He says, “Stand still, and see the salvation of God; for the Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”  Oh, how great the condescension which has given me a glimpse of “so great salvation”!  But I have remarked that it never has been in answer to any questionings or searchings of my own.  Some great perplexities I have had lately, being so unable to satisfy myself how far religion or its duties should be the act of ourselves—­so confused about prayer, etc.  Difficulties, hardly capable to be put into words, put me in real distress; but the good seems to be revealed, if I may use such a word, to another part of me; or, as I. Pennington would say, “to another eye and ear than those which are so curious to learn.”  The Lord grant that I may at last become an obedient and truly teachable child; for that faculty, whatsoever it be, that asks vociferously, seems not to be the one which, as I.P. says, “graspingly receives," but is rather a hinderance to its reception.

10th Mo. 14th.  Outwardly, the chief variety in my experience has been an interesting visit with my mother at Kingsbridge and Totness.  A solitary walk in the garden at Totness, on First-day afternoon, I think I can never forget.  No sunshine—­though not mere darkness—­was upon me during nearly all the week:  yet I wondered to find that at Kingsbridge, though visiting was a constant self-denial, in withdrawing me from the earnest search in which I was engaged, I got on more easily than common, and felt much more love than usual to my friends.  The first gleam of sunshine did not come through any man’s help, but in my lone matin the day after our return.  I tried to cast my care on God, and on Seventh-day morning was favored with a blessed evidence that He did care for me.  Since then it has not been repeated; but earnest have been my cries in secret to my heavenly Father, whose mercies indeed are great; and my lonely hours have been employed mostly in seeking Him, having little taste for reading of any general kind.  One morning in particular, at Trevelmond, in the plantation, waiting for my father, was my heart poured out to God.  Calmness has often succeeded; and then I dread the coming of indifference and coolness.  Oh, this is surely the worst of states!  I had rather endure almost any amount of anguish.

Yesterday, the probability that my course on earth may be short occurred forcibly.  I recurred to the words quoted by J.T., “The sting of death is sin,” with encouragement to hope for “the victory.”  However, the future is not my care.  May I be the care of Him whose care the future is, and then——­

10th Mo. 22d.  At home with a cold, and may just record my poor spirit’s lowness and poverty amid, as I trust, its honest desires to become wholly the Lord’s.  “Ye ask, and have not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts,” is surely true of spiritual food.  We should desire