and this is not a scene of probation. Still if
you insist that you have been smitten, it only shows how very "ordinary"
you are, and how angry God is with you.

Now you may ask why I have taken time to write this, since you are not
led away by these errors. Well, they are pleasant and very plausible
writers, and it has puzzled me to learn just where they were wrong. So I
have been thinking aloud, or thinking on paper, and perhaps you may find
one or more persons entangled in this attractive web, and be able to
help them out. How a good man and a good woman ever fell into such
mischievous mistakes, I can not imagine....

As to you and me, I see nothing strange in the weaning from self God is
giving us. It is natural to believe that He weans us from the breast of
comfort in which we had delighted, because He has strong meat in store
for us. I know I was awfully selfish about my relation to Christ, and
went about for years on tip-toe, as it were, for fear of disturbing and
driving Him away; but I do not know that I should _dare_ to live so
again. And how better can He show us our weakness than by making it
plain that we, who thought we were so strong in prayer, are almost "dumb
before Him"! My dear friend, I believe more and more in the _deep_
things of God.

"STRENGTH is born
In the deep silence of long-suffering hearts,
Not amid joy."

Imagine soldiers getting ready for warfare, being told by their
commander that they had no need to drill, and had nothing to do but
drink nectar! As to being brought low, I will own that I have not been
entirely left of God to my own devices and desires; if I had been, I
should have gone overboard. He had such a grip of me that He _couldn't_
let go. I saw a man apply a magnet to steel pens the other day, and
that's the way I clung to God; there was no power in me to hold on, the
magnetism was in Him, and so I hung on. Wasn't it so with you?

And now to change the subject again; if you have any faded ferns, vines,
leaves on hand, you can paint and make them beautiful again. For a light
wall, paint them with Caledonian brown, and they will have a very rich
effect. I expect a patent-right for this invention.

The vivid sense of human weakness and of the sharp discipline of life,
which she expresses in this letter, was deepened by hearing what a sea
of trouble some of her friends had been suddenly engulphed in. Early in
October she wrote to one of them:

For some time befor