It was not the path I should have chosen
in my blindness and easiness. But there could no longer be any
doubt about it. How the false ambitions, the comfortable schemes,
the trivial hopes melted away for me in that serene certainty! What
I had pursued before was the phantom of delight; and though I still
desired delight, with all the passion of my poor frail nature, yet
I saw that not thus could the real joy of God be won. It was no
longer a question of hope and disappointment, of sin and
punishment. It was something truer and stronger than that. The sin
and the suffering alike had been the Will of God for me. I had
never desired evil, though I had often fallen into it; but there
was never a moment when, if I could, I would not have been pure and
unselfish and strong. That was a blessed hour for me, when, in
place of the old luxurious delight, there came, flooding my heart,
an intense and passionate desire that I might accept with a loving
confidence whatever God might send; my wearied body, my tired,
anxious mind, were but a slender veil, rent and ruinous, that hung
between God and my soul, through which I could discern the glory of
His love.
June 20, 1891.
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