’You see, Mrs. Dempster, how deep my need was.  I went on in this way for months.  I was convinced that if I ever got health and comfort, it must be from religion.  I went to hear celebrated preachers, and I read religious books.  But I found nothing that fitted my own need.  The faith which puts the sinner in possession of salvation seemed, as I understood it, to be quite out of my reach.  I had no faith; I only felt utterly wretched, under the power of habits and dispositions which had wrought hideous evil.  At last, as I told you, I found a friend to whom I opened all my feelings—­to whom I confessed everything.  He was a man who had gone through very deep experience, and could understand the different wants of different minds.  He made it clear to me that the only preparation for coming to Christ and partaking of his salvation, was that very sense of guilt and helplessness which was weighing me down.  He said, You are weary and heavy-laden; well, it is you Christ invites to come to him and find rest.  He asks you to cling to him, to lean on him; he does not command you to walk alone without stumbling.  He does not tell you, as your fellow-men do, that you must first merit his love; he neither condemns nor reproaches you for the past, he only bids you come to him that you may have life:  he bids you stretch out your hands, and take of the fulness of his love.  You have only to rest on him as a child rests on its mother’s arms, and you will be upborne by his divine strength.  That is what is meant by faith.  Your evil habits, you feel, are too strong for you; you are unable to wrestle with them; you know beforehand you shall fall.  But when once we feel our helplessness in that way, and go to the Saviour, desiring to be freed from the power as well as the punishment of sin, we are no longer left to our own strength.  As long as we live in rebellion against God, desiring to have our own will, seeking happiness in the things of this world, it is as if we shut ourselves up in a crowded stifling room, where we breathe only poisoned air; but we have only to walk out under the infinite heavens, and we breathe the pure free air that gives us health, and strength, and gladness.  It is just so with God’s spirit:  as soon as we submit ourselves to his will, as soon as we desire to be united to him, and made pure and holy, it is as if the walls had fallen down that shut us out from God, and we are fed with his spirit, which gives us new strength.’

‘That is what I want,’ said Janet; ’I have left off minding about pleasure.  I think I could be contented in the midst of hardship, if I felt that God cared for me, and would give me strength to lead a pure life.  But tell me, did you soon find peace and strength?’