We are, however, anticipating the progress of events.—To return to the letters of which we have spoken; we find, in the first of them, allusions to the illness of Mr. Gurney’s brother, whose death, which followed a few weeks subsequently, was the cause of Mrs. Opie’s hasty return.
Norwich, 6th mo., 4th, 1814.
I have a mind, my dear friend, to write thee a letter; this is all the apology I offer for the intrusion. There are two or three things I wish to say to thee; the first is, that I remember, with true pleasure, thy affectionate conduct to us all, during the last few months of affliction. It has been like that of a sister, and has been prized by us, I trust, as it ought to be; however thou mayest be engaged in the gay whirlpool of London life, rest assured, therefore, thou art not forgotten by thy retired friends at Earlham. I thank thee for thy last note, which is an instructive inmate of my pocket-book, since it bespeaks a tender conscience. Wilt thou pardon thy friend if he tell thee, that he greatly admires this tenderness of conscience with regard to all thou sayest of others? It appears to him that thy mind is particularly alive to the duties of Christian charity; and he now wishes to express his desire that the same fear, (shall he call it “godly fear?”) may attend thee in all thy communications with the world.
To leave the third person; I will refer to two texts, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this—to keep one’s self unspotted from the world,” and again, “Be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds, that he may know what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.” Now, what wilt thou say to me? perhaps thou wilt say that thy countrified, drab-coated, methodistical friend, knows nothing of the “world,” misinterprets the meaning of the apostle, and is frightened by the bugbear of a name, as a child is by a ghost.
There may be some truth in these observations of thine, and I must allow that the world is not idolatrous now, as it was then; and again, that we all alike are citizens of the world, and there is no department of it which is not tinctured with evil; but I refer particularly to the “fashionable world,” of which I am apt to entertain two notions—the first, that there is much in it of real evil; the second, that there is much also in it, which, though not evil in itself, yet has a decided tendency to produce forgetfulness of God, and thus to generate evil indirectly. On the other hand, there is little in it, perhaps, which is positively good.
With regard to the apostolic precepts; perhaps they intimate that there are two spirits or dispositions, moving amongst mankind; the one celestial, leading to good; the other terrestrial, tending to evil; perhaps they are meant to warn us, not literally against the world, but against a worldly spirit. Now I will close my grave remarks, by saying, that it is my earnest desire, both for thee and myself, that we may be redeemed from a worldly spirit, and that in our communications with the world, whether fashionable, commercial, or common-place, we may be enabled simply to follow an unerring guide within us, which will assuredly inform us, if we will but wait for direction, what to touch and what to shrink from—what to follow, and what to eschew.
I returned home with Pris, last fourth day, and found my dear brother considerably more feeble than when I left him; I think this may be owing, principally, to his having fallen and hurt his knee, and to the confinement which the accident has rendered necessary. Upon the whole we are much at ease about him, and ought to be thankful whether we are so or no.
Do not be angry with me; write me a letter; and farewell, in every sense of the word.
I remain, thy affectionate friend,
J. J. Gurney.