treasure in the Gospel, I
should have been better satisfied. I am writing very frankly to you, as
you are wont to write to me (and I believe that you and I can bear these
terms, and bless them too), and therefore I will add that my greatest
distrust of your spiritual nature turns to this very point: whether you
have, in the same measure as you have other things, that deep heart's
rest, that quiet, profound, all-sufficing satisfaction in the infinite
resource, in the all-enbosoming love of the All-Good, in silent and
solitary communion with God, settling and sinking the soul, as into
the still waters and the ocean depths. Your nature runs to social
communions, to visible movements, to outwardness, in short, more than to
the central depths within. The defects in your preaching, which I have
heard pointed out by the discerning, are the want of consistency,--of
one six months with another six months,--and the want of spiritual depth
and vitality; of that calm, deep tone of thought and feeling that goes
to the depths of the heart.

God knows that I do very humbly attempt to criticise another's religion
and preaching, being inexpressibly concerned about the defects of my
own. And, dear friend, I speak to you as modestly as I do frankly. I may
be wrong, or I may be only partly right. But in this crisis I think that
I ought to say plainly what I feel and fear. I cannot bear, for every
reason,--for your sake and for the sake of the church, in which, for
your age, you are rooting yourself so deeply,--that you should make any
misstep on the ground upon which you seem to be entering.

[200] To Rev. William Ware.

SHEFFIELD, Dec. 6, 1847.

MY DEAR WARE,--I think my pen will run on, with such words to start
from, though it have spent itself on the weary "Sermons." This is Monday
morning, and I am not quite ready in mind to begin on a new one. The
readiness, with me, is nine tenths of the battle. I never, or almost
never, write a sermon unless it be upon a. subject that I want to write
upon. I never cast about for a subject; I do not find the theme, but the
theme finds me. Last week I departed from my way, and did lot make good
progress. The text, "What shall it profit t man?" struck upon my heart
as I sat down on Monday Horning, and I wrote it at the head of my usual
seven sheets of white paper, and went on. But the awfulness if the text
impressed me all the while with the sense of allure, and though the
sermon was finished, I m