Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by

ORESTES A. BROWNSON,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

BOSTON:

PRINTED BY FREEMAN AND BOLLES,

WASHINGTON STREET.

Ꮮ Ꭼ Ꭲ Ꭲ Ꭼ Ꭱ .

REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,

My apology, if an apology be needed, for addressing you on the Mediatorial Life of Jesus, is in the position which you occupy among the friends of liberal inquiry, the influence your writings have had in forming my own religious opinions and character, and the generous friendship which you have long shown me personally, in good report and in evil.

You, sir, have been my spiritual father. Your writings were the first to suggest to me those trains of thought, which have finally ended in raising me from the darkness of doubt to the warm sun-light of a living faith in God, in the Bible as God's Word, and in Jesus Christ as the mediator between God and man, and as the real Saviour of the world through his life, death and resurrection. I can never cease to be grateful for the important services you have rendered me, nor can I forget the respect and indulgence you have shown me notwithstanding all my short comings, and the steadiness with which you have cheered and sustained me, when the world grew dark around me, and hope was dying out of my soul.

You know, sir, somewhat of the long and painful struggles I have had in working my way up from unbelief to the high table-land of the Christian's faith and hopes; you have borne with me in my weakness, and have not been disposed

to condemn me because I was not able, with a single bound, to place myself on that elevation. You have not been one to despise my lispings and stammerings; but while others have treated me rudely, denying me all love of truth, and all sense of goodness, you have continued to believe me at bottom honest and sincere. From my heart, sir, I thank you. I feel that you have been a true friend, and that I may open my mind and heart to you without reserve. You will receive with respect whatever comes forth from an ingenuous heart, whether it find a response in your own severer judgment or not.

You know that many years ago I was a confirmed unbeliever. I had lost, not my unbelief, but my hostility to religion, and had even to a certain extent recovered my early religious feelings, when a friend, now no more, read me one day your sermon on Likeness to God, preached at the ordination of Frederic A. Farley, Providence, R. I., 1828. My friend was an excellent reader, and he entered fully into the spirit of the sermon. I listened as one enchanted. A thrill of indescribable delight ran through my whole soul. I could have leaped for joy. I seemed suddenly to have found a father. To me this was much. I had never known an earthly father, and often had I wept when I had heard, in my boyhood, my playmates, one after another, say "my father." But now, lone and deserted as I had felt myself, I too had become a son, and could look up and say, "my father"-around and say, "my broth

ers."

The train of thought then suggested, pursued with fidelity, led me to believe myself a Christian, and to resume my profession as a Christian preacher. But when I first came into this community as a preacher, my Christianity was pretty much all comprised in two articles, the Divinity of Humanity, and the brotherhood of the race, which I had learned from your sermon. These