“Come to your God in prayer—
“Come to your Saviour now—
“While youthful skies are bright and fair,
“And health is on your brow.”
“Clary read no further. That did not suit her, she thought—there was nothing bright about her way of life or herself. It seemed the old thing again—the happy rich people. She went back and read the first one over,—that did not seem so, and she sought further; wearily glancing from hymn to hymn, but with a longing that not even the hard words could check. At last she saw one verse, the first word of which she knew well enough,—
“Poor, weak, and worthless, though I am,
“I have a rich almighty Friend,—
“Jesus the Saviour is his name,—
“He freely loves, and without end.”
“The words went right to the sore spot in Clary’s heart—the spot which had ached for many a long day. Somebody to love her,—a rich friend;—if she had written down her own wishes, they could hardly have been more perfectly expressed; and the tears came so fast, that she had to move away lest they should blot the paper. Bitter tears they were, yet not such as she had often shed; for, she knew not how, those words seemed to carry a possible hope of fulfilment—a half-promise—which her own imaginations had never done. And the first line suited her so exactly,—