The spirit of obedience was one of Harriet Beecher’s characteristic traits. So she resolutely devoted herself at Catherine’s command to the critical analysis of Butler’s “Analogy,” a book on the works of God as shown both in nature and in the spiritual realm. It sounds rather profound for a girl in the early teens; but when we recall the titles she chose for the essays she wrote at the school in Litchfield, we are not surprised that she found interest in such a book. Indeed, she discovered a real pleasure in subjects of this kind. At the time when she was improving her mind with the “Analogy,” she was reading also another famous book of spiritual import, Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest.” No other book she ever read moved her so profoundly. It filled her with a sort of exaltation that made her wish as she walked the street that the pavements might sink beneath her if only she might thus find herself in Heaven. In this mood of spiritual elevation she went to Litchfield for one of her early vacations. While there a sermon preached by her father made a strong appeal to her mind and heart. Dr. Beecher’s text on that Sunday was this: “I call you not servants, but friends,” and his subject was Jesus as a soul-friend offered to every human being. Forgetting all about theology for the time, Dr. Beecher spoke that day with all simplicity of the faithful, unwearied love of Christ, how He tenderly cares for the soul’s wants through all its wanderings and sorrows, until He brings it through the darkness of earth to the perfection of Heaven. Even a child could have understood him. Harriet sat absorbed, her eyes gathering tears as she listened; and when the doctor said, “Come, then, and trust your soul to this faithful Friend,” her heart throbbed, “I will.” For a moment she was discouraged by the thought that she had not had any “conviction of sin,” but like a flash came the thought that Jesus could give her that as well as anything else, and that she could trust Him for the whole. And so her earnest young soul went out to the wonderful Friend. She sat through the sacramental service that followed with swelling heart and tearful eyes, and walked home filled with a new joy. She went up to her father’s study in the attic room and, falling into his arms, whispered: “Father, I have given myself to Jesus and He has taken me.” The doctor held her silently to his heart a moment, and his tears dropped on her head. “Is it so?” he said. “Then has a new flower blossomed in the Kingdom this day.”