e most minute affairs of his
life, and concerning every thing that lies upon his heart! Dear
reader, do you know the living God? Is He, in Jesus, your Father? Be
assured that Christianity is something more than forms and creeds,
and ceremonies: there is life, and power, and reality, in our holy
faith. If you never yet have known this, then come and taste for
yourself. I beseech you affectionately to meditate and pray over the
following verses: John iii. 16, Rom. x. 9, 10, Acts x. 43, I John v.
1.

May 2. A sister who lives near Lutterworth sent me yesterday 5l.,
which was given for the Orphans by a friend of hers. This 5l.
supplies our need today, it being Saturday, for there was only 1l. in
hand when this money came.

From March 20th, to May 7th, I spent at Nailsworth, where I prepared
the second part of my Narrative for the press, and laboured in the
Word. These seven weeks were on the whole, by the help of God,
profitably spent in the service of the Lord, and to the benefit of my
own soul. There was much love shown to me and my family by the dear
saints among whom I was labouring, and I know that my service among
them has not been in vain.

Today, May 7, I returned with my family to Bristol.

While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a
truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the
benefit of which I have not lost, though now, while preparing the
eighth edition for the press, more than forty years have since passed
away. The point is this; I saw more clearly than ever, that the first
great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was,
to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned
about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify
the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my
inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth
before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might
seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave
myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being
happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my
inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right
spirit. Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years
previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after
having dressed myself in the morning. Now I saw, that the most
important thing I had to