and help
of the book was more effective than the spiritual help in which
something altogether vital was still missing. Relief only came when
after a month a letter reached me from my husband, saying that the
terrible retreat was over and he safe.

Months and years dragged by. Sometimes the pain of it all was
eased; sometimes it increased.

As grass mown down and withered in the fields gives out the
pleasant scent of hay, so in her laceration and her anguish did the
soul, I wondered, give off some Pain-Song pleasing to Almighty
God.

At first I recoiled with terror from this thought; finally love
overcame the terror--I was willing to have it so, if it pleased Him.
My soul reached down into great and fearful depths. I envied the
soldiers dying upon the battlefields; life was become far more
terrible to me than death. Looking back upon my struggles, I see
with profound astonishment how unaware I was of my impudence to
God in attributing to Him qualities of cruelty and callousness, such
as are to be found only amongst the lowest men!

Yet good was permitted to come out of this evil; for where I
attributed to God a callousness and even an enjoyment of my
sufferings, I learnt self-sacrifice, the effacement of all personal gain,
and total submission for love's sake to His Will, cruel though I might
imagine it to be. With what tears does the heart afterwards address
itself in awed repentance to its Beloved and Gentle God!

A painful illness came and lasted for months. Having no home, I
was obliged to endure the misery of it as best I could among
strangers. At this time I touched perhaps the very lowest depths.
How often I longed that I might never wake in the morning! I
loathed my life.

During this illness I came exceedingly near to Christ, so much so
that I am not able to describe the vividness of it. What I learnt out of
this time of suffering I do not know--save complete submission. I
became like wax--wax which was asked to take only one impression,
and that pain. I was too dumb; I should have remembered those
words, that "men ought not to faint, but to pray."

Bewildered, and mystified by my own unhappiness and that of so
many others all around me, I sank in my submission too much into a
state of lethargic resignation, whereas an onward-driving resolution
to win through, a powerful determination to seek and obtain the
immediate protection and assistance of God, a standing before God,
and a claiming of His help--