To Mrs. Humphrey, New York, April 6, 1875.

My point about “Grace for Grace” [2] is this:  I believe in “growth in grace,” but I also believe in, because I have experienced it and find my experience in the Word of God, a work of the Spirit subsequent to conversion (not necessary in all cases, perhaps, but in all cases where Christian life begins and continues feebly), which puts the soul into new conditions of growth.  If a plant is sickly and drooping, you must change its atmosphere before you can cure it or make it grow.  A great many years ago, disgusted with my spiritual life, I was led into new relations to Christ to which I could give no name, for I never had heard of such an experience.  When we moved into this house, I found a paper that had long been buried among rubbish, in which I said, “I am one great long sunbeam”; and I don’t know any words, that, on the whole, could better cover most of my life since then.  I have been a great sufferer, too; but that has, in the main, nothing to do with one’s relation to Christ, except that most forms of pain bring Him nearer.  Now, one can not read “Grace for Grace” without loving and sympathising with the author, because of his deep-seated longing for, and final attainment of, holiness; but it seemed to me there was a good deal of needless groping, which more looking to Christ might have spared him.  It is, as you say, curious to see how people who agree in so many points differ so in others.  I suspect it is because our degrees of faith vary; the one who believes most gets most.

The subject of sin versus sinlessness is the vexed question, on which, as fast as most people get or think they get light, somebody comes along and snuffs out their candles with unceremonious finger and thumb.  A dearly-beloved woman spent a month with me last spring.  She thinks she is “kept” from sin, and certainly the change from a most estimable but dogmatic character is absolutely wonderful....  There was this discrepancy between her experience and mine, with, on all other points, the most entire harmony.  She had had no special, joyful revelations of Christ to her soul, and I had had them till it seemed as if body and soul would fly apart.  On the other hand she had a sweet sense of freedom from sin which transcended anything I had ever had consciously; although I really think that when one is “looking unto Jesus,” one is not likely to fall into much noticeable sin.  Talking with Miss S. about the two experiences of my dear friend and myself, she said that it could be easily explained by the fact that all the gifts of the Spirit were rarely, if ever, given to one soul.  She is very (properly) reticent as to what she has herself received, but she behaved in such a beautiful, Christlike way on a point where we differed, a point of practice, that I can not doubt she has been unusually blest.

Early in May of this year she was afflicted by the sudden death in Paris of a very dear friend of her eldest daughter, Miss Virginia S. Osborn. [3] During the previous summer Miss Osborn had passed several weeks at Dorset and endeared herself, while there, to all the family.  The following is from a letter of Mrs. Prentiss to the bereaved mother: