But I have learnt many lessons respecting that period. I have often said that I regarded that year as the most fruitless period of my ministry, but as I have gone on in life I have met with so many who have ascribed their conversion to the ministry of that short period, that I have been taught the lesson that a clergyman is utterly unable to form any estimate of what God the Holy Ghost is doing through his ministry. However, we were not to remain there long, for the Lord Himself made it perfectly plain that it was His will for us to remove. My dearest wife was very unwell, and I was lame in the right knee. My father also was quickly gathered to his rest in Christ Jesus, so that one of the great motives in going to Holloway was removed. Though I had great difficulty in walking, I was able to ride, and one day I rode in to call on my father-in-law, Sir Benjamin Brodie, whom I consulted respecting my knee, and he said to me,— “I tell you what, Edward; you must go to the seaside.” “Well,” said I, “I did think of going for a short trip after Easter.” “Oh, I don’t mean that,” said he. “You must go to the seaside for a year at least.” “But what,” said I, “is to become of my parish, my work, my family?” “I don’t know,” he replied, “but this I know, that if you don’t go to the seaside for at least a year you will die, and so what will become of it all then?” This was indeed a very heavy blow to me, and I rode home that day solemnised in spirit, and thinking how I should tell my dearest wife what her father had just said to me. It was a very solemn and sacred ride that I had that morning, but on my arrival, before I went upstairs to her, I opened my letters that had arrived during my absence, and almost the first one was from my friend John Plumptre, in which he said that he was one of the trustees of a new church nearly complete at Ramsgate, and it would be a great satisfaction to him and his colleagues if I would undertake the first Incumbency. To describe the mixed emotion with which I went upstairs to tell my wife, both of her father’s opinion and Mr. Plumptre’s letter, is impossible.