COME up here, my anxious friend, and I'll read my Concio to you; for it is written, as I preferred to do, before the warm and cold, wet and dry meslin of April weather comes, which always breaks me up in my studies. I will read it to you, and I rather think you will like it. . . . But do not make yourself uneasy. There will be nothing in the address of what you call "a defection to the radical side," simply because, in opinion, I cannot take that ground. I do not and cannot give up the miraculous element in Christianity. But I [294] embrace our whole denomination in my sympathies and do not think our differences so important as you do. That religion has its roots in our nature, if that is radicalism, I strongly hold and always have. And in its development and culture I have never given that exclusive place to Christianity that many do. I confess that I always disliked and resisted the utterances of the extreme conservatives on this point, more than those of their opponents. So you see that M. was mainly right. And certainly I think the minority in the Conference has had hard measure from the majority; and I liked Abbot's sermon as much as you heard I did. Yours ever, ORVILLE DEWEY. To Mrs. David Lane. ST. DAVID'S, April 14, 1867. DEAR FRIEND,--Why should I write to you about the things you speak of in your letter which crossed mine? How vain to attempt to discuss such matters on note-paper! But, without discussing, I will tell you, in few words, what I think. The vitality of the Christian religion lies deeper than the miraculous element in it. The miraculous is but an attestation to that. That is authority to me. The authority of God is more clearly and unquestionably revealed to me, than in anything else, in the inborn spiritual convictions of my nature, without which, indeed, I could not understand Christianity, nor anything else religious. These convictions accord with the deepest truths of Christianity, else I could not receive it. Jesus has strengthened, elevated, and purified these natural [295] convictions in such a way,--by such teachings, by such a life, by such an unparalleled beauty of character,-that I believe God has breathed a grace into his soul that he never-has [given] in the same measure and perfection to any other. Effects must have causes, and such an effect seems to me fairly to indicate such a cause.