Aug. 30. Received a fifty-pound note with these words: "I send you herewith a fifty-pound note, half for the missions, half for the orphans, unless you are in any personal need; if so, take five pounds for yourself. This will be the last large sum I shall be able to transmit to you. Almost all the rest is already _out at interest_." I took half of this fifty pounds for the orphans, and half for missionaries. The writer sold some time since his only earthly possession, and sent me at different times sums of one hundred and twenty pounds, of one hundred pounds, of fifty-five pounds, of fifty pounds, and of twenty pounds for the work of the Lord in my hands. When he says, therefore, "the rest is already out _at interest_," he means that he has given it away for the Lord, which indeed both for time and eternity is the very best way of using the means with which the Lord may be pleased to intrust us, in so far as, considering in the fear of God all our various claims and duties and relationships, we may do so. As this is written for the spiritual profit of the reader, I cannot but add to this extract from my journal under Aug. 30, 1849, that since that time I have received other donations from the same donor, and much larger still. He used for God the means with which he was pleased to intrust him, and, contrary to this brother's expectation, the above fifty pounds was not the last large donation; for it pleased God soon after to intrust him with another considerable sum, which he again used for the Lord. This did not at all surprise me; for it is the Lord's order that, in whatever way he is pleased to make us his stewards, whether as to temporal or spiritual things, if we are indeed acting as _stewards_, and not as _owners_, he will make us stewards over _more_.
Jan. 9, 1850. To-day was sent to me from the Committee of the Cholera Fund in Bristol, twenty pounds, which the gentlemen constituting it had voted for the benefit of the twenty children who had lost their parents in the cholera, and whom I had received into the new Orphan House.
I had not applied either directly or indirectly for this money; indeed, I was reluctant even to give information as to the number of cholera orphans whom I had received, lest there should be even the appearance as if after all I asked for money, instead of solely trusting in the living God. But some of the gentlemen on the committee, I understand, knowing the fact that I had received many orphans, made such by means of the cholera, proposed that there should be paid to the Institution a sovereign on account of each such child whom I had received. This sum was especially remarkable to me as a fresh proof of the numberless ways which God has at his command for providing me with means.
I also cannot help noticing the remarkable coincidence that, at the time that God visited this land with the cholera, in 1849, I had so much room for the reception of orphans. The Lord was pleased to allow me the joy and sweet privilege of receiving altogether twenty-six children, from ten months old and upward, who lost their parents in the cholera _at that time_, and many besides, since then, who were bereaved of their parents through this fearful malady.