to the head of the
establishment, dressed in becoming apparel, with plenty of food at her
command, pleasant, easy work to do, and leisure enough for rest and
enjoyment, perhaps you think she was happy.

Ah, she was still a slave, and every day she was painfully reminded of
it. She could not exercise her own judgment, nor act according to her
own sense of right. She must walk in the way her master pointed out, and
do his bidding. Whatever comforts she could pick up as she went along,
she was welcome to; but she must have no choice or will of her own.

Perhaps you think her gratitude to God for his great deliverance would
make her happy. So it did for a time, and then she forgot her deliverer,
and the still greater blessing she needed to ask of him. How many there
are just like her, who cry to God for help in adversity, and forget him
when the help comes. How many who promise God, when they are in trouble
and danger, that if they are spared they will serve him, and, when the
danger is past, entirely forget their vows.

Thus it was with Tidy. She had been brought out of the cotton-field, and
the misery that curtained it all round, into circumstances of plenty and
comparative ease; and, rejoicing that the first part of her prayer was
answered, she forgot all about the second and most important petition,
"O Lord, save my soul."

But God was too faithful to forget it. He allowed her to go on in her
own course a few years longer, and then he laid his hand upon her again.
He prostrated her upon a bed of sickness, and brought her to look death
in the face. Then the Holy Spirit began to deal powerfully with her. She
realized that she was a great sinner. It seemed that she was standing on
the brink of a horrible precipice, and her sins, like so many tormenting
spirits, were ready to cast her headlong into the abyss of destruction.
Whither could she flee for safety?

She found a Bible and tried to read; but it had been so long since she
had looked into a book that she had almost forgotten what she once knew.
It was impossible for her to read right on as we do; she could only pick
out here and there a word and a sentence. One day she opened the book
and her eye fell on the word "Come." She knew that word very well.
It made her think right away of the hymn, "Come, ye sinners, poor and
needy." She thought she would read on just there, and see what it said;
and imperfectly, and after long endeavors, she made out this verse,
"Come