Respected Friends,

It is because I feel a deep and tender interest in your present and
eternal welfare that I am willing thus publicly to address you. Some
of you have loved me as a relative, and some have felt bound to me in
Christian sympathy, and Gospel fellowship; and even when compelled by
a strong sense of duty, to break those outward bonds of union which
bound us together as members of the same community, and members of
the same religious denomination, you were generous enough to give me
credit, for sincerity as a Christian, though you believed I had been
most strangely deceived. I thanked you then for your kindness, and
I ask you _now_, for the sake of former confidence, and former
friendship, to read the following pages in the spirit of calm
investigation and fervent prayer. It is because you have known me,
that I write thus unto you.

But there are other Christian women scattered over the Southern
States, a very large number of whom have never seen me, and never
heard my name, and who feel _no_ interest whatever in _me_. But I feel
an interest in _you_, as branches of the same vine from whose root I
daily draw the principle of spiritual vitality--Yes! Sisters in Christ
I feel an interest in _you_, and often has the secret prayer arisen
on your behalf, Lord "open thou their eyes that they may see wondrous
things out of thy Law"--It is then, because I _do feel_ and _do pray_
for you, that I thus address you upon a subject about which of all
others, perhaps you would rather not hear any thing; but, "would to
God ye could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with
me, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy." Be not afraid
then to read my appeal; it is _not_ written in the heat of passion