SUNDAY, November 9.  Brother George Kline’s little Daniel died to-night.  I was with him when he died.  Just three years and four days old.  How deep the grief with which this kind family is stricken!  On Tuesday, October 21, while I was in Hampshire County, Virginia, Anna, aged seven years, two months and nineteen days, was laid in the cold grave.  On the thirty-first, only nine days later, little Mary passed away, aged four years, seven months and eleven days.  And now, only nine days later still, another, little Daniel, passes away.  All three bright, promising, happy children.  We can only lift up our voices and weep.  The only light that breaks in upon the darkness of this providence comes from heaven.  There is light beyond the cloud that now hangs so darkly and heavily in the sky above our heads.  God is our refuge.  His promise is:  “When thou passest through the deep waters, I will be with thee.”  Thou wilt not leave nor forsake us now.  The little lambs have been gathered into his arms.  He took them into his arms and blessed them here; how much more can he bless them there, for “of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

THURSDAY, November 27.  Have night meeting in Winchester, Virginia, in the Methodist church.  I speak from Luke 13.  Subject:  “The Strait Gate.”  Stay all night at Henry Krumm’s.

FRIDAY, November 28.  Breakfast at Brother Fahnestock’s; dine at Brother Mummert’s, and have night meeting in the Quaker meetinghouse.  Speak on John 4:24.  Text:  “God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”  As the house in which we have met for worship this evening has been erected by the Friends, or Quakers, and called after their name, I feel that it will not be out of place for me to speak from a passage of Scripture upon which they very much rely, as a strong support to their faith and ways of worship.  I must, at the same time, confess that I love these people dearly, as far as my acquaintance with them goes.  Their views and convictions in regard to simplicity in manners, and plainness in dress, and general nonconformity to the world; in regard to bearing arms, and using human laws in the adjustment of difficulties between brethren, are so very much like our own that I cannot avoid a strong attachment to them in my religious sympathies.  And I would not desire to eradicate this sympathy from my heart if I could.  These considerations, in connection with my early knowledge of them in Pennsylvania as being an honest and virtuous people, have always kept me in friendly love with the Quakers.

The language of my text is part of the instruction given by our Lord to the Samaritan woman at the well.  She said to him:  “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; but ye [meaning the Jews] say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”  She alluded to the temple, I suppose.  But our Lord at one stroke levels every support on which these false conceptions of him rested in her mind, by assuring her that God is a universal Spirit, and not confined to any one place; and that the worship which he delights in is not that of form and ceremony, but that of the heart, in the inner man, in spirit and in truth.  The meaning of my text also lays the axe at the root of all hypocrisy and spurious professions of religion.