Blackwell Family Alice Stone Blackwell General Correspondence Undated Taylor, Leila[?] Mar. 13. Dear Alice I've been trying for a week to find time to write to you. Tomorrow that horrible auction is to come off. I am undecided whether to cry or cut my throat or start for a lunatic asylum or keep still and let the world wag and take it as it comes. I am writing in my neighbor's kitchen, after breakfast, and have to divide my time with watching Mr. and Mrs. Murray carry on laugh- ing. Physically I am well but tired - mentally inAlso stupidity of confusion normally in utter blackness of disgust & homesickness A few hours of regular work at Trig. etc. will be the best panacea for the latter. I am very grateful to you & your Mother for your kind thoughtfulness for me But I want to know how your Mother is I was so sorry to hear how ill she had been - I have worried about her tho' you said she was better I hope she is all right again but I always dread the Spring weather for her or any one who needs rest & change as I think she must. You know I put her in my list of saints next to my own Mamma I intend to start for Boston Tuesday, the 21st. I shall leave here about noon the train reaches So. Framingham at 2, I believe - express I suppose from there. Now will it be perfectly convenient to have me come to you because if not I can easily make other arrangements. I shall be more than glad to come if it will be perfectly convenient for you Are you or your Mother in the Journal Office in the P.M.? If so - I will come right there - shall I?Hoping that you are all well - that I can see your dear old self before long. As ever yours lovingly Leila are keeping evils away from God every day, because you are wrong and yet you seem to be so right & good. You told me once of a promise you made & that you "break it every day" " for without Me ye can do nothing." Do I misjudge you? I know the purity of your motives, the sincerity & earnestness of your heart, & yet, my dear dear friend it is time that you know this life. That you know Jesus & if you seek you will find Him. I know, today, what that finding is & how useless & unsatisfying is any other life. There is but one door & that is Jesus - as He tells us. As long as you are kept from Him by however thin a veil your honesty, earnestness, & unselfishness are of no avail. In spite of them, even by means of them you are doing [*I want you to prove for yourself that my Savior is your Savior too. God bless & guide you - you will I think learn of the love that prompts me to write, & will not be offended or hurt. Write to me soon whether you answer this or not. Yours, Leila*]harm, because you are disobedient to God. I sometimes think you [a] waiting for a vision of Christ, the Christian's view of Jesus to flash upon you, so that reason will & affections shall all be soon at once, before you can believe in Him But you will wait forever, & die unsaved, if you wait for that. Jesus has declared Himself, but you do not believe His words or accept His works. You can at least go to Him, take Him at His word, & prove Him. I do not judge you, dear Alice, but I think one view of Jesus as your Savior & Master would change you, as it does others. What shall we do with Christ is a question that has troubled me until I have taken Him at His own word. The word of those who knew Him best, have yielded my whole heart and body to Him & He has Saved me, forgiven all the past, given me the witness that I am His child, and I am kept every day-Just in proportion as I "hide his word in my heart" & lean upon Him for help. I am kept from sin, overcome my habits, & grow in the love & knowledge of GodMy dearest Alice - I have just pencilled a note [??o?] Putnam + think Ill write a few words to you. I had been thinking I sh'd see you all today, but I have been indulging in bad habits + got tired out + didn't feel well enough this A.M. to come into college - I am very peculiar about some things I can do almost anything that I have not been accustomed to so. I can read a reasonable amount, write to my friends + see people, do all sorts of things but to study, or read one of "the No - you can't believe as you open + what your hand until you have drawn nigh to God in heart + His Holy Spirit takes of the things of God + these items unto you. You can draw nigh by "doing His will" as you see it - by looking into His hand - for actually asking to be guided by Him - not mechanically but by a life can you test Jesus. But you can help destroying that life before the birth hour comes If you wish to writelanguages" for a few minutes brings on the old headache -- & to think of coming into college will excite me beyond endurance almost. I've been fool enough to consent to edit or help edit a paper to be read at the Church Sociable next Thurs. Eve. & my associate is almost as nervous as I am. I need say no more I suppose. I think the paper is to be a success but I was a fool to take it just the same - I asked Hattie to see if she could find some old compositions among you for me, but as I'm not coming in to get them it will hardly pay - I have one of yours wh. will be most excellent & I'm going to monopolize it. Do you care? If you do say so quick, & it wont make any difference. In reply to your letter - I enjoyed it in a certain way. I always like to get at other people's Handprints - It did not "shock" me at all. It was very reasonable. Tho' I have been bro't up differently from you - I must remind you that for years I have been more or less in contact with all sorts of beliefs & disbeliefs, have studied your doctrines to some extent. I think I can understand how you look at things, tho' now I look at them so differently. I don't expect you or any one else will ever see just the God I see - There is not much more difference between your conception of God and your idea of mine, than between the viewsof Christians of the same church. I have a S.S. teacher [whi] & if as you say to me - "what she believes about God be true" then -as E. Putnam says - I sh'd certainly solemnly & deliberately choose to be damned by such a god. Fudge! just as tho we could have one sentiment of justice, mercy, truth or love that God has not in an infinitely greater measure, that we don't desire from Him, as His gift. Our conceptions about God, have little or nothing to do with Him, or with the revelation He gives of Himself. We take, or reject or borrow from the revelation & then squabble about the coloring our own temperament or training gives to the pure truth. Yet God does not lie - But He has revealed Himself - partly in the word of God, The Bible - partly thro' the Holy Spirit working on men's hearts - & that spirit & that word agree - The Holy Spirit does not testify of Himself but of Jesus - and I believe no man who has met with Jesus Christ in the study or the thought of his life but has felt the power of the secret witness of God's spirit to the truth. I think many & many a one does as it seems to me you do - they run across a word Hell - & they look at other men's words about God & that Hell - grows so big to them that it casts its lurid light over everything till God's face becomes that of a bloody Moloch, his Heaven [*on these things I sh'd enjoy it, if you will not let me hurt your feelings by my words. But if you do not wish to, or do not think it best. I shall be glad to resume the old pleasant letters of fun & gossip. I am very happy to.