Miss Holmes having most solemnly dedicated herself to God, and formed a sanguine opinion of the high capabilities of the renewed mind, began to prescribe a set of rules for her self-government, which she resolved to observe. If these rules had related merely to her conduct in social life, she might have kept them; but as they included the regulation of the disposition, and the frame of her mind towards God, they were founded on a mistaken conception of her own ability. They imperceptibly diverted her attention from the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, by faith in which sinners are accepted and justified, to a laborious effort to attain a high degree of sinless excellence; and as she progressively discovered so many, and such lamentable defects in her obedience, the peace of mind which she enjoyed when "first she knew the Lord" was destroyed, and she gradually sunk into a state of despondency. By making this fatal, yet common mistake, she was led to the conclusion, that the attainments of the genuine Christian were placed beyond her reach, and that it would be an act of presumption if she attempted to acquire them. An evangelical ministry is instituted to promote the edification of them that believe, no less than to convert sinners from the error of their ways; to guard them against those misconceptions of truth, which may prove injurious to their happiness and spiritual prosperity; and to explain that mysteriousness which rests over their earlier experience, when there is a constant, and often a rapid interchange of hope and of fear, of sorrow and of joy, of a bright prospect of future blessedness, and a foreboding apprehension of future woe. Those who attend such a ministry, partake of the advantages of it, without being conscious of the benefit which they receive; but if indisposition, or any other circumstance, prevent a Christian from availing himself of this ordinance of grace, he may linger for a long time, especially in the earlier stages of the spiritual life, in a state of great mental perplexity, and may gradually sink into a morbid depression, without being able either to remove or account for it. Domestic engagements prevented Mrs. Loader from paying a visit to the Elms; but the following letter is a proof of the deep interest which she took in the welfare of her friend, and also of her ability to give her judicious counsel:--