1844-54. THOUGHTS IN SICKNESS. 387 



tions were bound up in him, his knowledge of the state of his 

 health. So skilfully was this done, that, while themselves 

 keenly watching every change, and hoping against hope, they 

 believed him unconscious of much that filled them with harass- 

 ing anxiety, and not till after all his sorrows were over did they 

 learn from letters to others, that to him all had been as an open 

 book. It is needless to add, that no small amount of self-denial 

 and self-command were called for in carrying out this affec- 

 tionate purpose. 



" 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 with- 

 out 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, there- 

 fore, these good people be notified that now I am so well, that 

 if they utter any expressions concerning 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 pro- 



