When Mrs. Ford had got through her evening duties, and the little ones were hushed in sound slumber, she sat down near the open window to rest, her eye falling, as she did so, on Bessie’s card.  The motto upon it carried her thoughts away to the time when, as a newly-married wife, she had listened to a sermon on that very text,—­a time when, rejoicing in the happiness of her new life, she had felt her heart beat with gratitude to Him who had so freely given her all things, and with a sincere desire to live to His glory.  How had the desire been carried out?  A very busy life hers had been, and still was.  The innumerable cares and duties of her family and farm and dairy had filled it with never-ceasing active occupations, as was natural and right; but was it right that these occupations should have so crowded out the very principle that would have given a holy harmony to her life, and been a fountain of strength to meet the cares and worries that will fret the stream of the most prosperous course?  Sacred words, learned in her childhood, recurred to her mind:  “And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”  Had not that been her own experience?  Where were the fruits that might have been expected from “the word” in her?—­the Christian influence and training which might have made her household what a Christian household ought to be?

Had not the “cares of this world” been made the chief concern—­the physical and material well-being of her family made far more prominent than the development of a life hid with Christ in God?  Had not the very smoothness and prosperity of her life, and her self-complacency in her own good management, been a snare to her?  Her husband, good and kind as he was, was, she knew, wholly engrossed with the things of this life; and her boys—­steadier, she often thought with pride, than half the boys of the neighbourhood—­had never yet been made to feel that they were not their own, but bought with the price of a Saviour’s blood.  Such higher knowledge as Bessie had was due to Miss Preston, for, like many mothers, she had not scrupled to devolve her own responsibilities on the Sunday-school teachers, and thought her duty done when she had seen her children, neatly dressed, set off to school on Sunday afternoon.  And the little ones she had just left asleep—­had she earnestly commended them to the Lord, and tried to teach them such simple truths about their Saviour as their infant minds could receive?

All these thoughts came crowding into her mind, as they sometimes will when the voice of the Spirit can find an entrance into our usually closed hearts; and she shrank from the thought of the account she should have to give of the responsibilities abused, the trust unfulfilled.  Happily, she did not forget that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins;” and that quiet hour of meditation, and confession, and humble resolve was one of the most profitable seasons Mrs. Ford had ever known.  For God, unlike man, can work without as well as with outward instrumentality.