"Oh! there is a preciousness in Jesus that, if we saw it fully, would dazzle our eyes for discerning glory in external things; we should be unable to distinguish the great from the small, the bright from the dark…Do you feel what I mean ? that if Christ were apprehended, we should cease to know what the world calls little or great. The pursuit of an empire or of a butterfly would be to us alike little."

" I do not regret any of the trials I have had. Pilgrims must expect trials on a long journey:we cannot expect either good roads or good weather all the way; but the Lord Jesus has sanctified it all- foul and fair and made all to work together for our good. Whatever purposes are in your heart let them be high and heavenly ones for Christ and His kingdom:the world will soon pass away and all its glories, but that kingdom shall endure. Keep close to the simplicity of Christ; nothing will keep us from extravagances but talking with Him. He always moved so seriously to the object He had in hand-the fulfilment of His Father's will."

"The more the sense of my Lord's love presses upon me, the more does it make my heart mourn to think He should have been, served so much from cold principles, instead of that holy service of the heart He so desires and values."

'' I have learned much of the powerlessness of man to direct his own ways when in difficulty and perplexity. I know no resource, nor do I desire any, except to throw off my trials upon God, leaving it with Him to bring light out of darkness, and awaiting His time to do it. It is not that our Father has pleasure in our being in straits and difficulties that He thus permits them to try us, but He knows that our real life is hid with Christ in Himself, and whatever makes us feel this connection with Jesus necessary to our comfort, and constrains us to more close intercourse with Him, and makes the hope of final deliverance and rest more precious, is clearly to the happiness of our spiritual life, however mortifying it may be to the natural man."

'' In connection with these views, the state in which the Church is, is particularly affecting; for while the heart has individual experience of the need it has of these very trials of the cross to pull it out of the snare of the world, it has to mourn over the Church, not only as fallen in the dust, but as being more than ever reluctant to be raised up; and instead of following the revelation of God in all doctrine and practice, she gets rid of her difficulties in carrying them out, by weaving to herself various little texts of doctrine suited to the various sects of the day; and puts zeal for them in the place of zeal for God's holy and blessed truths, as His, without exception or innovation. Oh! who does not long that the warfare was accomplished, and the Church glorified together ? "-(Correspondence from the East, 1834.)