Famine is making its destructive way here among the poor. All the necessaries of life are raised from four to six times their usual price, and often are not to be obtained at all, and in addition there is no labour going on in the city: every shop is closed, and every one’s concern is to take care of his life or property. They are constantly killing persons in the streets, without the least inquiry being made after the perpetrators; nay, they are publicly and notoriously known, and no one regards it. Nothing can exceed the misery and fear that pervades the city. Yet amidst all these perplexities and troubles, the Lord reigns, and without him they can do nothing.
July 31. Lord’s day.—A day that always dawns with sweet peace on my soul: I seem more especially to bring before my mind those with whom I think I took sweet counsel, and went to the house of God in company; and though now deprived of all that the heart can desire from holy fellowship on earth, there is something that brings me near those I love, when I think on their places of assembly, and their times of prayer. Though my dear Lord has broken my heart in pieces, and his hand is still resting on me in the person of my dear little dying baby, whose love and preference for the little care I know how to show, renders it one of those exquisitely painful trials, that the feelings know not how to obey the Lord in, when the spiritual judgment is brought quite down. Yet I can never help feeling it to be a mercy eternally to be thankful for, that the sense of my Father’s love and Saviour’s sympathy has never been taken from me amidst all my trials; nay, I do feel that the Lord is fitting me, by suffering and separation, for the work to which he has called me; he leaves me without a home, or the desire of one, and in that way prepares me for situations, which, during the life-time of my dearest Mary, would have been deeply trying. I bless God for the fourteen years uninterrupted domestic happiness we enjoyed together, above all, for the seven years spiritual communion in a common gracious Lord, who led us in unity of faith and spirit to that work from which he has taken her so early to himself, and from which, when the Lord dismisses me, I trust to ascend and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb with her for ever and ever. My great want is, more of Christ, more of his whole character; this I purpose, by the Spirit’s help, more to meditate on, that all that hateful concern about self, that pollutes all I do, may be absorbed in one only thought of how he may be glorified. What I feel I want, is more holiness of spirit. I know the Lord is fitting me for his holy presence, and that he is the chief desire of my soul; yet, oh! the weakness of faith, the coldness of communion, the reserves of dedication. Oh, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!
A Mohammedan has been with me to-day, who is much alarmed at the state of the city, and wants to fly, but sees not now any opening. He told me, it was not this or that Pasha he cared about; but his property, his life, and the females of his family. Oh, what a relief to know, that my dear Mary is with her Lord; how light this makes my present trials. Yesterday they were fighting from before sun-rise till the afternoon, but could not effect an entrance into the city. The Lord preserves us all in simple dependence on himself.
August 2. Wednesday.—Accounts have arrived from the Hajjaj (Mecca and Medina, &c.) stating the mortality from plague and cholera to be most tremendous; many families that left this place on pilgrimage to escape the troubles, in the midst of which we have so long been, have, as we hear, suffered dreadfully. Thus God seems in wrath, making bare his holy arm against this wretched nation in all its length and breadth. My heart sometimes trembles for the dear brethren at Aleppo, lest at the conclusion of the hot season it should break out there. My only resource is God. The poor people here are beginning to sell their little all to buy bread, and in consequence of the badness and scarcity of provisions, dysentery is spreading its ravages in every direction, as well as fever.
I have had with me to-day the translator to the late French Bishop, and two or three Roman Catholic merchants, all overwhelmed with fear. They say, the Sultan, on hearing of the death of the Pasha of Mosul, and the Vaivode of Merdin, has written to the Pasha of Aleppo, to spare neither man, woman, nor child in the city; but to let the very name of Bagdad be swept from his dominions. Though this is not altogether unlike the Sultan, I rather think it the report of those within the city, to make the inhabitants dread delivering it up into the hands of those without. How blessed a portion is ours, in the midst of all these perplexities, to stay ourselves on our God, and to confide in the sympathizing love of our Lord, who, worthless and vile as we are, will not overlook us; but for his name’s sake, will take care of the very hairs of our heads, either in life or death. Amidst it all, what chiefly troubles me is, that I love my Father and my Lord so little, and that although there is not an object in the world, but his service and glory, for which I would desire to live; yet that, notwithstanding this I live so little for it. Three months have now passed since my dearest Mary has entered into her rest, which I have spent mostly in the sorrowful nursing of my poor dear sinking babe, and though her love and preference repays a hundred-fold all the trial, yet it pierces, while it pleases the heart, to see that connection so soon must cease. I often wonder at my strange indifference to my situation, which, but for my dear children, I think would be greater. I am afraid to think it is the fruit of faith I feel, in every other respect so weak; it seems more like the physical insensibility of one who is without a stake in what is passing. Oh, may my dear Lord, in every earthly tie he breaks, bind my poor soul doubly strong to himself for eternity, and to his service while here.
