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26 it. Each must bear his own burden, is the earthly sentence on the sick and suffering. