“It was,” she used to say, “a message from the Lord to my soul, and came to me with such power that I went on my way rejoicing.”  Ever after this text was a favourite one.  She always looked upon it as peculiarly her own.  Very practical was her reading of God’s Word.  She, indeed, expected to find in it a word from Him.  Just at the time of her setting out for her new home she read as usual her daily portion in Bogatsky’s Golden Treasury.  Through two leaves of the book being stuck together, she had missed the portion appointed for the day before.  But now it presented itself to her eye—­and no less surely to her heart:  “Have not I commanded thee?  Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed:  for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”  Her comment was, “That was another message from the Lord, that put strength into me.”

Many years afterwards she wrote:  “It was this day sixteen years that the text in Bogatsky was given to me from Joshua 1. 9, and truly I have found the goodness of the Lord with me, and everything temporal that I committed to Him He has indeed kept.  It is really most wonderful when I see trials and trouble all around me, to see how everything I prayed for regarding my own home has been accomplished; and shall I not trust Him for my soul, and for all that guidance I so greatly need in all that He would have me to do?  Surely He will guide me in spiritual as well as in temporal things; and the more I cease from man, and from any child of man, the more I shall be enabled to live simply to His glory.”  Another sixteen years passed.  The duchess was within a few days of her death.  She heard that a young man was in anxiety about his preparation for the ministry.  “He looks to difficulties; give him for a New Year’s message from me, Joshua 1. 9:  ’Have not I commanded thee?  Be strong and of a good courage; neither be thou dismayed.’  These words were given to me after Duke Alexander’s death, and from that day onward they have been a help to me.”

IV.

GOOD WORKS AT GORDON CASTLE.

The duchess did not write a regular diary.  But for one week in the first year of her residence at Gordon Castle such a record was kept.  Extracts from it may serve to give some insight into her thoughts and life.  The reader will be struck with the marked self-humiliation which was so characteristic of this child of God.  “I desired to have resolution to commence and continue a journal, that I might obtain a clearer view of my own heart, which I know, alas! to be deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  Well may I say with Job, ’I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.’” “A day lost though well begun; more peace, more clear belief, but, alas! not less indifference, not less hardness of heart; great idleness; after breakfast little or nothing done.  O Lord, deliver me from pride and vanity, and make me a humble and devoted