The Divinity that shapes our ends shaped mine in a painful manner. Let me tell you how. It was a beautiful Sunday morning in early June, and I had gone with my boy and my Bible into the grounds of an old Welsh castle for the purpose of quietly preparing my afternoon lesson. It was a beautiful spot; the old ivy-covered castle behind me, a lovely valley in front, beyond which rose the Welsh mountains, while the sheen of the sea was visible some miles to the right. As I lay prone with my Bible before me, I forgot in the enjoyment of the morning all about the afternoon, for I had to learn another lesson. I knew the poetry of Isaiah, and I called out: ‘“He weighs the hills in a balance, He measures the water in the hollow of His hand”; “He spreadeth out the heavens as a curtain.”’ I was full of oxygen and ecstasy. Immediately below me was a plain famous in Welsh history, for great battles had been fought there. So by one of those tricks of the mind--my mind, at any rate--I found myself at home, not with Isaiah, but Ingoldsby. ‘And I thought upon Wales and her glories, and all I’d been told of her heroes of old.’ I was just reeling it off when----‘See me roll, papa!’ I looked at my boy as he rolled about, and instead of laughing, I began to feel pathetic, with a sort of lump in my throat. I don’t know whether other folk are the same, but the sight of a happy child brings to me thoughts too deep for tears. Alone on a mountain-top, in the solitude of woods, or alone by the sea-shore, I experience the same feelings. I could not talk to my boy, so he spoke to me. ‘You roll, papa!’ and he pushed at me. I rolled. I heard his merry laugh. I rolled again, and then--chaos. Some time after I heard a little voice say, ‘Have you woke up, papa?’ I stared stupidly. I could see the sky above, and that was all; at length I realized that I was in the castle moat, and I remembered rolling. ‘I am only sick and giddy,’ I said to myself. But the feeling did not pass off, so I managed to crawl home, for I lived close by. I did not leave my bed for some months, for I had broken blood vessels, and streams of blood ran from my mouth. Thus I became a missionary, though suffering and pain and poverty for dark days and anxious years followed that Sunday morning--years in which I was learning my lesson. Slow years they were, not of sorrow, nay, nay, but years of grinding anxiety. I could not dig, to beg I was ashamed, and no man gave unto us. Several times I tried the iron foundry again, but I was weak and ill, hæmorrhage still threatened me, and having made up my mind not to die, I had to find some way to live.