most
striking scenes and incidents she repeated to me, during successive
mornings, before we got up. Her power of remembering and reproducing, in
all its details, and with all the varying lights and shades, any story
which she had read was something almost incredible. It always seemed
to me like magic. Her father possessed the same power and perhaps she
inherited it from him. [20]

The following letter will show that while her mind was still exercised
about the doctrines taught by writers on the "Higher Life" and "Holiness
through Faith," it was in the way of a deepening conviction that these
doctrines are not in harmony with the teaching of Scripture or with
Christian experience. Referring to some of these writers, she says:

_To a Christian Friend, Oct. 21, 1877._

I have not only no unkind feeling towards them, but have no doubt they
have lived near to Christ. But this I believe to have been their state
of mind for years, though perhaps not consciously: Most Christians are
"ordinary." Nearly all are a set of miserable doubters. Most of them
believe the Christian life a warfare. Most of them imagine it is also a
state of discipline, and make much of chastening, even going so far as
to thank God for His strokes of Fatherly love! Strange love, to be sure!
They also fancy they can work out their own salvation.

Now we are not "ordinary" Christians. We understand God's Word
perfectly; and when He says, "Work out your own salvation," He means
nothing by it except this, that _He_ will work it in you to will and to
do, and you are to do nothing, but _let_ Him thus work. And furthermore,
we know His mind beyond dispute; we can not err in judgment. Therefore,
if you doubt our doctrine, it is the same as doubting God, and you
should fall on your knees and pray to read Scripture as we do.

As to the Christian life being a conflict, why, you "ordinary"
Christians are all wrong. Satan never tempts us, though he tempted our
Lord; it comes natural to us to go into Canaan with one bound; the
old-fashioned saints were ridiculous in "fighting the good fight of
faith." Look at the characters in the Bible, "resisting unto blood,
striving against sin"; what blunderers they were to do that!... In our
enlightened day nobody is "chastened"; it used to be done to every son
the Father received and it was a token of His love. He knows better now.
He chastens no one; or if He does, we will cover it up and ignore it;
religion is all rapture,