In the afternoon Mr. Brooks spoke from the text, “He that hath the Son hath life.” I have seldom heard him speak with more fervor, of what life is, and of the dreadful thing it is to lack life, the life that comes to us and is in us through Christ,--the life of God in human souls. It is his last sermon for the summer, and the text itself is one to keep close at heart all through the year. “Not merely the knowledge of Christ, but Christ Himself with us, we must have,” he said: and with the thought comes the suggestion of all true relations of spirit with spirit, the human and the divine interblended, God the soul of our souls and the children one with the Father through the Son. I thank God for what I have found at Trinity Church this winter: I begin to know more what the true Church is,--nothing exclusive or separating, but the coming together of all souls in Christ. June 12. In Beverly, but not yet acclimated to the stronger sweep of the east winds. They give rheumatic twinges. But the birds sing, and the fresh foliage is shaken out into greenness, the rose acacia and the bridal-wreath spirea run wild in the garden, and the freedom of nature’s life revives mine. The thrill of the oriole,--what a jubilation it is, through the Sabbath stillness; it is better than the city in summer time. Read this morning Phillips Brooks’ sermon on “Visions” and “Tasks,” and several others--among them, the “Church of the Living God.” With reference to doctrines, she understood the Church’s position. The great facts of Christianity as set forth in the Apostles Creed, she did not doubt; and she liked the comprehensiveness of a Church, admitting those who accept these facts and desire to live a Christian life, and permitting a private opinion on many complicated questions of theology. And yet, with her appreciation for the Church, she could not make up her mind to enter it. There were objections difficult for her to overcome. These objections were not of a devotional or theological, but of an ecclesiastical character. High-Churchism, including in that term Sacerdotalism, offered a barrier. She felt that, by joining the Church, she would seem to approve of this teaching, and while she was willing to admit the historical fact of Apostolical continuity, she could not accept a theory of Apostolical succession which in any way seemed to exclude from good standing, as Churches, the various religious denominations which she had known and loved. She said, “In the broad idea of Christ’s Church, Episcopacy at times seems to me no less sectarian than other ‘isms.’” She had too much of the Puritan in her to make any such admissions about the Episcopal Church that would seem to indicate that she felt it was the only Church. Her position, as late as 1890, is very well put, in a letter to Mrs. S. I. Spalding, of Newburyport.