was upon me during nearly all the
week: yet I wondered to find that at Kingsbridge,
though visiting was a constant self-denial, in withdrawing
me from the earnest search in which I was
engaged, I got on more easily than common, and felt
much more love than usual to my friends. The first
gleam of sunshine did not come through any man's
help, but in my lone matin the day after our return.
I tried to cast my care on God, and on Seventh-day
morning was favored with a blessed evidence that He
did care for me. Since then it has not been repeated;
but earnest have been my cries in secret to my heavenly
Father, whose mercies indeed are great; and
my lonely hours have been employed mostly in seeking
Him, having little taste for reading of any general
kind. One morning in particular, at Trevelmond, in
the plantation, waiting for my father, was my heart
poured out to God. Calmness has often succeeded;
and then I dread the coming of indifference and coolness.
Oh, this is surely the worst of states! I had
rather endure almost any amount of anguish.

Yesterday, the probability that my course on earth
may be short occurred forcibly. I recurred to the
words quoted by J.T., "The sting of death is sin,"
with encouragement to hope for "the victory." However,
the future is not my care. May I be the care
of Him whose care the future is, and then----

_10th Mo. 22d_. At home with a cold, and may
just record my poor spirit's lowness and poverty
amid, as I trust, its honest desires to become wholly
the Lord's. "Ye ask, and have not, because ye ask
amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts," is
surely true of spiritual food. We should desire it
that we "may grow thereby," not from mere spiritual
voluptuousness; and, oh, in my own desires for the
will of God to be done, how often have I not known
what spirit I was of! How often have I been tenaciously
standing on the very ground that I was asking
to have broken up and destroyed! A short lone
meeting in the parlor, blest chiefly with humiliation,
and this I would regard as a blessing.

Letter to ----.

I am tempted to spend a few lonely minutes in thanking
thee for thy truly kind salutation, advice, and encouragement;
though I fear to say much in reply. I hope
and trust thou art not altogether mistaken in me: in one
respect I know thou art not,--that I have seen of the
mercy and love of