Is not the fruit of love aspiration after the holy? Elizabeth Prentiss

This evening I passed unavoidably through Miss ——'s room. She was reading Byron as usual and looked so wretched and restless, that I could not help yielding to a loving impulse and putting my hand on hers and asking why she was so sad.

She told me. It was just what I supposed. She is trying to be happy, and can not find out how; reads Byron and gets sickly views of life; sits up late dreaming about love and lovers; then, too tired to pray or think good thoughts, tosses herself down upon her bed and wishes herself dead. She did not tell me this, to be sure, but I gathered it from her story. I alluded to her religious history and present hopes.

She said she did not think continued acts of faith in Christ necessary; she had believed on Him once, and now He would save her whatever she did; and she was not going to torment herself trying to live so very holy a life, since, after all, she should get to heaven just as well through Him as if she had been particularly good (as she termed it). 

I don't know whether a good or a bad spirit moved me at that minute, but I forgot that I was a mere child in religious knowledge, and talked about my doctrine and made it a very beautiful one to my mind, though I don't think she thought it so.

Oh, for what would I give up the happiness of praying for a holy heart—of striving, struggling for it! Yes, it is indeed true that we are to be saved simply, only, apart from our own goodness, through the love of Christ. But who can believe himself thus chosen of God—who can think of and hold communion with Infinite Holiness, and not long for the Divine image in his own soul? It is a mystery to me—these strange doctrines. 

Is not the fruit of love aspiration after the holy? Is not the act of the new-born soul, when it passes from death unto life, that of desire for assimilation to and oneness with Him who is its all in all?

How can love and faith be one act and then cease?
I dare not believe—I would not for a universe believe—that my very sense of safety in the love of Christ is not to be just the sense that shall bind me in grateful self-renunciation wholly to His service.

 Let me be sure of final rest in heaven—sure that at this moment I am really God's own adopted child; and I believe my prayers, my repentings, my weariness of sin, would be just what they now are; nay, more deep, more abundant. 

Oh, it is because I believe—fully believe that I shall be saved through Christ—that I want to be like Him here upon earth. It is because I do not fear final misery that I shrink from sin and defilement here. Oh, that I could put into that poor bewildered heart of hers just the sweet repose upon the ever present Saviour which He has given unto me! The quietness with which my whole soul rests upon Him is such blessed quietness! I shall not soon forget this strange evening.

from Live and Letters of Elezabeth Prentiss