If in the life of Mrs. Prentiss the year 1870 was marked with a white stone as one of great happiness, the two following years were marked by unusual and very acute suffering.  Perhaps something of this was, sooner or later, to have been looked for in the experience of one whose organization, both physical and mental, was so intensely sensitive.  Tragical elements are latent in every human life, especially in the life of woman.  And the finer qualities of her nature, her vast capacity of loving and of self-sacrifice, her peculiar cares and trials, as well as outward events, are always tending to bring these elements into action.  What scenes surpassing fable, scenes both bright and sad, belong to the secret history of many a quiet woman’s heart!  Then our modern civilization, while placing woman higher in some respects than she ever stood before, at the same time makes her pay a heavy price for her advantages.  In the very process of enlarging her sphere and opportunities, whether intellectual or practical, and of educating her for their duties, does it not also expose her to moral shocks and troubles and lacerations of feeling almost peculiar to our times?  Nor is religion wholly exempt from the spirit that rules the age or the hour.  There is a close, though often very subtle, connexion between the two; just as there is between the working of nature and grace in the individual soul.

The phase of her history upon which Mrs. Prentiss was now entering can not be fully understood without considering it in this light.  The melancholy that was deep-rooted in her temperament, and her tender, all-absorbing sympathies, made her very quick to feel whatever of pain or sorrow pervaded the social atmosphere about her.  The thought of what others were suffering would intrude even upon her rural retreat among the mountains, and render her jealous of her own rest and joy.  And then, in all her later years, the mystery of existence weighed upon her heart more and more heavily.  In a nature so deep and so finely strung, great happiness and great sorrow are divided by a very thin partition.

But spiritual trials and conflict gave its keenest edge to the suffering of these years.  Such trials and conflict indeed were not wanting in the earliest stages of her religious life, nor had they been wanting all along its course; but they came now with a power and in a manner almost wholly new; and, while not essentially different from those which have afflicted God’s children in all ages, they are yet traceable, in no small degree, to special causes and circumstances in her own case.  Early in 1870 she had fallen in with a book entitled “God’s Furnace,” and a few months later had made the acquaintance of its author—­a remarkable woman, of great strength of character, of deep religious experience, and full of zeal for God.  Her book was introduced to the Christian public by a distinguished Presbyterian clergyman, and was highly recommended by other eminent