He gives all of himself that He has to give, in first living for us, and then dying for us. And the giving means our receiving His pure life into our stained souls, so that their defilement is cleansed, and we live His life of love and sacrifice, instead of our old selfish and sinful one. It is now His blood that flows through us, and inspires us with eternal strength. And this is what it means to be His, and one with Him; the character, the person, must be renewed, when filled with his purity, with his righteousness, and his consecration. Any other view of the atonement than this seems to me still to be something of a fiction. But this view is so inspiring to me, that the cross has a new meaning,--it is the true and only emblem of Christ’s work to hold up before the world. May 17. Mr. Brooks’s election as bishop has followed almost as the natural sequence to Bishop Paddock’s death, and it has seemed to be demanded quite as much by the community at large as by the church. The feeling has been, that if there is a place of higher influence for such a man, he must be put in it. I have not been accustomed to think that there can be any higher place than that of a Christian minister, but he will not cease to be this. But for me it is like the closing of a beautiful book of inspiration, from which I have been reading for the past ten years, almost constantly of late; and before the bishop’s death, I have felt that it was more than any one congregation ought to have to itself, and God will broaden the stream of the water of Life now into more far-reaching channels. The change has brought great sadness, but our best is given us to share, and we shall find joy even in this sacrifice. May 1. At Beverly,--and tired with my spring languor, and some inward depression. Yesterday I talked with Mr. Brooks about the change that is coming, and though I believe it best and needful for him, still I feel in it an unutterable sadness. It is strange that I do, for I never expect to see him often, or to hear him preach except for a few weeks in the winter. But I suppose we have all had the satisfaction of knowing that the fountain was flowing and that we might drink if we would. And what have I not received at this source? What a different world it is to me, from what it was ten years ago. How I have become strengthened through and through, to see and know what spiritual life is, and in my measure to live it, as I believe! Soul and eyes and heart and hands and feet have been given to me anew, through the illumination received. That strange “light in light” that seemed to glow around me, as I knelt in reconsecration of myself, a little more than a year ago, has not left me, though it is dimmed by this present regret, and I shall walk on in it through paths yet untried.