She even set up a private school for neglected children, and her church classmates put some of their own children into it "to help leaven it," as she suggested, and it became, in answer to their united prayers, a revival school. One family[1] who thus assisted her had two little boys converted in her school, right among the ragged, ignorant children, and they grew so strong in the work of these daily prayer meetings that one of them[2] became an able itinerant minister, and the other,[3] in the wilderness to which both families subsequently moved, became a class leader, having for several years some of these same schoolmates (then, like himself, in midlife) in his class, and even Mr. and Mrs. Arnold themselves and several of their children! So glorious are often the compensations of true zeal, even in "the life that now is."
[Footnote 1: That of Thomas Hubbard.]
[Footnote 2: Rev. Elijah B. Hubbard.]
[Footnote 3: Jabez Hubbard.]
CHAPTER IV.
REMOVAL TO A WILDERNESS COUNTRY.
How mysterious are the leadings of Providence! The most inviting scenes, the happiest state of society, the richest farm lands, the best educational facilities, sometimes fail to content even good people who live not to get rich, but to fulfill their mission in the service of their "generation by the will of God."
The young man marked by the Redeemer for a Gospel herald is not the only sort of Christian who feels uneasy in the crowded nursery, and groans to be torn out and transplanted on some bleak hillside where, shaken by fierce winds, his roots may strike deep, his branches spread wide, and he bear much fruit.
Families have thus caught the emigrating spirit in sufficient numbers to form clans of pioneer evangelists, and torn themselves out of little Edens to found colonies in dreary moral deserts; and as "the kingdom comes" with more rapid strides such single-eyed emigrations will become more frequent.