e and penetrating power than I ever beheld in them. Without
care, without fear, without a shadow of doubt, I can now, through God's
wonderful grace, and by His Holy Spirit, rest my all upon Christ--lay my
all upon His altar, and say, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is
gain."

On Sunday afternoon we had the renewal of the Covenant Service, in the
Metropolitan, and the Communion. It was a good time. I think there were
more than five hundred at the Communion--the largest number I ever
witnessed in America, even at a camp-meeting. It took Rev. Dr. Potts and
I more than an hour to distribute the elements.

I am anxious to go up to my cottage for change and retirement, so as to
be quite alone for a few weeks with my books and papers.

I am at work, as hard as I can, upon my history. On New Year's Day I
worked at it for fifteen hours--writing upwards of twenty pages of
foolscap, besides researches, comparing authorities, etc. I am anxious
to complete the two volumes of the New England Loyalists, before I go to
England in May.

In reply to Dr. Ryerson's letter of 3rd January, his brother John
wrote:--

My health is still precarious.... My attention to religious duties
(reading the Scriptures, private and meditative self-examination,
etc.,) I unremittingly persevere in, but my religious enjoyment is
low and my faith weak.... This winter I have read the Life of Dr.
Bradshaw, an eminent clergyman of the Church of England, some time
Rector of Colchester, then of Birmingham, and then of a Rectory in
the suburbs of London, where he died in 1865, at the age of
eighty-nine. His ministry extended over more than sixty years. He
was one of the most devoted, and singularly pious ministers whose
memoirs I ever read. O! into what dwarfishness the morality, and
the spiritual and elevated attainments of most Christians sink in
the presence of such men! Dr. Bradshaw's life was written by Miss
Marsh, the authoress of the Life of Captain Vicars, and other
excellent books. I have also read the Life of Miss M. Graham, a
most eminently pious and devoted lady, also a member of the Church
of England. She died at the early age of twenty-eight. Another
memoir--of Mrs. Winslow, from the reading of which I ought to have
derived much profit, one of the holiest women of whom I ever read,
was a devoted member of the English Church. She was the daughter o