as well as the punishment, of sin; and if we ask for grace, and yet cherish sin, truly we know not what spirit we are of, we wish not for complete salvation while we are asking for it.  Mercy is a broader thing than our most earnest prayers suppose; yea, it is “above all that we can ask or think.”

  8th Mo.  Letter to M.B.

* * * How little it avails to know the theory of wisdom and folly, right and wrong, etc., just so as to occupy only the perceptive and reasoning faculties!  What we want, what the world wants, I think, is the Christian version of the present so fashionable idea of earnestness, or, as I have thought it may imply, consistency of character.  We get ideas and opinions in a dead way, and then they do not pervade our characters; we have but half learned them; they have influenced not our feeling, but only our knowing faculties, and then perhaps it had been better not to have known the way of truth.  A full response is in my heart to the difficulty of keeping things in their right places, neither can I at all agree to the idea “that where the love of the world perverts one, the fear of it perverts ten;” at least, understanding the world to mean “whatever passes as I cloud between the mental eye of faith and things unseen.”  Many a time has the book-shelf and the writing-desk been made a substitute for the oratory.  As to friendship taking this place, surely the whole idea of a Church is based on that of Christian fellowship in its strict sense.  Be it ours to know what that means, and then, if our love to Christ is the main bond of union, while that continues, we shall love him the more rather than the less on that account.  But I know that friendship includes various other elements, and may we be sensible that if these are made the main things in our esteem, not only our faith, but our friendship too, becomes debased.

Respecting the seventh and eighth chapter of Romans, a believe I agree with thee; but lately I have had stronger feelings than I used to have about the distinction between defective religion and infant religion.  The full feeling of our corruption must certainly precede the full reception of the Christian’s joy; and I believe we ought not to be too anxious to reduce to regular theory what is so much above our finite understandings as the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart.  Still, I think there is, when it goes on as it ought to do, unobstructed, a completeness in all its stages.  There may and ought to be a perfect infant, then a perfect youth, then a perfect man, and I don’t know how to apply to the advanced stage only; that blessed declaration which I sometimes think expresses the sum of Christian liberty, “There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”  Still, it will be quite time enough to reason about this when we have attained such an entirely childlike state; nor, I suppose, shall