my beloved husband.  Then I no longer halted between two opinions; my God became my all.  I leave it as my testimony, that he has been a father to the fatherless, a husband to the widow, the stranger’s shield and orphan’s stay.  Even to hoar hairs and to old age he has carried me, and not one good word has failed of all that he has promised.  ‘He has done all things well,’ and at this day I am richer and happier than ever I was in my life.  Not that I am yet made free from sin, that is still my burden—­want of love and gratitude, indolence in commanded duty, self-will, and nestling in the creature.  But my heart’s wish and earnest desire is conformity to the divine will.  The bent of my will is for God; and if my heart deceive me not, my God is the centre of my best affections.  It is by grace that I am what I am, and the same grace engages to perfect the work begun.

“This God is my God; he will guide me even unto death, through death, and be my portion to eternity.  This God I recommend to my friend; and this well-ordered covenant, this all-sufficient Saviour, for your acceptance:  the Bible for your guide, pray to God for his Holy Spirit to lead you to the knowledge of the very truth as it is in Jesus.  Accept this as a testimony of friendship, and believe me

“Yours, in love,

“I.  GRAHAM.”

To the same.

“NOVEMBER 2, 1800.

“You have, I find, been the child of affliction:  she is a stern, rugged nurse; but blessed often are the lessons she teaches.  I have, says God, chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.  It is God’s ordinary way of drawing sinners to himself, either to dry up or imbitter the streams of worldly comfort, that he may shut them up to seek that comfort that depends not on any transitory source.

“I have no doubt but you shall yet sing with the royal Psalmist, ’It is good for me that I have been afflicted; for before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept thy word.  Blessed is the man thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law.’  Many are the texts to the same purport; take them for your consolation as a part of God’s well-ordered covenant.

“You have met with a late bereavement, which has entered deep into your soul.  We are not called to stoicism, but to tenderness of heart and spirit.  Jesus wept with the two sisters over a brother’s grave.  But still, the Christian’s spirit must be resigned, and say, and try to say with cheerfulness, ‘Not my will, but thine be done.’  And Oh, my friend, great will be the wisdom and happy the acquisition, if every new bereavement enlarge the room for divine love in the heart, and be filled up with that most noble, most blessed of principles.  Seek not, my friend, to replace friendship with any mere worldling; beg of God to fill up the vacuum, then will you be a great gainer.