Ah, she was still a slave, and every day she was painfully reminded of it. She could not exercise her own judgment, nor act according to her own sense of right. She must walk in the way her master pointed out, and do his bidding. Whatever comforts she could pick up as she went along, she was welcome to; but she must have no choice or will of her own. Perhaps you think her gratitude to God for his great deliverance would make her happy. So it did for a time, and then she forgot her deliverer, and the still greater blessing she needed to ask of him. How many there are just like her, who cry to God for help in adversity, and forget him when the help comes. How many who promise God, when they are in trouble and danger, that if they are spared they will serve him, and, when the danger is past, entirely forget their vows. Thus it was with Tidy. She had been brought out of the cotton-field, and the misery that curtained it all round, into circumstances of plenty and comparative ease; and, rejoicing that the first part of her prayer was answered, she forgot all about the second and most important petition, "O Lord, save my soul." But God was too faithful to forget it. He allowed her to go on in her own course a few years longer, and then he laid his hand upon her again. He prostrated her upon a bed of sickness, and brought her to look death in the face. Then the Holy Spirit began to deal powerfully with her. She realized that she was a great sinner. It seemed that she was standing on the brink of a horrible precipice, and her sins, like so many tormenting spirits, were ready to cast her headlong into the abyss of destruction. Whither could she flee for safety? She found a Bible and tried to read; but it had been so long since she had looked into a book that she had almost forgotten what she once knew. It was impossible for her to read right on as we do; she could only pick out here and there a word and a sentence. One day she opened the book and her eye fell on the word "Come." She knew that word very well. It made her think right away of the hymn, "Come, ye sinners, poor and needy." She thought she would read on just there, and see what it said; and imperfectly, and after long endeavors, she made out this verse, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Then she glanced at a verse above, "Wash ye, make you clean: put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well." These verses conveyed to her dark, unin-structed mind two very clear ideas. One was that she was to forsake every thing that appeared to her like sin, and to do right in future; and the other, that she was permitted to reason with the Lord about the sins she had committed; both which she at once resolved to do.