Page:Memorials of Capt. Hedley Vicars, Ninety-seventh Regiment by Marsh, Catherine, 1818-1912.djvu/77

Rh Soon after his second visit to us, I received the following letter:

" — In answer to your kind and encouraging letter, I cannot begin otherwise than by thanking Him 'who ordereth all things,' for his goodness in having so providentially led me to Terling at the time you were there, and thus a friendship was formed which, I trust, will last for ever. In every blessing I receive, I would raise my heart in gratitude and praise to that God who has poured such mercies upon me.

"In this, my first letter to you, I would be candid and unreserved. I do not wish to be thought better than I am, but rather desire to be looked upon as but a young soldier in Christ. When I bring to remembrance the years I have spent in sin, when I gloried in being the ringleader in every species of dissipation and folly, the thought has struck me that it were presumptuous in me now to rank myself amongst the followers of the Lamb. But in doing so, I would only conceal my unworthiness in the spotless robe of my Redeemer's perfect righteousness.

"Notwithstanding the advantages of Christian education and godly parents, the dictates of reason and the remorse of conscience, I lived for many years in total forgetful ness of a death-bed and a judgment day. But that God, who might so justly have cut me off in the full career of rebellion, at length (and oh! how feebly can I express my sense of his goodness) opened my eyes; and that stubborn heart, which neither the terrors of hell could deter, nor the wrath of God restrain from recklessly pursuing the path of destruction, He softened and changed by showing me the love and tenderness I was despising and trampling under foot. I can never forget the intensity of my feelings when first I saw my Saviour on the cross,