“My Dear Friend,—Blessed be God, we are still alive, and, in the midst of many infirmities, we enjoy a degree of health, spiritually and bodily. O how good was the Lord, to come as Son of man to live here for us, and to come in His Spirit to live in us for ever! This is a mystery of godliness. The Lord make us full witnesses of it!

“A week ago, I was tried to the quick by a fever with which my dear wife was afflicted. Two persons, whom she had visited, having been carried off, within a pistol-shot of our house, I dreaded her being the third. But the Lord has heard prayer, and she is spared. Oh, what is life! ‘On what a slender thread hang everlasting things!’ My comfort, however, is, that this thread is as strong as the will of God, and the word of His grace, which cannot be broken.

“That grace and peace, love and thankful joy, may ever attend you is the wish of your most obliged friends,

“John and Mary Fletcher.”[[635]]

The day after this, he wrote the following to the Right Honorable Lady Mary Fitzgerald:—

“Madeley, July 20, 1785.

“Hon. and Dear Lady,—We have received your kind letter, and have mournfully acquiesced in the will of our heavenly Father, who, by various infirmities and providences, weans us from ourselves and our friends, that we may be His without reserve. It was, perhaps, a peculiar mercy that Providence blocked up your way to this place this summer. A bad putrid fever carries off several people in these parts. Two of our neighbours died of it last week; and my wife, who had visited them, was taken in so violent a manner, that I was obliged to offer her up to God in good earnest, as an oblation worthy a son of Abraham. I hope the worst is over; but her weakness will long preach to me, as well as my own.

“Dying people, we live in the midst of dying people. O let us live in sight of a dying, rising Saviour; and the prospect of death will become first tolerable, and then joyous! Or, if we weep, as our Lord, at the grave of our friends, or at the side of their deathbeds, we shall triumph in hope that all will be for the glory of God, and the good of our souls.

“I am, my dear lady, etc.,

“John Fletcher.”[[636]]