How all this will end I know not, but cannot but trust God.

It is not my will but my destiny, which will not be one of ease and pleasure, but one which I contemplate as a perpetual sacrifice of my past hopes, though of a communion I had never felt.
Can I adopt a course of life to increase and fulfil my present life?
I am unable to give this decision singly.

You will, I hope, accept this letter in the spirit I have written it.

I speak to you in a sense I never have spoken to you before.

In this letter I have opened as far as I could my inmost life.