title: Pastoral Letters
author: Robert Murray McCheyne
description: Robert Murray McCheyne once said, "I am better acquainted with Jesus Christ than I am with any man in the world. His biographer, Andrew Bonar, informs us that "during the last years of his life, [he] walked calmly in almost unbroken fellowship with the Father and the Son." This no doubt explains why the spiritual impact of his life was so great, both during his short life on earth (he died in his twenty-ninth year), and in the years that followed his death--even up to the present time.
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  # Acknowledgments
  
  
  
  
  
  I should like to acknowledge my debt to Mr. J. Herries McCulloch's delightful
  study, _Sheep Dogs and Their Masters_. He must not, however, be held in any
  way responsible for my sheer fantasies.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # CHAPTER I  
  
  
  FIRST MEETING
  
  
  
  
  
  PLAXY and I had been lovers; rather uneasy lovers, for she would never speak
  freely about her past, and sometimes she withdrew into a cloud of reserve and
  despond. But often we were very happy together, and I believed that our
  happiness was striking deeper roots.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then came her mother's last illness, and Plaxy vanished. Once or twice I
  received a letter from her, giving no address, but suggesting that I might
  reply to her "care of the Post Office" in a village in North Wales, sometimes
  one, sometimes another. In temper these letters ranged from a perfunctory
  amiability to genuine longing to have me again. They contained mysterious
  references to "a strange duty," which, she said, was connected with her
  father's work. T