“. . . . . I am very glad that you have got through your degrees, and in a way to satisfy yourself as well as others, which in your case (contrary to most other cases) was the more difficult thing. Set your heart now at rest with the certain knowledge that you have taken more pains to qualify yourself for your profession than most members of it who have entered it in the ordinary course of education for that purpose. One great evil of our church is, that men are ordained at too early an age. How it could be otherwise I do not know in our state of society, but of this I am very sure, that at such an age it must be by rare circumstances that either the heart or understanding are ripe for such a charge.
“You will have perceived that in those Colloquies I have been careful not to offend those whom I endeavoured to impress, and that I have sometimes rather pointed at a wound than probed it. Prudence required this. Some effect the book is producing, for it has drawn on some correspondence respecting Sisters of Charity and Church Methodists, and will in all likelihood cost me in this way more time than I can well afford.
“As for the sale of the book I know nothing, which no
knowledge is proof sufficient that it has not as yet been great. Nor indeed is
it likely to be. But I am satisfied with myself for having written it,
| 60 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 55. |
“This has been hastily written amid much interruption; and I must now conclude, with our best remembrances to your fireside (for I conclude you have a fire) and my more especial ones to your good mother, who, if we looked at things as we ought, should be considered now as one of the happiest of human beings, sure as she is of her reward, and near it. I thank God for many things, and for nothing more than that he has enabled me to look onward to death with desire rather than with dread.
“God bless you, my dear Neville!
