"No, my dear. God forbid that I should ever desire pain and suffering for anybody, much less my husband. I wouldn't hurt a hair of his head. But you're not married, and you don't know what it is to walk one way and your husband another. For some time after I was John's wife, it did not matter to me that he never went down on his knees at home, or taught our first children anything about God, or entered a place of worship.
"We were both alike. We cared for none of these things. But the time came when God was pleased to show me what a poor helpless sinner I was, and to let me see that I could never save myself. I could not tell you now how it came about, it would take too long; but I think nobody in this world was ever more rejoiced after having been shown myself, to have a sight of my Saviour and realise what He had done for me.
"How thankful I was for my share in His salvation! And, oh, how I longed for John to feel like me! I prayed and prayed for him. I talked to him, begged of him to go with me to church, told him how happy I Was in thinking that I had a heavenly Friend that would never forsake me if I put my trust in Him. I sent the two eldest children to Sunday-school, and I wanted to a place of worship. But it was no use. John could not see any good in it. He did not hinder the children going on Sundays, he said the house was quieter without them; but he would neither go himself to the house of God nor let me. I have often been near giving up, but I was kept from that, though when one knew that one was praying for a right thing, it seemed hard to pray so long without getting an answer. I got almost desperate, I was so anxious for John, and I really did pray that he might be brought to Jesus, no matter how rough the way might be, or at whatever cost of hard work to me.
"Then this accident happened: poor John lay helpless and senseless, sometimes still enough, sometimes talking all sorts of wild talk, but knowing nobody. And then I wondered whether it could be that this was to be the end, and I was to get no answer to the prayers of all these years.
"One night the children were all gone to rest but baby, and I was just getting her to sleep to put her in the cradle beside her father's bed. I don't know how it happened, but I was praying aloud as I rocked her backwards and forwards, when all at once I heard poor John's voice from the bed. So weak and low it was, but it rung through me, like the loudest trumpet, for it brought the answer to my prayer.
"'Mary,' he said, 'I heard what you were asking God for me. I'm a poor good-for-naught, and I'm not worth all your praying and thought for me; but you're a good wife, and I can't bear you to keep asking and asking, and all for nothing. We've been sixteen years married, and I've never gone on my knees to God in all that time. I cannot kneel now, and I don't know how to pray, but if you'll come beside the bed and teach me what to say, I'll try.'
"I got up and reached him his medicine and gave him a drink, and then, with the little one in my arms, I dropped on my knees and prayed as well as I could for tears and sobs. But they were not sorrowful tears, for my heart was full of joy. At last I begun the Lord's Prayer, and John said it after me bit by bit, with his voice all trembling, like a little child learning from its mother.
"And when I got up, he said, 'Kiss me, Mary. I've never deserved to have you; but I hope, if I live, I shall be helped to behave better to you than I have done.'
"That was the beginning of better days for us, I am sure. John cannot be happy without daily prayer now, and I do believe he is a changed man, and that our latter days will be more blessed than our beginning.
"Now you understand how John's accident has been made the means of answering my prayer, and how it is that I can thank God even for what, at first look, seemed a sore trial."