cannot catch the blisful vision right,"

he was like one enraptured, as with tearful eyes, quivering lips, and
clasped hands he listened to the soul-stirring hymn. Little Abe was
ripening for the end.

"ARISE! LET US GO UP TO BETHEL."

A touching little incident is told of him about this time. He always
retained an affectionate regard for the old tree on Almondbury Common,
where many years before he had made his peace with God, and now a
strong desire was felt by him to visit the consecrated spot once more
before he died. It was his Bethel pillar; against that old tree he had
rested his weary head on the dark night of his desolation; there the
Lord God had appeared to him, and filled his soul with the joys of his
salvation; there the morning of a new life first broke upon his
troubled spirit; there he had made a covenant with the God of Jacob.
That old pillar was anointed with the first tears of sanctified joy
which ever fell from his eyes; it was the altar on which he offered his
broken and renewed heart to God, and he felt as if the Lord had given
it to him as an inheritance and a monument of His pardoning mercy.

He must see it once more and renew his vows to God; so one day they
wrapped him up in his great coat, and gave him his stick, and sent him
forth alone to his first sanctuary. Feebly and slowly the old man made
his way to the spot, and standing on the very ground, and with his hand
upon the same old tree, he saw how the locality was altered. Men had
been busy during these years, population had increased in the
neighbourhood, houses were built in different places, and many changes
had taken place. But there still remained the little running stream
close by,--figure to him of the stream of Divine grace, that had never
been cut off, never dried up in the drought of summer, never stopped by
the chill of winter, never lost in the wild growth of the wilderness
world; but on and on it flowed, down the incline of the moral world,
winding and turning from side to side, as if to gladden all in its
course, away down the hill among the gaps of the rocks, and over the
gravelly ground of human life, until it finds its way again into the
river of God's eternal love. And there too, stood the tree, the
monument; but both man and tree bore unmistakable marks of age. The
unwearying fingers of time had planted innumerable mosses against its
bark; some of its old branches had withered, its foliage was scantier
than