under God to render the book appropriate to her case, as I judged also it would be. Such cases are a marvellous help and encouragement amidst many fears and doubts apt to arise whether one's work is prospered of God.

TO MRS. KNOX.

Nov. 1879.

I am so enjoying Godet on St. John. It is delicious French, but the matter is of the finest of the wheat and honey of our Canaan.

TO BASIL. (On entering at Cambridge.)

Peshawur, Oct. 8, 1880.

This letter will find you, I trust, entered, and already beginning to feel settled down in your long-anticipated University life, and well pleased with the circle and society in which your lot is cast, and which, I hope, will be very profitable to you, and reap much profit from you, as it always must do from every consistent and persevering Christian example. I could wish to have been able to go up with you as I did with dear Cyril, and see you in your first college room, with its modest furniture and plain substantial look of comfort. . . . I need say little to you about the choice of friends, for you have tried at school, I believe, to be careful in your companionships. I went up to Oxford with little seriousness, I am sorry to say, and was much helped by the friends I was led to select, or rather was thrown amongst, by Bishop Waldegrave, Mr. Golightly, and others. I was thus saved, not so much from a wild and dissolute, as from a worldly course of life, although the latter pretty often comes by a gradual descent to the low level of the former. It was great grace that kept me, and I pray God that the same sheltering and shielding grace may uphold you, and set your feet on the Rock of your Saviour's strength, who is able to keep you from falling, so that the victory which overcometh the world may ever be your portion. May your principle in the selection of friends be that simple and beautiful one of St. John, 'Whom I love in the Truth for the Truth's sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be in us for ever.' . . . You will be able to study Ely Cathedral some day. I often wish I had made church architecture more my study: it would have helped me much now. Cambridge has much more material for the study of architecture (I imagine) than Oxford-in its churches at least. You will not forget how many men foolishly throw their first year away in the idea that they can make up lost ground hereafter. The first year spent in laying a solid foundation makes a man distance many a competitor at the close of the race. . . . Still, there is nothing like working to glorify God and to please Christ, and in remembrance of the great account.

PARTING AT BOMBAY, 1881

153

TO EDITH.

Autumn, 1880 (undated).

I must just begin an answer to your letter and try to finish it for next mail: a half sugar-plum is better than none. I was telling the soldiers this morning about General Garfield, how he came back from his canal-boat life to his mother's hut somewhere in the backwoods, and coming to the hut at night he saw a light and looked in at a window and saw his mother reading her Bible, and she looked up from her Bible to heaven, and he heard these words coming from her lips, 'Give Thy strength to Thy servant, and save the son of Thine handmaid.' Upon which he went in, and standing by his mother's side vowed himself to God from that time forward. You have not given me a text lately: I shall be so glad to have another one that has helped and strengthened you. I dwelt to-day for the natives on those words, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' It seems to me such a heart-searching question. I stayed the other day at General Palliser's, . . . who led on the cavalry against the Afghans at the battle of Ahmed Kheyl. I saw him at nearly all the prayer-meetings at Candahar. He seemed pleased that I spoke with praise and thankfulness of Wesley's hymns on seeking after growth in holiness and more perfectness in the life and love of God. I think he was surprised that a bishop should praise Wesley. He was formerly a great tiger hunter. He told me that he had helped to kill about eighty tigers, but he had given all the skins away. . . . I am so glad you get your two hours of work daily: it must make the day pass so much more pleasantly. I begin to long so to see you again. Time seems to go very slowly on. I pray God to give you health and strength, and, if it be His will, that your lips may speak His praise, and your life be a speechful image too. I wish you knew good Miss Elliott of Hastings- always an invalid, yet always in quiet simple ways glorifying Jesus. I read a sweet little book in prose by Miss Havergal last week called Royal Gifts and Loyal Services, or nearly that title. There was one striking little chapter on David's rejoicing at the willing offering of the people for the temple. Now no more. Much love to dear A., and a bishop's blessing to her schoolboys.

In February, 1881, the bishop took Mrs. French to Bombay, and whilst she sailed in one steamer for England, he left in another for Karachi. On February 8 he wrote to her from The Calcutta:

'We expect to arrive in port to-day . . . and I must begin a few lines were it only to express the many loving thankful thoughts and regrets with which I think of the happy past, and all the

thousand helps you have given me the last two and a half years. It will be long before I shall realize that on returning I shall return to an empty home. . . . It will be some little recompense to you to feel how tenderly all is appreciated and remembered. It will be a great comfort to me to hear of your safe arrival, and happy meeting with the dear children, to whom (in the case of the sick ones) your presence and mother's sympathy will be almost more than one hundred medicines. . . . It is my delight to commend you and ours earnestly to Israel's never-slumbering Shepherd and Keeper.

TO EDITH.

Lahore, March 15, 1881.

