246 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



" Could I escape exposure to cold and fumes and much 

 talking," he says, " I should do very well ; but my calling is 

 not a very helpful one to damaged lungs, and I am not 

 without unwonted anxieties concerning the winter." " God's 

 will be done. If His chastening hand is to be laid again 

 upon me, His sanctifying Spirit will be sent also, and He 

 who suffered for me will help me to suffer." While in bed 

 from a severe attack of local inflammation, with high fever 

 and great pain, he writes to Dr. Cairns : "I have gathered 

 spiritual instruction from this lesson, and could enlarge 

 thereon, but the flesh is weak. God's mercies are truly as 

 overwhelmingly great as they are altogether undeserved;" 

 and a few days later he says : 



" DEAR JOHN, ' I sing the sofa,' i.e., I write from it, a 

 great step towards convalescence. I begin with this fact, 

 which I beg you will communicate to the H and J 

 families. It is downright dishonesty and cruelty to permit 

 others to expend on our sufferings more sympathy than they 

 deserve. Let, therefore, these good people be notified that 

 now, I am so well, that if they utter any expressions con- 

 cerning me, it must be those of thanksgiving. . . . How 

 different the thoughts of health and illness are ! One thing 

 especially is impressed on me by every successive attack of 

 the latter. I refer to the feeling that one must despair of 

 building up a firm faith in Christ in the great majority of 

 cases of sickness, if it is all to do from the very foundation, 

 and the disease is in any way rapid or mortal. If your 

 objective experience is at all like my subjective one, you 

 will earnestly warn all against deathbed repentances. In 

 probably two-thirds, at least one-half, of the cases of fatal 

 illness, before alarm is felt, pain or what is far worse, 

 unless the agony be tremendous, sickness has prostrated 



