’But yet it should always be read with a view to some practical result; and so often there is not a special, though many general points which may make our reading at once practical.  Then comes the real trial, and then comes the wondrous power of God’s Word to help and strengthen.

’Now it helps me to know where I am, to learn how others manage to see where they are.

’All that you say about self-consciousness, &c., can’t I understand it!  Ah! when I saw the guileless pure spirit of those two dear fellows ever brightening more and more for now two years.  I had respected them as much as I loved them.  I used to think, “Yes, we must become such as they; we too must seek and pray for the mind of a little child.”

’And surely the contemplation of God is the best cure.  How admirable Jeremy Taylor is on those points!  Oh that he had not overlaid it all with such superabundant ornamentation of style and rhetoric.  But it is the manner of the age.  Many persons I suppose get over it, perhaps like it; but I long for the same thoughts, the same tenderness and truthfulness, and faithful searching words with a clear, simple, not unimaginative diction.  Yet his book is a great heritage.

’Newman has a sermon on Contemplation or Meditation, I forget which; and my copy is on board.  But I do hope that by praying for humility, with contemplation of God’s majesty and love and our Savior’s humility and meekness, some improvement may be mercifully vouchsafed to me.

’To dwell on His humiliation, His patience, that He should seek for heavenly aids, accept the ministration of an angel strengthening Him, how full of mystery and awe! and yet written for us!  And yet we are proud and self-justified and vainglorious!

’The Archbishop of York, in “Aids to Faith,” on the Death of Christ, has some most solemn and deep remarks on the Lord’s Agony.  I don’t know that it could ever be quite consistent with reverence to speak on what is there suggested.  Yet if I could hear Mr. Keble and Dr. Pusey (say) prayerfully talking together on that great mystery, I should feel that it might be very profitable.  But he must be a very humble man who should dare to speak on it.  Yet read it, Fan, it cannot harm you; it is very awful, it is fully meant that He was sinless, without spot, undefiled through all.  It makes the mystery of sin, and of what it cost to redeem our souls, more awful than ever.

’And then, surely to the contemplation of God and the necessary contrast of our own weakness and misery, we add the thought of our approaching death, we anticipate the hours, the days, it may be the weeks and months, even the years of weariness, pain, sleeplessness, thirst, distaste for food, murmuring thoughts, evil spirits haunting us, impatient longings after rest for which we are not yet prepared, the thousand trials, discomforts, sadnesses of sickness—­yes, it must come in some shape; and is it to come as a friend or an enemy to snatch us from what we love and enjoy, or to open the gates of Paradise?