Mrs. Lewis turned a loving, pitying look on the pretty young wife, and whispered a prayer for her as she answered: 

“Jeremiah and David did not find it a gloomy book, for they both said this:  ‘Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.’  My dear, I want to put my testimony with theirs, that in a long lifetime—­part of it spent in every variety of worldly pleasure—­that there is nothing, nothing that has or can give me the joy that the words of my dear Lord do.  I claim no credit that it is so.  I believe that the same sweet experience will be given to all who truly desire it.”

“I can’t agree with that idea, either,” said Mrs. Brown, “that the best kind of food is what one relishes most.  My children relish pie and cake and candies wonderfully, but I know it is not good for them to eat much of them.  When they have no appetite for good bread and milk, and such nourishing food, I know there is something amiss with them—­they are sick—­and did you ever notice this?  Children who are allowed to live mostly on these knicknacks do not relish plain food, and do not thrive.  The text that was last read did not say that we were to read the Bible as a duty, but to desire it.  If we have no appetite for the spiritual nourishment that is best for us to grow on, I do not know why we are not sick Christians?”

“It strikes me,” said Mrs. Peterson, who had watched in vain for an opportunity to speak before, “that while you are talking about the Bible being food for us, making us grow, and all that, my text about meditation comes in; David says, ’I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation.’  I can speak from experience about that; I know it makes a sight of difference how you read.  I had quite a sick spell once, a sort of low fever, and when I began to get better I was so weak I couldn’t eat hardly anything; I heard the woman that took care of me tell the doctor that if I didn’t eat more I’d starve as sure as the world; and the doctor said, ’no I wouldn’t, that the amount a body ate wasn’t the main thing, it was what was digested, and that it did mischief to eat more than one could digest; so I kept on taking my little bit of beef-tea a good many times a day, but I was very weak for a long time:  I couldn’t even hold my Bible to read it, and I began to fret about it; I was used to reading my two or three chapters a day, and I felt sort o’ lost without them.  One day my next neighbour brought in what she called a ‘Silent Comforter,’ and hung it on the wall; it had only three or four texts on a page in large letters, so that I could read it without glasses.  Well, what a comfort that was, to be sure.  I had nothing to do all day but lie there and think of those verses; it seemed like a new Bible.  Every morning they turned a leaf over, and I was more anxious to see what my new verses would be, than to eat my breakfast.  When I got a little stronger I wrote down everything