“MY DEAR UNCLE,—I am always greatly rejoiced to hear of your well-doings at Lowestoft, but I am more pleased than ever now, for I have something of a parental as well as filial interest—filial because I was trained amongst you myself, and parental because Frank stayed six months with me. I have no doubt that the change of ministry is likely to prove a real refreshment to your people, and I should not be surprised if it were to be the means of calling out some, and leading to true conversions. You must not let all the ladies turn Frank’s head by flattery, of which there always appears to me great danger for young clergymen, for good people seem to suppose that religious interest gives a licence which is allowed in nothing else, and make the Gospel an occasion, rather than a check, for unwholesome conversation. I have felt the danger of it very much here, and though I have been very much preserved by a culpable want of sentimentality, I fear that I have suffered from the evil. I find that I often return from my intercourse with them thinking better of myself instead of worse. I was much interested by your remarks about the country. How completely does it prove that ‘Christ is the head over all things to the Church’! Men appear with wicked designs and ungodly purposes, but Christ is Lord, and when they are just ready to strike He paralyses their aim. I regard these failures of wicked men not so much as the effect of a state of society as evidences of the controlling power of the Lord. He allows them to form their wicked schemes, and just when all is ready for an explosion, He defeats them, that so He may prove His power and their nothingness. Thus it is that these very men who are most opposed to the Church of Christ become the occasions for adding to its strength, for they call forth the protecting power of God, and so increase faith by experience. I have been inexpressibly cheered lately, amidst the sins of this ungodly world, by the thought of the final triumph of the Church. ‘The God of Peace shall bind Satan under your feet shortly.’ It is therefore certain that the day will come when Satan and all his agents will be overthrown, when we shall no more suffer from sin and its effects, and then all the elect people of God shall be visibly gathered under one Head, enjoying a perfect union with each other and with Christ. All this must take place. Popery, atheism, infidelity, and the spirit of schism may unite their unholy ranks and lend all their strength for the overthrow of our Lord’s kingdom, but ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ How is it that our hearts are not filled with holy joy at the prospect, and that we do not ride triumphant over all the fears, the sorrows, the sins, with which on every side we are beset?