Here I am, dearest child, just one day in the empty and solitary house, except that I have asked Jesus to stay with me, and help and comfort me, and I believe He will. I loved your comforting letter of yesterday very much about Deut. xxxii. It is a very favourite chapter of mine too-and what do you think? just after reading it I had to go and examine Mr. Clark's Alexandra School of nearly fifty girls of the more well-to-do classes of Christians, and I read them out part of your letter to me, and you should have seen how they brightened up and smiled. The letter seemed to have come just in time. I told them of your confirmation, and that I believed you had given your heart then to the Lord wholly, and had been very happy in Him since and trying to work for Him. Ten of them were confirmed last Sunday, so it seemed appropriate to tell them this, and you know and believe that it is all of grace, only grace, as is said in the text on which I spoke first last Thursday at the opening of a native Christian church at Allahabad, They shall bring forth the topstone with shoutings of grace,' i. e. it is all grace from first to last; and then another, I will bring them to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer,'-not only bring them there, but make them joyful when there. On this also I spoke at Sukkur on the Indus in consecrating the church there: it stands on a lime rock overlooking the great king river, and shows that Christ is a greater king than even he! On Sunday I confirmed over forty Christian young men and women. I spoke of learning from the Cross the spirit of Sacrifice, and the spirit of Service; and gaining from the Cross, PARDON, PEACE, POWER. This evening, I hope to address a party of Hindu and Mohammedan youths on ancient aud modern education, wherein they agree and also differ, especially what Christ and the Gospel have done for education, that He is the Head-Master of all our schools-one is your Master, even Christ; and I hope to ask them whether they have ever asked Him to teach them, to be their Master of all truth, and that He will teach them all their life long, and for ever.

EDITH CONFIRMED.

LEAVES SCHOOL

155

I have been looking at my old master Dr. Arnold's letters, and his remarks on education. One letter (82) is very striking about studying Christ's sufferings when we are sick, and another about the Unitarians, of whom he says that they seem to think and speak of Christ as if He were dead instead of living, so they cannot do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.

If your young friends have very rich friends, any of them, perhaps you will show them the enclosed circular, which I distribute everywhere, but almost in vain. You can say I intend to build a strong large parish church: by-and-by my successor can add steeples to it, and make it a cathedral. I am longing to hear of dear mama's and L. and A.'s safe arrival. I have only heard from Suez.

TO EDITH.

Easter Day, Rawul Pindi, April 17, 1881.

I feel so, so sorry that you have done with Mrs. Umphelby and her bright circle of old friends, though to be with your dear mother will more than make rich amends in many ways. I do so long to come in and have a look at you, and be comforted in my cares and sorrows in seeing your bright smiles, in spite of pain and weakness. If it be God's will, may you be spared to welcome me back again, but God does not seem to give me leave at present to turn my back on India. . . . In dwelling this evening on the body is for the Lord,' I am thinking of you, dearest child, and remembering how God uses often sickness, pain, and suffering of body, as means of growth and fresh health and life to the soul, which is very wonderful and all of His grace. How often invalids seem brimful of love, and peace, and unmurmuring rest in God's will, and seem to delight in quiet work and prayer for the Kingdom of Christ, and have much of that wisdom St. James talks of, first pure, then peaceable. . . . It is a sight to see the churches in Peshawur and Rawul Pindi, the number of soldiers and officers. In this place there has been almost every officer at the Holy Communion to-day at the two morning services. I dwelt on Jesus Christ as 'the Beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things He might have preeminence.' . . . My heart rejoiced in delivering this blessed message. I am sure an archangel might well envy me, if they could envy in heaven. I showed how all our beginnings of good and of resisting evil were embraced in Christ as the Beginning,' and how all was from the victory of His cross and the power of His resurrection. . . . I know you will pray that Jesus will be the Omega as well as the Alpha, and will finish in many many hearts the good thing He has begun. He will perfect, He will perfect,' said a dying bishop once.

The next two or three extracts concern some of the lesser

worries of his work, part of the daily burden of the care of all the Churches.

To MRS. FRENCH. (Small Troubles at Kasauli and elsewhere.)

May 5, 1881.

It is hard work for a bishop to try to throw oil on such boiling yeasty waves, but I pray God it may be given me. 'Love is of God,' as I told them yesterday, and I can't give it them. The points of discussion were some quite frivolous and silly; but many molehills make a big mountain, as it seems, or, as St. James puts it-How great a fuel a little fire kindleth! Then I have had to soothe the N. people, who are indignant, chaplain and all, because I wrote in the Record-book, speaking of the Sunday there, The day was not satisfactory, I fear, viewed in the light of eternity,' referring to the few communicants and small collection. I tell them the censure was chiefly on myself for preaching so ineffectively, but they can't take this in.

TO MRS. FRENCHI.

(Newspaper Controversialists.)

July 10, 1881, from Murree.

I have sent a letter to the Record in reply to Mr. P.'s, but it is the last of the kind I mean to send. I think my friends generally seemed to think I should take notice of it. writes to me

a very distressing letter of expostulation about the Sisterhood. I must send him a few lines. . . . It is a comfort to answer attacks at once, then one forgets them. Poor fellow, he and I both seek God's glory, I trust; . . . from their comfortable retreats it is easy for them to launch their missiles at us in these trying and often suffering places of the field.

On the same subject he wrote also to Cyril:

'It has a little vexed me to be so misrepresented. . . . My great struggle is to keep Ritualism from raising its head and triumphing, while I wish to use whatever is good and holy and self-denying in it. That is in my judgement not cowardice or compromise, but rather manly wisdom and economizing all available forces for resisting evil and error.'

TO DR. VALPY FRENCH.

July 13, 1881.

You have struck an important blow at a social vice and corruption in attacking the toasting system.' It has long been a distress and source of shame to me, though in India the dimensions of the evil have shrunk very materially. The regimental messes have steadily improved. During a mess at