of fire to Elijah. From these
visitations as judgments, we have an especial promise of protection,
and we trust in the midst of them some good may spring up; at all
events, we feel that we shall have quite met our dear Lord's mind in
giving this people a last opportunity of hearing, ere their house is
left unto them desolate.

_April 12._--I have just taken leave of the kind T.'s. The accounts of
the dead are truly terrific; they say the day before yesterday 1200
died, and yesterday Major T.'s man of business obtained a receipt to
the amount of 1040 on this side of the river. If this statement can
be relied on, the mortality, within and without the city, must be
truly appalling, and should it not please the Lord soon to stay the
destroying Angel's hand, the whole country must become one wide
waste. Some very kind Armenians[24] have offered to provide what is
necessary for our journey to Damascus, if we will go with them. The
possibility of meeting our dear Brethren is a great temptation, but
still we do not see clearly our permission to go, and the Lord has
given us all such perfect peace in staying, and such perfect health,
that we are even unwilling to go; we remain, therefore, and wait upon
our Lord's love, which we feel assured will be manifested towards us
amidst this scene of death; and afterwards we shall see why we
remained, more clearly perhaps than now.

[24] The caravan they went by suffered the most complicated
misery both from the flood and the plague, and never succeeded in
prosecuting the journey.

_April 13._--The plague has just entered our neighbour's dwelling,
where they have collected together nearly thirty persons, not simply
their own family. It seems as if a spirit of infatuation had seized
them, for instead of making their number as small as possible, they
seem to congregate as many together as they can.

Oh! what a blessed portion is ours, to have the God of Israel and his
unchangeable promises for our sure and abiding place of rest--our
little sanctuary unto which we may always resort. Yea, in the secret
of his pavilion he will hide us.

_April 14._--This is a day of awful visitation. The accounts of deaths
yesterday vary from between 1000 and 1500; and to-day, they say, is
worse than any, and the increase in the numbers of deaths is exclusive
of the immense multitudes who are dying without the city. One of our
schoolmasters[25] is gone to Damascus, and has taken with him his
littl