* * * _Nothing_, I think, loses by its foundation being tried. We see that in yet higher things it is needful and right often to try whether principle is firm; and, though sometimes we may tremble lest faith should fall in the trial, perhaps it would be more just to fear lest the trial should merely show it already to have fallen. What thou sayest about laying aside reasoning is very true; but how hard to do so! Saul's armor doubtless it is, as says the little tract. How easy, comparatively, to let any want go unsatisfied, rather than that imperious reason which urges its claim with so many good pretences, which tells us truth will always bear investigation, and that if we cannot explain by our small faculties experiences in which the highest mysteries are involved, the experiences must have been fallacious! How different is _this sort_ of voluntary and almost presumptuous self-investigation from submitting all to the unerring touchstone! It is, indeed, very instructive to observe that our Saviour's rejoicing in spirit was not over the subjects of some wondrous apocalypse, or over those endowed with miraculous power, but over "babes;" and that in the same way His lamentation was not that the Jews had refused His offers of any thing of this kind, but that they "would not" be "gathered" by Him as "chickens under their mother's wing." It was the fault of my obscure expression, that when I spoke of my "painful reason" I did not make it apparent that I meant it of the _faculty_ of reason, which has been a very unquiet occupant of my mind for some years past, and which has led me to the conclusion that our mental atmosphere, the whole system of feelings, affections, hopes, doubts, fears, perplexities, etc., is one which it is dangerous _needlessly_ and wilfully to disturb. When once we have carelessly wrought up a storm it is not in our own power so quickly to lay it, and the poor mind is almost compelled to endure passively the disturbance till these unruly elements spontaneously subside, or something better interferes for its help. Surely, if there has been any resting-place given us, if our eyes have ever seen the "quiet habitation," we ought to fear the excitement of any thing which, naturally breaks the equilibrium. I believe some people think _imagination_ the unruly member among the mental parts; but with me it is the aforesaid offender decidedly. I hope I do not tease thee about teetotalism: it lies near my heart, and has done so for a long time; and though I too find it an effort sometimes to give up an evening to a meeting of that sort, it is such a comfort to be able to do any thing to show on which side I am, that I think I ought not to mind that.