"_Queries._--With what feelings do you look back upon your past life, its influence and results, its commencement and its end? As it regards your published works and writings, has experience strengthened the opinions and points laid down in them, or have you after years of study and reflection found cause for change? What is the present end and aim of your life, and how does it differ from the morning of your existence? "_Reply to Query 1st._--When I survey the course of my past life, as I often do, I am filled with wonder; and a clear conviction that, as a whole, it has been appointed and directed by Infinite Wisdom, all but reduces me to nothing. True, I can simply realize that I exist; and can compare myself to a drop of water in the midst of the ocean, dependent, as I always have been, on that Being who holds the unmeasured deep in the hollow of his hand. I am fully satisfied that none of the eventful incidents of my life would have been what they were, had not an overruling Providence disappointed my own plans and purposes in many instances. Pursuant to these considerations, in viewing the apparent 'influences and results' of my labors, I should be quite at variance with the conviction of my own understanding, should I indulge a feeling to credit them to myself. With such views of the past and present, I feel satisfied, and even thankful. "My childhood and youth were, like most of others, full of vanity. My public life commenced with no extensive prospects. I do not know that the thought ever entered my mind that my public labors would ever procure me a livelihood.... My main desire now is that it may please Him whose I am and whom I serve, so to direct that what remains of my fleeting days may in no way dishonor, but promote, the cause of his truth, to which I have so long been devoted. "_Reply to Query 2nd._--All the _important_ doctrinal points contained in the several works which I have published are still my honest convictions; and as they were widely different from the views generally entertained by theologians, I examined them with all possible care, and have never seen cause to rescind them. And I can add, that I have never, in my public labors, allowed myself to present to my hearers any sentiment, or to expound any portion of scripture, but in accordance with the sober convictions of my understanding. "_Reply to Query 3d._--The main object by which I was actuated at the commencement of my public labors was to understand the true doctrine of the Scriptures, and by all possible means to convey conviction of its truth to the understanding of all who had ears to hear; and my present aim is to finish, in the best manner I can, these labors, by persuading people, not only to understand the true nature of the gospel, but to cherish its blessed hopes, and to faithfully practise its precepts."