"Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in." The truth of these words from Israel's sweet psalmist was revealed to me in all their beauty and sublimity when, five years ago, I caught the sweet strain in my innermost soul, and was thereby enabled to break the tends of earth asunder, after long years of suffering.
For sixteen years I was a constant sufferer, knowing no respite from mental and physical ills, and existing only through the tentative methods of materia medica. Living in a family of physicians, and myself the wife of one, I was truly well immersed in all the paraphernalia of what the art consists in,—medicine, surgery, and electricity,—all to no avail and without hope for permanent recovery. Temporary relief from pain and constant torment was obtained through ease-potions in the shape of anæstheties. Frequent admonishments to patience was my only solace. Not even the blessed hope of death was likely soon to relieve me, for I was pronounced very tenacious of life, and had demonstrated the fact beyond any doubt in many perilous ordeals. To be able to endure all things seemed to be the fate allotted to me.
Sickness and death had robbed me of earth's choicest treasure, when in grief and unmitigated sorrow I stood alone with my God. The sounds of earth jarred fearfully upon my sensitive soul, and my church (the Presbyterian), in which I had been reared, and to the teaching of which I had longingly trusted, could no longer sustain me. I turned away and prayed beseechingly, heart-brokenly, for more than two years at the foot of a little vacant chair, that I might find the light which "fadeth not away," and "the peace of God which passeth all understanding." In answer to my call it seemed that "the rod which reforms." was once more presented in multiplied and greatly augmented physical suffering, and I grew desperate.
