Cambridge: April 30, 1903.
I am satisfied with your decision. I thought over the matter, but I could not see my way quite clearly to say anything more definite, so I did not write again. Don't think that my silence was due to slackness. I did what I thought was better than writing. I spent an hour in praying over the matter. Now that the matter is settled I can tell you what a keen pleasure it is to me to have my dear old —— near me in England,[1] and doing a piece of work which is full of hope and joy. I would not say this before, because I did not wish to influence your decision by private considerations. Get some quiet time for prayer before September 1, that when you go to Osborne you may go en pleromati eulogias Christou ('filled full with the blessing of Christ'). I feel increasingly the need of such times to learn to walk by faith without stumbling, and to accustom myself to the atmosphere of faith, to see things as they appear to a man who has faith 'as a grain of mustard seed.'
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: en—epsilon, nu; pleromati—pi, lambda, eta, rho, omega, mu, alpha, tau, iota; eulogias—epsilon, upsilon, lambda, omicron, gamma, iota, alpha, final sigma; Christou—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]
Westcott records a visit (see 'Life,' i. 249) to his old schoolmaster, Bishop Prince Lee. '"People quote various words of the Lord," said the Bishop, "as containing the sum of the Gospel—the Lord's Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, and the like; to me the essence of the Gospel is in simpler and shorter terms: me phobou, monon pisteue.[2] Ah! Westcott, mark that monon," and his eyes were filled with tears as he spoke.' Ah! S——, mark that monon!… God bless you in your new work and make you a blessing to others as you have been to me.
[1] He had been offered work in South Africa.
[2] 'Be not afraid, only believe.'
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: me—mu, eta; phobou—phi, omicron, beta, omicron, upsilon; monon—mu, omicron, nu, omicron, nu; pisteue—pi, iota, sigma, tau, epsilon, upsilon, epsilon]
To J. K.
St. Thomas's Home, St. Thomas's Hospital: August 28, 1903.
… I am most grateful for your kind words, though I know full well how little it is that I have done for you. We clergymen so often seem to be working in the dark. There are no clear results to show, as e.g. a doctor can comfort himself with, when he has visibly cured a patient. And I for one am too easily inclined to despair, and to wonder whether the work is not in vain. But 'trust is truer than our fears.' Yet it does me good when I feel I have done anything, however tiny, for a man. After all, results are best left in God's hand. He gives us enough to help us the next step onward, but not enough to exalt us, and to make us think we can do anything without His assistance. Work 'in the Lord' cannot be in vain.