Here is an excerpt from a letter written by Mary Lyons, founder of Mount Holyoke College (then Mount Holyoke Female Seminary), to Miss Zilpah Grant:

“I have thought of you very much since we separated. I greatly fear that the trying questions which are now taxing your mental energies...will be more than you can sustain. May the Lord give you strength equal to your wants, and may he give you wisdom from on high to guide your thoughts, your views of things, and your present important decisions.

When all human help and human wisdom fail, and all knowledge of future events, as connected with present causes, and present actions, seems entirely cut off, how sweet it is to go to One, who knows all from the beginning to the end--to One who can direct our very thoughts, and who can take us individually by the hand, and lead us in a plain path. Everything appears to me as dark as Egyptian darkness, only as I turn my thoughts to Him, who is the fountain of light. I dare not pray for anything in particular, only that the will of the Lord may be done--that all interested in this new institution may be so humble, and so submissive, that his will towards this enterprize may be done, as it is done towards those on whom he smiles, and not as it is done towards those whom he chastens and afflicts. My daily feeling is ‘Lord thou knowest--not my will O God but thine be done.’”

From Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke: Opening the Doors, by Elizabeth Alden Green.