ng compared with others; and yet this consideration,
though here undoubtedly a secondary one, is, I believe, more weighty
than any of those which can be advanced in favour of an opposite
determination.)

For some time I doubted whether to state reasons at all: fearing that it
might appear presumptuous; but I resolved to do it as choosing rather to
incur that risk, than the hazarding an appearance of reserve and desire
to conceal my real sentiments from one who has a right to see into the
bottom of my heart.

Yet one trespass more I must make on your patience. It may perhaps seem
that the inducements I have stated are of an unusual character,
unsubstantial, romantic, theoretical, and not practical. Unusual,
indeed, they are: because (though it is not without diffidence that I
bring this sweeping charge--indeed, I should not dare to bring it were
it not brought elsewhere) it is a rare thing in this world even where
right actions are performed to ground them upon right motives. At least,
I am convinced that there are fundamental errors on this subject very
prevalent--that they are in general fixed far too low, and that the
height of our standard of practice must ever be adapted more or less to
that of principle. God only knows whether this be right. But hence it
has been that I have endeavoured, I trust not improperly, to put these
motives forward in the simplicity of that form wherein they seem to me
to come down from the throne of God to the hearts of men; and to
consider my prospects and obligations, not under all the limitations
which a highly artificial state of society might seem to impose upon
them, but direct and undiluted; not, in short, as one who has certain
pursuits to follow, certain objects of his own to gain, and relations
to fulfil, and arrangements to execute--but as a being destined shortly
to stand before the judgment seat of God, and there give the decisive
account of his actions at the tribunal whose awards admit of no evasion
and of no appeal.

That I _have_ viewed them in this light I dare not assert; but I have
wished and striven to view them so, and to weigh them, and to answer
these questions in the same manner as I must answer them on that day
when the trumpet of the archangel shall arouse the living and the dead,
and when it will be demanded of me in common with all others, how I have
kept and how employed that which was committed to my charge. I dare not
pretend that I could act even up to t