CHAPTER XXI.
conclusion.
It was a sad day to the bereaved widow and family of the subject of this memoir, when, on the 27th of August, 1853, they landed in England, three months after the dear subject of this memoir had fallen asleep. They had left India, in the hope of seeing him, directly the intimation of his wish reached them. No letter awaited them at Plymouth, where the steamer stopped six hours; but at Southampton the communications respecting his end, which had gone to and returned from India, were brought them. Mr. G. Baynes, Mrs. Groves’s brother, mentioned in this memoir as their companion in India, and her sister, Mrs. Jarratt, awaited their arrival; and they then learnt, for the first time, they were to see his face no more! but the God of the widow, and the Father of the fatherless, proved Himself on that day the hearer and answerer of prayer, and not one thing failed of all those promises given to the afflicted and bereaved in the time of trial. Truly they sorrowed, but not as those without hope; for the letters, from which extracts have been given in the last chapter, all told that death had lost its sting. His eldest son expresses the feeling, not of his widow only, but of many, when he writes:—
“July 15th, 1853.—When the tidings first reached me, I felt painfully disappointed. I had looked forward to the Lord’s using my beloved father eminently in the Church, but since I have seen all the accounts of his last days; his blessed preparedness of soul; his longing to be with Christ; the Lord’s abundant manifestation of Himself; and the brightness of the heavenly visions vouchsafed, I have felt unable but to be satisfied with the Lord’s ways towards His servant; and, as Mr. Craik says in his letter to me, to give God thanks for his godly
