They are living somewhere in intense vitality, I
must believe, and you, dear doctor, must not doubt.
I think about your writings a great deal, and one element in them
always attracts me. It is their pitiful and sympathetic vein, the pity
for poor, struggling human nature. In this I feel that you must be
very near and dear to Him whose name is Love.
You wrote some verses once that have got into the hymn-books, and have
often occurred to me in my most sacred hours as descriptive of the
feelings with which I bear the sorrows and carry the cares of life.
They begin,--
"Love Divine, that stooped to share."
I have not all your books down here, and am haunted by gaps in the
verses that memory cannot make good; but it is that "Love Divine"
which is my stay and comfort and hope, as one friend after another
passes beyond sight and hearing. Please let me have it in your
handwriting.
I remember a remark you once made on spiritualism. I cannot recall the
words, but you spoke of it as modifying the sharp angles of
Calvinistic belief, as a fog does those of a landscape. I would like
to talk with you some time on spiritualism, and show you a collection
of very curious facts that I have acquired through mediums _not_
professional. Mr. Stowe has just been wading through eight volumes of
"La Mystique," by Goerres, professor for forty years past in the
University of Munich, first of physiology and latterly of philosophy.
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