1832-37. DEATH OF TWIN-BROTHERS. 51 



lias passed before him, accompanied by an aptitude to com- 

 prehend the whole ; and a writer has most beautifully imagined 

 that the Book of Account of the Bible will be our own mind 

 endowed with a power of contemplating all its past conduct and 

 judging of its propriety. I fear this writing will be illegible. 



" Now, how delightful it would be to have an aptitude to 

 understand all, given with a remembrance of the past ! I be- 

 lieve the vision would be more beautiful than aught of the con- 

 ceptions of maturer years. Do write me your opinion about 

 all these points, and excusing the strangeness and illegibility 

 of this letter (I intend to mend the last),- -Believe me, yours 

 most affectionately, " GEORGE WILSON." 



The few religious allusions contained in those letters are 

 interesting as the only guide by which we may trace his feelings 

 on such subjects ; and they are the more so when we remember 

 how strongly materialistic was the tendency of the Medical 

 School at that time. One of his dearest early friends says " I 

 have a vivid remembrance of a long talk with him one day 

 while he was in the Infirmary Laboratory, in the course of 

 which he lamented the Sabbath service required of him there. 

 This remark impressed me much, for at that time I fear I should 

 have been glad of any seeming work of necessity which broke 

 in upon the Sabbath rest." 



Once again was the household darkened by the shadow of 

 sickness unto death. John, the gentle, loving twin-brother of 

 George, had never been robust, and pulmonary symptoms had 

 caused anxiety for some years past. Those now became so 

 marked as to leave little ground for hope, and some months of 

 lingering illness brought him to his heavenly home. Blessed 

 months they were to him, for in them he learned the wonderful 

 secret how God can be just, yet the justifier of the ungodly. 

 Instead of murmuring at the wearisome days and nights ap- 

 pointed him, he rather most gratefully rejoiced that time had 

 thus been given to work out his salvation with fear and trem- 

 bling. A friend already mentioned 1 says of him, " He was a 

 sincere and lowly Christian, and died in perfect peace, leaning 



1 Ante, p. 2G. 



