bestowed this morning, and, may I hope, a small capacity granted to enter into the sanctuary and pray.  This week I have been unwatchful,—­too much cumbered; yet, oh, I hope and trust, at times, my chains are breaking, and though I must believe the bitterness will come in time, the gospel of salvation is beginning to be tasted in its sweetness, completeness, and joy.

1st Mo. 1843.  I desire that the privilege of this day attending the Quarterly Meeting at Plymouth, may be long held in grateful remembrance; that the language, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” may be my increasing experience.  Conscious that the state of my heart, long wavering between two opinions, has of late been fearfully in danger of fixing to the wrong one of these, I would ask of Him who seeth in secret, and who is, I trust, at this very moment renewing a measure of the contrition, which, amid all my desires for it, did but gleam upon me this morning, to do in me a thorough work, to remain henceforth and ever.

2d Mo. 12th.  About four weeks since, we had a precious visit from B.S., and it has been a sacrifice to me to make no record of his striking communications; but I have been fearful, lest in any measure the weight and freshness of these things should vanish in words; and I have never felt at liberty to do so.

In this year, she wrote but little in her Journal, and it appears to have been a time of spiritual proving; yet one in which she experienced that it was good for her “to trust in the name of the Lord, and to stay herself upon her God.”

  6th Mo. 16th, 1844.  One week ago was the
  twenty-first anniversary of my birthday.  In some
  sense, I can say,—­

  “The past is bright, like those dear hills,
    So far behind my bark;
  The future, like the gathering night,
    Is ominous and dark.

  “One gaze again—­one long, last gaze;
    Childhood, adieu to thee;
  The breeze hath hurried me away,
    On a dark, stormy sea.”

Deeply and more deeply, day by day, does my understanding find the deceitfulness of my heart.  Well do I remember the feelings of determination, with which I resolved, two years since, that this period should not find me halting between two opinions,—­that ere this day I would be a Christian indeed.  And looking back upon my alternating feelings, ever since reason was mine, upon the innumerable resolutions to do good, which have been as staves of reed, I must want common perception not to assent to the truth, that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:  who can know it?” But, oh, it is not this only, which my intellectual conscience is burdened with:  when I look at the visitations of divine grace which have been my unmerited, unasked-for, privilege, through which