painful and gloomy hour might have been cheered by the Sun of Righteousness, but for my obstinacy in trying to light farthing candles!  But I believe there are generally other obstacles at the same time.  We will have some beloved indulgence, some pleasures, of which perhaps the will is the chief sin, and which, if but willingly resigned, might be reconsecrated for our use and enjoyment; and then darkness and gloominess of mind follow, and we light matches and farthing candles to comfort us, while these very resources keep us back from seeking the radical remedy.  How easy it is to write or tell the diagnosis of such a case! but to be reconciled to the true mode of treatment, the prognosis, as doctors say, there is the difficulty, while I doubt not Cowper speaks the truth:—­

    “Were half the breath thus vainly spent
    To heaven in supplication sent,
    Your cheerful song would oftener be,
    Hear what the Lord hath done for me.”

I have been much interested with Thomas Charles’s life; such an example of spiritual-mindedness, faith, and love.  Dr. Payson’s death-bed is indeed a deeply interesting history.  How we should all like to choose such an one! and yet, if but prepared to go, whether we depart as he did, or as poor Cowper, how true are the words of the latter, “What can it signify?” I have often thought these words very significant.

Of phrenology I have heard such conflicting opinions that only my own small experience would satisfy me of its general truth.  I think only very weak minds need be led by it to fatalism.  The very fact of so many propensities and sentiments balancing each other seems to show that the result is to be contingent on some other thing than themselves, as the best-rigged vessel on an uncertain sea, in varying winds, is under the control of the helmsman and captain, and may be steered right or wrong; and surely no vessel is built by an all-wise Hand which cannot be steered aright with grace at the helm.

8th Mo. 19th.  Solemn thoughts yesterday in reading that solemn tract, “The Inconvenient Season.”  In visiting I met with another affecting illustration of the unfitness of old age for beginning religion, in the senseless self-righteousness of poor old Mary N. She says every night and morning the prayers she learned when a child, which she evidently thinks an abundant supply of religion,—­saying, “if people only do the best they have been brought up to, that is all they can need; and she never did any harm to any one.”  Then there was poor Alice, who, notwithstanding her rank Calvinism, seemed refreshing in comparison.  She knew she could not do any thing for herself; it was all grace; but then, “whatever I am, or whatever I do,” she said, “I am safe, unless I have committed gross sin, which I never shall.”  Then poor M.L., whose only fault, she seems to think, is not having learned to read, though she knows