CCLIII. TO MISS LAWRENCE.[210]
March 22, 1832.
My dear Miss Lawrence,—You and dear, dear Mrs. Crompton are among the few sunshiny images that endear my past life to me, and I never think of you without heartfelt esteem, without affection, and a yearning of my better being toward you. I have for more than eighteen months been on the brink of the grave, the object of my wishes, and only not of my prayers, because I commit myself, poor dark creature, to an Omniscient and All-merciful, in whom are the issues of life and death,—content, yea, most thankful, if only His Grace will preserve within me the blessed faith that He is and is a God that heareth prayers, abundant in forgiveness, and therefore to be feared, no fate, no God as imagined by the Unitarians, a sort of, I know not what law-giving Law of Gravitation, to whom prayer would be as idle as to the law of gravity, if an undermined wall were falling upon me; but “a God that made the eye, and therefore shall He not see? who made the ear, and shall He not hear?” who made the heart of man to love Him, and shall He not love the creature whose ultimate end is to love Him?—a God who seeketh that which was lost, who calleth back that which had gone astray; who calleth through His own Name; Word, Son, from everlasting the Way and the Truth; and who became man that for poor fallen mankind he might be (not merely announced but be) the Resurrection and the Life,—“Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest!” Oh, my dear Miss Lawrence! prize above all earthly things the faith. I trust that no sophistry of shallow infra-socinians has quenched it within you,—that God is a God that heareth prayers. If varied learning, if the assiduous cultivation of the reasoning powers, if an accurate and minute acquaintance with all the arguments of controversial writers; if an intimacy with the doctrines of the Unitarians, which can only be obtained by one who for a year or two in his early life had been a convert to them, yea, a zealous and by themselves deemed powerful supporter of their opinions; lastly, if the utter absence of any imaginable worldly interest that could sway or warp the mind and affections,—if all these combined can give any weight or authority to the opinion of a fellow-creature, they will give weight to my adjuration, sent from my sickbed to you in kind love. O trust, O trust, in your Redeemer! in the coeternal Word, the Only-begotten, the living Name of the Eternal I AM, Jehovah, Jesus!
I shall endeavour to see Mr. Hamilton.[211] I doubt not his scientific attainments. I have had proofs of his taste and feeling as a poet, but believe me, my dear Miss Lawrence! that, should the cloud of distemper pass from over me, there needs no other passport to a cordial welcome from me than a line from you importing that he or she possesses your esteem and regard, and that you wish I should shew attention to them. I cannot make out your address, which I read “The Grange;” but where that is I know not, and fear that the Post Office may be as ignorant as myself. I must therefore delay the direction of my letter till I see Mr. Hamilton; but in all places, and independent of place, I am, my dear Miss Lawrence, with most affectionate recollections,
Your friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
Miss S. Lawrence, The Grange, nr. Liverpool.
CCLIV. TO THE REV. H. F. CARY.
Grove, Highgate, April 22, 1832.