236 AMERICAN JOURNEY. [Chap. V. 



body and mind, to re-engage in conflicts which had worn his 

 spirit ; while it might be better for the congregation, as he had 

 himself suggested, that another should reap of the good seed 

 he had sown. He wrote to his sister Susan that even she 

 seemed not quite to understand him : " If I had been less free 

 in writing, you might have made me out better. I see, from 

 the answers I get to things which merely passed through me, 

 that the instantaneous photographs which I have been in the 

 habit of sending home do not give a truthful picture of my 

 spiritual state. My proprium possesses intensely strong affec- 

 tions, and an intensely strong self-will. The Lord's course with 

 me has been to require a sacrifice of all this, step by step. 

 Each step as it comes rouses up the self-hood to a desperate 

 height ; but it has to be conquered. After a long fight, I lay 

 the thing on the altar, and contemplate the new relations ; and 

 after a longer or a shorter season, according to the strength of 

 evil in me, I accept, first as a fact, afterwards from choice, 

 what before I shuddered at. You get your letters during the 

 writhing process ; I get your answers by the time I have found 

 peace. The intense overstrain of many years naturally threw 

 me into a reaction over here. Not knowing the will of God 

 in the matter, 1 resigned myself to impressions from within and 

 from without, let all things have their fling, and waited for light." 

 He had at first to lay on the altar his desire for Canada : 

 now, just as he had reconciled himself to Warrington, he is 

 advised to give it up ; and immediately he discovers how he 

 had been planning for his future life there. " The idea of 

 being unsettled a year more, with long farewell visits which 

 I feel I could not pay * (my heart will bear a good deal, but 

 not that, unless required of me), is harrowing to me; and I pine 

 for the rest of daily duty-life. . . . One's own choice is the 

 dream of self-love ; the actual lot in life is the reality of God's 

 will. All I gather from the family letters is, 6 You don't like 

 Cairo Street ; you wish Natural History or Canada : there's a 



* When sailing to America, he wrote : "It was terrible work getting 

 away ; if you had not been all so kind in avoiding feelings, I could not 

 have managed it. " 



