Finger Posts on the Way of Life

OUR title, though savouring of quaintness, is yet in keeping with the object of this volume. As we press onward in the journey of life, to each of us the path is new and strange. Often it is rough and thorny; often it winds through places beset with difficulties and danger; often the sky is so dark that we can scarcely see the narrow line upon which our advancing footsteps may rest in safety. As Finger-Posts on the Way of Life, pointing the wary traveller in the right direction, has this little book been written. It does not, professedly, take the high mission of the preacher; yet, while its end is to guide in natural life, the author is never unmindful of the fact that all natural life is for the sake of spiritual life, and that no one can live well in the true sense, who does not live for Heaven. He trusts, therefore, that while these finger-posts indicate the path in which to walk safely through the world, they will point, as well, to the narrow way that leadeth to Life Eternal.

A LITTLE thing clouded the brow of Mrs. Abercrombie—a very little thing. But if she had known how wide the shadows were often diffused, and how darkly they fell, at times, on some hearts, she would have striven more earnestly, we may believe, to keep the sky of her spirit undimmed.
It will not be uninstructive to note the incidents, in a single day, of Mrs. Abercrombie's life—to mark the early cloud upon her brow, and then to glance at the darkly falling shadows.
Mr. Abercrombie was a man of sensitive feelings, and though he had striven for many years to overcome his sensitiveness, he had been no more able to change this hereditary weakness than the leopard his spots or the Ethiopian his skin. At home, the lightest jar of discord disturbed him painfully, and the low vibration ceased not, often, for many hours. The clouded brow of his wife ever threw his heart into shadow; and the dusky vail was never removed, until sunlight radiated again from her countenance. It was all in vain that he tried to be indifferent to these changeful moods—to keep his spirits above their influence: in the very effort at disenthralment he was more firmly bound.