Aug. 3.—Some of the principal Christian families sent to me to-day, to request me to subscribe for guards to our quarter of the city, so that every night we might have about 40 on guard. This I saw my way clear in declining, believing that for Christ’s servants the sword is not a lawful defence; whatever it may be the Lord’s holy will I suffer, let it not be in acting against my convictions of his holy and blessed will, for though I feel as a sheep in the midst of wolves, the Lord does not allow my heart to be disturbed with any sense of personal insecurity. How beautifully all our blessed Lord’s precepts hang together, and fit the one the other; if your consent to follow him in his poverty as he has commanded, you have little to fear in following his other commands of non-resistance: if you accept not the first, you will not accept the second, except in such circumstances as expose you to perhaps little comparative danger. May the Lord make me willing, whatever it costs, to learn all his will, and give me grace to love it. I have heard such instances to-day of hateful and abominable oppression and wickedness against the poor Christians, by the followers of those who have the name of rulers within the city, that my heart aches, and my soul loathes the place. But what can we expect, when these very persons robbed last night the house of Saleh Beg, himself from whom they receive their pay.
A little butter and some sheep have been brought into the city; but they ask so enormous a price, that they have not yet been bought.
I was struck with the quickness with which the mind apprehends the simple truth of God when unprejudiced by interest. I have, without even speaking contemptuously to the Christians of their fasting, taken various opportunities of expressing the liberty of a Christian to fast in such a way, and at such times, as he believes most conducive to his soul’s advantage; and have pointed out to them, that to lay the stress on it they do, was quite perverting the very end and design of fasting; for that they are manifestly less afraid of violating Christ’s commands than their own regulations, which, as they used them, were purely human. To-day, a question arose between two of them in my presence, about their fasts; and the one stated as clearly as could be wished, the uselessness of burthening their consciences about eating a little butter instead of oil, or such like, instead of seeking to flee from their lies, and drunkenness, and robbery, and cheating. There seems to me such a glorious moral power in God’s word, that my heart never doubts of its producing marked effects, where it can be clearly and fully delivered; but, oh, the language, what a mountainous barrier!
Last night, whilst lying on my bed, on the roof of my house, five balls passed over my head in about as many seconds, so close, that I threw myself off in expectation that the next might hit it or me; at times I almost determined to go down, but the danger of being shot did not appear so dreadful as the suffocating heat down stairs.
August 4. Thursday.—We have received accounts to-day of another messenger from Bussorah, with letters for us, having been stripped. How trying these dispensations are—how necessary for our peace that our eye should only rest on God, ordering in love every event concerning us, even to the arrival of a letter, so that he will allow nothing to fail us that is for our good. I have to-day finished reading through again Martyn’s Memoir, by Sargent. How my soul admires and loves his zeal, self-denial, and devotion; how brilliant, how transient his career; what spiritual and mental power amidst bodily weakness and disease. Oh, may I be encouraged by his example to press on to a higher mark. When I think of my own spiritual weakness, contrasted with his spiritual power, it brings a striking warning home to my heart to seek a fuller and more abiding union with Jesus, from whom alone flows the living waters that make the branches fruitful; I am not now troubled about that intellectual difference between us, which might seem to make it impossible for me to do what he did: the Lord has made me, blessed be His holy name, contented in this respect with any difference I may feel between myself and his more exalted members; but my sorrow is caused by my want of that likeness to him, who is my Lord and King, which is alike the common inheritance of all the members of his mystical body. May I, however, henceforth make the most of my talent, that I be not numbered among the slothful servants at my dear Lord’s most glorious and blessed appearing. The mild seriousness that pervades dear H. M.’s soul has for my heart a great charm. There is not a trait of eccentricity—all is like his Lord in its measure—he was solemn and serious as became his work, yet full of zeal and affection, which shewed itself, however, rather in the steady power of a course of action than in expression. It is astonishing what the world will endure from a child of God, whose manner gives them excuse for calling him an interesting eccentric madman; because then all he says they feel at liberty to laugh at; whereas, if the very same truths were declared to them in the calm seriousness of our Lord’s manner, it would make them gnash on him with their teeth.