"Betty," said Mrs. Simpson, "we must learn not to rate health nor life itself too highly. There is little in life, for its own sake, to be so fond of. As a good archbishop used to say, ''tis but the same thing over again, or probably worse: so many more nights and days, summers and winters, a repetition of the same pleasures, but with less relish for them; a return of the same or greater pains, but with less strength, and perhaps less patience to bear them.'" "Well," replied Betty, "I did think that Providence was at last giving you your reward." "Reward!" cried Mrs. Simpson. "O, no! my merciful Father will not put me off with so poor a portion as wealth; I feel I shall die." "It is very hard, indeed," said Betty, "so good as you are, to be taken off just as your prosperity was beginning." "You think I am good just now," said Mrs. Simpson, "because I am prosperous. Success is no sure mark of God's favor; at this rate, you, who judge by outward things, would have thought Herod a better man than John the Baptist; and if I may be allowed to say so, you, on your principles, that the sufferer is the sinner, would have believed Pontius Pilate higher in God's favor than the Saviour whom he condemned to die, for your sins and mine." In a few days Mrs. Betty found that her new friend was dying, and though she was struck at her resignation, she could not forbear murmuring that so good a woman should be taken away at the very instant which she came into possession of so much money. "Betty," said Mrs. Simpson in a feeble voice, "I believe you love me dearly, you would do any thing to cure me; yet you do not love me so well as God loves me, though _you_ would raise me up, and He is putting a period to my life. He has never sent me a single stroke which was not absolutely necessary for me. You, if you could restore me, might be laying me open to some temptation from which God, by removing, will deliver me. Your kindness in making this world so smooth for me, I might forever have deplored in a world of misery. God's grace in afflicting me, will hereafter be the subject of my praises in a world of blessedness. Betty," added the dying woman, "do you really think that I am going to a place of rest and joy eternal?" "To be sure I do," said Betty. "Do you firmly believe that I am going to the assembly of the first-born; to the spirits of just men made perfect, to God the judge of all; and to Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant?" "I am sure you are," said Betty. "And yet," resumed she, "you would detain me from all this happiness; and you think my merciful Father is using me unkindly by removing me from a world of sin, and sorrow, and temptation, to such joys as have not entered into the heart of man to conceive; while it would have better suited your notions of reward to defer my entrance into the blessedness of heaven, that I might have enjoyed a legacy of a few hundred pounds! Believe my dying words--ALL IS FOR THE BEST."