Left to my Mother's sole care, I became the centre of her
solicitude. But there mingled with those happy animal instincts
which sustain the strength and patience of every human mother and
were fully present with her--there mingled with these certain
spiritual determinations which can be but rare. They are, in
their outline, I suppose, vaguely common to many religious
mothers, but there are few indeed who fill up the sketch with so
firm a detail as she did. Once again I am indebted to her secret
notes, in a little locked volume, seen until now, nearly sixty
years later, by no eye save her own. Thus she wrote when I was
two months old:

'We have given him to the Lord; and we trust that He will really
manifest him to be His own, if he grow up; and if the Lord take
him early, we will not doubt that he is taken to Himself. Only,
if it please the Lord to take him, I do trust we may be spared
seeing him suffering in lingering illness and much pain. But in
this as in all things His will is better than what we can choose.
Whether his life be prolonged or not, it has already been a
blessing to us, and to the saints, in leading us to much prayer,
and bringing us into varied need and some trial.'

The last sentence is somewhat obscure to me. How, at that tender
age, I contrived to be a blessing 'to the saints' may surprise
others and puzzles myself. But 'the saints' was the habitual term
by which were indicated the friends who met on Sunday mornings
for Holy Communion, and at many other tunes in the week for
prayer and discussion of the Scriptures, in the small hired hall
at Hackney, which my parents attended. I suppose that the solemn
dedication of me to the Lord, which was repeated in public in my