o the future, or can anticipate the continuance of
any one desire, feeling, or principle, in a mind so wayward and
uncertain as my own--so far do I believe that this sentiment will
remain.

It gives me pain, great pain, to communicate anything which I have even
the remotest apprehension can give the slightest annoyance to you. I
trust this will not do so; although I fear it may. But though fearing it
may, I feel it is my duty to do it: because I have only these three
alternatives before me. First, to delay communication to some subsequent
opportunity: but as I have no fair prospect of being able _then_ to
convey a different statement, this plan would be attended with no
advantage whatever, as far as I can see. Secondly, to dissemble my
feelings: an alternative on which if I said another word I should be
behaving undutifully and wickedly towards you. Thirdly, to follow the
course I have now chosen, I trust with no feelings but those of the most
profound affection, and of unfeigned grief that as far as my own view is
concerned, I am unable to make it coincide with yours. I say, _as far_
as my own view goes, because I do not now see that my own view can or
ought to stand for a moment in the way of your desires. In the hands of
my parents, therefore, I am left. But lest you should be led to suppose
that I have never reasoned with myself on this matter, but yielded to
blind impulses or transitory whims, I will state, not indeed at length,
but with as much simplicity and clearness as I am able, some of the
motives which seem to me to urge me with an irresistible accumulation of
moral force, to this conclusion, and this alone. In the first place, I
would say that my own state and character is _not_ one of them; nor, I
believe, could any views of that character be compatible with their
existence and reception, but that in which it now appears to me: namely,
as one on which I can look with no degree of satisfaction whatever, and
for the purification of which I can only direct my eyes and offer up my
prayers to the throne of God.

First, then, with reference to the _dignity_ of this office, I know none
to compare with it; none which can compete with the grandeur of its end
or of its means--the end, the glory of God, and the means, the
restoration of man to that image of his Maker which is now throughout
the world so lamentably defaced. True indeed it is, that there are other
fields for the use and improvement of all which God le