Messrs. (?) Paillard & Co.  21 Maiden Lane, New York  

November 29, 1866

Thanks you much for your account of Ireland, which I was very glad to get, and glad indeed that dear T__ is clear. I have no doubt, nor indeed never had, that souls simply seeking edification would find blessing in the paper on the sufferings. I dread only too great dissecting and explaining them. The truth is the added explanations clear up really everything, still it is all right to meet any minds who have difficulties. I am thankful too that in the main the brethren have stood in the pressure that came. I think it will have been a certain crisis for them, and that it be a strengthening of their conscious position. I do not think they are wholly through it but pretty near. My own mind never swerved a moment, though much tried, and honestly searching out thoroughly all I had written to judge it, as I was bound to do. They have confounded a person’s sufferings and inflicted suffering, but they would not, had they been simply seeking the truth. The extent they go to is to me shocking. I fear multiplying papers on the subject, but as many have been anxious I should, I have written a kind of introduction and notes to add when a new edition comes out. Rickards told me Morrish would have to print one, so I set about it. I wait for an intimation from Morrish to that effect. Save errors, or making a sentence or two clearer, I shall not change the tract. I thought people who got it would be glad to see it as it was, the dragon’s head itself. They will better judge of what has made such a fuss. The explanatory papers at the end made really anything more unnecessary; however, I have unfolded the debated points in the introduction, and I hope for edification. Hall’s doctrine I look upon as dreadful. I have seen the tracts, that is all; not read Dorman’s at all, only glanced at Hall’s in the hands of another. I have never had them myself. I went through the Scriptures with three brethren who had read them. But it is edification which is wanting, not controversy; explaining, when needed by anyone. I should greatly regret turning, what might be progress to souls, into a matter of