Were they all accompanied with the exact time and circumstances
of their composition, they would form, in connection with others
unpublished, her spiritual autobiography from the death of Eddy and
Bessie, in 1852, to the autumn of 1873. [8]

As she anticipated, the volume met in some quarters with anything but a
cordial reception; the criticisms upon it were curt and depreciatory.
Its representation of the Christian life was censured as gloomy and
false. It was even intimated that in her expressions of pain and sorrow,
there was more or less poetical affectation. Alluding to this in a
letter to a friend, she writes:

I have spoken of the deepest, sorest pain; not of trials, but of sorrow,
not of discomfort, but of suffering. And all I have spoken of, I have
felt. Never could I have known Christ, had I not had large experience of
Him as a chastiser.... You little know the long story of my life, nor is
it necessary that you should; but you must take my word for it that if
I do not know what suffering means, there is not a soul on earth that
does. It has not been my habit to say much about this; it has been a
matter between myself and my God; but the _results_ I have told, that He
may be glorified and that others may be led to Him as the Fountain of
life and of light. I refer, of course, to the book of verses; I never
called them poems. You may depend upon it the world is brimful of pain
in some shape or other; it is a "_hurt_ world." But no Christian should
go about groaning and weeping; though sorrowing, he should be always
rejoicing. During twenty years of my life my kind and wise Physician was
preparing me, by many bitter remedies, for the work I was to do; I can
never thank or love Him enough for His unflinching discipline.

Even the favorable notices of the volume, with two or three exceptions,
evinced little sympathy with its spirit, or appreciation of its literary
merits. [9] But while failing to make any public impression, the little
book soon found its way into thousands of closets and sick-rooms and
houses of mourning, carrying a blessing with it. Touching and grateful
testimonies to this effect came from the East and the farthest West and
from beyond the sea. The following is an extract from, a letter to Mr.
Randolph, written by a lady of New York eminent for her social influence
and Christian character:

The book of heart-hymns is wonderful, as I expected from the specimens
which you read to me from the lit