I844-54- GLIMPSES OF THE INNER LIFE. 21$ 



ber 28, 1851, George says, "There are white hairs in both 

 our beards, and we are growing graver, as we would do if 

 we were mere animals. Yet I hope I sit looser to the world, 

 and nearer to Christ ; but not near enough. This evil heart 

 of unbelief will not quickly soften, and the Saviour is not 

 freely given the central place in it ; the world looms deceit- 

 fully large in all my visions. To do work for Him, in His* 

 Spirit, is my increasing desire. May my prayers be heard, 

 and yours be doubled for me. I know a serenity I have 

 not known for months. How much of it is the fruit of 

 better health and less work, how much through God's grace^ 

 I will not curiously inquire. They are all His, and only 

 His gifts. The whole household sends you the sincerest 

 wishes for a happy New Year. I seem to feel the pressure 

 of your great kind hand." 



After months of over-work and fatigue, he tells the same 

 friend in 1853, " I can with a rejoicing heart say that that 

 great and gracious Lord and Master whom we serve, grows 

 day by day dearer to me, and to do His will is to me in- 

 creasingly the desire of my heart, and its prayer." 



Writing to Dr. J. H. Gladstone in 1854, of a medical- 

 student preparing for the mission field, he says, " He is irr 

 the way of a training which will make him a powerful 

 ambassador for Christ among the subtle, sagacious, meta- 

 physical, oriental nations. I am going to give him charge 

 of a class in summer, to secure for him a thorough famili- 

 arity with our noble science. It is a blessed thing to know 

 that our Art, once called emphatically ' the Black Art,' and 

 which, when not held to be the offspring of Satanic collu- 

 sion, was looked to by the vulgar as fitted only to gratify 

 their lust for gold, can be made by us to serve the cause of 

 Christ. We shall be alchemists of another sort than the 

 older ones, and whisper to an unbelieving world that there 



