"... I turn now to that for which I most wished to write,--your present anxieties in your professional duties. I cannot indeed, as you say, help you, as _he_ could have done, but O how fully can I sympathize with you! It is to my mind only the reiteration of what I have so often heard from him; even after the ten years' experience which he had had when I first was partaker of his joys and sorrows, he suffered at times as you do now; and the details he has given me of his trials when he was first settled would equal, if not exceed, yours. You may depend upon it, dear John, yours is a common experience of all young ministers who have feeling and sensibility enough to be really good ministers; and you must not be discouraged by thinking your difficulties grow out of peculiar disabilities. I remember hearing a parishioner of Mr. Buckminster say, that he felt so much his incapacity to administer comfort to the sick and afflicted, that it was distressing to see him in a sick-room. I wish you could talk freely with some ministers about it. I have no doubt you would find it more or less so with all, according to their natural temperament. As I have said again and again, it is well to keep one's conscience and sensibilities tender; it is well to realize one's deficiencies to the extent of making us humble and energetic to improve, but not to make us despond or be discouraged; for; 'faint heart never won' the prize of goodness, any more than of the less spiritual objects. I know what it is to feel that more is expected of one than _can_ be accomplished; and it is, I grant, of all things the most distressing. But we must shut our eyes to all such considerations, and go on, looking only to the standard we have in our own minds, striving with all diligence to reach that, and be satisfied with striving, if it be but real, hearty endeavor.... I remember there were some passages in Taylor's 'Holy Living,' which used to be a great help to me in your state of mind. I have not the book by me, and cannot quote the words. Fenelon, too, has much comfort for one thus tried.... We forget, in our familiarity with what seem 'commonplaces,' that they really contain the great, fundamental principles from which all strength, all consolation, is to be derived; and of course, when the vision is quickened by present need, they all seem to be worth more than at any other time. And as to the other point, it is not you that speak,--you are only the medium by which the truths which _God_ spake are conveyed to the outward ear; you are only His instrument, and, while you are to seek to supply yourself with a full portion from the fountain of all truth, you are to be satisfied to present it as His, not your own; sympathizing as a