There are, too, cases of doubt
which I can meet, which formerly I could not have met. I can make more
allowances too, than formerly, for those who are troubled with doubt, or
ensnared by error. And my preaching, in some cases, is more powerful.
And I am more free from bigotry and intolerance. While I see more to
love and admire in the Church generally, I love _all_ hard-working
churches without partiality. I think less of the points on which they
differ, and more of the points on which they agree. They appear to me
more as one church. There are many points on which I might once have
engaged in controversy, which now appear of little or no moment. While I
have more zeal for God, I have more charity for men.
There are many things in Wesley's hymns, and many things in other hymns,
which formerly I did not understand or appreciate, or understood and
appreciated but very imperfectly, which now I understand more perfectly,
and prize more highly. And so with many things in the Bible.
30. And I have, at times, and have had for years, strange glimpses of
the magnificence and wondrousness of the universe; startling views of
the awful grandeur and movements of its huge orbs, and of the terrible
working of its great forces, and an overpowering sight and sense of the
presence and power of the living God in all, which I never had in my
earlier days.
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