MS location unknown. This fragment printed in Yonge, Life of John Coleridge Patteson, II, 337-8.1
I add one line, my dear Cousin, to assure you of my prayers being offered for you, now more especially when a heavy trial is upon you and a deep sorrow awaiting you. May God comfort and bless you! Perhaps the full experience of such anxiety and the pressure of a constant weight may, in His good Providence, qualify you more than ever to help others by words put into your mouth out of your own heart-felt troubles.
Yet in whatever form the sorrow comes, there is the blessing of knowing that she is only being mysteriously prepared for the life of the world to come.2 There is no real sorrow where there is no remorse, nor misery for the falling away of those we love. You have, I dare say, known (as I have) some who have the bitterness of seeing children turn out badly, and this is the sorrow that breaks one down.
I cannot write more. My letters only reached me yesterday, returned from Norfolk Island, whither they were sent from Auckland two days after I left Norfolk Island for Auckland.3 The General Synod begins on Monday. Bishops Harper and Abraham have just arrived, and we are all in confusion. We all move about rather like uneasy spirits, with a sense of something that we can’t talk about. May God abundantly bless him, and cause his work to prosper in his hands! I don’t grudge him to you one bit; but sometimes I can hardly look at him, though the sentiment has been pretty well knocked out of me.