to come--but
lead us thereby. Knowing ourselves only as poor and feeble, aware only
of ordinary and common movements of mind and soul, may we yet be
possessed by the spirit of God, led by His will in ours. For all things
in a man, even those that seem to him the commonest and least uplifted,
are the creation of Thy heart, and by the lowly doors of our wavering
judgment, dull imagination, luke-warm love, and palsied will, Thou canst
enter and glorify all. Give us patience because our hope is in Thee, not
in ourselves. Work Thy will in us, and our prayers are ended. Amen."

They rose. The curate said he would call again in the evening, bade
them good-by, and went. Mr. Drake turned to his daughter and said--

"Dorothy, that's not the way I have been used to pray or hear people
pray; nevertheless the young man seemed to speak very straight up to
God. It appears to me there was another spirit there with his. I will
humble myself before the Lord. Who knows but he may lift me up!"

"What can my father mean by saying that perhaps God will lift him up?"
said Dorothy to herself when she was alone. "It seems to me if I only
knew God was anywhere, I should want no other lifting up. I should then
be lifted up above every thing forever."

Had she said so to the curate, he would have told her that the only way
to be absolutely certain of God, is to see Him as He is, and for that we
must first become absolutely pure in heart. For this He is working in
us, and perfection and vision will flash together. Were conviction
possible without that purity and that vision, I imagine it would work
evil in us, fix in their imperfection our ideas, notions, feelings,
concerning God, give us for His glory the warped reflection of our
cracked and spotted and rippled glass, and so turn our worship into an
idolatry.

Dorothy was a rather little woman, with lightish auburn hair, a large
and somewhat heavy forehead, fine gray eyes, small well-fashioned
features, a fair complexion on a thin skin, and a mouth that would have
been better in shape if it had not so often been informed of trouble.
With this trouble their poverty had nothing to do; that did not weigh
upon her a straw. She was proud to share her father's lot, and could
have lived on as little as any laboring woman with seven children. She
was indeed a trifle happier since her father's displacement, and would
have been happier still had he found it within the barest possibility to
decline the