Yet good was permitted to come out of this evil; for where I attributed to God a callousness and even an enjoyment of my sufferings, I learnt self-sacrifice, the effacement of all personal gain, and total submission for love's sake to His Will, cruel though I might imagine it to be. With what tears does the heart afterwards address itself in awed repentance to its Beloved and Gentle God! A painful illness came and lasted for months. Having no home, I was obliged to endure the misery of it as best I could among strangers. At this time I touched perhaps the very lowest depths. How often I longed that I might never wake in the morning! I loathed my life. During this illness I came exceedingly near to Christ, so much so that I am not able to describe the vividness of it. What I learnt out of this time of suffering I do not know--save complete submission. I became like wax--wax which was asked to take only one impression, and that pain. I was too dumb; I should have remembered those words, that "men ought not to faint, but to pray." Bewildered, and mystified by my own unhappiness and that of so many others all around me, I sank in my submission too much into a state of lethargic resignation, whereas an onward-driving resolution to win through, a powerful determination to seek and obtain the immediate protection and assistance of God, a standing before God, and a claiming of His help--these things are required of the soul: in fact that importunity is necessary of which Jesus spoke (Luke xi. 7-9): "And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not . . . I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet _because of his importunity_ he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Such times of distress are storms, fearful battles of the soul in which she must not faint but rise up and walk towards God and clamour for help; and she will receive it. In His own good time He will give her all that she asks and more even than she dreamed of. She must claim from God a continual restrengthening, and search with glowing aspiration for a more joyous love. X