To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. ST. DAVID'S, Nov. 24, 1874. DEAR FRIEND,--I have read and read again what you have written upon the Great Theme. What a subject for a letter! And yet the most we can say seems to avail no more than the least we can say. Some one, or more, of the old Asiatics--I forget who--says he "would have no word used to describe the Infinite Cause." I suppose no word can be found that is not subject to exceptions. The final words that I fall back upon are righteousness and love. Even the word intelligence is perhaps more questionable. If it implies anything like attention to one person and thing or another, anything like imagination, comparison, reasoning, we must pause upon the use of it. To say knowledge would perhaps be better, for there must be something that knows its own works and creatures. To suppose the cause of all things to be ignorant of all things seems like a contradiction in terms. It would be, in fact, to deny a cause; to say that the universe is what it is without any cause. Even that awful supposition, the only alternative to theism, comes over the mind sometimes; but if I were to accept it, "the very stones would cry out" against me. Oh, my friend, I lie down in my bed every night thinking of God; and I say sometimes, is it not a false idea of greatness, to suppose the Infinite Greatness cannot [327] regard me? Worldly great men shrink from little things, from little people. But it is not so with the most truly great. They come down in art, in poetry, in eloquence, in true learning, to instruct and lift up the lowly and ignorant. And again I say, when trying to reckon up the account with myself before I sink into unconsciousness, thinking of this bodily frame, with its million harmonious agencies, and the mind more wonderful still; or when I sit down in my daily walk, and sink into the bosom of nature, with light and life and beauty all around me,--surely the author of all this is good. It would be monstrous fatuity to question it, utter blindness not to see it. And yet again, I say, there are relations between the finite and the Infinite, between my mind and the Infinite mind, between my weakness and the Infinite power. And why should conscious Omnipresence in our conception localize it? Presence is not limited to contact. I am present here in my room; I am present in the field where I sit down. Why, with the whole universe, should not the Infinite Being thus be present?