light of day.  We can not make ourselves holy.  We are born sinners.  A certain school believe that they are “kept” by the grace of God from all sin.  I do not say that they are not.  But I do say that I think it requires superhuman wisdom to know positively that one not only keeps all God’s law, but leaves no single duty undone.  Think a minute.  Law proceeds from an infinite mind; can finite mind grasp it so as to know, through its own consciousness, that it comes up to this standard?  On the other hand, I do believe that a way has been provided for us to be set free from an “evil conscience”; that we may live in such integrity and uprightness as to be at peace with God; not being afraid to let His pure eye range through and through us, finding humanity and weakness, but also finding something on which His eye can rest with delight—­namely, His own Son.  Every day I live I see that faith is my only hope, as perhaps I never saw it before....  Read over again the experience of Antiochus; he got in early life what dear Dr. ——­ only found on his deathbed, and so may you.

To Miss E. A. Warner, New York, Oct. 28, 1877.

I am too tired on Sunday evenings to find much profit in reading, and have been sitting idle some minutes, asking myself how I should spend the hour till bed-time, if I could pick and choose among human occupations.  I decided that if I had just the right kind of a neighbor, I should like to have her come in, or if there was the right kind of a little prayer-meeting round the corner, I would go to that.  Then I concluded to write to you, in answer to your letter of July 24.  I write few letters during the summer, because it seems a plain duty to keep out of doors as much as I possibly can; then we have company all the time, and they require about all the social element there is in me.  We feel that we owe it to Him who gives us our delightful home to share it with others, especially those who get no mountain breezes save through us; of some I must pay travelling expenses, or they can not come at all.  Their enjoyment is sufficient pay.  My Bible-reading takes all the time of two days not spent in outdoor exercise, as I have given up almost everything of help in preparation for it but that which is given me in answer to prayer and study of the Word.  I am kept, to use a homely expression, with my nose pretty close to the grindstone; in other words, am kept low and little.  But God blesses the work exactly as if I were a better woman.  Sometimes I think how poor He must be to use such instruments as He does.

How is the niece you spoke of as so ill and so happy?  For my part I am confounded when I see people hurt and distressed when invited home.  How a loving Father must feel when His children shrink back crying, “I have so much to live for!” or, in other words, so little to die for.  It frightens me sometimes to recall such cases.

And now I am going to tote my old head to bed.  It is 59 years old and has to go early.