* * * There is much, very much, connected with any experience in these matters calculated to teach us that this is not our rest; and often have I thought, when pondering the uncertain future, that but for the small degree in which the hope of things beyond, steadfast and eternal, keeps its hold, I should be ready to sink; and then I think of kind rich promises on which I try to lay hold, “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,” and “As thy day, so shall thy strength be.”  And so, dear M., I trust it will be with us all, if our trust be but rightly placed; and in this I fear I have sometimes, perhaps often, been mistaken.  I am sure it is well to have this sifted and searched into, and none of the pains which must attend such a process are in vain.  When we have learned more fully what and how frail we are, then we can better appreciate the help that is offered, and the abundant blessing of peace when it does come.  The depth of our own capacity for suffering is known to few of us; and when we have made a little discovery of it, some short acquaintance with the dark cold caverns of hopeless woe into which it is possible to fall, even when all externally is bright and apparently prosperous, how thankful then should we feel for the daylight of hope!

Perhaps I am using strong language.  I would not use it to every one, but I think thou knowest that words are feeble rather than strong to express what may be the real portion of one whom spectators look on as very happy; and I do feel sure that not a grief that can befall us even in this hidden world of ours, but may be the stepping-stone to a joy with which also a stranger doth not intermeddle; and how shall we sooner find it than by “casting all our care on Him who careth for us”?  “He knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust, and is touched with a feeling of our infirmities.”

  3d Mo. 14th.—­Letter to M.B.

* * * I am abundantly convinced that if we can find the right place and keep it, and endeavor to fulfil its duties, whatever they may be, there is our safety, and there is our greatest peace; and what a blessing to know in any degree where the knowledge and the power are both to be obtained! * * *

6th Mo. 21st.  After a fortnight’s visit to my dear aunts, I followed Louisa to Tottenham.  Many an occasion of deep instruction was offered to us at the Yearly Meeting; and yet from all this what remains?  A solemn inquiry for all; and how much so for me, now that every principle of the heart and mind must prepare to encounter unwonted exercise and trial, now that I daily need all that I can have in a peculiar manner, and now that the future, amid the hopeful calm which it sometimes assumes, will sometimes almost frown upon me with lowerings of fear?  Fear it is, not of others, but of myself, and fear of the ignorance or precipitancy of my yet but very partially regulated mind.