University of Virginia Library

“I have lived through many wonderful scenes
since I saw you last. My life has been so adventurous,
that I scarcely know myself when I
think of it. But it is not of that I am going
now to write. I have written all that to mother,
and she will show it to you. But since I parted
from you, there has been another history going on
within me; and that is what I wish to make you
understand, if I can.

“It seems to me that I have been a changed
man from that afternoon when I came to your
window, and where we parted. I have never forgot
how you looked then, nor what you said.
Nothing in my life ever had such an effect upon
me. I thought that I loved you before; but I
went away feeling that love was something so
deep and high and sacred, that I was not worthy
to name it to you. I cannot think of the man in
the world who is worthy of what you said you
felt for me.

“From that hour there was a new purpose in
my soul, — a purpose which has led me upward
ever since. I thought to myself in this way:
`There is some secret source from whence this
inner life springs,' — and I knew that it was connected
with the Bible which you gave me; and
so I thought I would read it carefully and deliberately,
to see what I could make of it.

“I began with the beginning. It impressed me
with a sense of something quaint and strange, —
something rather fragmentary; and yet there were
spots all along that went right to the heart of a
man who had to deal with life and things as I
did. Now I must say that the Doctor's preaching,
as I told you, never impressed me much in any
way. I could not make any connection between
it and the men I had to manage and the things
I had to do in my daily life. But there were
things in the Bible that struck me otherwise.
There was one passage in particular, and that was
where Jacob started off from all his friends to go
off and seek his fortune in a strange country, and
laid down to sleep all alone in the field, with
only a stone for his pillow. It seemed to me exactly
the image of what every young man is like,
when he leaves his home and goes out to shift
for himself in this hard world. I tell you, Mary,
that one man alone on the great ocean of life
feels himself a very weak thing. We are held up

by each other more than we know till we go off
by ourselves into this great experiment. Well,
there he was as lonesome as I upon the deck of
my ship. And so lying with the stone under his
head, he saw a ladder in his sleep between him
and heaven, and angels going up and down. That
was a sight which came to the very point of his
necessities. He saw that there was a way between
him and God, and that there were those
above who did care for him, and who could come
to him to help him. Well, so the next morning
he got up, and set up the stone to mark the
place; and it says Jacob vowed a vow, saying,
`If God will be with me, and will keep me in
this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat
and raiment to put on, so that I come again to
my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be
my God.' Now there was something that looked
to me like a tangible foundation to begin upon.

“If I understand Dr. Hopkins, I believe he
would have called that all selfishness. At first
sight it does look a little so; but then I thought
of it in this way: `Here he was all alone. God
was entirely invisible to him; and how could he
feel certain that He really existed, unless he could
come into some kind of connection with Him? the
point that he wanted to be sure of, more than
merely to know that there was a God who made
the world; — he wanted to know whether He cared

anything about men, and would do anything to
help them. And so, in fact, it was saying, `If
there is a God who interests Himself at all in
me, and will be my Friend and Protector, I will
obey Him, so far as I can find out His will.'

“I thought to myself, `This is the great experiment,
and I will try it.' I made in my heart
exactly the same resolution, and just quietly resolved
to assume for a while as a fact that there
was such a God, and, whenever I came to a place
where I could not help myself, just to ask His
help honestly in so many words, and see what
would come of it.

“Well, as I went on reading through the Old
Testament, I was more and more convinced that
all the men of those times had tried this experiment,
and found that it would bear them; and in
fact, I did begin to find, in my own experience, a
great many things happening so remarkably that
I could not but think that Somebody did attend
even to my prayers, — I began to feel a trembling
faith that Somebody was guiding me, and
that the events of my life were not happening
by accident, but working themselves out by His
will.

“Well, as I went on in this way, there were
other and higher thoughts kept rising in my mind
I wanted to be better than I was. I had a sense
of a life much nobler and purer than anything I

had ever lived, that I wanted to come up to. But
in the world of men, as I found it, such feelings
are always laughed down as romantic, and impracticable,
and impossible. But about this time
I began to read the New Testament, and then
the idea came to me, that the same Power that
helped me in the lower sphere of life would help
me carry out those higher aspirations. Perhaps
the Gospels would not have interested me so
much, if I had begun with them first; but my
Old Testament life seemed to have schooled me,
and brought me to a place where I wanted something
higher; and I began to notice that my
prayers now were more that I might be noble,
and patient, and self-denying, and constant in my
duty, than for any other kind of help. And then
I understood what met me in the very first of
Matthew: `Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he
shall save his people from their sins.'

“I began now to live a new life, — a life in
which I felt myself coming into sympathy with
you; for, Mary, when I began to read the Gospels,
I took knowledge of you, that you had been
with Jesus.

“The crisis of my life was that dreadful night
of the shipwreck. It was as dreadful as the Day
of Judgment. No words of mine can describe to
you what I felt when I knew that our rudder was
gone, and saw those hopeless rocks before us.

What I felt for our poor men! But, in the midst
of it all, the words came into my mind, `And
Jesus was in the hinder part of the ship asleep
on a pillow,' and at once I felt He was there;
and when the ship struck I was only conscious of
an intense going out of my soul to Him, like
Peter's when he threw himself from the ship to
meet Him in the waters.

“I will not recapitulate what I have already
written, — the wonderful manner in which I was
saved, and in which friends and help and prosperity
and worldly success came to me again, after
life had seemed all lost; but now I am ready to
return to my country, and I feel as Jacob did
when he said, `With my staff I passed over this
Jordan, and now I am become two bands.'

“I do not need any arguments now to convince
me that the Bible is from above. There is a great
deal in it that I cannot understand, a great deal
that seems to me inexplicable; but all I can say
is, that I have tried its directions, and find that
in my case they do work, — that it is a book that
I can live by; and that is enough for me.

“And now, Mary, I am coming home again,
quite another man from what I went out, — with
a whole new world of thought and feeling in my
heart, and a new purpose, by which, please God,
I mean to shape my life. All this, under God, I
owe to you; and if you will let me devote my

whole life to you, it will be a small return for
what you have done for me.

“You know I left you wholly free. Others
must have seen your loveliness, and felt your
worth; and you may have learnt to love some
better man than me. But I know not what hope
tells me that this will not be; and I shall find
true what the Bible says of love, that `many waters
cannot quench it, nor floods drown.' In any
case, I shall be always, from my very heart, yours,
and yours only.