These words come from dough—the soul of honesty.

To H. J. B.

Derwent Hill, Ebchester, Durham: April 14, 1902.

It seems to me a truism to say that we ought to look at life in the light of eternity. Only then does the true significance of the meanest action in life appear. Life is redeemed from triviality and vulgarity. So far from worldly possessions losing their value, and ordinary occupations appearing insignificant, their importance is realised as never before. If man does not live for ever, his character and actions seem of comparative unimportance. If he does live for ever, it is rational for him to look at each action in the light of that larger life which he inherits. If something like class distinctions are eternal, it is an inducement so to use your distinctive privileges here in a worthy manner, that hereafter you may use them for nobler ends.

I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I want to say. My relations to you surely become not less, but more important, when I realise that I am only beginning to know and love you here. The eternal element in them—the knowledge that there is throughout an implicit reference to a Third and Unseen Person in all that I say to you or think of you—fills me with a sense of awe, and makes the relations more real because more spiritual.

To the mother of his godchild, Margaret Forbes.

July 6, 1902.

I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to see my godchild.… I feel she has a strength of purpose and a desire to know the truth which will fit her for high service in God's kingdom on earth. I pray for her, and I shall do so in the future with fuller understanding and with great hope. What God hath begun He will assuredly bring to perfection. I hope that some day she will learn to pray for Uncle Forbes. I should value her prayers. It is good to feel that in the midst of your weary time of weakness God has given you such a child as a pledge of His affection for you, as an assurance that He believes in you. To give you a little child to train for Himself is a proof that He trusts you very much. I do not know that He could have given a greater proof of His confidence in you. And it is God's implicit trust in us that draws out our trust in turn. We trust and love Him, because He first trusted and loved us. I wonder more and more at the way in which He trusts us. To allow us to suffer without telling us the reason, when He knows that we shall be inclined to think harshly of Him—that is, perhaps, the greatest proof that He believes in us. He can try our faith and perfect it by long-continued trial, because He knows that we shall respond, that we shall prove 'worthy to suffer.'