Some one has said that Paul's favorite illustrations by images are drawn, not from the operations and uniform phenomena of the natural world, but from the activities and outward exhibition of human society, from the lives of soldiers, from the lives of slaves, from the market, from athletic exercises, from agriculture, from architecture.
At this time she again writes: "I visited a family where the mother was a Christian, and the father a Jew. The father being sick for two years past, and unable to support his wife and four children, has gone to his own people. The eldest girl is a member of my Sunday-school class. The mother told me one day, as I was speaking to her of the Bible, that she had not seen or read one since she was married; 'but,' said she, 'since Amelia has been in your class, she has repeated the lessons she has learned at home, and I am longing for a Bible.' I gave her one given me for my Jewish children. She thanked me heartily, and now reads it every day with her children. One Sunday morning her husband came in to see them, and found her reading aloud to the children from the Bible. He asked her what she was reading. She told him it was the Bible, and how she had got it, and that the children went to Sunday-school, and that she went to church. He was not pleased, but could say nothing, as he does not live with or support his family. This poor woman was deeply convicted of sin, and was earnestly seeking for forgiveness and peace, and peace has come to her son through humble trust in the Saviour of sinners. Thus the Lord is prospering our labors, and the meetings begun in trembling, have been blessed to some souls."
It seems her source of unalloyed happiness was in watching for souls, at morning, noon, and night. Her prayers were perfumed with sighs, and cries, and tears for the impenitent. She was one of those so graphically described by Jeremiah: "They say to their mothers where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mother's bosom. What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee."—Lam. ii. 12-13.
Long they sat beneath the shadow,
And the gloom of moral night,
Waiting only for the dawning
Of the promised heavenly light.
But they've heard the glorious Gospel,
Of salvation full and free,
Now they read the "Blessed Bible,"