I have thought often of the text, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Oh, how much that implies, both of love and joyfulness to be aimed at in our service of our heavenly Father on earth.  How high a standard!  Can we hope ever to attain it?  Surely we are to ask it, not as a millennial glory for the world only, (if at all,) but also as our own individual portion.  It is more to be lamented that we do not realize this than that we do not realize Foster’s idea of the world to come, in which we, yes, we, our very selves, will be actually concerned.  But I believe the two deficiencies are more connected than we are sometimes aware of; and perhaps the joys of a happy death-bed, the foretaste of heaven, of which we sometimes hear, are as much connected with the completeness of religious devotedness, often not till then attained, as with the nearness in point of time to a world of purity and joy.  How striking is the earnestness shown in John Fletcher’s “Early Christian Experience,” in seeking mastery over sin, not as “uncertainly,” or as “beating the air,” but as one resolved to conquer in the might of that faith which “is the victory;” and how wonderfully was his after-life an example of “doing the Divine will as it is in heaven”!

9th Mo. 17th.  Distress in the country great.  What will all issue in?  Surely in this, “the Lord sitteth on the flood; yea, He sitteth King forever.”  Oh! if He be King in our hearts we shall not be greatly moved.  There is comfort to the Christian, immovable comfort, in having his affections, his patriotism, in heaven.  My own heart, I ardently hope, is not a totally devastated land.  There is a rudiment still there which God looketh upon, and perhaps, though I know it not, his eyes and his heart are there perpetually.  It is not meant to remain a rudiment:  oh, no; as “sin hath reigned, even unto death, so grace should yet reign, even to eternal life.”

9th Mo. 27th.  Perplexed about Irish knitting, because it is slave-grown cotton.  It does not seem consistent to buy it; and yet I don’t know what to recommend.

9th Mo. 30th.  Another month is at an end.  Oh that I knew whereabouts I stand in the race! “’Tis a point I long to know.”  Sometimes I have joy of heart, and then I tremble lest it be not rightly founded; sometimes tenderness of heart, and then I fear it is only natural feeling; sometimes fervent desires after good, and then I fear lest they are only the result of fear of punishment; sometimes trust in the merits of Jesus, and can look to Him as a sacrifice for sin; then I fear lest it is only as an escape from danger, not deliverance from present corruption; sometimes wish to fulfil actively my duties, then these same duties have stolen away my heart.  Oh, how do I get cumbered with cares and many things, entangled with perplexity, or elated with cheer!  I think I have honestly wished to be fed with convenient