I do not mean to praise caution at the expense of courage. I have a constitutional aversion to that caution allied to timidity and cowardice which prompts a man to look to his safety, comfort, and worldly repute as the first social law that concerns _him_. I admire rather the brave man who is ready to sacrifice all that, if he can, by so doing, gain the desired right end. But in the case before us, it is not so. Men talk as if all we had to do to convert a sinner from the error of his way was to give him a good talking, forgetting that we have not a plastic material to work upon, but a most stubborn and intractable one, wherever interest is concerned; and that a bold bad man is generally proof against talk, and yields to no power but the grace of God exercised directly, and seconded by His heavy judgments. Have we not all seen, with shame and astonishment, the "wicked rich" regularly in their places at church, much oftener than the "wicked poor," who have less interest in playing the hypocrite? And have we not felt our utter powerlessness, whether by public preaching or by private monition, to find a way to those case-hardened hearts? What are we to do with such a man as Tennyson describes in "Sea Dreams," who "began to bloat himself, and ooze All over with the fat affectionate smile That makes the widow lean;" when his victim-- "Pursued him down the street, and far away, Among the honest shoulders of the crowd, Read rascal in the motions of his back, And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee." Here is all that we can do--told us in the last sweet lines:-- "'She sleeps: let us too, let all evil, sleep. He also sleeps--another sleep than ours. He can do no more wrong: forgive him, dear, And I shall sleep the sounder!' Then the man, 'His deeds yet live, the worst is yet to come; Yet let your sleep for this one night be sound: I do forgive him.' 'Thanks, my love,' she said, 'Your own will be the sweeter;' and they slept." ON LETTER VI As is the manner of our friend, he concludes a letter which was begun with thoughtful wisdom, with a proposal which, if gravely made, will seem to most of us both unpractical and impracticable. Very forcible and very true is the emphatic declaration here made of the deep, perhaps unpardonable sinfulness of taking in vain the holy name of God.