“My Dear Friend,—Uncertain as I am whether your daughter is yet alive, I know not what to say, but this,—our Heavenly Father appoints all things for the best. If her days of suffering are prolonged, it is to honour her with a conformity to the crucified Jesus. If they are shortened, she will have drunk all her cup of affliction, and found, at the bottom of it, not the bitterness of her sins, but the consolations of our Saviour’s Spirit.
“I had lately some views of death, and it appeared to me in the most brilliant colours. What is it to die, but to open our eyes after the disagreeable dream of life? It is to break the prison of corruptible flesh and blood, into which sin has cast us. It is to draw aside the curtain which prevents us seeing the Supreme Beauty and Goodness face to face. O my dear friend, how lovely is death, when we look at it in Jesus Christ! To die is one of the greatest privileges of the Christian.
“If Miss Ireland is still living, tell her, a thousand times, that Jesus is the resurrection and the life; that He has vanquished and disarmed death; that He has brought life and immortality to light; and that all things are ours, whether life or death, eternity or time. These are great truths upon which she ought to repose her soul with full assurance. Everything is shadow, in comparison of the reality of the Gospel. If your daughter be dead, believe in Jesus, and you shall find her again in Him, who fills all in all, who encircles the material and spiritual world in His arms—in the immense bosom of His Divinity.
“Adieu, my dear friend. Yours,
“J. Fletcher.”[[161]]
“Madeley, October 14, 1768.
“My Very Dear Friend,—I think I told you at Trevecca,[[162]] that we had no farmers at Madeley who feared God and loved Jesus. This generation among us are buried in the furrows of their ploughs, or under the heaps of corn which fill their granaries. Now that I am on the spot, I do not see one who makes it necessary for me to change my opinion. Your bailiff cannot come from this Nazareth.
“If the last efforts of the physicians fail with respect to Miss Ireland, it will be a consolation to you to know that they have been tried. Every thing dies. Things visible are all transitory; but invisible ones abide for ever. If Christ is our life and our resurrection, it is of little importance whether we die now, or thirty years hence.
“Present my respects to your son, and tell him, that last week I buried three young persons who had died of a malignant fever; and who, on the second day of their illness, were deprived of their speech and senses, and, on the fifth, of their lives. Of what avail are youth and vigour when the Lord lifts His finger? And shall we sin against the eternal power, the infinite love, the inexorable justice, and the immense goodness of this God, who gives us, from moment to moment, the breath which is in our nostrils? No—we will employ the precious gift in praising and blessing this good God, who is our Father in Jesus Christ.
“I hope you learn, as well as I, and better than I, to know Jesus in the Spirit. I have known Him after the flesh, and after the letter; I strive to know Him in the power of His Spirit. Under the Divine character of a quickening Spirit, He is everywhere. All that live, live in Him, and they who are spiritually alive have a double life. The Lord give us this second life more abundantly. Yours,