[Boston—Monday, 3 February 1868]
Monday morning—a visit from Mrs Stowe. There is something in her friendship more satisfactory, or I would rather say, as truly satisfactory as that of any woman I have ever known—her insight and sweetness and modesty her rest in love and desire for it, her other worldliness and abstractions, have a comfort for me beyond expression. They lift me up and push me into the peace of love.
We were talking of the Catholic Church! Oh, she said if we could only all be Catholics, if we were only ignorant enough to be catholics how we would all go into the church tomorrow and rest there. I had it on my lips to say when something came between us, that the true church and the true rest which we can foretaste in this world is our rest in the hearts of men.
(I cannot let this go without saying, it is the divine spirit which we find in hearts wh. is the clear mirror and the soft couch—wherever we find it that is heaven and that is rest.)
