At last, the six months for which I was to be absent, the eight months and more to which you extended my leave, are gone by, and I take up my work again, finding it difficult to believe that thirty-six weeks have elapsed, a Spring, a Summer and an Autumn, between my last appearance in the pulpit and my next. There is little to add to my last letter written on the railway, among the mountains which page 73 form the eastern border of California. A journey of thirty hours brought us to Salt Lake City, where we were most hospitably received by Mr. and Mrs. Fish, who are well known to many in England since Mr. Fish was Minister at Kidderminster. They have resided two years at Salt Lake and built up a church, both in the literal and metaphorical sense. I preached on Sunday morning to about 150 persons and attended the Sunday School, which in America is generally held after morning service. In the afternoon I attended service at the Mormon Tabernacle; it was one of the most striking scenes I witnessed on my travels. It was simply the ordinary Sunday service and the regular choir, and the place was by no means full, but there must have been about twenty-five times as many as came to hear me.

On Monday night we left our kind hosts to continue our journey, and at noon of the next day reached the height of 10,000 feet, and began to descend towards the Great Eastern Plain. We stayed a couple of days at Colorado Springs and were welcomed with the kindness we have met with everywhere by Mr. Hill the acting trustee of the little Church, there being at present no minister. Thence a day and a half brought us to Chicago and on Sunday afternoon we reached Albany. On Thursday we left for New York, a four hours' journey, and happily arrived there just in time to share our dear Robert Collier's 81st birthday dinner. We found him the same as ever in mind, a little more infirm in body. "May I tell them in England that you hope to come over this summer?" page 74 I asked, "No don't" he said, "I'll come if I feel inclined, but I don't now and I don't know that I shall." But his colleague Mr. Savage is coming, and has promised to preach for me in the Summer.

We left New York in the Etruria on Saturday morning, and rolled across the Atlantic till the Saturday following, when at 7 o'clock at night we landed at Liverpool, and arrived in Leeds at 11-30, at the very platform whence we left in the opposite direction on the 5th of April, having been just 257 days away. Very thankful was I the next morning to take my old place in the pulpit and be privileged to speak to you of the words which came to my mind as I left Leeds, parting with my family and friends, and facing a new world where all was strange and doubtful. There was the possibility that my mission might be a mistake and a disappointment. It might be that I should die far from home. Then I heard as it were an inner voice recalling words once familiar on my lips, "Deus, deusmeus." It is so that the 22nd Psalm begins in the Latin version—"O God, my God." Yes it was all right, come what might. That was my faith, my theology, my religion, my whole and satisfying creed. In the uncertainty and impotence of which I was so conscious I fell back upon the Infinite and Unchangeable Good, and was reassured.

And now, beloved friends, I resume my interrupted ministry among you. For how much longer? I know not, and do not much care. I should of course like to be assured that I should be strong and capable of mind and body for ten years and longer. But no one can give me the assurance, and I am well content to live now in the present and let "tomorrow take thought for itself."

C. H.