She comes to us for counsel and asks, “Is it because I am so sinful or so incompetent, that I do not succeed better in teaching my dear ones to forsake the evil and choose only the good? They are loving and kind; but if their hearts are not entirely astray from God, why do they so constantly forget all I try to teach them, and do those things which they know I think wrong? Did you ever feel discouraged and almost hopeless?” Yes, O yes! And voluntarily threw away half the comfort every mother is entitled to when her children are young and ever with her. Anxious mothers never fully remember the days of their own youth, or realize that half of what they call sin is but the overflow of bright, young spirits, ready to effervesce and sparkle a little beyond the strict lines that the mother, in her more sedate years, has marked out as the proper bounds. Then mothers are so full of apprehension, so easily alarmed! “The evils of this life appear like rocky precipices,--rugged and barren when seen at a distance”; and they are sure their children will stumble and fall, and be destroyed by them. But wait and _trust_. When the great pressure of present care is somewhat lifted, and the children, one by one, go out from your immediate influence, and little grandchildren rise up about you,--for whom, though you dearly love them, you do not feel the full responsibility,--you will find on a nearer approach to these “rocky precipices” which so frightened you, “that there are many fruitful spots and refreshing springs mixed with the harshness and deformities of nature.” And remember, above all things, that it is folly to add all the possible cares and burdens of the _future_ to those which can come to you only day by day. “Does each day upon the wing Its allotted burden bring? Load it not besides with sorrow Which belongeth to the morrow. Strength is promised, strength is given, When the heart by God is riven; But _foredate_ the day of woe, And _alone_ thou bear’st the blow. “One thing only claims thy care: Seek thou first, by faith and prayer, That all-glorious world above,-- Scene of righteousness and love; And, whate’er thou need’st below, He thou trustest will bestow.” LXXXVI. WHAT WE KNOW NOT NOW WE SHALL KNOW HEREAFTER. STRANGE how natural it is for each individual to feel that there are no troubles, no sorrows, so severe as his own! How ready we are to feel that if the lessons our Father is teaching us were such as others around us were learning, we could surely bear them with fortitude!