o Mr. Lane. We are busy, Is city people cannot
conceive of, in getting the indoors and outdoors to rights.

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.

SHEFFIELD, Nov. 26, 1847. MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have thought much of what
you said the other morning; and though I expect to see you gain in a
fortnight, I cannot let the interval pass without a few words. The new
interest in your mind, as far is it is spiritual, and the new measures
you propose to adopt in your church, so far as I understand them,
have my entire sympathy. But I demur to your manner of stating the
speculative grounds of this change in your feeling and view. Certainly
my mind is, and has been or a long time, running in a direction contrary
to your present leanings. I cannot think that human nature is o low and
helpless as you seem to think, nor that the gospel is so entirely
the one and exclusive remedy. And yet I agree, too, with much (in its
practical bearing) of what you say, in the direction that your mind is
taking. I have often insisted in the pulpit that the people do not yet
understand Christianity; its spiritual nature, however, rather than its
positive facts, its simple love and disinterestedness rather than its
supernaturalism, were to me the points where they have failed. . . .
fully admit, too, the need of progress in our denomination, but I do not
believe in any grand new era to be [197] introduced into its history
by the views you urge, or any other views. All good progress must be
gradual. If there is a revolution in your mind, does it follow that that
must be the measure for others, for your brethren, for the denomination,
in past or present time?

Your sympathies are wide; the tendency to outward action is strong in
you; your generous nature opens the doors of your mind to light from
every quarter; need is, to carry on a strong discriminating work in
a mind like yours. With your nature, so utterly opposed to everything
sluggish and narrow, you have need of a large and well-considered
philosophy, "looking before and after," and settling all things in their
right places, and questioning every new-coming thought with singular
caution, lest it push you from your propriety or consistency. In truth,
you quite mistake me when you say that I have not studied your mind.
I have watched its workings with the greatest interest, often with
admiration, and sometimes--may I say?--with anxiety. There was a time
when I greatly feared that you would go the lengths of Parke