Besides this capacity for suffering, Mrs. Prentiss had a very clear cognition of the sacred office of suffering, and of its relation to perfection of character.  There were two ideas which pervaded her whole theory of religious experience.  The one was that whenever God has special work for His children to do, He always fits them for it by suffering.  She had the most intense conviction of any one I ever knew of the necessity of suffering to perfection of character or of work.  Doubtless there have been others who have learned as well as she its value as a purifying and exalting power, but very few, I think, who have so early and so uncompromisingly taken that truth into their theory of Christian education.  She quoted with approval the words of Madame Guyon, that “God rarely, if ever, makes the educating process a painless one when He wants remarkable results.”  Such must drink of Christ’s cup and be baptized with His baptism.  Along with this went another and a complementary thought, viz., that as God prepares His workmen for great work by suffering, so there is another class of His children whom He does not find competent to this preparation; who escape much of the conflict and suffering, but never attain the highest enjoyments or fight the decisive battles of time....  In a volume of Fenelon’s Christian Counsel, which was one of her favorite closet companions, this passage is scored:  God “attacks all the subtle resources of self-love within, especially in those souls who have generously and without reserve delivered themselves up to the operations of His grace.  The more He would purify them, the more He exercises them interiorly.”  And she has added a special note at the foot of the page:  “He never forces Himself on ungenerous souls for this work.”

Along with this went the thought that God’s discipline was intended to make not only models, but ministers; that one who had passed through the furnace with Christ was to emerge from the fiery baptism not merely to be gazed at, but to go down to his brethren telling with power the story of the “form of the Fourth.”  This is the sentiment of some lines addressed by her to an afflicted friend: 

  “O that this heart with grief so well acquainted
    Might be a fountain, rich and sweet and full,
  For all the weary that have fallen and fainted
    In life’s parched desert—­thirsty, sorrowful.

  “Thou Man of Sorrows, teach my lips that often
    Have told the sacred story of my woe,
  To speak of Thee till stony griefs I soften—­
    Till those that know Thee not, learn Thee to know.”

At a comparatively early period of her Christian experience, the theme of her prayer was:  “I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory”; for in the answer to that prayer there seemed, as she said, to be summed up everything that she needed or could desire.  In a paper in which she recorded some of her aspirations, she wrote:  “Let my life be an all-day looking to Jesus.  Let my love to God be so deep, earnest, and all-pervading, that I can not have even the passing emotion of rebellion to suppress.  There is such a thing as an implicit faith in, and consequent submission to, Christ.  Let me never rest till they are fully mine.”