St. Hilary Church, in which Henry Martyn preached, is one of the oldest in England, containing, in the tower of Edward III.'s reign, two stones with inscriptions of the time of the Emperor Flavius Constantinus, who was killed by Honorius in 411. What Lydia Grenfell thought of Martyn's sermon on that day, August 26, thenceforth memorable to both, we find in her _Diary_ of that date: _1804, August 26._--Heard H.M. on 'Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin (_i.e._ sin-offering) for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.' Exordium on the honourable employment of a minister of the Gospel. In the text two things were implied. First, we were at enmity with God. Second, we were unable to restore ourselves to His favour. There were two things expressed in the text--the means of reconciliation, and God's invitation to be reconciled; a threefold address to saints, backsliders, and sinners; and a farewell address. A precious sermon. Lord, bless the preacher, and those that heard him! At that time, in 1804, the lady was still preoccupied, in conscience or heart, or both, by her imaginary ties to Mr. S. John. But six months before that she had heard of his approaching marriage, though, in fact, that did not take place till 1810. All that time, if she did not feel, to one to whom her heart had been more closely united than to any 'earthly object,' as she had written in her _Diary_, what Mr. H.M. Jeffery describes as the attachment of a widow with the responsibility of a wife, her scrupulous introspective habit was an obstacle to a healthy attachment. The preacher, younger than herself, was in 1804 evidently to her only an interesting and gracious second cousin, or perhaps a little more. On his way back to London Henry Martyn again visited Plymouth, where he learned from his cousin 'that my attachment to her sister was not altogether unreturned, and the discovery gave me both pleasure and pain.' He left them, his thoughts 'almost wholly occupied with Lydia.' London, Cambridge, his reading and his walking, his work and even his sleep, bring him no rest from the absorbing passion. His _Journal_ is full of it, almost every day. Fortescue's poems recall the happy mornings at St. Hilary, but his pensive meditation subsided into a more profitable one on the vanity of the world: 'they marry and are given in marriage,' and at the end of a few years what are they more than myself?--looking forward to the same dissolution, and expecting their real happiness in another life. 'The fashion of this world passeth away,' Amen. 'Let me do the will of God while I am in it.'