_July 22._--I have to-day received letters from London and Aleppo, and
I have reason to bless God for all; yet they all come armed with
sorrow; for they are full of her of whom the Lord has emptied me. In
my strength I thought I could so entirely give her up to him, did he
desire it, since he had made her so strong in himself, and filled her
so full of his blessings; well, and even now, my soul doth magnify the
Lord, though in so many ways, I still feel my great and trying loss.
Perhaps the Lord has meant to teach me that the 91st Psalm, as dear
brother Cronin writes, relates only to Christ's humanity, specially
shewing how, from his cradle to his grave, his father watched over
him, so that at last he laid down his life, but none took it from him;
and he, in this great act, has made it over spiritually to us: he has
left the natural plague because of sin, but destroyed the spiritual
because of righteousness, even that righteousness which is by his own
most precious blood.
The Pasha of Aleppo, hearing of dear Edward Cronin, as an English
physician, wishing to come to Bagdad, wished to engage him to come
with him as his physician, and offered him 1500 piasters a month; but,
anxious as they were to come, the circumstances of their party did
not, on mature deliberation, allow them to separate, and Ali Pasha was
unwilling to undertake the responsibility of the females with his
camp. And, oh, how my soul blesses the Lord, now I think on it, that
these obstacles were so graciously interposed; disease, delay, and
trouble would have accompanied them, and, till now, they would have
been detained in the desert, with little prospect of speedy admission
into the city, which is firing against the camp, and the camp firing
against the city, and they would have been exposed to the full power
of a sun, which no one can tell how to estimate, but by actual
exposure to it.
I have also received a letter from Bussorah, stating that on the
drying up of the inundations there, a fever has been spreading, and
carrying off numbers. Major T.'s family had most of them been ill, but
they were recovering. Mr. Bathie was very weak, and his wife dead. Dr.
Beagry, the new surgeon of this station, also died, and immense
numbers of those who had fled from the plague. Bussorah is still
besieged, but expected soon to fall into the hands of the Motezellim.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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