the year seasons return, but not to me.”  It would, however, be most ungrateful to complain.  To live at all is a great favor—­an undeserved and unspeakable favor; and though it be a life of pain and weariness, and even grief, may it never become a life of thankless ingratitude!  We who have tried our heavenly Father’s patience so long, dare we complain of waiting for Him?

  4th Mo. 13th.  Letter to M.B.

* * * However high be the capacity of the mind, it is humiliating to find what small things can distract it, if its anchor-hold be not truly what and where it ought to be; and who does not find the need of this being often renewed and made fast?  The little experience I have had, that even a life comparatively free from trial, except as regards its highest significance, “is but vanity,” and the belief that it is so infinitely surpassed by another, has much modified to me the feeling of witnessing (might I venture to say of anticipating?) the transition for others or for myself.  I nevertheless cannot say much from experience; for it has not yet been my lot to lose one of my own intimate or nearly attached friends, except where the course of time had made it a natural and inevitable thing; and I know there must be depths of sorrow in such events only fathomed by descending to them.

  4th Mo.—­th.  Letter to M.B.

What a privilege it is to be permitted to expect and look for a better guidance than our own judgment or inclination, even in the small things of our small lives; small though they are, compared with the great events which are ruled by our heavenly Father’s will, how much is involved in them as far as we are concerned! and we need not measure the controlling care of Providence by the abstract greatness or littleness of any event.  Compared with His infinity, the fate of an empire would be not more worthy of His care than the least event of our lives; but it is love—­the same wonderful love that can comfort and bless the dying-pillow of a little one, in which we want more practical faith for our safe conduct through this uncertain life.  Did we live in such a faith, it would be sweet and easy to die in it.

4th Mo. 30th.  Bristol.  Yesterday was a memorable day to me; the evening meeting found me very sad and burdened; when I thought I was made sensible of something like an offer from One who is infinite in power and love, to take this burden away, to bear it Himself, and to do in me His own will.  There seemed something like a covenant set before me, that all this should be done for me on condition of my acquiescence with and subjection to that supreme will, that I should refuse neither to suffer His own work within me nor to do His manifested will.  It may be that I stamp too highly what was most gently and calmly spread before my heart.  It may be that the relief, the peaceful calm, which followed my endeavor