It seemed too sacred to read to Dr.
Howe, but it was just to John that it should be heard, even if only partly understood; and it was also just to her--for Helen had one of those healthy souls which could be just to itself.

With the letter had come a clear and logical statement of the doctrine of reprobation, together with the arguments and reasons for holding it; besides this, there was a list of books which he meant to send her.

All these she handed to her uncle.
"I will not read you all he writes," she said, "but even a little will show you the hopelessness of thinking I can ever go back to him.

He tells me first of a meeting of his Session, where the elders told him they wished to have me summoned before them, and of another visit from Mr.
Dean, of whom I spoke to you, insisting that John had been faithless in his duty to his church and me.

'I could only listen,' he writes, 'in assenting anguish, when he charged me with having been careless of your spiritual life; and when he said that the sin of your unbelief had crept from soul to soul, like an insidious and fatal disease unseen by the eyes of the church, until spiritual death, striking first one and then another, roused us to our danger.