Do you know that it is just twenty-five years since we first met?  How gladly would I spend the day of our silver wedding with you!  You will see that I am near in spirit, at all events.  My thoughts have been busy the past week with reviewing the years through which I have travelled, hand in hand, with my dear husband; years full of sin, full of suffering, full of joy; brimful of the loving-kindness and tender mercy that smote often and smote surely.  Your last letter only confirms what I already knew, but am never tired of hearing repeated, the faithfulness of God to those whom He afflicts.  When we once find out what He is to an aching, empty heart, we want to make everybody see just what we see, and, until we try in vain, think we can.  I had very peculiar feelings in relation to you when your dear husband was, for a time, parted from you.  I knew God would never afflict you so, if He had not something beautiful and blissful to give in place of what He took.  And what can we ask for that compares for one instant with “the almost constant felt presence of our Saviour’s sympathy and support”?  Our human nature would like to have the earthly and the divine friendship at once; but, if we must choose between the twain, surely you and I would choose Christ without one moment’s hesitation.  I hope you mention my name every day to Him as I do yours, as I love to do.

I enclose, and want you, when by yourself, to sing for my sake a little hymn that I am sure is the language of your heart.  My dear husband had a few copies struck off to give friends.  Write soon and often.  Oh, that you lived here or at Dorset.  Good-bye, with warmest love, now twenty-five years old!

To Mrs. Condict, New York, April 20, 1870.

Last Saturday was the twenty-fifth anniversary of our marriage, and a very happy day to us both.  My dear husband wrote me a letter that made me tremble, lest he should get such hold of me as no human being must have.  I have a very curious feeling about life; a satisfied one, and as if it could not possibly give me much more than I now have. "I have lived, I have loved." [4] People often say they have so much to live for; I can’t feel so, though I am not only willing, but glad to live while my husband and children need me; and yet—­and yet—­to have this problem solved, and to be forever with the Lord!  I want to see you.  I can no longer see my dear Mrs. B.; she is too ill, and that makes me miss you the more.  I hope that little MS. of mine did not task your sympathies; I don’t want you to pity me, but to magnify Him who took such pains with me, and is carrying on just such work in thousands of hearts and lives.  What goodness!  What condescension!  The least we can do who have suffered much is to love much....  I have been studying the Bible on the subject of giving personal testimony, and think it makes this a plain duty.  There is nothing like the influence of one living soul on another.  Then why should we not naturally speak to everybody who will listen, of what fills our thoughts; our Saviour, His beauty, His goodness, His faithfulness, His wisdom!  I don’t believe a full heart can help running over.