Friday, May 23rd, 1869.
My Dear——,-I postpone writing about the state of things here until I may have had the fullest opportunity which so short a visit can give of seeing. But the Lord's great grace to us-ward should be named, and along with the mention of that our own pitiful weakness. If one could but be nothing, He might use us more. The carpenter can use his saw, or file, or hammer, without fear of its boasting of the work being its own. If God used His children without a good deal of discipline to them accompanying, they would be spoiled, and boast in what was wrought as being theirs and not His. He loves us too much for that. Whom He loves He chastens, and well does He know what in each of us are the tender parts which being touched we feel most.
But it is all that we may be partakers of His holiness, and become fitted to walk with Him while we are still down here in the wilderness; and a broken and contrite heart He will not despise. You and your wife are both in His hand, and while to you the seeing her suffering is a -strong and a searching medicine, it is one as full of love to you, and of grace toward His children around you, as it is of love and favor to herself. I look, up for her thus: first, that she may glorify God while in the furnace, and that Christ may be magnified, made to lookers-on to appear bigger than they thought Him, in her body, whether it be by life or by death. But then I look up for myself and us: that she may be restored to us, and that we may not have sorrow upon sorrow. He is pitiful to His children, and I am sure He knows how deeply sorrow would be ours if she were taken now to enter into her joyful rest. His will be done, come what may; and nothing is without Him. As the First and the Last, He is Master of the ground long before we were in being: yet I do hope in Him for her restoration, and for our consolation as well as yours therein.
Most affectionately yours, G. V. W.