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four pence halfpenny a pound I find it is cheaper than the coarser kind. Sometimes I have roast potatoes and tongue, which is as inexpensive, as any other meat. For tea I have biscuit and apples. I take' no supper, or occasionally a little biscuit and apple. Sometimes I have a rice pudding, a few boiled peas instead of potatoes, and now and then some fish. By being wide awake, I can get cheese at four pence to six pence a pound that is better than we often have at home for eight pence. Now I see rhubarb and lettuce in the market, so I shall soon have another change. I pickled a penny red cabbage with three halfpence worth of vinegar, which made me a large jar full. So you see, at little expense I enjoy many comforts. To these add a home where every want is antici pated and ‘the peace of God which pass- eth all understanding’ and if I were not happy and contented I should deserve to be miserable. “I am enlarging on these trifles, though they are not worth writing about, because I know they will interest you and perhaps help you to feel more settled about me. If not, please tell me and I will not do so any more. “Continue to pray" for me, dear mother. Though comfortable as regards temporal matters, and happy and thankful, I feel I need your prayers. . . . Oh mother, I can not tell you, I cannot describe how I long to be a missionary; to carry the glad tid ings to poor, perishing sinners; to spend and be spent for Him who died for me. I feel as if for this I could give up every thing, every idol, however dear.” In the early years of his work in China, when only twenty-three years of age, Hud son Taylor had the rare good fortune to be associated with that mighty man of God, William Burns, and owed a great deal in the development of his own life and of his future success as a missionary to that fact. Incidentally we get in this book glimpses into the life of that great servant of God, Wc read on pages 346 and 347:
“Prayer was as natural to him as breath ing, and the Word of his God as neces sary as daily food.” “His whole life was literally a life of prayer, and his whole ministry a series of battles fought at the mercy-seat.” “ ‘Who among us has the spirit of prayer?’ he wrote from Swatow, ‘They are mighty who have this spirit, and weak who have it not.’” “In digging in the field of the Word,’ said an intimate friend, ‘he threw up now and then great nuggets which form part of one’s spirit ual wealth ever after,’ ” “He was mighty in the Scriptures, and his greatest power in preaching was the way in which he used the ‘Sword of the Spirit’ upon men’s consciences and hearts. . . . Sometimes one might have thought, in listening to his sol emn appeals, that one was hearing a new chapter in the Bible when first spoken by a living prophet.” “He was always cheer ful, always happy, witnessing to the truth of his own memorable words: ‘I think I can say through grace, that God’s presence or absence alone distinguishes places to me.’ ” Simplicity in living was his great delight. “He enjoyed quietness and the luxury of having few things to take care of,” and thought the happiest state on earth for a Christian was ‘that he should have few wants.’ ‘If a man have Christ in his heart,’ he used to say, ‘heaven be fore his eyes, and only as much of tem poral blessing as is just needful to carry him safely through life, then pain and sorrow have little to shoot at. . . . To be in union with Him Who is the Shepherd of Israel, to walk very near Him Who is both sun and shield, comprehends all a poor sinner requires to make him happy between this and heaven.’” Of the influence of William Burns upon Hudson Taylor the present biographers say on pages 348 and 349: “And this man, the friendship of this man with all he was and had been, was the gift and blessing of God at this particular juncture to Hud son Taylor. Week after week, month after month they lived and traveled together, the exigencies of their work bringing out
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