“Isabel, this is the key of your mother’s wardrobe,” said a father to his motherless daughter, and only child, on her eighteenth birthday. “Take it, and at your leisure, look over your sainted mother’s things. You are at an age now to value them.”
With these words the father, a great scholar and “bookworm,” left the room.
Isabel was soon busy looking over her young mother’s possessions. She could just remember being taken as a tiny child to kiss a pale, sweet lady in bed, and next day being told that her mother was in heaven; and, as she looked on the long-unused things, she yearned to have that fair mother by her side, for she was often lonely and cheerless.
Suddenly Isabel came on a well-worn book, bound in red morocco, with a silver clasp. It opened at once about the middle, the place being marked by a bunch of dry and colorless flowers. She saw at once that it was a small Bible, and that it opened at a place where was a verse strongly marked in red ink. That verse was, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted”; and by the side was written, “My little motherless Isabel.”
“It is almost like my mother speaking to me from the dead,” Isabel said solemnly; “she must have known I should find this someday,” and eagerly she kissed the page again and again.
The young mother had known that some time her daughter would probably find those words watered by her dying prayers. And richly God answered those prayers, for that well-worn Bible soon became her child’s greatest treasure. From it she learned the plan of salvation, and from it she drew heavenly comfort and joy that lighted up and brightened her solitary life. So true is it that “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the Word of our God shall stand forever.” (Isa. 11:88And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. (Isaiah 11:8).)
Prospect Row Sunday School
Through the kindness of Dr. H. Wreford, of Exeter, 130 pocket Testaments have been distributed to the scholars, who are eager to have them. It is a cheering sight at the evening service to see the children all over the meeting following the scripture reading from their own Testaments. Who can measure the result of getting the Word of God into these homes? ―From a Friend.