But I find no consolation or support in the remarks.My comfort is in my perfect faith in the goodness and love of my Father, my certainty that He had a reason in thus afflicting me that I should admire and adore if I knew what it was.And in the midst of my sorrow I have had and do have a delight in Him hitherto unknown, so that sometimes this room in which I am a prisoner seems like the very gate of heaven.
MAY.-A long winter in my room, and all sorts of painful remedies and appliances and deprivations.And now I am getting well, and drive out every day.Martha sends her carriage, and mother goes with me.Dear mother! How nearly perfect she is! I never saw a sweeter face, nor.
ever heard sweeter expressions of faith in God, and love to all about her than hers.She has been my tower strength all through these weary months; and she has shared my sorrow and made it her own.
I can see that dear Ernest's affliction and this prolonged anxiety about me have been a heavenly benediction to him I am sure that every mother whose sick child he visits will have a sympathy he could not have given while all our own little ones were alive and well.I thank God that He has thus increased my dear husband's usefulness as Ithink that He has mine also How tenderly I already feel towards all suffering children, and how easy it will be now to be patient with them!
KEENE N H JULY 12 It is a year ago this day that the brightest sunshine faded out of our lives, and our beautiful boy was taken from us.I have been tempted to spend this anniversary in bitter tears and lamentations For oh, this sorrow is not healed by time! I feel it more and more But I begged God when I first awoke this morning not to let me so dishonor and grieve Him.I may suffer, I must suffer, He means it, He wills it, but let it be without repining, without gloomy despondency.The world is full of sorrow; it is not I alone who taste its bitter draughts, nor have I the only right to a sad countenance.
Oh, for patience to bear on, cost what it may!
"Cheerfully and gratefully I lay.myself and all that I am or own at the feet of Him who redeemed me with His precious blood, engaging to follow Him, bearing the cross He lays upon me." This is the least Ican do, and I do it while my heart lies broken and bleeding at His feet.
My dear little Una has improved somewhat in health, but I am never free from anxiety about her.She is my milk-white lamb, my dove, my fragrant flower.One cannot look in her pure face without a sense of peace and rest.She is the sentinel who voluntarily guards my door when I am engaged at my devotions; she is my little comforter when Iam sad, my companion and friend at all times.I talk to her of Christ, and always have done, just as I think of Him, and as if Iexpected sympathy from her in my love to Him.It was the same with my darling Ernest.If I required a little self-denial, I said cheerfully, "This is hard, but doing it for our best Friend sweetens it," and their alacrity was pleasant to see.Ernest threw his whole soul into whatever he did, and sometimes when engaged in play would hesitate a little when directed to do something else, such as carrying a message for me, and the like.But if I said, "If you do this cheerfully and pleasantly, my darling, you do it for Jesus, and that will make Him smile upon you," he would invariably yield at once.
Is not this the true, the natural way of linking every little daily act of a child's life with that Divine Love, that Divine Life which gives meaning to all things?
But what do I mean by the vain boast that I have always trained my children thus? Alas! I have done it only at times; for while my theory was sound, my temper of mind was but too often unsound.I was often and often impatient with my dear little boy; often my tone was a worldly one; I often full of eager interest in mere outside things, and forgot that I was living or that my children were living save for the present moment.
It seems now that I have a child in heaven, and am bound to the invisible world by such a tie that I can never again be entirely absorbed by this.
I fancy my ardent, eager little boy as having some such employments in his new and happy home as he had here.I see him loving Him who took children in His arms and blessed them, with all the warmth of which his nature is capable, and as perhaps employed as one of those messengers whom God sends forth as His ministers.For I cannot think of those active feet, those busy hands as always quiet.Ah, my darling, that I could look in upon you for a moment, a single moment, and catch one of your radiant smiles; just one!
AUGUST 4.-How full are David's Psalms of the cry of the sufferer! He must have experienced every kind of bodily and mental torture.He gives most vivid illustrations of the wasting, wearing process of disease-for instance, what a contrast is the picture we have of him when he was "ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to," and the one he paints of himself in after years, when he says, "I may tell all my bones.they look and stare upon me; my days are like a, shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass.I am weary with groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.For my soul is full of troubles; and my life draweth near unto the grave,"And then what wails of anguish are these!
