1842-43. PAINFUL REMINISCENCES. 153 



earnest words uttered when the deeper emotions were 

 stirred, were all that ever could be obtained. The first 

 extract is from a letter to Dr. Cairns on New Year's Day, 

 1854 : "There is no day so painful to me to recall as the 

 first of January, so far as suffering is concerned. It was on 

 it, eleven years ago, that the disease in my foot reappeared, 

 with the severity which, in a few days thereafter, compelled 

 its loss, and the season always comes back to me as a 

 very solemn one ; yet if, like Jacob, I halt as I walk, I 

 trust that, like him, I came out of that awful wrestling with 

 a blessing I never received before ; and you know that if I 

 were to preach my own funeral sermon, I should prefer to 

 all texts, ' It is better to enter halt into life, than having two 

 feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be 

 quenched.' " 



And to a young friend he says, in 1847 : " I can pro- 

 foundly sympathize with your feelings of agitation, agony, 

 and alarm, at finding your strength and health failing, and 

 another world looking closer at hand than it did a short 

 while ago. I have been in this condition, and only passed 

 out of it after a spiritual struggle such as I still feel appalled 

 at gazing back upon. 



"When I was recovering, you can well believe that there 

 were many weary, wretched, sleepless hours, especially 

 during darkness. Particularly dreary was the first waking in 

 the dull grey morning. Despair seemed ready to over- 

 whelm me. It was then I fully realized the unspeakable 

 preciousness of prayer, and that not to an overwhelming 

 mysterious agency such as electricity or gravitation, but to 

 an agent, a Person, and he not separated from me by all that 

 intervenes between God and man ; but possessing, as I 

 possess, a human nature, though (unlike mine) his nature is 

 sinless, and is unspeakably glorious." 



