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Head Quarters 88th Ill. Infantry. Loudon: Tenn. March 31, 1864, My dear friend. I am glad that, after all, we do not stand so far apart as some who yield readier assent may do. Reading your letter of the 20th I think your pulse beats somewhat to the the time of my own. I do not like to talk greatly about matters of the soul. Just as I hold the love that a man may bear to a woman to be too fine and holy to be made the theme of common speech, so I think that the yearning of a human heart toward the Divine love and wisdom is invested with sanctity too inexpressibly tender and awful to be spoken of by other than clean and [left margin text begin] L. M. [left margin text end] reverent lips. It may be all wrong in me, but I confess that the boisterous utterances in which so many good Christians indulge - the unctious demonstrativeness of speech and manner - seem unalterably profane and shocking. I have heard ministers tell their congregration that they needed more "of the spirit and love of God" in much the same way that a man would tell his neighbors his ale needed malt, or a housewife that her butter needed salting. The argumentative and demonstrative parts of us are not, I take it, the religious regions. "Religo." "Binding and being bound." The re-unition of the soul with God: the processes that link the