Your letter with Disputation and oranges was received in due time per extra valisse. I have lost your letter (just now) but can probably answer it about as well. The dispute is not by me either, but I interlined a little commentary or criticism in it and will return by valisse.

We read it—I did—to all hands, in parlour assembled, as I afterwards did the President’s message. They were all much gratified with it, except perhaps father, who thought you ought to have written more carefully as you had time enough (and if you had not you ought to have made time) and claimed the credit himself of all the original ideas—what he called the “best things.” You having got them from him when you was here.

I was myself much pleased with your views, which I generally coincide in. You have got my opinions. Only I doubt I should have known them if you had not shown them up for me. But there are some sentences with or without meaning, that I’m sure you wrote without much consideration, that will do well enough to be heard (read rapidly) in a dispute, but would not be the thing to be read carefully and reflected about even perhaps “after dinner.”

I am much pleased with the view you take of the tendencies of Carlyle’s writings—with his object—and the distinction in that respect between him and Macaulay. I must go further than you, however. You say (or quote) in your letter, “e. is not a believer.” I must wish to believe that he is. And can you give a reason why I should not? At least, tell me why you will not consider Carlyle a converted man.

Can we not follow him by his own account through his “experimental” knowledge of the “successive states and stages of growth, entanglement, unbelief, and almost reprobation into a certain clearer state of what he himself seems to consider as conversion whereby the Highest came home to the bosoms of the most limited”? What was that, in common with “the poorest Pietists and Methodists,” from when he dates his Spiritual Majority—whence forth (from which) “we are to see him work in well-doing with the spirit and clear aims of a” (true) “man?”

For what does he “thank the Heavens that he has found his Calling; wherein, with or without perceptible result, he is minded diligently to persevere”? Considering himself a priest—and if but the meanest of that sacred hierarchy, it is honor enough to spend & to be spent, speaking boldly forth what is in him; “what God has given; what the Devil shall not take away.”

Are not these sentences (below) which I copied—while reading [279]Sartor Resartus—the very reflections or mottoes of a sanctified or super-worldly heart?

“Make thy claim of wages, a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet.” (Let (new) Life begin with Renunciation (of self). What right hast thou to happiness? Thou canst love the earth while it injures thee, and because it injures thee (through much tribulation we enter a better world.)) “Love not pleasure, love God.” (Man) can do without Happiness and instead thereof find Blessedness.”

You admit his writings show that he endeavours to do good. He himself says again, “conviction is nothing till it has converted itself into conduct.” So he says to himself in continuation, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do”—&c. and—“Work while it is called today,” &c.

I do hope and believe, though I would do it with the most profound humility, that I shall see among the jewels of our infinitely merciful Father and Saviour, Thomas Carlyle, and Milton, who never “joined a church,” and Sanctus Socrates, and Ann Boyd whom God saw fit to make the instrument of the conversion (at least of removal) of one soul to the hopes and intentions at least, of Christianity—from the gaping jaws of a sleeping church (so-called) together with the Sages and Martyrs and Poets and Priests who have in all times spoken and suffered, bearing testimony of the God-like which is in man—which by the way wouldn’t be there if He had not put there, man being totally depraved by nature.

What is this we call Conversion? Some change from the natural character of man by the action of the Spirit, and manifesting itself by the fruits of the Spirit. But how much action? How much change? How much fruit shows the point is past? Which fruit is the cultivated and which the wild? Which the wheat—which the chaff—until at the harvest they shall be separated?

Dr. Hawes says there is a definite moment when a real change takes place—though we may not be able to distinguish the minute in which it occurs, or the hour, or day or week or month or year or years. He says, too, that a child is converted so young that its earliest memories will be devoted to God. Paul says, the children of a Single believing parent are holy. Schleusner’s comment is “Now are they counted members of the Christian Church.” And this I find quoted approvingly by a Presbyterian commentator.

The Reverend E. Chapman says they are holy enough for religious ordinances, at any rate. Is that holy enough for conversion? Is conversion holy enough for that? Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe says that an individual passing from what is at present expected or attempted or asked (“If you have got so far, you may have the privileges which we hold the keys of from the apostles. If you have not, you must wait till you get up to, and profess, our standard.”) to the Christian experience of the Apostolic age, would feel as if [280]delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the children of God. Were they converted when in that bondage?

The Reverend Mr. Snyder thinks no man is a Christian who does not denounce the abolition of Capital Punishment. The reverend father Harvey thought no converted man (“follower of Christ”) would hesitate to go as far as the most enthusiastic apostle of—Temperance. The reverend Mr. ______ of Cincinnati assures his flock that they must be drunk to receive the grace of God. The right reverend and sainted father Cotton Mather thought anyone who defended the witches or refused his assistance in drowning them was an alien from Christ’s kingdom.

Who shall separate the tares from the wheat? Who shall attempt to decide where D.D.’s disagree? Verily, the “church committee!” They shall make a standard to suit themselves—and if you don’t come up to it you can not come in. And if you do not stay up to it, or down to it, you shall be warned publicly, or finally kicked out in disgrace. “You can’t come in now. Go next door. We consider it a gate of Hell, but you can get in there. They say whosoever will, let him come and drink freely. Get out—we are too good for you! Your example would be bad. What would folks—we mean sinners—say?”

Fred, please hand this to John—but read it, beginning over the page and tell me what you think of Carlyle?

Lib wishes me to tell you the Campbells are coming—and sends her love.