* * * Oh for that simple faith which thou speaks of as mastering mountains of difficulty, and that not by might or power, but by its intrinsically victorious nature! I have sometimes been struck by the way in which this is asserted in the text, "This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith." It is taken for granted that there will be a contest and a victory; but if there is true faith the world will certainly be overcome: I mean provided the faith is held fast. It may be abandoned, or foes within may betray the citadel; but it will not otherwise yield to pressure from without. May we, if possible, encourage one another not to let go that small, and, it may be, famishing and almost expiring confidence, which hath, not only is promised, great recompense of reward. I little thought to come to any thing so encouraging when beginning a sort of lamentation over myself. But really there is so much that is deceptive in the deceptive heart; so many things, even our humility, that we once thought of the right kind, turn out to have been some refined manifestation of spiritual pride, that we may daily find, at least I do, that the question "Who can cure it?" follows its judgment as "desperately wicked," with emphasis full as great as that of "Who can know it?" is prompted by the discovery that it is "deceitful above all things."
* * * Job Thomas's death-bed has long been an interesting one to me; and I think his parting address, especially seeing it is a translation from Welsh, conveys remarkably the impression of a mind beginning to be shone upon from the other world. On the other hand, death-beds of opposite characters, such as "Altamont" in Murray's Power of Religion, carry a no less convincing evidence of the dark realities to come. When my father was in America he was much interested with hearing from a friend, a female connection of whom had lived in the house with Tom Payne, some account of the last hours of that wretched man, who appears to have become so fully sensible of his fatal errors as to have written a recantation, which some of his infidel friends destroyed. The account they gave to Cobbett was entirely false; as the friend related that he expressed to her the greatest sorrow for the harm that he had done, and, on hearing that she had burned some of his books, he expressed a wish that all had done the same.[2]
[Footnote 2: For a farther account see Life of Stephen Grellet, vol. i. p. 163, Amer. edit.]
* * * Total abstinence, as well as many other good Causes, and the good cause, have lost a noble advocate in our honored and lamented friend J.J. Ghirney. It is hard to reconcile one's mind to so sudden a summons; so little time for his sorrowing friends to receive those ever valuable and precious legacies, "dying sayings." We have heard of nothing of that kind; and perhaps he was not conscious of the approach of death at all. So much the brighter, doubtless, the glad surprise of the transition. Oh, how one longs for permission to look in at heaven's opened door-way after the entrance of such souls!
1st Mo. 23d. To-day, writing rhyming Irish, appeal. It got the upper hand and made me sin—so unhappy about it. When I believe sincerely desiring to offer it up to the Lord's, will, I grew easy to continue it. Perhaps it was a selfish and self-pleasing influence, but I think not so. I felt very glad afterwards to be able to ask to have all my heart consecrated by the Lord's spirit; and I do believe that to rectify, not extinguish, the beat of oar facilities, is religion's work.
This appeal on behalf of the poor Irish was never made public. It had occupied her thoughts very deeply, and, had she seen fit to publish it, might have been an auxiliary to the material efforts on behalf of the sufferers in which she, in common with many others at that period, was warmly engaged.
Many visits to poor people. In some I felt able to talk to them of heavenly things. I believe it is right to speak in love and interest, but never to out-strip our feelings. "I was sick, and ye visited me," refers to a duty; and surely, when we are blessed with a knowledge of the way of salvation, and feel anxious for the salvation of others, it is right to do our endeavors; at the same time well knowing that God only can touch the heart. I believe that indifference and indolence do much shelter themselves under pretence of leaving God's work to Himself. I have often learned salutary lessons in doing my little.
2d Mo. 19th. I have been musing upon "my sorrow was stirred." Can it be that every heart is a treasury of sadness which has but to be stirred up to set us in mourning? Is it proportionate to the amount of evil? Does a certain amount of evil necessarily bring a certain amount of sorrow soon or late? Do we suffer only by our own fault, unless a grief is actually inflicted upon us? I think not. There may be mental storms, over-castings of cloud in the mind's hemisphere, independent of the exhalations from the soil.
2d Mo. 23d. Letter to M.B.
* * * The truth is, that I was once fonder of reading than of almost any thing else. * * * I don't know how to tell thee about the strangely sad impression that has followed, that "this also is vanity." I know it is our duty to improve our minds, and I wish much that mine had been better cultivated than it has been, and yet some utilitarian infirmity of mind has so often suggested, "What use is it?" while I have been reading, that my zest for the book has been almost destroyed, and the very thought of the volume has been saddened by remembering what I felt while reading it. So that what E. Barrett says of light reading is true to me of Schiller and some others:—