p379 [From the French.] DEAR SISTER, - I write these few lines to express to you my cordial sympathy, for I have just now heard that you have lost your dear husband. This news has moved me deeply, and how much more must it have you. I knew him a long time before you knew him; he was still quite young, in his father's house, and I was interested in a journey which he took into Germany in search of a situation as tutor, and in which he did not succeed. God had provided a better work for him. When he returned home, there was a struggle in his soul between the call of the Lord and his duty towards his parents, who had made many sacrifices for his education. At length, during a storm on the lake of Neuchâtel, which he was crossing to visit one of his sisters, being at the point of perishing, he felt he must devote himself to the work of the Lord. When he returned home he told his mother so. … Since then you have known him better than I, though our intercourse has always been full of love, and I was heartily attached to him, so that this blow from the hand of the Lord touches me deeply. The work of the Lord, too, in a field where, as far as we can see, few will be able to replace him, is apparently left without help. For the work, for yourself, we must look to the Lord. Your part now is to have entire confidence in Him, the Father of the fatherless, and the Husband of the widow. Your large family gives you the opportunity of glorifying the Lord much, because you have so many things to trust Him about. He seeks this confidence. If the heart of man loves confidence, much more does the heart of the Lord, for He is goodness itself. Commit to Me, He says, your widows and your fatherless. And not only has the Lord Jesus compassion, but circumstances awaken His pity, as in the case of the son of the widow of Nain, and when He saw the crowds who were as sheep without a shepherd. Your task is great, but it is not too much for the goodness of the Lord. By this stroke He can make a comfort and support of your children themselves. But your trust must be in the Lord, for yourself and for everything.

I did not intend, dear sister, to say so much to you, being on a journey in a village in Canada, but I would not and could not receive the news of the departure of your husband without expressing how I participate in your mourning and loss. For him it is joy and peace, for you and your children it is separation from that which is most dear, but to find solitude with God. But God is sufficient for everything, and when sin brought in death, trial and mourning, the Conqueror of death and of the enemy afterwards entered, become man to participate in all and to give us a hope, which has made a gain of death itself - a perfectly certain hope, a love from which nothing can separate us.

Your brother in the Lord.

October, 1876.

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