ng that. He had often himself heard her
name mentioned in conversation above; and the most hopeful reports, he
told her, were circulated from door to door that she was actually all but
started on the upward way. Yes, he said, and we have a place prepared
for you on the strength of these reports, a place among the immortals
close beside your husband. And all that, as you will not wonder, was the
beginning of Christiana's secret life. After that morning she never
again felt alone or forgotten. I am not alone, she would after that say,
when any of her old neighbours knocked at her door. No, I am not alone,
but if thou comest in God's name, come in.

2. And from that day a long succession of secret providences began to
enter Christiana's life, till, as time went on, her whole life was filled
full of secret providences. And not her present life only, but her
discoveries of God's secret providences towards her and hers became
retrospective also, till both her own parentage and birth, her husband's
parentage and birth also, the day she first saw him, the day of their
espousals, the day of their marriage, and the day of his death, all shone
out now as so many secret and special providences of God toward her.
Bishop Martensen has a fine passage on the fragmentariness of our
knowledge, not only of divine providence as a whole, but even of those
divine providences that fill up our own lives. And he warns us that,
till we have heard the "Prologue in Heaven," many a riddle in our lives
must of necessity remain unsolved. Christiana could not have told her
inquiring children what a prologue was, nor an epilogue either, but many
were the wise and winning discourses she held with her boys about their
father now in heaven, about her happiness in having had such a father for
her children, and about their happiness that the road was open before
them to go to where he now is. And there are many poor widows among
ourselves who are wiser than all their teachers, because they are in that
school of experience into which God takes His afflicted people and opens
to them His deepest secrets. They remember, with Job, when the secret of
the Lord was first upon their tabernacle. Their widowed hearts are full
of holy household memories. They remember the days when the candle of
the Lord shone upon their head when they washed their steps with butter,
and the rock poured them out rivers of oil. And still, when, like Job
also, they sit soli