All this might have been so different. Dorcas might have succumbed to sorrow, and amid the ruins of her shattered home she might have flung herself on the ground in despair. She might have been moping and repining, selfishly nursing her grief, embittered, envious, and grudging to others their joy. God pity those who are; it is often that the milk of human kindness has turned sour: the fault is of misfortune. She might have made herself a burden to all around, held the world a debtor, and herself a wronged creditor. She might have insisted on being miserable—as if a long face made a lighter heart. Some in her position act so. They resent the smiles of others, and hold that if weeping is their portion, then all should weep. Others hide under a smiling face a sad heart, and laugh with you. Dorcas did none of these things. She set herself to be of use, to give aid and help to others. Ah! I think it sometimes happens that God removes the home of a woman's love, breaks down its walls, and unroofs it before the storm, in order that the love may go out to embrace a larger family. The hearts of some women are made to shelter and console all homeless ones. Their love takes wings, and flies through the earth in search for the desolate and afflicted. It does not need the ties of home, of husband and children, to form a loving, useful, warm-hearted woman. How long had Dorcas been such a woman as the story tells of? We cannot say. Perhaps she was humbly good and sensible, and had borne her sorrows bravely from the first, an unconscious follower of Jesus. Perhaps she was once soured, bitter, and woe-begone, till she heard of the great Sorrow-bearer, and learnt from Him to make her sorrow an offering, and to use her knowledge of sadness to lighten others' woe. For she was "a disciple." That means just one who looks how Christ went about the world, and sets to to go likewise. Having made up her mind to do good, what could she do? Nothing much. She could not preach; she could not be an apostle, and do great deeds of healing. She was too poor, too stupid, too uninfluential to start a mission or build a hospital. But she could darn, and stitch, and plan garments for widows—and how many such does not the life of a seafaring town create! She could speak kind words and do good turns, go to meeting, and be a quiet, gentle, sweet, helpful woman. That she could be, nothing more; and that she was. Why should she be more? That is what God means a good woman to be.