falling. … On proceeding into the dining-room, I found the candles lit, as they had been left the preceding evening, and my little drawers broken open, all my papers scattered about the room, and my money gone.[1] As I was returning up stairs, I met dearest M. in the hall, and said, ‘Well, my love, the thieves have been here, and taken all the money.’ ‘And now,’ she said, ‘you wont go to Dublin.’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘that I wont,’—and we spent one of the happiest Sundays I ever recollect, in thinking on the Lord’s goodness, in so caring for us as to stop our way up, when He does not wish us to go. Some thought it right; others thought it foolish; it mattered not to us, we had not a doubt it was of the Lord. Yet, after my connection with college had been thus broken off—for I was to have taken my degree the following Easter, and I was unable, subsequently, to enter the church at all, from not being able to subscribe the Articles, or rather that one relative to war—I was still so far attached to the Church of England, that I went to London, to arrange my going out as a layman, for the Church Missionary Society; but as they would not allow me to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, when no other minister was near, it came to nothing. My mind was then in great straits; for I saw not yet my liberty of ministry to be from Christ alone, and felt some ordination to be necessary, but hated the thought of being made a sectarian. But, one day the thought was brought to my mind, that ordination of any kind to preach the gospel is no requirement of Scripture. To me it was the removal of a mountain. I told dearest M. my discovery and my joy; she received it as a very little thing—indeed she had received the truth in such power, that she seemed only to desire to know the mind of God, that she might fulfil it; and I may add that, after the question about property was agreed on between us, we never had a difference of judgment, that I know of, even for a moment, on any inportant measure. She soon fully learnt to
- ↑ It is a remarkable fact that there were two packets of money, one containing £40 for the Irish trip, and one, £16, in another drawer, for taxes; the former was taken, the other left. This circumstance was often noticed as most remarkable by Mr. Groves.
