“O man! thou image of thy Maker’s good, What canst thou fear, when breathed into thy blood His Spirit is that built thee? What dull sense Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence Who made the morning, and who placed the light Guide to thy labours; who called up the night, And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers, In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers; Who gave thee knowledge; who so trusted thee To let thee grow so near Himself, the Tree? Must He then be distrusted? Shall His frame Discourse with Him why thus and thus I am? He made the Angels thine, thy fellows all; Nay even thy servants, when devotions call. Oh! canst thou be so stupid then, so dim, To seek a saving[1] influence, and lose Him? Can stars protect thee? Or can poverty, Which is the light to heaven, put out His eye! He is my star; in Him all truth I find, All influence, all fate. And when my mind Is furnished with His fulness, my poor story Shall outlive all their age, and all their glory. The hand of danger cannot fall amiss, When I know what, and in whose power, it is, Nor want, the curse of man, shall make me groan: A holy hermit is a mind alone. * * * * Affliction, when I know it, is but this, A deep alloy whereby man tougher is To bear the hammer; and the deeper still, We still arise more image of His will; Sickness, an humorous cloud ’twixt us and light; And death, at longest, but another night.” [1] Many, in those days, believed in astrology. I had more than ordinary attention during my discourse, at one point in which I saw the down-bent head of Catherine Weir sink yet lower upon her hands. After a moment, however, she sat more erect than before, though she never lifted her eyes to meet mine. I need not assure my reader that she was not present to my mind when I spoke the words that so far had moved her. Indeed, had I thought of her, I could not have spoken them. As I came out of the church, my people crowded about me with outstretched hands and good wishes. One woman, the aged wife of a more aged labourer, who could not get near me, called from the outskirts of the little crowd— “May the Lord come and see ye every day, sir. And may ye never know the hunger and cold as me and Tomkins has come through.” “Amen to the first of your blessing, Mrs Tomkins, and hearty thanks to you. But I daren’t say AMEN to the other part of it, after what I’ve been preaching, you know.” “But there’ll be no harm if I say it for ye, sir?” “No, for God will give me what is good, even if your kind heart should pray against it.” “Ah, sir, ye don’t know what it is to be hungry AND cold.” “Neither shall you any more, if I can help it.” “God bless ye, sir. But we’re pretty tidy just in the meantime.”