IV - APRIL 23RD—AUGUST 13TH, 1827

Summary

17th July 1827.—Bankipore (near Patna).—One year to-day since I embarked for India; surely, my dearest friend, the misery of a whole existence has been compressed into that period of time. One year! Can it be that I have suffered so much in one year, or rather in three months?

I do not ask your sympathy or attempt to describe my bereavement, well knowing that you will feel for me beyond what I could wish; in truth, if I wanted to express to you my situation or my feelings, I could not. I seem to be surrounded by dreams, shadows, recollections, like the waves of the sea beneath a midnight sky, darkness without diversity. Hopeless, my sinking heart endeavours to comprehend why the hand of God has dealt with me thus heavily! Again and again I ask myself—‘What am I? what has one day made me?’

I know and believe the dispensation is from the hand of my Heavenly Father, who has dried up my source of temporal happiness, perhaps because I loved the creature more than the Creator. I may yet be enabled to attain resignation, and perceive that even in His wrath there is mercy; but oh! the dreary present! I may have years of existence to linger through. What is to become of me? How strange seems the capability of enduring that is sometimes given us, when I look back on even the bodily suffering of the last three months.