and joys, like a thin mist in early morning, vanished in the light of
eternity; and quickly from that young heart, pierced with a new
sorrow, went up the prayer, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"

How little the world understands that same old prayer. Yonder afar
off stands a man who, having trafficked in all iniquity, having
matured in wickedness, and perfected himself in the fine art of
dodging truth and conscience, is at length found out in the thicket
of his own vices by a bull's eye that glares on him like hell. Well
it befits such an one, even the world admits, to smite upon his
breast and cry for mercy. But for a girl in her teens, an innocent,
merry-hearted, pure-minded young thing, to raise a cry for mercy like
a very publican or a prodigal, is confounding to the world's sense of
propriety and measure in things; and hence that world is angry, and
in effect repudiates the need of so much mercy, of so much abasement
and urgency in a case like this. The root and rise of this cry for
mercy the natural man does not understand; but that soul knows it
right well, where the lightnings of Omniscient Holiness have gleamed
and the shadows of God's anger have fallen.

The cry was heard. Light arose on that troubled soul, the Saviour
appeared and drew the sinking one out of the waters. Even where there
is little to be changed outwardly, conversion is always followed by
remarkable effects; the light of the morning is like a new creation
on the cultivated field as well as on the barren moor. Our young
convert saw everything in a new light. She understood now, as she had
not before, why her mother, stealing precious hours from sleep,
wearied her fingers and weakened her eyes with the self-imposed task
of providing for the necessities of children not her own. If a ruling
motive is one of the greatest things in the secret of a human life,