Dear brother Seth—­Your letter lay three days beyond my knowing of it at the post, for I had not money enough by me to pay the carriage, this being a time of great need and sickness here, with the rains that have fallen, as if the windows of heaven were opened again; and to lay by money, from day to day, in such a time, when there are so many in present need of all things, would be a want of trust like the laying up of the manna.  I speak of this, because I would not have you think me slow to answer, or that I had small joy in your rejoicing at the worldly good that has befallen your brother Adam.  The honour and love you bear him is nothing but meet, for God has given him great gifts, and he uses them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted to a place of power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his parent and his younger brother.

“My heart is knit to your aged mother since it was granted me to be near her in the day of trouble.  Speak to her of me, and tell her I often bear her in my thoughts at evening time, when I am sitting in the dim light as I did with her, and we held one another’s hands, and I spoke the words of comfort that were given to me.  Ah, that is a blessed time, isn’t it, Seth, when the outward light is fading, and the body is a little wearied with its work and its labour.  Then the inward light shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the Divine strength.  I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes, and it is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore.  For then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the blindness, and the sin I have beheld and been ready to weep over—­yea, all the anguish of the children of men, which sometimes wraps me round like sudden darkness—­I can bear with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer’s cross.  For I feel it, I feel it—­infinite love is suffering too—­yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth.  Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world:  sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off.  It is not the spirit only that tells me this—­I see it in the whole work and word of the Gospel.  Is there not pleading in heaven?  Is not the Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended?  And is He not one with the Infinite Love itself—­as our love is one with our sorrow?

“These thoughts have been much borne in on me of late, and I have seen with new clearness the meaning of those words, ’If any man love me, let him take up my cross.’  I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus.  But surely that is a narrow thought.  The true cross of the Redeemer was the sin and sorrow of this world—­that was what lay heavy on his heart—­and that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we must drink of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love which is one with his sorrow.