of my love for you.

_To a friend at Cambridge._

40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne: September 8, 1902.

I have been thinking of you. I keep myself from becoming morbid by
making most of my thoughts into prayers for you. The
glory--wonder--strangeness of being loved by a man from another and a
better world fills me with gratitude to God. Sometimes it seems a dream,
and I half dread that I shall wake up and find that you have ceased to
care for a worthless creature. But _phobos ouk estin en te agape, all he
teleia agape exo ballei ton phobon_. I need not fear. I know that you
will love me, whatever happens.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were
transliterated as follows: _phobos_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, final
sigma; _ouk_--omicron, upsilon, kappa; _estin_--epsilon, sigma, tau,
iota, nu; _en_--epsilon, nu; _te_--tau, eta; _agape_--alpha, gamma,
alpha, pi, eta; _all_--alpha, lambda, lambda; _he_--(rough breathing
mark) eta; _teleia_--tau, epsilon, lambda, epsilon, iota, alpha;
_agape_--alpha, gamma, alpha, pi, eta; _exo_--epsilon, xi, omega;
_ballei_--beta, alpha, lambda, lambda, epsilon, iota; _ton_--tau,
omicron, nu; _phobon_--phi, omicron, beta, omicron, nu]

I want you to be one of the best men that ever lived--to see God and to
reveal Him to men. This is the burden of my prayers. My whole being
goes out in passionate entreaty to God that He will give me what I ask.
I am sure He will, for the request {168} is after His own heart. I do
not pray that you may 'succeed in life' or 'get on' in the world. I
seldom even pray that you may love me better, or that I may see you
oftener in this or any other world--much as I crave for this. But I ask,
I implore, that Christ may be formed in you, that you may be made not in
a likeness suggested by my imagination, but in the image of God--that you
may realise, not mine, but His ideal, however much that ideal may
bewilder me, however little I may fail to recognise it when it is
created. I hate the thought that out of love for me you should accept my
presentation--my feeble idea--of the Christ. I want God to reveal His
Son in you independently of me--to give you a first-hand knowledge of Him
whom I am only beginning to see. Sometimes more selfish thoughts will
intrude, but this represents the main current of my prayers; and if the
ideal is to be won from heaven by importunity, by ceaseless begging, I
think I shall get it for you