*]a Harem. & Hell a suite of all human & super-human infamies & of course such a deity is that is a blasphemy. & so he would be to any Christian. I don't believe much in arguement about these things for this reason. "Draw nigh to God, & He will draw nigh to you" & the calm & hush of soul essential to such drawing is opposed to the heat & rivalry of argument. & because also, no man, but only God can testify satisfactorily of Himself Christians can bear testimony to what they know in their own lives & that is all I want to do unless it is to urge you to care in rejecting from prejudice what you have not fully & frankly & prayerfully looked into. Still, I do not think a frank & kindly talk about our own views will hurt either of us. You can do as you like, if I get the worst of it, "I began it" But what perplex me is this: Where do you find your God, what is your idea of God & where do you get it. Outside of the Bible the weary, hopeless wanderings of the ever degrading & disintegrating religions of paganism show us God such as you seem to have conceived. In the Bible I find a revelation, dim, faint & fearfully humanized at first but still infinitely beyond any contemporary conception of deity, till in Jesus Christ & His gospel, the light grows full & bright. There is a God a Father such as us humanmind could ever conceive of itself, a God who accounts for all the noble & pure things in men. But you do not accept this God. For you take one word that He says as true & the next you say is false. You seem to me to leave out all idea that man has sinned that He is not what God made Him. Alice, a God who would because "He so loved the world" become man & suffer & die as Jesus did, is a God far more tender & infinitely more nice & just & rightenes than man could conceive of. Where did the New Testament come from? What does the life & death of Jesus mean? I have plenty of friends such as you speak of, & their lives are lovable & noble just in so far as life & religion of Jesus Christ. What he brought into the world, lives in them affects them, either unconsciously, or by education, & no farther They lack the full power of godliness & goodness because they lack the full gift of Christ, His presence & his light. I [?] you can judge of a single soul. By their works ye shall know them. God knows His own. God loves those who reject the only Gospel He ever sent, & my compassion or yours are but motes in the sunshine of God's compassion, righteousness & love. As for me, I see a life given in God's word, to wh. the witness of the Holy Spirit bears testimony in my own [*enjoy life better than for a long time. I feel deeply anxious for those of you who do not yet know the love of Jesus in its full power, but God leads you & I trust Him. I wish you would come & see me when you can. I often wish you were blinking in the sun by my side while I'm torturing the organ. With love & a kiss, Leila*]soul. I do not see a Hell. While I know & believe what the Savior so solemnly & tearfully said of it - I am a Savior - a God whose love is boundless & whose mercy sure - I have a friend who goes thro' every step of my life with me - who shares & comforts my errors & who gives me joy unspeakable. I know my heart to be changed & my life being conformed by the operations of His Spirit more & more to the will of God. I have unlimited promises to all men of this same Friend & Savior - & it is the greatest joy to carry them - It is the wonder of wonders to me, that men & women so sinful sh'd have such mercy - sh'd be thus uplifted & sustainedIt is rather jolly to run away from things downstairs, and sit down alone with only the bare, brown hill, with its fringe of trees, and the gray clouds above, lit up here & there with flashes of light. What I want of you this week is - tell me where you go in the summer - to the mountains - tell me about them I never saw them but once. I've lived among hills, but all of the real mountains or the real sea I know, has come in brief glimpses that have aroused the slumbering homesickness and not appeased it. I never knew till this last summer how much of the world the wild world, too, lay open in a few square yards of tamed & tied up ground. But I don't believe I can stand it another summer. Another thing - will you explain or tell me about that picture in the Art Museum - Dante & Virgil It bewitches me, I don't know why. I heard some one criticize it yesterday. I wonder why it was kept there. Today has seemed funny to me. I have not been out but have played, sung, studied. I dreamed. I have given up my S.S. class tho: It was no use. I could neither do justice to the babies or myself. I'm going to have that time for play. I shall keep the Sabbath as a play-day. I think Allie - are you always in earnest are you ever silly & nonsensical I am sorry for your Kittie - to love you, & be loved by you so well, and yet not to see you It is five years since my twin went away from me. We had been friends not quite a year, but it almost took my life away to lose her. Her name was Alina - a blue-eyed singing bird. With the most thrilling weird voice, & the sweetest that I ever heard. Papa wanted to adopt her. Her mother a widow with several little ones had gone to Newfoundland to the old homestead, and Alma with her twin sister were left in N. for a year. We only hear from each other two or three times a year, but love does not die easily, and it makes me think of her to hear you speak of your cousin. I am glad that the most precious things are those that can't be seen. I'd rather lose everything than some words & looks and motions out of my consciousness. They are like a light on that brown hill, which I can hardly see, now - they shine brighter as the years grow darker. Do you remember a kiss you gave me, one day - I think I shall keep that a long time. More clouds are gloriously wild & strange. I'd like to be there, & have a race with you Can you imagine a long clinging kiss - without a lips or face - but from one heart to another - that holds a great deal of love & trust & hope - then take one tonight from Leila