My dear Sir,
You will have the kindness to excuse the brevity of these few lines, as I have only this moment arrived after a journey of preaching and inspecting some of the schools, and it is necessary that the readers’ journals should go off by this day’s mail, which will proceed immediately. I have, I trust, some interesting things to communicate, which, please providence, I shall shortly do; and also, offer my grateful thanks to the Committee of the Tract Society, for a precious parcel of tracts, forwarded with a kind letter from their worthy Secretary; and also my very grateful acknowledgments to an excellent lady, for a very acceptable parcel for the female children in the schools; this good lady says, they are “from one who wishes well to the cause of instructing the rising generation.” The thimbles, bodkins, thread-cases, needle-books, work-bags, scissors, and five shillings, inclosed in the “old purse,” shall be judiciously distributed: the five shillings we will apply to clothing some naked creatures. May the Lord of glory clothe the dear lady’s soul with the beautiful and glorious, the spotless and eternal, robes of the Redeemer’s righteousness, which will never wax old!
With the kindest wishes for you, my dear Sir, and all the dear friends of the Society, ever most affectionately yours,
Wm. Thomas.
Rev. J. Bates to the Secretary.
Sligo, Nov. 31, 1834.
Dear Sir,
Through mercy I am spared to give you an outline of my imperfect labours during the month that is now past, and gone into eternity. When I think of the rapid flight of time, and view the condition of my fellow-sinners around me with regard to their religious circumstances and eternal prospects, I feel that my situation is such as should lead me to Jesus, to seek more of his mind and more of his spirit, that “whatever my hand findeth to do, I may do it with my might.”