a month on the same,--and bring us summer.
And there is cheer and comfort in [330] that, though the proverb about
the cold strengthening holds for a couple of months.

With our Merry Christmas to you all, I am, all days of the year,

Yours heartily,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.

ST. DAVID'S, May 9, 1875.

MY DEAR FELLOW (of the Royal Society, I mean),--I have had it upon my
mind these two or three weeks past to write to you; and I really believe
that what most hindered me was that I had so many things to say. And
yet, I solemnly declare that I cannot remember now what they were. They
were things of evanescent meditation, phases of the Great Questions; but
for a week or two I have been saying, I will not weary myself so much
with them. So you have escaped this time. One thing, however, I do
recall, though not of those questions; and that is, reading the Psalms
through for my pillow-book. And it is with a kind of astonishment that
I have read them. Did you ever look into them with the thought of
comparing them with the old Hindoo and Persian or Mohammedan or Greek
utterances of devotion? How cold and formal these are, compared with
the earnestness, the entreaty, the tenderness of David and Asaph,-the
swallowing up of their whole souls into love, trust, and thankfulness!
What is this, whence came it, and what does it mean? This phenomenon
in Judaa, how are you to explain it, without supposing a special
inspiration breathed into the souls of men from the source of all
spiritual life and light? The Jewish nature was not [331] more keen than
the Greek, or perhaps the Arabians, yet all their religious utterances
are but apothegms in presence of the Jewish vitality and experience.
I do not deny their grandeur and beauty; but the Bible brings me into
another world of thought and feeling,--into a new creation. And when we
take into the account the Gospels, we seem to be brought alike out of
the old philosophy and the new,--out both from the old formalism and the
vast inane and unknown, which the science of to-day conceives of, into
new and living relations with the Infinite Love and Goodness. In this,
for my part, I rest.

To the Same.

ST. DAVID'S, Jury 24, 1875.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Thank you for one of your good, long, thoughtful
letters. My thoughts in these days run in other directions. I cannot
tell you what they are; no language can; at least, I never used any that
did. Almost all human experien