subject will appear in the
sequel. It is enough to say here that "Holiness through Faith" and other
works, in advocacy of the same or similar doctrines, meeting her as
they did when under a severe mental strain, and touching her at a most
sensitive point--for holiness was a passion of her whole soul--had
for a time a more or less bewildering effect. She kept pondering the
questions they raised, until the native hue of her piety--hitherto so
resolute and cheerful--became "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
thought."

The inward conflict which has been referred to she described sometimes,
in the language of the old divines, as the want of God's "sensible
presence," or of "conscious" nearness to and communion with Christ;
sometimes, as a state of "spiritual deprivation or aridity"; and then
again, as a work of the Evil One. She laid much stress upon this last
point. Her belief in the existence of Satan and his influence over human
souls was as vivid as that of Luther; she did not hesitate to accuse him
of being the fomenter and, in a sense, the author of her distress; the
warnings of the Bible against his "wiles" she accepted as in full force
still; and she could offer with all her heart, and with no doubt as
to the literal meaning of its closing words, the petition of the old
Litany: "That it may please Thee to strengthen such as do stand, and to
comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up those who fall, and
finally to _beat down Satan under our feet_."

The coming trouble seems to have cast its shadow across her path even
before the close of 1870. Early in 1871 it was upon her in power.
Her letters contain very interesting and pathetic allusions to this
experience. But they do not explain it. Nor is it easy to explain. In
the absence of certain inciting causes from without, it would never,
perhaps, have assumed a serious form. But these sharp spiritual
trials are generally complicated with external causes, or occasions;
ill-health, morbid constitutional tendencies, loss of sleep, wearing
cares and responsibilities, sudden calamities, worldly loss or
disappointment, and the like. It is in the midst of such conditions that
pious souls are most apt to be assailed by gloom and despondency. And
yet distressing inward struggles and depression arise sometimes in the
midst of outward prosperity and even of unusual religious enjoyment.
In truth, among all the phenomena of the Christian life none are more
obscure or ha