But the fullest outpourings of his heart, in his correspondence with friends at a distance, were to his sister, Mrs. Morton. Well could he assure ’my ever dearest Jane’—’one of the purest and most delightful of all my feelings in this world of many distractions is the feeling of tenderness which I ever associate with you and all your concerns’; nor was he less sincere in saying that he could think of ’no more delightful scene of occasional rest and recreation than the neighbourhood where Providence had ordained her habitation, so rich in the beauties of nature, and still richer in the pieties and charities of the excellent people that lived in it.’ To her he writes freely of all the events of his life, and still more of the vicissitudes of his Christian experience, and of the ever open refuge alike from domestic sorrows and spiritual infirmities which we have in the grace of our Saviour and in the love of our Father. All the more tenderly did he write when the deep shadow of bereavement fell upon her home; when a heart full of humility and somewhat disposed to despondency was liable to be swallowed up with over much sorrow, and to forget (as he reminded her) that even when the day is overcast and lowering, the sun is shining with undiminished lustre. His eldest brother, James, who lived in London, was a hard subject to deal with. He seemed to shut himself up from all his family, and to stand in awe lest they should come to visit him. He had resolutely abstained from hearing his brother preach after he became famous. Hardly any case could have more convincingly verified the remark, how unlike brothers may be to each other. James had a kind of mania for balancing his personal accounts to the minutest fraction, and on one occasion worried himself for months in the endeavour to account for a penny, till a year after, when about to cross a toll-bridge, he remembered that he had crossed it a twelvemonth before, and forgot to enter the penny in his accounts. Yet Thomas bore with him patiently, and dealt with him affectionately but faithfully, evidently in the hope that he might change. And before the end he did become more amiable. In announcing his father’s death, Thomas pathetically, and with an obvious practical design, remarked that if their beloved parent looked down upon them, ’nothing could afford his spirit a more delightful spectacle than that of his children seeking the Gospel which they had aforetime despised, praying for grace, and not ceasing to pray, till they had obtained.’