Busy Replying To Letters From

I Hope You Will Be Benefitted By Your Churchgoing. Where The Habit Does Not Christianize, It Generally Civilizes. That Is Reason Enough For Supporting Churches, If There Were No Higher.

I Leave The Governor's Office Next Week, And With It Public Life[which] Has Been On The Whole A Pleasant One. But For Ten Years And Over My Salaries Have Not Equalled My Expenses, And There Has Been A Feeling Of Responsibility, A Lack Of Independence, And A Necessary Neglect Of My Family And Personal Interests And Comfort, Which Make The Prospect Of A Change Comfortable To Think Of.

The Religion Of The Bible Is The Best In The World. I See The Infinite Value Of Religion. Let It Be Always Encouraged. A World Ofsuperstition And Folly Have Grown Up Around Its Forms And Ceremonies. But The Truth In It Is One Of The Deep Sentiments In Human Nature.

Have Been Reading "genesis" Several Sundays, Not As A Christian Reads For "spiritual Consolation," "instruction," Etc., Not As Aninfidel Reads To Carp And Quarrel And Criticize, But As One Who Wishes To Be Informed And Furnished In The Earliest And Most Wonderful Of All Literary Productions. The Literature Of The Bible Should Be Studied As One Studies Shakespeare, For Illustration And Language, For Its True Pictures Of Man And Woman Nature, For Its Early Historical Record.

The Best Hopes Of Any Community Rest Upon That Class Of Its Gifted Young Men Who Are Not Encumbered With Large Possessions.... I Now Speak Of Extensive Scholarship And Ripe Culture In Science And Art.... It Is Not Large Possessions, It Is Large Expectations, Or Rather Large Hopes, That Stimulate The Ambition Of The Young.