting a dead idol in its room. God hath dried up one cistern, that you may go afresh to the living Fountain and drink from it as you have never drank from it before. Let God and men and angels now see what is in you. Let your patience and faith and submission to the Divine will be now seen, that it may be known your only Beloved, first and last, hath been Christ. Your heavenly Father never thought this world's painted glory a gift worthy of you, and therefore He hath taken out the best thing it had in your sight, that He might Himself fill the heart, which He has wounded, with Himself.

Let the moveables go, the inheritance is your's; you are a child of the house, and joy is laid up for you. He who loves you better than you love yourself hath been loosing you at the

root from perishing things, to take the faster hold of your heart. Precious C―, for the Son of God's sake, let Him not miss His hold, but stay and abide in the love of God, as Jude saith, ver. 21. This is not a field, my child, where your happiness groweth; it is up above, where dear James now is, with the great multitude, Rev. vii. 9, which no man can number, of all nations, kindreds, people, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. What you could never get here you shall find there. The day of your redemption draweth nigh; and remember, that star that shined once in Assam and Tezpore, is now shining in another world with far greater lustre and beauty and glory.-Your's, my own child, in all the affection of a fond and sympathising father,

JAMES H. EVANS.

TO HIS DAUGHTER.-ON THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND.

Brightwell, May 17, 1849.

My heart is with you though my poor body is absent, dear and precious C. I do not forget you nor your deep, deep Ctrouble; but what is far, far more, God-your God and his God who has left us for a little while to sojourn with Him for ever, He does not forget you: His tender loving eye is ever upon you, as His poor, afflicted, tried, and tempted child. I say tempted,

because full well have I ever had cause to know that there is no trial but what brings its own peculiar temptations with it. But His eye is upon you; yes, of Him who has with His own the eye righteous hand, and as loving as it is righteous, afflicted you. His ear is open to your cry, however faint and feeble it may be, and often is. He marks the falling tear; He hears the halfsmothered sigh; and He who wept at the grave of Lazarus, in a sense weeps as you weep, sighs as you sigh, and that not merely nor chiefly because you are afflicted, although that afflicts Him (Isaiah lxiii. 9), for it is said, "In all their affliction He was afflicted; " but more than this, because so much is sin bound up in our nature, and such is its evil and God-dishonouring nature, and so impossible is it that with