A circumstance has occurred to-day which a little tries me. The Armenian Priests are both dead; and the Armenian servant of Mrs. T. has asked if she might receive the communion with us, the next time we received it. Now, while I feel in my own soul that she knows nothing of the power of the divine life, yet how far I have authority from God's word to set up this, my private feeling, in the absence of any thing palpable to fix on as an objection, I do not see. I feel so utterly unworthy to place myself in the situation of a judge in such a case. I feel so exceedingly low in the divine life--I experience so little of the power of that life which was in Christ, subduing all things to the obedience of the Father's will--that I feel she may object more to my being accepted than I could to her. Yet, notwithstanding all this, I am conscious there is a difference--though I am only on the lowest step of Jacob's ladder, yet I do desire to ascend higher into the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to descend lower in my own esteem, so to be able to say without the pollution of affected humility, I feel myself less than the least of all saints. The divine life appears to me daily more and more a deep internal personal work, without which all external exertions and exercises will come to nothing; however fair, it will be at best but a fruitless blossom, that withers as soon as blown. Oh! how difficult it is not to deceive oneself with the appearance of Christian graces instead of the substance; how difficult not to substitute the _act_ for the _spirit_; that monster pride, how hard it is to kill, how chameleon like it changes its colour and seems to live on air, yea, on very vanity. _July 18._ _Lord's Day._--The warlike sounds of the cannon and mortars have abated within these three days. Oh that the Lord would quickly terminate this hateful civil strife. Yet at present there seems no prospect.