Then follow some thoughts on the solidarity of humanity, which retards individual progress by weighting each with the burdens of all others. He finds in this an explanation of the truth that our Lord took all the sins of men upon Himself and suffered for them on the cross. The blind ingratitude with which this sacrifice has been repaid cuts him with anguish, from which he rises into this cry of love and adoration:
"O Lord! my heart is choked from the utterance of its depth of thankfulness. O dear Christ! O sweet Christ! O loving Christ! oh, more than brother, friend! oh, more than any other being can be! O Son of God! oh, Thou who showest forth the pure love of God! oh, Thou inexpressible Love! draw me nearer Thee, let me feel more of Thy purity, Thy love! Oh, baptize me with Thy Spirit and loosen my tongue that I may speak of Thy love to men! Oh, it cannot be spoken of, nor can our hearts feel its greatness. God! what is Thy mercy that Thou sufferest us to live? Our ingratitude is too great to be uttered. Lord, I am silent, for who can speak in Thy presence? O Father! O Love! O Loving-kindness! My heart could fly away!"
On his birthday, December 18, 1843, having finished his twenty-third year, he puts down an account of conscience in the form of prayers and aspirations to God, breathing a deep sense of humility, expressing regret for his inactivity, his lack of gratitude for favors both spiritual and temporal, and adding a fervent appeal for more light and greater courage. In almost every entry of any length in the diary during this period he complains of his lack of solitude and of the means of obtaining it. His mind, after arriving home, was tossed with many interior distresses which he could not communicate to his brothers, nor even to his mother, with any hope of assuagement, but which silence and solitude enabled him to soothe by prayer. On the last day of the year he reverts to the great changes which 1843 had witnessed in his soul, and which, he says, were accompanied by bitter anguish. Twelve months before he had been with his "dear friend, 0, A. Brownson, filled with an unknown spirit, driven from home by it, and like one intoxicated, not knowing who I was or wherefore I was so troubled"--then to Brook Farm, and to Fruitlands, and back again in New York for the previous five or six months, the same spirit still in sovereign mastery over him, and, "though regulated, none the less powerful." He says that he is not so restless nor his mind so chaotic, but that he still has a pain at heart which he declares to be almost unbearable, joined to some nervous excitability.