404 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



with you very sincerely ; and it is in the hope of helping 

 to enliven your solitude for at least a few brief minutes 

 that I again avail myself of a leisure hour in which to 

 write you. I know from experience that there is no 

 solitude like that of a sick chamber ; it wears away the 

 poor remnant of spirits that indisposition spares to us ; 

 but it will not render the sense of this loneliness weightier 

 to you to learn that an old friend, though also a power- 

 less one, continues to regard you with sympathy and 

 esteem. It is a better assurance, however, that He who 

 is more thoroughly your friend than any one else, and 

 who can sympathize with you more deeply, is possessed 

 of a power that has no limits. 



1 Your brother hinted to me that you are not unwill- 

 ing I should recur to the subject of my last. I feel, my 

 dear William, that I am unworthy to approach a theme 

 so sacred, I am also too little impressed with it, too 

 little in love with it ; but I know of its importance, and I 

 believe in its truth. In one respect too we may be better 

 fitted for conference with each other on the doctrines of 

 religion than either of us would be with minds who had 

 never doubted of them. I know you are not unacquainted 

 with infidel objections, you are familiar with some of 

 the most insidious writings of Voltaire ; I am intimate 

 with these also, and with those of many a sceptic besides. 

 And so, as we can approach our subject over nearly the 

 same ground, it is surely not irrational to expect that it 

 may present itself to us in nearly the same points of view. 

 ' I think I remarked to you in my last letter that 

 Christianity is no common-sense religion ; were it such 

 it would have little in common with the other marvellous 

 workings of Him who devised it, as these are shown in all 

 He has made and in His mode of governing all But 

 do not infer from this, as some infidels do, tacitly at 



