Is not this the true, the natural way of linking every little daily act of a child's life with that Divine Love, that Divine Life which gives meaning to all things?
But what do I mean by the vain boast that I have always trained my children thus? Alas! I have done it only at times; for while my theory was sound, my temper of mind was but too often unsound. I was often and often impatient with my dear little boy; often my tone was a worldly one; I often full of eager interest in mere outside things, and forgot that I was living or that my children were living save for the present moment.
It seems now that I have a child in heaven, and am bound to the invisible world by such a tie that I can never again be entirely absorbed by this.
I fancy my ardent, eager little boy as having some such employments in his new and happy home as he had here. I see him loving Him who took children in His arms and blessed them, with all the warmth of which his nature is capable, and as perhaps employed as one of those messengers whom God sends forth as His ministers. For I cannot think of those active feet, those busy hands as always quiet. Ah, my darling, that I could look in upon you for a moment, a single moment, and catch one of your radiant smiles; just one!
AUGUST 4.-How full are David's Psalms of the cry of the sufferer! He must have experienced every kind of bodily and mental torture. He gives most vivid illustrations of the wasting, wearing process of disease-for instance, what a contrast is the picture we have of him when he was "ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to," and the one he paints of himself in after years, when he says, "I may tell all my bones they look and stare upon me; my days are like a shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass. I am weary with groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears. For my soul is full of troubles; and my life draweth near unto the grave."
And then what wails of anguish are these!
"I am afflicted, and ready to die from my youth up, while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me. Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into utter darkness."
Yet through it all what grateful joy in God, what expressions of living faith and devotion! During my long illness and confinement to my room, the Bible has been almost a new book to me, and I see that God has always dealt with His children as He deals with them now, and that no new thing has befallen me. All these weary days so full of languor, these nights so full of unrest, have had their appointed mission to my soul. And perhaps I have had no discipline so salutary as this forced inaction and uselessness, at a time when youth and natural energy continually cried out for room and work.
AUGUST 15.-I dragged out my drawing materials in a listless way this morning, and began to sketch the beautiful scene from my window. At first I could not feel interested. It seemed as if my hand was crippled and lost its cunning when it unloosed its grasp of little Ernest, and let him go. But I prayed, as I worked, that I might not yield to the inclination to despise and throw away the gift with which God has Himself endowed me. Mother was gratified, and said it rested her to see me act like myself once more. Ah, I have been very selfish, and have been far too much absorbed with my sorrow and my illness and my own petty struggles.
AUGUST 19.-I met to-day an old friend, Maria Kelly, who is married, it seems, and settled down in this pretty village. She asked so many questions about my little Ernest that I had to tell her the whole story of his precious life, sickness and death. I forced myself to do this quietly, and without any great demand on her sympathies. My reward for the constraint I thus put upon myself was the abrupt question: