k in thousands of
hearts and lives. What goodness! What condescension! The least we can
do who have suffered much is to love much.... I have been studying the
Bible on the subject of giving personal testimony, and think it makes
this a plain duty. There is nothing like the influence of one living
soul on another. Then why should we not naturally speak to everybody who
will listen, of what fills our thoughts; our Saviour, His beauty, His
goodness, His faithfulness, His wisdom! I don't believe a full heart
_can help_ running over.

_To a young Friend, April 21, 1870._

I was right sorry to lose your Saturday's call. It was a happy day to
me, but I can conceive of no enjoyment of any sort that would put me out
of sympathy with the trials of friends:

"Old and young are bringing troubles,
Great and small, for me to hear;
_I have often blessed by sorrows
That drew other's grief so near."_

I thought I was saying a very ordinary thing when I spoke of thanking
God for His long years of discipline, but very likely life did not look
to me at your age as it does now. I was rather startled the other day,
to find it written in German, in my own hand, "I can not say the will is
there," referring to a hymn which says, "Der Will ist da, die Kraft ist
klein, Doch wird dir nicht zuwider seyn." I suppose there was some great
struggle going on when this foolish heart said that, just as if God did
not _invariably_ do for us the very best that can be done. [5] You speak
of having your love to Jesus intensified by interviews with me. It can
hardly be otherwise, when those meet together who love Him, and it is a
rule that works both ways; acts and reacts. I should be thankful if no
human being could ever meet me, even in a chance way, and not go away
clasping Him the closer, and if I could meet no one who did not so stir
and move me. It is my constant prayer. I have such insatiable longings
to know and love Him better that I go about hungering and thirsting for
the fellowship of those who feel so too; when I meet them I call them
my "benedictions." Next best to being with Christ Himself, I love to
be with those who have His spirit and are yearning for more of His
likeness. You speak of putting "deep and dark chasms between" yourself
and Christ. He lets us do this that we may learn our nothingness, our
weakness, and turn, disgusted, from ourselves to Him. May I venture
to assure you that the "chasms" occur less and less freque