home; and I wish industriously to do my little duties, and follow my little callings:  of these the Workhouse women supply one of the most satisfactory to myself.  They are a sad sight; but I feel that my small labors with them are not rejected, but desired, and I hope to a few at least they may be of some use.  On First-days I now first read a short tract, then read in the Testament two or three chapters, verse by verse, with the women, then hear them say hymns,—­which three or four learn gladly:  this fills the hour.  And once in a week I like to go in and try to teach those who cannot read.  I have much felt, lately, that it is vain to try as a mere satisfaction to conscience to do these things, because we ought:  it must be from a better motive—­true keeping of the “first and great commandment,” and the second, which “is like unto it.”  No busy doings at home or abroad will ever do instead.

8th Mo. 5th. 7th-Day.  I must in thankfulness record free and great mercies this week.  First-day was a happy one.  In the morning rain and a cough kept me at home.  I read the crucifixion and resurrection in different Evangelists, and cannot tell how meltingly sweet it was.  Surely I did love Jesus then because He had first loved me.  Sundry sweet refreshing brooks have flowed by my wayside, and some dry lonely paths I have trodden, (since,) but think He who is alone the foundation and corner-stone, immovable and undeceiving, has become more precious.  Oh, how shall I be enough careful to trust him alone?  I have got on a little with Gibbon’s Rise and Fall, and have begun Neander on the Emperors, finished one volume of Goethe with L., and begun Milton with M., and English history with R.

9th Mo. 2d.  The week tolerably satisfactory; but how truly may we say, “A day in thy courts is better than a thousand”!  This evening’s unexpected, unsought, unasked, free, gratuitous mercy has made the last two hours worth more than some whole days of this week.  Oh, how kind is He who knows how to win back and attract to Himself by imparting ineffable desires after what is good, even to a heart that has grown dry and dead and worldly!  I have thought that some measure of our growth in grace may be found in the degree in which our carnal natural reluctance to receive Christ back into our vessel, come how He may, is diminished.  How full of significance is the inquiry, “To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” Blessed revelation; and well is it for those who feel ready to adopt the prayer, “Awake, awake, O arm of the Lord,” if they know the way of its coming.  Oh, how does its acceptance presuppose an experience of something of the kind, so awfully set forth as from Omnipotence Himself!—­“I looked, and there was no man, therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me.”  Yes, it is when He sees that we have no human expectance or confidence left, and are, as it were, at our wits’ end; it is then that His own arm brings salvation, that