o it at the studio. Meanwhile, I have worked on
another she lent me, and finished it to-day, and they all say that it is
a success. In my last two lessons Mrs. B. contrived to let some light
into my bewildered brain, and says that if I paint with her this
winter and next summer I shall be able to do what I please. My most
discouraging time, she says, is over. Not that I have been discouraged
an atom! I have great faith in a strong will and a patient perseverance,
and have had no idea of saying die.... Some lady in Philadelphia bought
forty copies of Urbane. It was very discriminating in you to see how
comforting to me would be that passage from Robertson. God only fully
knows how I have got my "education." The school has at times been too
awful to talk about to any being save Him. [1]

_To Mrs. Humphrey, New York, April 6, 1875._

My point about "Grace for Grace" [2] is this: I believe in "growth in
grace," but I also believe in, because I have experienced it and find
my experience in the Word of God, a work of the Spirit subsequent to
conversion (not necessary in all cases, perhaps, but in all cases where
Christian life begins and continues feebly), which puts the soul into
new conditions of growth. If a plant is sickly and drooping, you must
change its atmosphere before you can cure it or make it grow. A great
many years ago, _disgusted_ with my spiritual life, I was led into new
relations to Christ to which I could give no name, for I never had heard
of such an experience. When we moved into this house, I found a paper
that had long been buried among rubbish, in which I said, "I am one
great long sunbeam"; and I don't know any words, that, on the whole,
could better cover most of my life since then. I have been a great
sufferer, too; but that has, in the main, nothing to do with one's
relation to Christ, except that most forms of pain bring Him nearer.
Now, one can not read "Grace for Grace" without loving and sympathising
with the author, because of his deep-seated longing for, and final
attainment of, holiness; but it seemed to me there was a good deal of
needless groping, which more looking to Christ might have spared him. It
is, as you say, curious to see how people who agree in so many points
differ so in others. I suspect it is because our degrees of faith vary;
the one who believes most gets most.

The subject of sin _versus_ sinlessness is the vexed question, on which,
as fast as most people get or think th