‘It was set upon some of our hearts,’ he writes after the storm of Tredah, ‘that a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the spirit of God. And is it not so, clearly? That which caused your men to storm so courageously, it was the spirit of God, who gave your men courage, and took it away again; and gave the enemy courage, and took it away again; and gave your men courage again, and therewith this happy success.’ [1] [1] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. cv.] During his brief sojourn in London between the two wars it appears from a dialogue with Ludlow [1] that his thoughts were running on the need of swift reforms, especially of the law, and that he ‘was feeding on’ the hundred and tenth psalm; ‘The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion.... Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power; in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning.’ The experience of the Scotch campaign, full, as he conceived, {354} of miraculous passages, was not likely to temper his consciousness of a divine mission. ‘There may be a spiritual fulness,’ he writes to the general assembly of the kirk, [2] ‘which the world may call drunkenness, as in the second chapter of the Acts.’ In such spiritual fulness he lay on September 2, with a sickly, half-starved army about Dunbar, in the face of an enemy double in number and apparently commanding his position, yet sure, as he says, that just ‘because of their numbers, their advantages, and their confidence, because of our weakness, our strait, we were in the mount, and in the mount the Lord would be seen, and that he would find a way of deliverance for us.’ Through ‘an high, act of the Lord’s providence’ Lesley made a false move, and the way of deliverance was found. ‘It is easy to say,’ he writes to parliament after the victory, ‘the Lord hath done this. It would do you good to see and hear our poor foot go up and down making their boast of God. But it’s in your hands, and by these eminent mercies God puts it more into your hands to give glory to him; to improve your power and his blessings to his praise.... Disown yourselves and own your authority.... Relieve the oppressed, hear the groans of poor prisoners in England. Be pleased to reform the abuses of all professions; and if there be any one that makes many poor to make a few rich’ (a hit at the lawyers), ‘that suits not a commonwealth.’ [3] [1] [_Memoirs_, p. 123; ed. 1751.] [2] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. cxxxvi.] [3] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. cxl.]