its very nature to do so, because it can not help it, and this without regard to what its object gives.  I dare not pretend that I have fully reached this state, but I have entered this land, and know that it is one to be desired as a home, an abiding place.  I have thought painfully of the narrow quarters and the hot nights endured by so many in New York, during this unusually warm weather—­especially of Mrs. G. with three restless children in bed with her and her poor lonely heart.  I can not but believe that Christ has real purposes of mercy to her soul.  I feel interested in Mr. H.’s summer work in a hard field.  In place of aversion to young men, I am beginning to realise how true work for Christ one may do by praying persistently for them, especially those consecrated to the ministry of His gospel.  I do hope Christ will have the whole of you, and that you will have the whole of Him.  When you write, let me know how you like my beloved Fenelon.  Still, you may not like him.  Some Christians never get to feeding on these mystical writers, and get on without them.

To Mrs. Condict, Dorset, July 18, 1870.

I was greatly struck with these words yesterday:  “As for God His way is perfect”; think of reading the Bible through four times in one year, and nobody knows how many times since, and never resting on these words.  Somehow they charmed me.  And these words have been ringing in my ears,

  “Earth looks so little and so low,”

while conscious that when I can get ferns and flowers, it does not look so “little” or so “low,” as it does when I can’t.  My cook, who is a Romanist, has been prevented from going to her own church seven miles off, by the weather, ever since we came here, and last Sunday said she meant to go to ours.  Mr. P. preached on God’s character as our Physician, and she was delighted.  I think it was hearing one of his little letters to the children that made her realise, that he was a Christian man whom she might safely hear; at any rate, I feel greatly pleased and comforted that she could appreciate such a subject.  I fear you are suffering from the weather; we never knew anything like it here.  We do not suffer, but wake up every morning bathed in a breeze that refreshes for the day; I mean we do not suffer while we keep still.  I am astonished at God’s goodness in giving us this place; not His goodness itself, but towards us.  If Mrs. Brinsmade [8] left much of such material as the extract you sent me, I wonder Dr. B. did not write her memoir.  The more I read of what Christ said about faith, the more impressed I am.  Just now I am on the last chapters in the gospel of John, and feel as if I had never read them before.  They are just wonderful.  We have to read the Bible to understand the Christian life, and we must penetrate far into that life in order to understand the Bible.  How beautifully the one interprets the other!  I want you to let me know, without telling her that I asked you, if Miss K. could make me a visit if it were not for the expense?