May 6, 1847.
My Beloved Sister,
The Lord be with you and refresh your spirit. And it is simply resting on the sure and everlasting foundation of faith, which the hand of your covenant God has laid for you, by which this refreshment will come. It is not an effort of the soul after the joys of the Holy Ghost, or spiritual exercise of heart, but it is the precious repose of faith, and the bright prospects of hope which grow up therefrom, that will be our refreshment, beloved.
There is, in some deep and happy sense, more communion with those who have departed than with those who still cluster around us. I remember a dear sister saying this to me some years since, and I have often thought of her words. She spake in reference to a dear son who had then lately departed in the Lord. But it is so. We think of them only in their beauties in Christ Jesus. Our thought of them is not hindered, but there in spirit we see them, having first trusted in Christ, waiting with their beloved Savior, for the consummation of His joy and their joy.
I thank you for your last few acceptable lines. I did not expect them from yourself, but I knew that my dear sister Ellen would let us hear of you.
The Lord bless you. The Lord comfort, in the calmness of a believing heart, your dear mother. My Christian love to her and all around you. Accept my dear Mary's love. The good hand of the Lord still keeps, and our Johnny's arm, we think, is better.
Ever, beloved sister, yours affectionately,
J. G. B.
I do value the thoughts I enclose. They are by another; but this simple believing, setting of Christ above all, even above the exercises of the soul in the Holy Ghost, I do delight in. We are always, as was said, higher in our standing than in our experience. Faith alone does God, and His love, and His doings, justice.
I count on hearing again from someone. Do you know dear Gambold's hymn?
"No more with trembling heart I try”
Yes, indeed, whether we wake or sleep, we shall be together with Him.