do to-day, that women cannot judge nor understand such things?

Ah! he was wise, and only too glad to have all the help that Catherine
could give him. In fact, he often wrote begging her to help him more. The
outlines for addresses which she sent him weekly he valued and used, as
this letter shows:--

'I have,' he writes, 'just taken hold of that sketch you sent me on "Be
not deceived," and am about to make a full sermon on it. I like it much.
It is admirable.

'I want a sermon on the Flood, one on Jonah, and one on the Judgment.
Send me some bare thoughts, some clear, startling outlines. We must have
that kind of truth which will move sinners.'

But if Catherine Mumford was anxious about the mind and work of her
future husband, much more was she anxious about his soul. To her, there
could be no true love without faithfulness, and where she felt it
necessary, she cautioned him in the truest and tenderest way:--

'You have special need,' she writes, 'for watchfulness and for much
private intercourse with God.

'My dearest love, beware how you indulge that dangerous element of
character, ambition. Misdirected, it will be everlasting ruin to
yourself, and perhaps to me also. Oh, my love, let nothing earthly excite
it; let not the wish to be great fire it. Fix it on the Throne of the
Eternal, and let it find the realization of its loftiest aspirations in
the promotion of His glory, and it shall be consummated with the richest
enjoyments and brightest glories of God's own Heaven.'