have done what I could. It requires a person able to bear as well as do. But there is progress, thank God. Of all the evils and in this sense difficulties, loose principles, what has got the name of ‘Neutrals’ is the worst! In certain respects they are worse in this country than in England. In England many of them deny the Church. Here they receive all these truths and even exaggerate them. Take ground some did in Ireland, outress [outrės] views of brethren as to grace. The leading and most influential one holds Bonar’s doctrine in the main, and accepts persons denying the immortality of the soul, the pest of this country, and those who follow him teach it in one place at least, though not wishing to be known that they hold it. One preacher, out from among the ‘Neutrals’ in England, threw himself openly, avowing it to myself, among those that hold this, though saying he did not hold it, but that there was a fixed truth to judge by, and when I said we must have the truth, quoting John “…whom I love in the truth,” he said, What is truth? It was in one sense then a mercy, for we were pestered with them, and it will keep them as a distinct thing apart. My horror of this loose system is daily increasing. The utmost largeness of heart when questions as to which people have to be fully persuaded in their own minds when the faith is not in question. But the faith of God’s elect I must look for, and nothing inconsistent with it. The efforts to charge me with Newton’s doctrine have only made me stronger and more decided, as being an effort of the enemy to try to swamp this. The first of the two I spoke of avoids church cares by breaking bread alone with his wife. He had joined the loosest of all loose gatherings, where they had advertised for Christians – Irish Neutrals – but he was called in question by a clever fellow there, so he left and went away in dudgeon. The condition of the States spiritually, indeed every way, unless money making, is frightful: the common course for Christians is to go to balls, etc., and enter fiercely into politics, though there are exceptions. Assassinations of daily occurrence in the large town, so that the newspapers do not