how weary in body and mind and heart she was as she
sat down among the people! It seemed to her that not one of all the
congregation was so hopeless or so helpless as she--that no one in all
the world needed a Saviour more. As she sat there in the silence that
preceded the opening of the meeting, all her fears and anxieties came
over her like a flood, and she felt herself unable to stand up against
them in her own strength. She was hardly conscious of putting into
words the cry of her heart for help; but words are not needed by Him
from whom alone help can come.

God does not always choose the wisest and greatest, even among his own
people, to do his noblest work. It was a very humble servant of God
through whose voice words of peace were spoken to Shenac. In the midst
of her trouble she heard a voice--an old man's weak, quavering voice--
saying,--

"Praise God. The Lord praise, O my soul.
I'll praise God while I live;
While I have being to my God
In songs I'll praises give.
Trust not in princes;"

and so on to the fifth verse, which he called the key-note of the
psalm:--

"O happy is that man and blest,
Whom Jacob's God doth aid;
Whose hope upon the Lord doth rest,
And on his God is stay'd;"

and so on to the end of the 146th Psalm, pausing on every verse to tell,
in plain and simple words, why it is that they who trust in God are so
blessed.

I daresay there were some in the kirk that night who grew weary of the
old man's talk, and would fain have listened to words more fitly chosen;
but Shenac was not one of these. As she listened, there came upon her a
sense of her utter sinfulness and helplessness, and then an
inexpressible longing for the help of Him who is almighty. And I cannot
tell how it came to pass, but even as she sat there she felt her
heaviest burdens roll away; the clouds that had hung over her so long,
hiding the light, seemed to disperse; and she saw, as it were, face to
face, Him who came to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, and
thenceforth all was well with her.

Well in the best sense. Not that her troubles and cares were at an end.
She had many of these yet; but after this she lived always in the
knowledge that she had none that were not of God's sending, so she no
longer wearied herself by trying to bear her burdens alone.

It was not that life was changed to her. _She_ was changed. The same
Spirit who, through God's Word and the example and influenc