I arrived at Halifax, he says, in a letter of the 28th of the Fourth Month, on Fifth-day evening, and attended the Monthly Meeting of Brighouse on the 20th. It looked formidable to me in prospect on the first entering into harness; but I hope the meeting proved a good introduction, and I saw a good specimen of a large, harmonious, and well-conducted Monthly Meeting. There might be near 250 members present.
When he had completed the service, he took a week of repose at Harrowgate, where he briefly reviews his journey.
5 mo. 29.---In passing along through my native county, I found many countenances missing which were very familiar to me years ago, and who are now gone to their rest. But I was comforted to find in many places a race of young people springing up who bore the marks of being plants of my Heavenly Father's right-hand planting, and who gave hopes of becoming useful in his Church. It is with a grateful heart that I record the mercy of my Lord, in that he has granted me strength in a remarkable manner to do what he put in my heart to do, from place to place. Blessed be his name!
After having finished the service in Yorkshire, I have had a week's tarriance at Harrowgate. The rest and quiet have proved beneficial to my health, and very precious have been the seasons of sweet communion I have been permitted to hold with my God in this retirement.
This summer he repeated his visit to Minden, and hired a lodging at the Klause. A reflection in one of the letters which he wrote from this retreat affords a pleasing glimpse of his mind:--
I sometimes think that a large portion of comfort and joy are allowed to those who really love the Lord; and how chastened are the pleasures of the humble Christian! They abide with us long after the causes of them are passed away; and the more our permitted pleasures are enjoyed under a grateful sense of the goodness of the bountiful Giver, the longer they may be permitted to us.
In the Ninth Month, he attended the Two-months' Meeting at Pyrmont. It was not without emotion that he visited once more the place which had been so familiar to him in earlier days. The hopes he had then conceived, and which, as we have seen, he had so fondly cherished, with regard to the Society of Friends in that part, had been disappointed; the little company had dwindled in numbers and declined in religious influence; and when he took leave of Pyrmont for the last time, it was with a sorrowful heart.
From Minden, accompanied by Sophie Peitsmeyer, he went southwards, and took up his abode at the little town of Neuveville, on the Lake of Bienne, in Switzerland.
I spent, he says, two or three days at Neufchatel, and visited many of my old friends in the place and neighborhood; but it was affecting to find how many of those I had known years ago were no longer on this earth. Madame Pétavel was as warm-hearted as ever; the professor, her husband, is ripening for heaven.
John Yeardley had gone to Neuveville with the intention of passing the winter in Switzerland. After remaining a month, however, he returned to England; and this change of mind was the result of a remarkable circumstance. He became silent and reserved, with the air and manners of one who is not at peace with himself; until one night, when he was heard to cry out in a loud tone, as though speaking to some one. The next morning at breakfast he appeared subdued and full of tenderness; and on his young friend inquiring what had made him cry out in the night, he told her that he must return home, for there was more work for him to do. He said that a prospect of service in the gospel had latterly opened before him, and that as he had greatly desired to remain in Switzerland, he had striven against the sense of duty and refused to yield; but that during the night he had had a vision, in which he heard the command repeated to return home and enter again upon his labor, and that he felt, as he thought, the touch of the heavenly messenger's hand. This caused him to call out; and when he awoke, he found that willingness of spirit had taken the place of his former obstinacy. Thus turned from his own purpose, he set about to accomplish the will of his gracious Master with his usual resolution, and they made the best of their way back to England. The nature of the service which he saw before him is touched upon in the following passage from a letter, dated Neuveville, the 14th of the Tenth Month.