Types of eternal rest, fair buds of bliss,
In heavenly flowers unfolding week by week
The next world’s gladness imaged forth in this,
Days of whose worth the Christian’s heart can speak.
Vaughan.

The Sabbath dawned clear and beautiful, bringing refreshing breezes after the intense heat of the past fortnight. After the morning service in the Methodist church Mrs. Lester stayed to the Bible class led by the minister. The lesson was the eighth chapter of Romans, and it was interesting to see two old men, with spectacles, bending earnestly over one book, and talking over the meaning of the passage. The members of the class were all men and women, and there was a very free interchange of thought, as they looked 169into the Scriptures of truth. One face especially attracted Mrs. Lester’s attention. It was a youthful face, rather large, very fair, with light hair, blue eyes, and regular features, not beautiful, but with a sweet, heavenly expression on the high brow, and in the untroubled eye. In the class-meeting that followed the Bible class, she spoke calmly, but with an unfaltering trust, of her love to the Saviour, as being the master-passion of her soul; that she loved God supremely, and found him to be a satisfying portion. Her father, who led the class, spoke to her, with tears in his eyes, of the time when her decrepit form would put on immortality, and would shine with glorious beauty; when she would know no weary hours of pain, but would dwell in the land where the inhabitants shall no more say, I am sick, but where all tears shall be wiped away.

Yes, that sweet face was the face of a 170cripple. Her form was shrunken and withered, and her limbs had never carried her whithersoever she would. Her father took her into his arms at the close of the service, her limbs hanging limp and as if without life, and carried her to the little wagon in which he had drawn her to church. Mrs. Lester asked her if she was not tired with the long service.

“O no,” she said; she would like to stay there till the evening prayer-meeting at five o’clock.

It was not very often she could go to the house of God. She felt with David, “A day in thy courts is better than a thousand: I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.” O how she loved the house of God, the place where his honor dwelleth.

This poor, crippled girl, who had known no happy childhood, who had never been able to participate in its sports, who had 171always been confined to the narrow precincts of a home destitute of all the luxuries of life, who had been daily accustomed to pain and privation, had yet found the true secret of happiness. It lay like moonlight on her countenance. She had that within which many of the rich and wise and great, who look at will on the glorious scenery of earth, who command the treasures of literature and art, who surround themselves with all the comforts and appliances of a home of elegant sufficiency, fail to gain—calm peace in her heart, perfect contentment with her lot, and a spring of never-failing happiness. Nor is she useless in the world, though she has no worldly means to give, nor hands or feet to do her bidding. The light of her holy example, her patience, meekness, resignation, and faith, are treasures to the Church. Every Wednesday............