“You will best enter into my views by considering those texts which serve to recall me to a right aspect of things. I have not that coldness in prayer you would expect, but generally find myself strengthened in faith and humility and love after it: but the impression is so short. I am at this time enabled to give myself, body, soul, and spirit, to God, and perceive it to be my most reasonable service. How it may be when the trial comes, I know not, yet I will trust and not be afraid. In order to _do_ his will cheerfully, I want love for the souls of men; to _suffer_ it, I want humility: let these be the subjects of your supplications for me. I am thankful to God that you are so free from anxiety and care: we cannot but with praise acknowledge his goodness. What does it signify whether we be rich or poor, if we are sons of God? How unconscious are they of their real greatness, and will be so till they find themselves in glory! When we contemplate our everlasting inheritance, it seems too good to be true; yet it is no more than is due to the kindred of ‘God manifest in the flesh.’ “A journey I took last week into Norfolk seems to have contributed greatly to my health. The attention and admiration shown me are great and very dangerous. The praises of men do not now, indeed, flatter my vanity as they formerly did; I rather feel pain, through anticipation of their consequences: but they tend to produce, imperceptibly, a self-esteem and hardness of heart. How awful and awakening a consideration is it, that God judgeth not as man judgeth! Our character before him, is precisely as it was before or after any change of external circumstances. Men may applaud or revile, and make a man think differently of himself; but _He_ judgeth of a man according to his secret walk. How difficult is the work of self-examination! Even to state to you, imperfectly, my own mind, I found to be no easy matter. Nay, St. Paul says, ‘I judge not mine own self, for he that judgeth me is the Lord.’ That is, though he was not conscious of any allowed sin, yet he was not thereby justified, for God might perceive something of which he was not aware. How needful then, the prayer of the Psalmist, ‘Search me, O God, and try my heart, and see if there be any evil way in me.’ May God be with you, and bless you, and uphold you with the right hand of his righteousness: and let us seek to love; for ‘he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, for God is love.’” His diary furnishes a farther insight into his experience, and the resoluteness with which he opposed the wavering of his faith by continual application to the promises of God in Christ.