But if it is chosen, or if there is a desire to be enabled to choose it, what a help and stimulus comes from the reading and study of the Bible, especially of the Psalms and the New Testament!  Therein are recorded every phase of the spiritual experiences of humanity in its aspiration after a knowledge of God.  Therein are recorded the words and precepts of “the Great Teacher sent from God,” who said that he and the Father were one, and that he was sent of God to seek and save the lost.  Here are the records of the compassionate expressions that fell from his lips as he proclaimed his message as the Son of God.  Whatever other opinion men may have of Christ, all must confess that in his words to and about sinning and sorrowing and suffering men and women, he displayed a love and sympathy such as earth had never known before, and such as it has known since, in kind, only in the devoted followers of Christ.  To have the memory stored with these expressions or teachings, or with the prayers and aspirations of the psalms and the prophecies, is to have a fountain of comfort and consolation for the heart, that passes all understanding.  But this fact of human experience you must accept on the testimony of those who have experienced it, until you have experienced it for yourself.

And thus, my daughter, while I wish for you the possession of all the graces and adornments of person and character that pertain to and are possible for the life that now is, how infinitely more do I desire for you that you may know God and the comforts and consolations of His word and spirit.  To know that you had sought and found for yourself this knowledge, that you knew and sought the help of the divine spirit in resisting temptation to do wrong, that in disappointment your heart would turn to God for comfort, that in sorrow you would seek consolation in communion with God, would be to feel that your future happiness was absolutely assured.  In this seeking after God, all things would be yours.  And even though you had made but a small and weak beginning to follow on and know the Lord, I should rejoice in the assurance that the good work, having been begun, would be completed unto the end.  And so I close these letters with the same summing up of all advice, all instruction, which more than four thousand years ago a prophet of God gave to his reflections upon the vicissitudes of human life:  “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:  Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

A LITTLE SERMON TO SCHOOL-GIRLS.

    Be kindly affectioned one toward another with brotherly love, in
    honor preferring one another.

    —­Rom. xii. 10.

    Whose adorning ... let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that
    which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet
    spirit which is in the sight of God of great price.