YOUR two or three last letters, but more particularly the last of all, seem written under a degree of depression which I am greatly concerned to observe. While engaged in doing a great work, while filling an important post, and that with no small measure of patient perseverance, you suffer yourself to suppose that you are doing almost nothing. While your friends which you have left behind you are admiring the zeal and the love which have enabled you to tear yourself from the comforts of civilized and refined society, and thus to forget, as it were, your own people and your father’s house, while they are thankful for the grace of God within you, you are so discouragingly comparing yourself with a Schwartz and a Van der Kemp, as to request of your unworthy friend that he would pray for you, lest, after all, you should prove a castaway. Now, my dear Armstrong, what must I say to such feelings and requests? Must I sympathise with my dear desponding friend? I do so from my heart; but I must also chide with him: you overlook the tender mercies of God towards you; you keep your eye not on the bright side, but on that which is dark, gloomy, and foreboding; and thus faith and confidence in your loving and omnipotent Redeemer seem dormant and inactive principles. But what is the language of the Saviour under such circumstances of discouragement? It is that which he addressed to Martha at the grave of Lazarus: “Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God?” It is that also which he used towards the afflicted father, who with tears requested that, if he could do anything, he would have compassion on him, and help him: “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” Believe then, my dear friend, through all your difficulties and discouragements, and your temporary darkness will be succeeded by glorious and abiding light. The clouds which for a season overspread your horizon will be dispelled, and your glistening eye will be cheered with a bright and resplendent day. Perhaps, however, you may tell me, that faith is the gift of God, and that we must wait till this hinging blessing be bestowed. But are not all the gifts of God to be obtained upon the simple condition of asking? and were you to ask for this gift, or for its increase, would the blessed God deny it? I have often found it exceedingly useful to my own mind, after having fallen upon my knees to pray to that God who has promised to give to us all that we ask in faith,—I have found it profitable to ask previously, that the Lord would give me faith to believe, that the petitions which I should present before his throne of grace, would be answered by him, and, as a consequence, my faith has been strengthened far beyond its usual exercise. And with regard to discouraging circumstances, my constant prayer has been that my faith might not fail. Since I came into this