"As the result of our incidental conversation on Monday last, let me say, that the facts of which we spoke occurred during a drive which the Rev. Dr. ----, of Scotland, and I were enjoying with your father, in his carriage, at his kind invitation, in October, 1847.
"Without being able to recall the precise connection in which the remarks were made, I only now remember that Mr. Lawrence was led to speak with some degree of warmth, but with entire kindness, on the great error of relying on any idea of justification before God by faith, without corresponding works; so that, to one not familiar with the religious events in the history of this community, which, by operating on Mr. Lawrence's habits of thought, might well lead him to be jealous of any view of faith which did not directly express the necessity of good works, his remarks might very readily have seemed like a direct attack on that great truth of justification by faith, which Luther affirmed to be, as it was held or rejected, the test of a falling or rising church.
"Immediately, that which the late Edward Irving, in one of his sermons, under the name of 'Orations,' calls the 'ingenium perfervidum Scotorum,' burst from the Rev. Dr. ----, with something of that zeal for the doctrines of Knox and Calvin for which I understand he has been somewhat remarkable in his own country. He vehemently declared his abhorrence of any such denial of the first and fundamental truth of the Gospel, evidently taking it somewhat in the light of an insult to us as the preachers of that truth. He ended by saying, with much force and warmth, that the apostle Paul sometimes condensed the whole of the Gospel into a single phrase; and one of these phrases, as expressed in the Epistle to the Philippians, he commended to the notice of Mr. Lawrence, namely, 'We are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit; and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.'
"Mr. Lawrence met this strong, and apparently indignant and truly honest expression of feeling, with entire courtesy and self-command, but with evident and deep emotion; and, repressing all expression of displeasure, he gradually led the conversation to less unwelcome subjects, so that our ride ended pleasantly, though the embarrassment created by this event continued, in a lessening degree, to its close.