But I wish, oh how earnestly, that whether I go or stay, I could inspire some lives with the joy that is now mine. For many years I have been rich in faith; rich in an unfaltering confidence that I was beloved of my God and Saviour. But something was wanting I was ever groping for a mysterious grace the want of which made me often sorrowful in the very midst of my most sacred joy, imperfect when I most longed for perfection. It was that personal love to Christ of which my precious mother so often spoke to me which she often urged me to seek upon my knees. If I had known then, as I know now what this priceless treasure could be to a sinful human soul, I would have sold all that I had to buy the field wherein it lay hidden. But not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of Gods word by the loss of earthly joys, sickness destroying the flavor of them all, did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to know that I love Him-this is all! And when I entered upon the sacred yet oft-times homely duties of married life, if this love had been mine, how would that life have been transfigured! The petty faults of my husband under which I chafed would not have moved me; I should have welcomed Martha and her father to my home and made them happy there; I should have had no conflicts with my servants, shown no petulance to my children. For it would not have been I who spoke and acted but Christ who lived in me. Alas! I have had less than seven years in which to atone for a sinful, wasted past and to live a new and a Christ-like life. If I am to have yet more, thanks be to Him who has given me the victory, that Life will be Love. Not the love that rests in the contemplation and adoration of its object; but the love that gladdens, sweetens, solaces other lives. O gifts of gifts! O grace of faith My God! how can it be That Thou who hast discerning love, Shouldst give that gift to me? How many hearts thou mightst have had More innocent than mine! How many souls more worthy far Of that sweet touch of Thine? Oh grace! into unlikeliest hearts It is thy boast to come The glory of Thy light to find In darkest spots a home. Oh happy, happy that I am! If thou canst be, O faith The treasure that thou art in life What wilt thou be in death? ------------------------------------------------------------------- STEPPING WESTWARD. WHILE my fellow-traveler and I were walking by the side of Loch Katrine one fine evening after sunset in our road to a hut where in the course of our tour we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region two well-dressed women, one of whom said to us by way of greeting, "What, you are stepping westward?"