ound the throne,
`Rejoice, for the Lord brings back his own!'"

"Thank you, Thomas, thank you most sincerely," cried the sick girl,
raising herself again. "Yes, I trust that these beautiful words _do_
apply to me. Jesus has gone after me, a poor wandering and rebellious
sheep, and brought me back again. Do then, kind friend, tell my dear
class for me that I have found all out of Christ to be emptiness, and
that there can be no true happiness here unless we are working for him.

"Of course, I might have pursued my studies innocently had I given to
them leisure hours when other duties had been done, and then they would
have been a delight to me, and a source of real improvement. But
instead of that I made an idol of them, and they became a snare to me.
I lived for them, and in them, and all else was as good as forgotten.
Yes, even my Bible, that was once so precious,--it might as well have
lain on the shelf, and indeed, latterly, it has seldom been anywhere
else. I had no time for reading it; earthly studies absorbed every
moment. But now it has become to me again truly my Bible; it has shown
me, and shows me more and more plainly every day, my sin and my neglect.
Ah! It is an awful thing when the struggle after this world's honours
and prizes makes us thrust aside thoughts of God and of the crown of
glory. It has been so with me. I have been chasing an illuminated
shadow until it has suddenly vanished, and left me in a darkness that
might be felt.

"Tell my girls, then, dear friend, to take warning from me. Tell them
how I mourn over my wasted life; but tell them also that I have a good
hope that God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven me, and ask them to pray
for me. The great lesson I want you to impress upon them from my case
is just this, that no knowledge can be worth having that interferes with
our following our Saviour; that no pursuit, though it may not be
outwardly sinful or manifestly worldly, which unfits us in body or mind
for doing our duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to
call us, can be innocent, for it robs Jesus of that service which we all
owe to him.

"And now I am going to ask you to give these photographs, one a piece,
to my girls: they will value them, I know, as the likeness of one who
was once happy in being their teacher, and who hopes, should God spare
her, to be their teacher again; a better instructed teacher far, I hope,
because taught in the school of bitter