APPENDIX I. 367 



In another letter to the same friend, he recurs to that happy- 

 period of his younger life : " How sweet the assurance of your 

 undying love, and how sweet the recollection of that happy early 

 time, when God gave me the precious gift of personal acquaint- 

 ance with you and other dear brethren. What z.piinctum saliens 

 was that in my life ! I had been reared by godly parents 

 {Independents). About a year before I knew you, my friend 

 Matthew Habershon had lent me his two volumes on prophecy, 

 which first opened my eyes to the pre-millennial Advent of our 

 Lord. The first volume I began after closing my school on a 

 summer evening (June, 1842) j and before I went to bed, I had read 

 it right through. I possessed a very full knowledge of the letter 

 of Scripture from childhood, so that the proofs of the doctrine 

 commended themselves to me as I read without cavil. It was a 

 glorious truth to me. I hailed the coming Jesus with all my 

 heart. So absorbed was I, that when at length I finished the 

 book, I could not, for some considerable time, realize where I 

 was ; it seemed another world ! From that time I began to pray- 

 that I might be privileged to wait till my Lord should come, and 

 go up to Him without having been unclothed. Forty long years 

 have passed. I am now a man of grey hairs ; but I never cease 

 to ask this privilege of my loving God (Luke xxi. 36), and every 

 day I ask it still. Of course, I have no assurance that so it will be. 

 I have no such revelation as Simeon had (see Luke ii. 26) ; but I 

 wait, I hope, I pray." This hope of being caught up before 

 death continued to the last, and its non-fulfilment was an acute 

 disappointment to him. It undoubtedly was connected with the 

 deep dejection of his latest hours on earth. 



In another letter he wrote to this same friend in North Africa, 

 1 88 1, he says, " Within a few years back, when the sole ministry in 

 Marychurch and the pastorate there had become somewhat too 

 much for my advancing years (I am now in my seventy-second 

 year), a loving Christian gentleman, Mr. William King Perrens, 

 who had had experience in the same work, came to reside in our 

 neighbourhood, and he has now, with my wishes, become a sharer 

 with me in the oversight, and we labour together in fullest harmony. 

 There are now about one hundred and twenty in fellowship and 

 in ' the breaking of bread,' mostly poor and working people in 

 the midst of much worldliness and Popery, and we wait for our 



