I always thought George McDonald a little audacious, though I like him in the main. There is a fallacy in this cavil, you may depend. Some years ago, when I was a little befogged by plausible talk, Dr. Skinner came to our house, got into one of his best moods, and preached a regular sermon on the glory of God, that set me all right again. I am not skilled in argument, but my heart sides with God in everything, and my conception of His character is such a beautiful one that I feel that He can not err. I do not like the expression, "He's aye thinking about his own glory" (I quote from memory); it belittles the real fact, and almost puts the Supreme Being on a level with us poor mortals. The more time we spend upon our knees, in real communion with God, the better we shall comprehend His wonderful nature, and how impossible it is to submit that nature to the rules by which we judge human beings. Every turn in life brings me back to this—more prayer…. I shall go with much pleasure to see Mrs. G. and may God give me some good word to say to her. I almost envy you your sphere of usefulness, but unless I give up mine, can not get fully into it. I want you to know that next to being with my Saviour, I love to be with His sufferers; so that you can be sure to remember me, when you have any on your heart…. P. S. I have hunted up Mrs. G. and had such an interesting talk with her that she has hardly been out of my mind since. It is a very unusual case, and the fact that her husband is a Jew, and loves her with such real romance, is an obstacle in her way to Christ. When you can get a little spare time I wish you would run in and let us talk her case over. I'm ever so glad that I'm growing old every day, and so becoming better fitted to be the dear and loving friend to young people I want to be.
I wish we both loved our Saviour better, and could do more for Him. The days in which I do nothing specifically for Him seem such meagre, such lost days. You seemed to think, the last time I saw you, that you were not so near Him as you were last year. I think we can't always know our own state. It does not follow that a season of severe conflict is a sign of estrangement from God. Perhaps we are never dearer to Him than when we hate ourselves most, and fancy ourselves intolerable in His sight. Conflict isn't sin.
To Miss E. A. Warner, New York, October 11, 1869.
I hear with great concern that Miss Lyman's health is so much worse, that she is about to leave Vassar. Is this true? I can not say I should be very sorry if I should hear she was going to be called up higher. It seems such a blessed thing to finish up one's work when the Master says we may, and going to be with Him. I can fully sympathise with the feeling that made Mrs. Graham say, as she closed her daughter's eyes, "I wish you joy, my darling!" But I should want to see her before she went; that would be next best to seeing her after she got back. If you meet with a dear little book called "The Melody of the 23d Psalm," do read it; it is by Miss Anna Warner, and shows great knowledge of, and love for, the Bible. In a few weeks I shall be able to send you a copy of Stepping Heavenward.
We have been home rather more than a week and the house is all upside down, outwardly and inwardly. For A. sails for Europe on the 21st with M. and Hal Smith, to be gone a year, and this involves sending the other children to school, and various trying changes of the sort. Tossing my long sheltered lambs into the world has cost me inexpressible pain; only a mother can understand how much and why; and they, on their part, go into it shrinking and quivering in every nerve. To their father, as well as to me, this has been a time of sore trial, and we are doing our best to keep each other up amid the discouragements and temptations that confront us. For each new phase of life brings more or less of both.
Stepping Heavenward was published toward the end of October, having appeared already as a serial in the Chicago Advance. The first number of the serial was printed February 4, 1869. The work was planned and the larger part of it composed during the winter and spring of 1867-8. Referring more especially to this part of it, she once said to a friend: "Every word of that book was a prayer, and seemed to come of itself. I never knew how it was written, for my heart and hands were full of something else." By "something else" she had in mind the care of little Francis. The ensuing summer the manuscript was taken with her to Dorset, carefully revised and finished before her return to the city. In revising it she had the advantage of suggestions made by her friends, Miss Warner and Miss Lyman, both of them Christian ladies of the best culture and of rare good sense.
Notwithstanding the favor with which the work had been received as issued in The Advance, Mrs. Prentiss had great misgiving about its success—a misgiving that had haunted her while engaged in writing it. But all doubt on the subject was soon dispelled:
The response to "Stepping Heavenward" was instant and general. Others of her books were enjoyed, praised, laughed over, but this one was taken by tired hands into secret places, pored over by eyes dim with tears, and its lessons prayed out at many a Jabbok. It was one of those books which sorrowing, Mary-like women read to each other, and which lured many a bustling Martha from the fretting of her care-cumbered life to ponder the new lesson of rest in toil. It was one of those books of which people kept a lending copy, that they might enjoy the uninterrupted companionship of their own. The circulation of the book was very large. Not to speak of the thousands which were sold here, it went through numerous editions in England. From England it passed into Australia. It fell into the family of an afflicted Swiss pastor, and the comfort which it brought to that stricken household led to its translation into French by one of the pastor's daughters. It passed through I know not how many editions in French. [5] In Germany it came into the hands of an invalid lady who begged the privilege of translating it. The first word of a favorite German hymn,
"Heavenward doth our journey tend;
We are strangers here on earth,"
furnished the title for the German translation—"Himmelan." It appeared just after the French war, and went as a comforter into scores of the homes which war had desolated, and frequent testimony came back to her of the deep interest excited by the book, and of the affectionate gratitude called out toward the author. She seemed to have inspired her translator, whose letters to her breathe the warmest affection and the most enthusiastic admiration. It would be easy to fill up the time that remains with grateful testimonies to the work of this book. From among a multitude I select only one: A manufacturer in a New England town, a stranger, wrote to her expressing his high appreciation of the book, and saying that he had four thousand persons in his employ, and a circulating library of six thousand volumes for their use, in which were two copies of "Stepping Heavenward." He adds, "I hear in every direction of the good it is doing, and a wealthy friend has written to me saying that she means to put a copy into the hand of every bride of her acquaintance." [6]