September, 1867.
My Dear Brother in the Lord,-Perfection must be looked for in God; He alone is perfect, and in Him is Jesus, in whom alone man can trace what is divine. That blessed One, when down, here, was wont to see everything on God's side of it. " The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?" Cup of wrath against man's sin held in Satan's hand before Him and He saw nothing but His Father's gift I Death, judgment, wrath! He would not see anything apart from His Father's gift, and to Himself. And if my God put it into my heart to come out here in June, and into my wife's heart to urge me to go, and show her love to the Lord's saints, would it become me, even had He taken her away in England, to judge by the sight of the eye or the hearing of the ear, and to repine, not seeing the Father's hand and His love, and love to me in any, in every sorrow? No; now is the time to give up self; Christ's presence will be the place to have giving up of self owned in.
Forty years have I known her; thirty-seven years have I seen the motto of her life to have been, " It is right for me to devote myself to God, and to His saints, while here on earth." Thirty-two years of that time it has been mine to seek to shelter her as my companion. He said, " If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father." Did I love His gift to me? and shall I repine if she was put into fuller, greater blessing, made to feel how right her self-denying devotedness is counted in heaven? Selfishness and materialism would stir the storm of passion, and feebleness of human feeling might quiver, and the divine taste of death, as the Lord took it into His own soul in John 11, would lead to deepness of sorrow too, unselfish sorrow; but above it all, if " Christ is to be magnified in my body " by life, the Spirit being in me, I should still say, " I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth," and " The cup which the Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?"
We are poor things, poor vessels, to have such treasure as we carry in us; but " My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness."
She fell asleep at 10.10 p.m., September 12th, 1867.
Heaven is not changed, nor has her admission into the presence of my God cast a spot nor any dimness or shade there. He who chose to reveal Himself to her, who forced her to own His death, and Himself, alive in heaven, coming again to fetch us, had a right to take her there; and He comforts my heart with the truth of her being there, let into His presence. Our prayer was, that " Christ might be magnified " in her body and in mine, " whether by life or by death." She was selected for the one; may I find grace for the other; saints keeping me by prayer. The last two Lord's-days, wishing neither "to despise the rod, nor to faint under it," I abstained from preaching, dear B being here; but now I would be like David, and spoke last night at the room on " God, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort."
The interment takes place (D.V.), Monday (the undertaker having this morning changed the time). Dear J. N. D. had settled to come for it on Tuesday, the day first appointed, but now he cannot be here (as we have exchanged telegrams) All this is well-his proposing to come, and the preventing cause too. It will prevent his exhausting himself by a three days' journey too.
My salutation,
G. V. W.