feeling that goes to the depths of the heart. God knows that I do very humbly attempt to criticise another's religion and preaching, being inexpressibly concerned about the defects of my own. And, dear friend, I speak to you as modestly as I do frankly. I may be wrong, or I may be only partly right. But in this crisis I think that I ought to say plainly what I feel and fear. I cannot bear, for every reason,--for your sake and for the sake of the church, in which, for your age, you are rooting yourself so deeply,--that you should make any misstep on the ground upon which you seem to be entering. [200] To Rev. William Ware. SHEFFIELD, Dec. 6, 1847. MY DEAR WARE,--I think my pen will run on, with such words to start from, though it have spent itself on the weary "Sermons." This is Monday morning, and I am not quite ready in mind to begin on a new one. The readiness, with me, is nine tenths of the battle. I never, or almost never, write a sermon unless it be upon a. subject that I want to write upon. I never cast about for a subject; I do not find the theme, but the theme finds me. Last week I departed from my way, and did lot make good progress. The text, "What shall it profit t man?" struck upon my heart as I sat down on Monday Horning, and I wrote it at the head of my usual seven sheets of white paper, and went on. But the awfulness if the text impressed me all the while with the sense of allure, and though the sermon was finished, I mainly felt at the end that I had lost my week. One thing I find in my preaching, more and more, and hat is that the simplest things become more and more weighty to me, so that a sermon does not require to be my thing remarkable to interest me deeply. Everything hat I say in the pulpit, I think, is taking stronger and stronger hold upon me, and that which might have been lull in my utterance ten years ago, is not so now. I say his to you, because it has some bearing on one of the natters discussed in our last letters; that is, whether I should leave the pulpit. If I leave it, it will be with a fresher life in it, I think, than has stirred in me at any previous part of my course. And certainly I have long believed that it was my vocation to preach, above all things,--more than to visit parishioners, though I always [201] visit every one of them once a year,--more than to write, though you say I have written to some purpose (and your opinion is a great comfort to me). Certainly, then, I shall not retire from the pulpit, but upon the maturest reflection and for what shall seem to be the weightiest reasons. And I did not mean that the things I referred to should be prima facie reasons for retirement; but the question with me was whether my unprofessional way of thinking and acting were not so misconstrued as to lessen my power to do good; whether the good I do is in any proportion to the strength I lay out.