God knows how little I deserve of this.
I have a book wrapped in my haversack that I never tire of reading, though I have but seldom opened it here—to my loss. It is F. W. H. Myers' St. Paul. No doubt you know it. It has given strength many a time.
'Nay but Thou knowest us, Lord Christ, Thou knowest,
Well Thou rememberest our feeble frame,
Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest,
Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.
'Therefore have pity!—not that we accuse Thee,
Curse Thee and die, and charge Thee with our woe:
Not through Thy fault, O Holy One, we lose Thee,
Nay, but our own,—yet hast Thou made us so!
'Then, though our foul and limitless transgression
Grows with our growing, with our breath began,
Raise Thou the arms of endless intercession,
Jesus, divinest when Thou most art man!'
... I have always looked forward to the days when you would be able to take our services for us, and missed them when they were impossible. The passion of self-sacrifice, the passion of St. Paul as of his Christ, makes strong appeal, and I always found that note in your words to us, and I loved it. It has no limits; it counts no cost.
I miss you now—we all do. God grant we may meet again.
One wonders how long it still must last. There is something written by George Dawson that I like for these days. It is this:—
'Grant unto us, Almighty God, that when our vision fails and our understanding is darkened, when the ways of life seem hard and the brightness of life is gone—to us grant the wisdom that deepens faith when the sight is dim, and enlarges trust when the understanding is not clear. And whensoever Thy ways in nature or in the soul are hard to be understood, then may our quiet confidence, our patient trust, our loving faith in Thee be great; and as children, knowing that we are loved, cared for, guarded, kept, may we with a quiet mind at all times put our trust in the unseen God. So may we face life without fear and death without fainting.'
You will, I hope, forgive this much quotation. They are taken out of my treasures, and I like to share them with those I care for.