“Do not think for a moment that I claim any merit. If there be any doctrine that I dislike and fear more than another, it is the ‘Doctrine of Works.’ Whatever I have done has been given to me; what I have done I was enabled to do; and all happy results (if any there be) must be credited, not to the servant, but to the great Master, who led and sustained him.
“My course, however, has raised up for me many enemies, and very few friends, but among those friends I hope that you may be numbered.
“Yours truly,
“Shaftesbury.”
I sent him another little souvenir two years later:—
TO LORD SHAFTESBURY ON HIS 82ND BIRTHDAY.
With a China Tablet.
The Lord of Rome, historians say,
Lamented he had “lost a day,”
When no good deed was done.