the story of her
religious life is more striking and beautiful. Her faith never failed;
she glorified God in the midst of it all; she thanked her Lord and
Master for "taking her in hand," and begged Him not to spare her for her
crying, if so be she might thus learn to love Him more and grow more
like Him! And, what is especially noteworthy, her own suffering, instead
of paralysing, as severe suffering sometimes does, active sympathy with
the sorrows and trials of others, had just the contrary effect. "How
soon," she wrote to a friend, "our dear Lord presses our experiences
into His own service! How many lessons He teaches us in order to make us
'sons' (or daughters) 'of consolation!'" To another friend she wrote:

I did not perceive any selfishness in you during our interview, and you
need not be afraid that I am so taken up with my own affairs as to feel
no sympathy with you in yours. What are we made for, if not to bear each
other's burdens? And this ought to be the effect of trial upon us; to
make us, in the very midst of it, unusually interested in the interests
of others. This is the softening, sanctifying tendency of tribulation,
and he who lacks it needs harder blows.

At no period of her life was she more helpful to afflicted and tempted
souls. In visits to sick-rooms and dying beds, and in letters to friends
in trouble, her heart "like the noble tree that is wounded itself when
it gives the balm," poured itself forth in the most tender, soothing
ministrations. It seemed at times fairly surcharged with love. Meanwhile
she kept her pain to herself; only a few intimate friends, whose prayers
she solicited, knew what a struggle was going on in her soul; to all
others she appeared very much as in her happiest days. "It is a little
curious," she wrote to a young friend, "that suffering as I really am,
nobody sees it. 'Always bright!' people say to me to my amazement.... I
can add nothing but love, of which I am so full that I keep giving off
in thunder and lightning."

The preceding account would be incomplete without adding that the state
of her health during this period, combined with a severe pressure of
varied and perplexing cares, served to deepen the distress caused by her
spiritual trials. Whatever view may be taken of the origin and nature
of such trials, it is certain that physical depression and the mental
strain that comes of anxious, care-worn thoughts, if not their source,
yet tend always greatly to i