inconsistent with the devotion owed to God. I do not mean that I really
love anybody better than I do Him, but that human friendships tempt me.
This easily-besetting sin of mine has cost me more anguish than tongue
can tell, and I deeply feel the need of more love to Christ because of
my earthly tendencies. I know I would sacrifice every friend to Christ,
but I am not always disentangled. How strange this is, how passing
strange!... In a religious way I find myself much better off here than
at Dorset. But there is yet something apparently "far off, unattained
and dim" that I once thought I had caught by the wing, and enjoyed for a
season, but which has flown away. I am afraid I am one who has got to be
a religious enthusiast, or else dissatisfied and restless. When I give
way to an impulse to the first, I care for nothing worldly, and am at
peace. But I am unfitted for daily life, for secular talk and reading.
Is it so with you? Does it run in our blood? I do long and pray for more
light; and I _will_ pray for more love, cost what it may. Sometimes I
long to get to heaven, where I shall not have to be curbing my heart
with bit and bridle, and can be as loving as I want to be--as I _am_.

_To a young Friend abroad--New York, Dec. 8, 1871._

There never will come a time in my life when I shall not need all my
Christian friends can do for me in the way of prayer. I am glad you are
making such special effort to oppose the icebergs of foreign life; God
will meet and bless you in it. Let us, if need be, forsake all others to
cleave only unto Him. I don't know of any real misery except coldness
between myself and Him.

I feel warm and tender sympathy with you in all your struggles,
temptations, joys, hopes and fears. As you grow older you will _settle_
more; your troubles, your ups and downs, belong chiefly to your youth.
Yes, you are right in saying that Mr. P---- could go through mental
conflicts in silence; he does not pine for sympathy as you and I do.
You and I are like David, though I forget, at the moment, what he said
happened to him when he "kept silence." (On the whole, I don't think he
said anything!)

I think the proper attitude to take when restless and lonesome and
homesick for want of God's sensible presence, is just what we take when
we are missing earthly friends for whom we yearn, and whose letters,
though better than nothing, do not half feed our hungry hearts, or fill
our longing arms. And that attitude