e my affectionate remembrance to
Dorothy, and

Believe me ever yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, April 30th, 1840.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Of course I have begun to die already: which I believe people do as soon
as they reach maturity; at any rate, the process begins, I am sure, much
earlier, and is much more gradual and uninterrupted, than we suppose or
are aware of. Most persons, I think, begin to die at about thirty; some
take a longer, and some a shorter time in becoming quite entirely dead,
but after that age I do not believe anybody is quite entirely alive....
Still, though somewhat dead (as I have most reason to know), to the
eyes of most people I am even now an uncommonly lively woman; and while
my soul is at peace, and my spirits cheerful, I am not myself painfully
conscious that I am dying.... The treasure of health was mine in
perfection, almost for five and twenty years, and I do not see that I
should have any right to complain that I no longer possess it as fully
as I once did....

You and I have changed places curiously enough, since first we began to
hold arguments together; and it seems as strange that you should
disparage reason to me, as the chief instrument of education, as that I
should be upholding it against your disparagement. The longer I live,
the more convinced my _reason_ is of the goodness and wisdom of God; and
from what my _reason_ can perceive of these attributes of our Father my
_faith_ derives the surest foundation on which to build perfect trust
and confidence, where my _reason_ can no longer discern the meaning of
my existence, the exact purpose of its several events, and significance
of its circumstances. Entire faith in God seems to me entirely
reasonable; but, indeed, I have yet had no experience of any
dispensations of Divine Providence which at all tried or shook my
reason, or disturbed my trust in their unfailing righteousness.

Our reason, above all our other faculties, shows us how little we can
know; and it is the very function of reason to perceive how finite,
vague, and feeble all our conceptions of the Almighty must be; how
utterly futile all our attempts to fathom His purposes, whose ways are
assuredly not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts.

The spring has come; the mysterious resurrection which with its annually
recurring miracle