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defeated. _To T. H. M._ Christ's College, Cambridge: July 18, 1891. We have but lately heard that my missionary brother[1] has passed away into the eternal world. He died in Africa. He gave up all, he gave up his life for Christ. Terribly as we feel the loss, and shall feel it still more, I cannot help thanking the Eternal Father that He has accepted the life-sacrifice, and feeling that He calls upon us here and now, each day and moment of our lives, to offer up ourselves on the altar of universal thanksgiving. Life is sacrifice, renunciation: true life is dependence on God. Sin is isolation, death--a failure to recognise and act on our dependence. I do feel as I seldom felt before something of the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, the communion of the Spirit. We _must_ learn that an individual hope, aspiration, ambition, is against the law of the universe--the law of self-sacrifice. We _must_ learn that our wills are ours to make them God's; that if we have a single hope or thought which He does not inspire, which true humanity cannot share, the hope and thought are wrong. God grant that you and I may renounce {57} our individual lives, and become truly ourselves by martyrdom, by allowing the Christ in us to live. I am to be ordained in September. Pray for me. There is no power like prayer. Let us pray for one another. The great Father longs for simple lives, simple piety, perpetual thanksgiving. And we have so much to be thankful for--so much here and now. I do long to offer body, mind, soul, affections, will, hope, to Him as a thanksgiving. Self-renunciation, life in a Church, a Body, is the only life. God grant we may live it! [1] John Alfred Robinson, formerly a scholar of Christ's College, who died at Lokoja on the River Niger, on June 25, 1891. _To T. H. M._ Christ's College, Cambridge: November 17, 1891. Do you know that it isn't a bad thing to feel a babe? We must all become simple little children before we enter the kingdom of heaven, because God, who lives in that kingdom, has the simplest heart in all the wide universe--the most childlike, for God is Love. He has no cross purposes. Though He is stronger and better and bigger than we are, He is simpler. He will love a poor, simple old woman in His simple way with a wonderful affection. He is so simple, because He does not know what sin is. God never sins. God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at a
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