Never lower your principles to the world’s standard. Never let sin, however popular it may be, have any sanction or countenance from you, even by a smile. The manly confession of Christ, when his cause is unpopular, is made by himself the condition of his confessing us before men. If people find out that we are earnestly religious, as they soon will, if the light is shining, let us make them heartily welcome to the intelligence, and allow them to talk and criticise as much as they please. And then, again, in order that the lights may shine without obstruction, in order that it may easily transpire what we are, we must be simple, and study simplicity. This is by no means so easy as it at first sight appears; for in this highly artificial and pretentious age all society is overlaid with numerous affectations. Detest affectation, as the contrary of truth, and as hypocrisy on a small scale; and allow yourself freely to be seen by those around you in your true colors. There is an affectation of indifference to all things, and of a lack of general sensibility, which is becoming very prevalent in this age, and which is the sworn foe to all simplicity of character. The persons who labor under this moral disorder pretend to have lost their freshness of interest in every thing; for them, as they would have it believed, there is no surprise and no enthusiasm. Without assuming that they are really the unimpressionable creatures which they would make themselves out to be, we may warn them that the wilful dissembling of a generous emotion is the way to suppress it. As Christians, we must eschew untruth in every form; we must labor to seem just what we are, neither better nor worse. To be true to God and to the thought of his presence all day long, and to let self occupy as little as possible of our thoughts; to care much for his approval, and comparatively little for the impression we are making on others; to feed the inward light with oil, and then freely to allow it to shine; this is the great secret of edification. May he indoctrinate us into it, and dispose and enable us to illustrate it in our practice. [_March 23._]