Rev A. Brandram No.14
Madrid, 17th February 1848
My Dear Friend,
I received your letter yesterday dated the 9th instant, and I cannot tell how much I feel obliged by the very kind sympathies and the prayers of yourself and of the Committee in my present distress. The Lord reward you all. I needed your help, and you have very kindly given it me. God has heard your prayers, and he has not left me, but deals with me very graciously. Blessed be his name, I do not sorrow for my wife, as those who have no hope. She is in heaven, I doubt not; and to that holy happy place I now look more than ever, and with a new interest, superadded to all its attractions and glories previously impressed on my mind. There we shall meet again, and there we two shall enjoy, I believe, a peculiar fellowship together, and happiness in each other, as is adumbrated here below, though faintly, in the marriage union.
In answer to your inquiry, my letter of the 14th will inform you of what previous intimations I had of the sad calamity that came upon me. The aggravating circumstances in regard to my loss, are, as you enumerate and say, many, but the will of the Lord be done. He knows best how to do good to all, and I doubt not but we two shall yet praise him together for this very way in which he has been pleased to deal with us, with the one and with the other.
I thank you for your consoling expressions in regard to my wife's Christian character, which is all correct. It was pleasing you met with Colonel Anderson at such a time. He and his wife were our dear friends, and Mrs. Thomson spent a week with them on the little island of St. Helens in the River St. Lawrence, whilst I paid a visit to Quebec, and she was some days with them when I was in Scotland.
I had a letter today from Bath, from a clergyman formerly in the West Indies, from which I quote the following, – "To Mrs. Thomson's affectionate and faithful dealing with her, my wife considers herself originally indebted for such spiritual views and impressions, as by God's grace and blessing have issued in her 'translation from the kingdom of darkness into that of God's dear son.'" How gratifying is this information! And at such a time! Blessed be God for this, and for all his goodness and mercies to us in all our ways.
On the 30th ultimo, the day on which I wrote you, and the first post after the sad event, I wrote to Mrs. Thomson's only Brother concerning it. But, before the letter reached, he also was gone! He died on the 3rd instant. Thus each was spared the shock of the death of the other. In his last days and hours this clergyman and his wife, in affectionate remembrance of their former friends, administered instruction and consolation to the dying Brother. Oh, the goodness of God here, and in everything. In heaven we shall all praise him together for all his mercies and loving kindnesses. Blessed be the name of the Lord both now and forever, Amen.
Allow me to give you a further extract from the above-mentioned pleasing letter, though conveying doleful intelligence. "I had the satisfaction of ministering consolation, in my humble way, to your dying friend, and of directing his eye of faith to the 'Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world'. I made his acquaintance only about two months ago, and had not been in his company more than three or four times before he fell sick; nor was it till within the last few weeks that I happened (accidentally) to discover his relationship to you. From the date of that discovery however, both Mrs. Thorburn and myself felt quite a new and tender interest in him; and considering her (Mrs. Thorburn's) deep debt of obligations to your late excellent wife for her faithful counsels and remonstrances, a debt of obligation which it would have been most pleasing to have had an opportunity of acknowledging to Mrs. Thomson, had God been pleased to spare, and permit a meeting on this side the grave. Mrs. Thorburn did very greatly rejoice to meet with her Brother, and that in God's providential arrangements it was ordained that we should be privileged to be near him, and render such Christian offices as lay in our power."
Mrs. Thomson's great concern was the salvation of her only Brother, and she used to say, that God would accomplish the work in his own time and way. Probably what might have been wanting as to due and full effects from the sister's instructions and entreaties was made up in the providential way mentioned, by the help of strangers, and in the hour when the ear is fully open, and the heart melted. In this supposition he would enter heaven just five days after, and oh, what most unspeakable joy that would be! May the two left behind arrive safely in due time, and add to the joy of those already blessed!
Be so good as to say to Mr. Mills, that he has rendered me a great service in my present case. He procured me a letter of introduction from Mr. Pratt (as he will recollect) to Colonel Stopford here: and Col. and Mrs. Stopford were the chief parties who attended my dear wife in her illness, and with night and day kindness till her death: also their tender interest has been, and is, every way shown to the survivor.
You very kindly inquire concerning my health, and as affected by present circumstances. My health, blessed be God, is good, very good. My spirits also, I am thankful to say, are as good as they well can be under this visitation. Overflowings occur, and why shouldn't they? It would be a sort of sacrilege to suppress them altogether. Did not your tender letter open every wound afresh? And I let them flow. But, by and by, God will wipe away all tears from all our eyes, and with his own blessed hand in heavenly places. The new turn, which I may say, has been given to my feelings sustains me, and more, I look not to the dead, but to the living, not to the grave, but to the skies; nor do I mourn as a marriage dissolved, for that it is not, but I look forward to the day when we shall be most truly married and united in a conjugal bond of eternal duration.
I have thus written you, according to your friendly desire, not about business, but about my poor self, and of God's goodness to me past and present, and of his prospective blessings which he graciously keeps before me.
Remember me very kindly to all in your house, and to all the Committee, in thankfulness for all their kind interest in my case. The Lord be with you all.
Please continue to remember me, and poor Spain. We are both very poor and low, we much need heavenly help, and this you can aid us in procuring.
Believe me, My Dear Friend,
Most Affectionately Yours,
James Thomson.