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My dear old friend, I do assure you I have not forgotten our last meeting, nor our retrospective look over the route by which God had then led us; and I bless his name that he has again enabled me to hear your words of cheering and comfort at a time when I, at least, am on the “brink of Jordan.”
See Bunyan's Pilgrim.
God in infinite mercy grant us soon another meeting on the opposite shore.
I have often passed under the rod of Him whom I call my Father; and certainly no son ever needed it oftener; and yet I have enjoyed much of life, as I was enabled to discover the secret of this somewhat early.
It has been in making the prosperity and the happiness of others my own; so that really I have had a great deal of prosperity.
I am very prosperous still, and looking forward to a time when “peace on earth and good will to men” shall every where prevail; I have no murmuring thoughts or envious feelings to fret my mind.
“I'll praise my Maker with my breath.”
Your assurance of the earnest sympathy of the friends in my native land is very grateful to my feelings; and allow me to say a word of comfort to them:
As I believe most firmly that God reigns, I cannot believe that any thing I have done, suffered, or may yet suffer, will be lost to the cause of God or of humanity. And before I began my work at Harper's Ferry, I felt assured that in the worst event it would certainly pay. I often expressed that belief, and can now see no possible cause to alter my mind.
I am not as yet, in the main, at all disappointed.
I have been a good deal disappointed as it regards myself in not keeping up to my own plans; but I now feel entirely reconciled to that, even; for God's plan was infinitely better, no doubt, or I should have kept to my own. Had Samson kept to his determination of not telling Delilah wherein his great strength lay, he would probably have never overturned the house.
I did not tell Delilah; but I was induced to act very contrary to my better judgment; and I have lost my two noble boys, and other friends, if not my two eyes.
But “God's will, not mine, be done.”
I feel a comfortable hope that, like that erring servant of whom I have just been writing, even I may (through infinite mercy in Christ Jesus) yet “die in faith.”
As to both the time and manner of my death, I have but very little trouble on that score, and am able to be (as you exhort) “of good cheer.”
I send through you my best wishes to Mrs. V- and her son George, and to all dear friends.
May the God of the poor and oppressed be the God and Saviour of you all.
Farewell, till we meet again.
Your friend, in truth, John Brown.
