to God for help, so utterly weak and ignorant am I and so dependent upon
Him. Sometimes in my walks, especially those of the early morning, I
take a verse from the "Daily Food" to think upon; at others, if my mind
is where I want it should be, everything seems to speak and suggest
thoughts of my Heavenly Father, and when it is otherwise I feel as
if that time had been wasted. This is not "keeping the mind on the
stretch," and is delightfully refreshing. All I wish is that I were
always thus favored. As to a hasty temper, I know that anybody who ever
lived with me, until within the last two or three years, could tell
you of many instances of outbreaking passion. I am ashamed to say how
recently the last real tempest occurred, but I will not spare myself. It
was in the spring of 1838, and I did not eat anything for so long that I
was ill in bed and barely escaped a fever. Mother nursed me so tenderly
that, though she forgave me, I _never_ shall forgive myself. Since then
I should not wish you to suppose that I have been perfectly amiable, but
for the last year I think I have been enabled in a measure to control my
temper, but of that you know more than I do, as you had a fair specimen
of what I am when with us last summer. It has often been a source of
encouragement to me that everybody said I was gentle and amiable till
my father's death, when I was nine years old.... While reading to-night
that chapter in Mark, where it speaks of Jesus as walking on the sea,
I was interested in thinking how frequently such scenes occur in our
spiritual passage over the sea which is finally to land us on the shores
of the home for which we long. "While they were toiling in rowing,"
Jesus went to them upon the water and "would have passed by" till He
heard their cries, and then He manifested Himself unto them saying, _"It
is I."_ And when He came to them, the wind ceased and they "wondered."
Surely we have often found in our toiling that Jesus was passing by
and ready at the first trembling fear to speak the word of love and
of consolation and to give us the needed help, and then to leave