us in any position in which we can not grow.  We may fancy that He does.  We may fear we are so impeded by fretting, petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward.  Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress.  God delights to try our faith by the conditions in which He places us.  A plant set in the shade shows where its heart is by turning towards the sun, even when unable to reach it.  We have so much to distract us in this world that we do not realise how truly and deeply, if not always warmly and consciously, we love Christ.  But I believe that this love is the strongest principle in every regenerate soul.  It may slumber for a time, it may falter, it may freeze nearly to death; but sooner or later it will declare itself as the ruling passion.  You should regard all your discontent with yourself as negative devotion, for that it really is.  Madame Guyon said boldly, but truly, “O mon Dieu, plutot pecheur que superbe,” and that is the consoling word I feel like sending you to-day.  I know all about these little domestic foxes that spoil the vines, and sympathise with you in yours.  But if some other trial would serve God’s purpose, He would substitute it.

To a young Friend, New York, Dec. 3, 1873. I was interested in what you wrote about Miss G. and of Dr. C.’s meeting.  You say she spends her time in young works of benevolence.  This shows that her piety is of the genuine sort.  It is hard to have faith in mere talk.  It is a great mystery to me, that, while we meet with negative faults in ordinary prayer-meetings, we find so many positive faults in more earnest ones.  Perhaps there is less of self in those who conduct them than we imagine.  I always regret to see talk to each other supplant address to God in such meetings—­always.  As to Miss ——­ and others making a “creed” as you say out of their experience, I think it may be accounted for in this way:  They come suddenly into possession of thoughts and emotions to which others are led gradually; they are startled and overwhelmed by the novelty of the revelations, and at once form a theory on the subject; and, having formed the theory, they fall to so interpreting the Bible as to support it.  Those who reach the point they have reached more slowly are not startled, and do not need to form theories or seek for unscriptural expressions with which to declare what they have learned.  They are probably less self-conscious, because they have not been aiming to enter any school formed by man, but have been simply following after Christ; hardly knowing what they expect will be the result, but getting a great deal of sweet peace on the way.  And they also acquire, gradually, a certain kind of heaven-taught wisdom, whose access comes not with observation; blessed truths revealed by the Holy Spirit, full of strength and consolation.