Pray night and day, very quietly, like a little weary child, to the good and loving God, for everything you want, in body as well as soul -- the least thing as well as the greatest. Nothing is too much to ask God for -- nothing too great for Him to grant: glory be to Thee, O Lord! And try to thank Him for everything . . . I sometimes feel that eternity will be too short to praise God in, if it was only for making us live at all! And then not making us idiots or cripples, or even only ugly and stupid! What blessings we have! Let us work in return for them -- not under the enslaving sense of paying off an infinite debt, but with the delight of gratitude, glorying that we are God's debtors.

Letters. 1843.