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Amberly, Charles Kingsley, the good Quaker, Joseph Sturge, all are with the shadowy train that has moved on. Among them were as dear and true friends as I ever had, and as pure and noble specimens of human beings as God ever made.
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
