The will of God, the sweet will of God. If He should take them all away, I might still possess a peace which would flow on forever. I know this partly from my own experience and partly from that of others. Mrs. Campbell says that the three months that followed the death of her first child were the happiest she had ever known. Mrs. Wentworth, whose husband was snatched from her almost without warning, and while using expressions of affection for her such as a lover addresses to his bride, said to me, with tears rolling down her cheeks, yet with a smile, 'I thank my God and Saviour that He has not forgotten and passed me by, but has counted me worthy to bear this sorrow for His sake.' And hear this passage from the life of Wesley, which I lighted on this morning: "He visited one of his disciples, who was ill in bed and after having buried seven of her family in six months, had just heard that the eighth, her husband, whom she dearly loved, had been cast away at sea. 'I asked her,' he says, 'do you not fret at any of those things?' She says, with a lovely smile, 'Oh, no! how can I fret at anything which is the will of God? Let Him take all beside, He has given me Himself. I love, I praise Him every moment.'" "Yes," Helen objected, "I can imagine people as saying such things in moments of excitement; but afterwards, they have hours of terrible agony." "They have 'hours of terrible agony,' of course. God's grace does not harden our hearts, and make them proof against suffering, like coats of mail. They can all say, 'Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee,' and it is they alone who have been down into the depths, and had rich experience of what God could be to His children there, who can utter such testimonials to His honor, as those I have just repeated." "Katy," Helen suddenly asked, "do you always submit to God's will thus?" "In great things I do," I said. "What grieves me is that I am constantly forgetting to recognize God's hand in the little every-day trials of life, and instead of receiving them as from Him, find fault with the instruments by which He sends them. I can give up my child, my only brother, my darling mother without a word; but to receive every tire some visitor as sent expressly and directly to weary me by the Master Himself; to meet every negligence on the part of the servants as His choice for me at the moment; to be satisfied and patient when Ernest gets particularly absorbed in his books because my Father sees that little discipline suitable for me at the time; all this I have not fully learned." "All you say discourages me," said Helen, in a tone of deep dejection. "Such perfection was only meant for a few favored ones, and I do not dare so much as to aim at it. I am perfectly sure that I must be satisfied with the low state of grace I am in now and always have been." She was about to leave me, but I caught her hand as she would have passed me, and made one more attempt to reach her poor, weary soul.