Page:Memorials of Capt. Hedley Vicars, Ninety-seventh Regiment by Marsh, Catherine, 1818-1912.djvu/186

Rh Hayward — a man of devoted piety, who lives to win souls to Christ. He is universally respected and beloved.

"I have now before me your letter of the 26th, with its mention of past distress and present thankfulness to God for having spared my life. I could scarcely read it all for tears. May God shower His best blessings upon each of you for all your love to me. Will you tell all who have kindly prayed for me and given thanks for my preservation, in Beckenham and elsewhere, that I am deeply grateful for their Christian love. How thankful I am that I heard it first from you, before she saw it in the 'Times.'

"How uneasy you must have felt when you read in that interesting soldier's letter, that he hoped God would accept his own sufferings and the sufferings of his blessed Saviour in atonement for his sins, when the 'blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' God grant he may see that the way to join the blessed company who are arrayed with white robes and palms in their hands, is to wash his robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb. Oh! ]nay he and multitudes of the British army show themselves, in the last great fight, good soldiers of Jesus Christ, and conquer through Him who loved them, and died for them, and washed away their sins in His own precious blood. Although I have often cause to grieve for my backwardness and slothfulness in the cause of Christ, yet my heart yearns over the souls of those who have not fled to the cleansing fountain of His blood for pardon and peace; and often, on rising from my knees, I have felt so powerfully drawn by the love of Christ that I have been almost on the point of going out through the camp to endeavour to impart to others the ground of my own peace and happiness. But then, too often, when face to face with those whom I know I shall meet at the last