‘This morning my dear friend passed away, full of peace and content to go. The children have been all that we could wish, full of sympathy, but quietly impressed and very sorrowful. We do not wish them to leave, but to learn to look calmly on death, and hopefully up to Him Who has taught His servants to triumph over death....
‘The loss to me is more than I can say. God’s will be done.’
The next letter is to Mrs. Cooper,[105] a much-loved old pupil, who in 1902 lost a son, a promising young artist, and seven months later her husband through death:—
‘June 1903.
‘I am sending you such a nice sermon by our good bishop, which I think you will like. I quite agree with you that one ought not to seek intercourse through mediums. I would never join the Psychical Society. It was right to enquire as these scientific men have done, but the inexperienced are almost sure to be taken in by such, and it seems to me that we ought not to try to draw aside the veil but wait until God’s herald bids us enter.
‘I think you must expect to feel the sense of loss becoming greater, but then you will get to feel how short is the time of mourning on earth, and to ascend in heart and mind—and so to be above the storms and clouds of earth—even as the lark—and yet with him to hover over the earthly home, “that nest which you can drop into at will,—Those quivering limbs comprest.” You will want to speak to and help others with the comfort wherewith you are comforted of God....
‘It is nice to look back on that time forty years ago. I remember your confessions to me then. Well, you have not been forsaken, nor left to beg your bread.’
To the same:—
‘October 1903.