the only true policy.

Who shall do it? You exhort me to write. I shall do so as I am able, and
see occasion, as I have done. I shall scarcely refrain, I suppose, from
writing this winter. But alas! I am broken in health, and am totally
unable fairly and fully to grapple with any great subject. I have more
than I can well, or, I fear, safely do to meet the ordinary calls of my
pulpit.

In fact I am a good deal discouraged about my ability to do good in any
way, unless it be by quiet study, and such fruits as may come of it. I
have encountered so much misconstruction within a year past, or rather
have come to the knowledge of so much, that I am seriously tempted, at
times, to retire from the pulpit, from the church, from the open field
of controversy in every form, and to spend the remainder of my days in
studies, which, if they last long enough, may produce a book or two that
will not subject me to that sort of personal inquisition which I find
has beset me hitherto.

You may be surprised at my saying this, and may ask if I have not had
as much honor and praise as I deserve. I do not deny it. But still there
is, unless I am mistaken, a sort of question about me as a professional
person,--about my professional sanctity, or strictness, or peculiarity,
that moves my indignation, I must say, but (what is more serious) that
makes me doubt whether, as a clergyman, I am doing any good that is
proportionate to my endeavors, and inclines me to retreat from this
ground altogether. How, for instance, if I have any desirable place in
one denomination, could the "Christian World" venture to say that I
had done more hurt [194] by my observation about teetotalism in my
Washington discourse than all the grog-shops in the land! How could a
clerical brother of mine seriously propose, as if he spoke the sense of
many, to have me admonished about my habits of living,--of eating,
he said, but perhaps he meant drinking, too,--my habits, who am a
remarkably simple and small eater; and, as to wine, do not taste it
one day in twenty! Yet this person actually attributed my ill-health to
luxurious living. I live as list; I feast as other men feast, when I am
at a feast, which is very rarely; I laugh as other men laugh; I will
not have any clerical peculiarity in my manners; and if his cannot be
understood, I will retire from the profession, for I will be a man more
than a minister. I came unto the profession from the simplest
possible impulse