Chapter I: HAVE read your letter with tears, and earnest prayers to God for you,

and for myself. We are both unworthy creatures; indeed, my love, we are _more_ unworthy than we can either express or conceive. O let us fly to the blood of sprinkling. There and there alone can we find help.

Thanks be to God, that you have a clear view of your own heart. This is a most profitable prospect, though a most dreadful one. Think me not cruel, when I wish that the holy Spirit may _deeply_ wound your soul with a sense of its corruptions. The deeper the conviction, the firmer the peace that follows.

*I hardly know how to believe you, when you tell me you are hurried away by desires after worldly happiness. Is it possible? Alas, my friend, pardon the harshness of the expression, if the love of the world is in your heart, you are only a _painted sepulchre_, beautiful indeed outwardly, but within――――. My dear creature, I cannot bear to think this――a Christian to be hurried away with desires and endeavours after worldly happiness! If St. _Paul_’s character of a Christian is right, how far are you from being a Christian? “Ye are dead,” says he, “and your life is hid with Christ in God.”

May not these violent ragings of pride, vanity, &c. you speak of, be some of the last struggles of a dying enemy? When the strong man armed keepeth his house, his goods are in peace. But when there is a stronger comes upon him to overcome him, and to take from him that armour in which he trusted, no wonder the house is in a tumult. And this I hope is your present case. But beware, my dear soul, of thinking, that you never should be otherwise. Limit not the grace of God. He has only to say, _Peace, be still_, and immediately the winds and seas obey him. “But how to obtain this peace?” Oh my dear friend, will you follow the advice of the meanest and most unworthy of the servants of Christ? Look upon yourself as being only _now_ fully convinced of your guilt and dreadful condition. Look upon yourself as a _poor, lost, helpless, miserable creature_. Set before your eyes your sins, with all their aggravations; and when your soul is weighed down to the dust under a sense of your own vileness, then throw yourself at the foot of the cross: there lie as a loathsome leper before the almighty healer: there let your parched soul _gasp_ (with the utmost stretch of all your faculties) after those life-giving streams which flowed from Christ’s hands, his feet, his pierced side; and there keep the eye of your mind fixed, until the still small voice be heard in your soul――“Be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee.”

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