us to consider whether we love truth absolutely, and not only relatively to the circumstances which will not exist then; and whether we can be happy in a land where righteousness and peace forever kiss each other.  And may I, without vanity and just in illustration, quote from a rhyme of my own?—­

  While thus we long, in bonds of clay,
    For freedom’s advent bright,
  Upbraid the tardy wheels of day,
    And call the slumbering light,

  Do we no willing fetters wear
    Which our own hands have made,
  No self-imposed distresses bear,
    And court no needless shade?

  While our departed friends to meet
    We often vainly sigh,
  To hold in heaven communion sweet,
    Communion large and high,

  Do we, while here on earth we dwell,
    Those pure affections show
  For which we long to bid farewell
    To all we love below?

  For no unhallow’d footstep falls
    Upon that floor of gold;
  Those pearly gates, those crystal walls,
    No earthly hearts enfold.

  And if our voice on earth be strange
    To notes of praise and prayer,
  That voice it is not death’s to change,
    Would make but discord there.

8th Mo. 10th.  Strange vacillations of feeling; at one time on the point of trusting the Lord for eternity, at another, cannot trust him even for time.  At one time would cast my whole soul on him; at another, will bear the weight of every straw myself, till I become quite overloaded with them.  Oh, what a spectacle of folly, and weakness, and sin!  A soul immortal spending all her powers, wasting her strength in strenuous idleness!

8th Mo. 16th.  Very busy making things tidy, and resolved, almost religiously, to keep them so.  I think I would not, for any consideration, die with all my things in disorder.  Disorder must be the result of a disordered mind, and not only so, it reacts on the mind and makes it worse in turn.

8th Mo. 18th.  People do not say enough of the need of consistency, when they speak of trusting in Providence instead of arms.  It was consistent in William Penn, but it would not have been consistent in his contemporaries, who took the Indians’ land for nought.  Providence is not to be made a protector of injustice, of which arms are the fitting shield.  Oh that consistency, earnestness of character, were more valued!

8th Mo. 23d.  Some true wish, may I say prayer, that Christ may now, now, blot out as a cloud my sins, even on his own terms, which, I am more convinced, do not consist of things required of us to give in exchange for his mercy, but are a part of that mercy, a part of that redemption.  Yes, when sin becomes thoroughly a burden, as sin, then we see that grace would be indeed imperfect, if it was not to be a deliverance from the power,