November 27th 1845

I have made so many resolutions, and broken them, concerning my writing, that I am beginning to think it useless to make any more. Yet I know I would enjoy looking over it in time to come. I am at present very busy in Latin. I am greatly at a loss to know whether it is my duty or not to be spending time with it. I am living under great guilt of conscience from several causes. I forget sufficiently to carry my profession into my business, also am too familiar with careless people, and in the habit of speaking so abominably light and frivolous, lacking that gravity, etc., Paul recommends young men to have. I see these and a great many more things to be wrong, and yet I do not use the means appointed for overcoming these sins, to wit - prayer, fasting, reading, and meditation, which I have always found sufficient, in a measure, so long as I continued to exercise them. I have been trying to serve two masters, and have been thinking to enjoy worldly society, when the command is "Come out from among them, and be ye seperate." A true Christian professing to have found a new life and a new way must not find his fellowship among those who care for none of these things. They cannot walk together, they are not agreed. I have found my desire for spiritual things getting very weak, and the beginning of it was, feasting with formal professors. I now find there are no opportunities coming in my way of doing good. In the Sabbath School I am not even interesting, as I am not acquiring any new light on the Scriptures. Thus I am not only dishonouring God, grieving the Holy Ghost, and putting Christ to an open shame, but I am also the cause of injuring my class, and I may say, all others with whom I meet, whereas, had it been otherwise, what might have been the good effect upon my own soul and, who can tell, upon that of others also? O how long will I be at ease in Zion! For Thy name's sake awaken me, lest I sleep my sleep outright. Turn me, Lord, and I shall be turned, for Thou art my God. On Sabbath before last the Sacrament was dispensed here. I did not communicate in consequence of guilt in the aforementioned respects. Rev. Archibald Cook of Inverness, preached on Saturday, from "What think ye that he will not come to the feast?"