"If, my dear, you have felt sorrow for sin, you need not be distressed because you have not felt it in its most intense and agonizing degrees. True repentance does not always burst forth in bitter lamentations and weeping, leaving the victim of its infliction an exile from all the comforts of life and all the promises of mercy--doomed, in his own apprehension, to a more awful banishment at the day of final decision; but it is often the silent tear, and the noiseless sigh--the self-loathing of the soul over its defects--which become daily more and more apparent, accompanied by an humble and implicit dependence on the death and mediation of Jesus Christ for pardon and endless life. The author from whose beautiful sermon you have quoted a passage, remarks towards the latter end of it, that 'heartfelt sorrow for sin is not opposed to happiness. The tears of penitence are not tears of unmingled bitterness. There is a joy connected with them which is as satisfying and exalting as it is purifying and humbling. God himself has pronounced the sorrow of the poor in spirit, blessed; and he has not blessed it in vain. His people taste its sweetness. Their happiest hours are those which are spent in the exercise of penitence and faith; and while these graces are in lively exercise, they may look on the inhabitants of heaven without envy, even though they may long to participate of their still more elevated enjoyments.'" "Such a repentance I am conscious I have felt. I would not return to my former course of life, even if it were compatible with a religious profession; for I have lived a life of vanity, minding earthly things; my intellectual studies were pursued to gratify pride, which coveted the honour which comes from man; the claims of God, on the homage and supreme affections of the heart, I have neglected; the Redeemer I have neither loved nor honoured; I have spurned from my presence those religious principles which require a separation from the world, and have uniformly acted as though the realities of an unseen world were a mere fanciful creation; but now the delusion has vanished away, and I see with an unveiled face the supreme importance of those truths and sources of enjoyment which in the days of my ignorance were concealed from me; and if I have any regret, it is not because I have discovered the illusion so soon, but because I did not discover it sooner."