384 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



" I deeply sympathize with you both in the anguish which 

 such a trial must beget ; but with a happy issue out of her great 

 affliction so certainly and, please God, so unremotely awaiting 

 dear Lucy, I do not wonder that you bow in unrepining sub- 

 mission to Him who doeth all things well. 



" And when we consider that each of us, in the depth of even 

 natural sleep, is as helpless as your silent sufferer when in the 

 grasp of her malady ; and further, that there is certainly much 

 less physical agony than from the movements of the limbs we 

 infer there must be, we may surely think that to be with Christ 

 as Lucy, spite of her bonds, even now is, is ' far better' than to 

 enjoy the soundest unblessed slumbers, which shut out not only 

 the world, but the very sense of God, from hundreds who never 

 suffered a brief pang. 



" We may yet find that He who has told us that the first shall 

 be last- and the last first, has been peculiarly overflowing in re- 

 velations of His goodness and mercy to those who, like dear 

 Lucy, seemed to the thoughtless left alone. 



"And how cheering is the assurance that the Holy Ghost 

 ' intercedeth for us with groanings which cannot be uttered/ 

 Her inarticulate sighs are translated by the Advocate with the 

 Father into prevailing prayers, and, presented by Him, we know 

 how they will be answered.- -Yours very affectionately, 



" GEORGE WILSON." 



One is often tempted, in looking at the many-sided mystery 

 of suffering, to come to the conclusion that some are set apart, 

 not only for their own profit, but as unconsciously teachers of 

 others, setting forth the causes, the uses, and the results of afflic- 

 tion. In George Wilson's life we can even now see the wisdom 

 of God's dealings, in this point of view, with regard to him ; 

 much more shall we rejoicingly see it when that which is in 

 part shall be done away. 



His wonderful recovery, time after time, from severe illnesses, 

 evinced an amount of vitality which was scarcely looked for in 

 his apparently feeble frame. Again and again did his medical 

 friends look on him as almost brought back from the grave ; 

 yet there he was, claiming no compassion, and bravely doing a 



