I must be short with you. I received some fifteen or twenty letters and seven or eight paper proofs to correct, besides others since.... I was troubled in the same way when a clergyman, but never had the smallest shadow of it since. I judge it as Satan: but going from cabin to cabin to speak of Christ, and with souls, these thoughts sprang up, and if I sought to quote a text to myself it seemed a shadow and not real. I ought never to have been there, but do not think that this was the cause, but simply that I was not set free according to Rom. 8 As I have said, I have never had it at all since. I went through a day's mental process as to the word, at the time I was set free. This may have strengthened me as to it by grace. But God's word has ever since been God's word, from God.
Halifax, April, 1877.