Part 4 (1/2)

”Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell!”

in at someof the ”manydust Of my divine abode-”

Had I not known that, ever since I was a baby? But the light does not streahtness all the time

Earth draws her dark curtains too soon over the s of heaven, and the little children fall asleep in her diet their visions

That majestic hymn of Cowper's,--

”God moves in a mysterious way,”

was one ofof thunder through the sky; and, understood as little as the thunder itself, which my mother told me was God's voice, so that I bentto hear it shaped into words, it still did give , that thrilled me with reverent awe And this was one of the best lessons taught in the Puritan school,--the lesson of reverence, the certainty that life reater than ourselves, to a Life far above us, which yet enfolded ours

The thought of God, when He was first spoken of to ht of my father and e, for I could not with h the sky, beyond which I supposed he lived But it was easy to believe that He could look down and see ht very early to say ”Thou, God, seest me”; and it was one of my favorite texts Heaven see at me A baby is not afraid of its father's eyes

The first real unhappiness I remember to have felt hen some one told me, one day, that I did not love God I insisted, almost tearfully, that I did; but I was told that if I did truly love Hiood I kneas not that, and the feeling of sudden orphanage ca cloud Yet I was sure that I loved hty, Was He harder to please than they?

Then I heard of a dreadful dark Somewhere, the horror of which was that it ay fro, and find o to sleep for that dread

And the thought was too awful to speak of to anybody Baby that I was, I shut ht that if I could not be good, I hty, and enjoy it But soraded whenever I knew that I had been cross or selfish

I heard thereat while ago, whose death reat difference to us, I could not understand how It seemed like a lovely story, the loveliest in the world, but it sounded as if it were only a story, even to those who repeated it tothat had happened far away in the past

But one day a strange minister came into the Sabbath-school in our little chapel, and spoke to us children about Him, oh! so differently!

”Children,” he said, ”Jesus is not dead He is alive: He loves you, and wants you to love Hiood”

My heart beat fast I could hardly keep back the tears The New Testament, then, did really ain, and would always be with those who loved Him

”He is alive! He loves ood!” I said it over to myself, but not to anybody else I was sure that I loved Him

It was like a beautiful secret between us two I felt Hiood, and I could be, I would be, for his sake

That stranger never kne his loving word had touched a child's heart The doors of the Father's house were opened wide again, by the only hand that holds the key The world was all bright and fresh once more It was as if the May sun had suddenly wakened the flowers in an overshadoayside nook

I tried long afterward, thinking that it was my duty, to build up a wall of difficult doctrines overblossoht was never wholly stifled out, though I did not always keep my face turned towards it: and I kno, that just to let his lifegiving smile shi+ne into the soul is better than any of the theories we can invent about Hidoreat reason for a child's love of hymns, such as mine was, is that they are either addressed to a Person, to the Divine Person,--or they bring Hi written upon a subject, like a sermon To make Him real is the only way to ratefully now of the verses I learned fro that cas The whole Hymn-Book was not for me then, any more than the whole Bible I took fro those who found in the true sources of faith and adoration, was like breathing inabout the land from which I had come Much that was put in the way of us children to climb by, we could only stuhnesses of the road, the pure atmosphere of worshi+p was felt everywhere, the healthiest atmosphere for a child's soul to breathe in

I had learned a great many hymns before the fae of my most motherly sister Emilie,--I like to call her that, for she was as fond of early rising as Chaucer's heroine:--

”Up rose the sun, and up rose Ee,--she undertook to see how many my small memory would contain She promised me a new book, when I should have learned fifty; and that when I could repeat any one of a hundred hymns, she would teach me to write I earned the book when I was about four years old I think it was a collection of some of Jane Taylor's verses ”For Infant Minds,” was part of the title I did not care for it, however, nearly so much as I did for the old, thuone beyond the stipulated hundred

A proud and happy child I hen I was peroose quill into an inkstand, andthem with a pencil on a slate

My sister prepared a neat little writing-book for me, and told me not to make a mark in it except when she was near to tell et out of ”pothooks and trammels”