l of the sea
through the sparkling ripples on the surface.

Fourth, her style was easy, colloquial, never stilted or affected,
marked at times by an energy and incisiveness which betrayed earnest
thought and intense feeling. She aimed to impress the truth, not her
style, and therefore aimed at plainness and directness. Her hard common
sense, of which her books reveal a goodly share, was offset by her vivid
fancy which made even the region of fable tributary to the service of
truth.

Fifth, her books were intensely _personal_; expressions, I mean, of her
own experience. Many of her characters and scenes are simple transcripts
of fact, and much of what she taught in song, was a repetition of what
she had learned in suffering.

To go back once more to her office of consoler. She exercised this not
only through her books, but also through her personal ministries in
those large and widening circles which centred in her literary and
pastoral life. Those who were favored with her friendship in times of
sorrow found her a comforter indeed. Her letters, of which, at such
times, she was prodigal, were to many sore hearts as leaves from the
tree of life. She did not expect too much of a sufferer. She recognized
human weakness as well as divine strength. But in all her attempts at
consolation, side by side with her deep and true sympathy, went the
_lesson_ of the _harvest_ of sorrow. She was always pointing the mourner
_past_ the floods, to the high place above them--teaching him to
sing even amid the waves and billows--"the Lord will command His
loving-kindness"; "I shall yet praise Him for the help of His
countenance." "I knew," she wrote to a bereaved friend, "that God would
never afflict you so, if He had not something beautiful and blissful to
give in place of what He took." The insight which her writings revealed
into many and subtle aspects of sorrow, made her the recipient of hosts
of letters from strangers, opening to her their griefs, and asking her
counsel; and to all she gave freely and joyfully as far as her strength
and time and judgment would allow. There was a tonic vein mingling with
her comforts. Her touch was firm as well as tender. She knew the shoals
of morbid sentimentality which skirt the deeps of trouble, and sought to
pilot the sorrowing past the shoals to the shore.

And now, having thus spoken of her preparation for God's work, the
work itself, and its fruits, how can we gather up and depict the many