life?

For to her, God was not what He, alas! is to so many—an unapproachable Deity, to be worshipped from afar, in fear and trembling, or a cold though sublime abstraction. No, Jesus was her friend, her counsellor, her refuge. There was familiarity and tenderness in her very love for Him; and, though she scarcely knew it herself, a deep and fervent sense of His divine humanity of those thirty-three years of earthly life, of toil, of poverty, of trouble, and of sorrow which move our very hearts within us, when we look from Bethlehem to Calvary, from the lowly birth in the Manger to the bitter death on the Cross.

We might ask, were these the pages to raise such questions, why Jesus is not more loved thus—as a friend, and a dear one, rather than as a cold master to be served, not for love, but for wages. But let it rest. Sufficient is it for us to know that not thus did Rachel Gray love him, but with a love in which humility and tenderness equally blended.

After a meditative pause, she quietly put away her things by moonlight, then again closed shutter and window, and softly stole up to the room which she shared with her step-mother. She soon fell asleep, and dreamed that she had gone to live with her father, who said to her, "Rachel! Rachel!" So great was her joy, that she awoke. She found her mother already up, and scolding her because she still slept.

"Mother," asked Rachel, leaning up on one elbow, "was it you who called me, Rachel?"

"Why aint I been a calling of you this last hour?" asked Mrs. Gray, with much asperity.

Rachel checked a sigh, and rose.

"Get up Jane—get up Mary," said Mrs. Gray, rapping soundly at the room door of the two apprentices.

"Let them sleep a little longer, poor young things!" implored Rachel.

"No, that I won't," replied her mother, with great determination, "lazy little creatures."

And to the imminent danger of her own knuckles, she rapped so pertinaciously, that Jane and Mary were unable to feign deafness, and replied, the former acting as spokeswoman, that Mrs. Gray needn't be making all that noise; for that they heard her, and were getting up. "I thought I'd make them hear me," muttered Mrs. Gray, hobbling down stairs.

There are some beings who lead lives so calm, that when they look back on years, they seem to read the story of a few days; and of these was Rachel Gray. Life for her flowed dull, monotonous and quiet, as that of a nun in her cloister. The story of one day was the story of the next. A few hopes, a few precious thoughts she treasured in her heart; but outwardly, to work, to hear idle gossip, to eat, drink, and sleep, seemed her whole portion, her destiny from mom till night, from birth to the grave.

Like every day passed this day. When it grew so dark that she could see no more to work, she put her task by, and softly stole away to a little back room up-stairs.

It was a very small room indeed, with a bed, where the apprentices slept; a chest of drawers, a table, and two chairs:—many a closet is larger. Its solitary window looked out on the little yard below; low walls, against which grew Rachel's stocks and wall-flowers, enclosed it. From the next house, there came the laughter and the screams too of children, and of babies; and from a neighbouring forge, a loud, yet not unmusical clanking, with which now and then, blended the rude voices of the men, singing snatches of popular songs. Dimmed by the smoke of the forge, and by the natural heaviness of a London atmosphere, the sky enclosed all; yet, even through the smoke and haze, fair rosy gleams of the setting sun shone in that London sky, and at the zenith there was a space of pure, ethereal blue—soft, and very far from sinful and suffering earth, where glittered in calm beauty a large and tranquil star.

Rachel sat by the window. She listened to earth: she looked at Heaven. Her heart swelled with love, and prayer, and tenderness, and hope. Tears of delight filled her eyes; she murmured to herself verses from psalms and hymns—all praising God, all telling the beauty of God's creation. Oh! pure and beautiful, indeed, would be the story of these your evening musings, if we could lightly tell it here, Rachel Gray.

Reader, if to learn how a fine nature found its way through darkness and mist, and some suffering to the highest, and to the noblest of the delights God has granted to man—the religious and the intellectual; if, we say, to learn this give you pleasure, you may read on to the end of the chapter; if not, pass on at once to the next. These pages were not written for you; and even though you should read them, feel and understand them, you never will.

Our life is twofold; and of that double life, which, like all of us, Rachel bore within her, we have as yet said but little. She was now twenty six; a tall, thin, sallow woman, ungraceful, of shy manners, and but little speech; but with a gentle face, a broad forehead, and large brown eyes. By trade, she was a dress-maker, of small pretensions; her father had forsaken her early, and her step-mother had reared her. This much, knew the little world in which moved Rachel Gray, this much, and no more. We may add, that this some little world had, in its wisdom, pronounced Rachel Gray a fool.

Her education had been very limited. She knew how to read, and she could write, but neither easily nor well. For though God had bestowed on her the rare dower of a fine mind, He had not added to it the much more common, though infinitely less precious gift, of a quick intellect. She learned slowly, with great difficulty, with sore pain and trouble. Her teachers, one and all, pronounced her dull; her step-mother was ashamed of her, and to her dying day thought Rachel no better than a simpleton.

Rachel felt this keenly; but she had no means of self-defence. She had not the least idea of how she could prove that she was not an idiot. One of the characteristics of childhood and of youth is a painful inability, an entire powerlessness of giving the form of speech to its deepest and most fervent feelings. The infirmity generally dies off with years, perhaps because also dies off the very strength of those feelings; but even as they were to last for ever with Rachel Gray, so was that infirmity destined to endure. Shy, sensitive, and nervous, she was a noble book, sealed to all save God.

At eleven, her education, such as it was, was over. Rachel had to work, and earn her bread. She was reared religiously, and hers was a deeply religious nature. The misapplication of religion narrows still more a narrow mind, but religion, taken in its true sense, enlarges a noble one. Yet, not without strife, not without suffering, did Rachel make her way. She was ignorant, and she was alone; how to ask advice she knew not, for she could not explain herself. Sometimes she seemed to see the most sublime truths, plain as in a book; at other times, they floated dark and clouded before her gaze, or vanished in deep obscurity, and left her alone and cast down. She suffered years, until, from her very sufferings, perfect faith was born, and from faith unbounded trust in God, after which her soul sank in deep and blessed peace.

And now, when rest was won, there came the want for more. Religion is love. Rachel wanted thought, that child of the intellect, as love is the child of the heart. She did not know herself what it was that she needed, until she discovered and possessed it—until she could read a book, a pamphlet, a scrap of verse, and brood over it, like a bird over her young, not for hours, not for days, but for weeks—blest in that silent meditation. Her mind was tenacious, but slow; she read few books—many would have disturbed her. Sweeter and pleasanter was it to Rachel to think over what she did read,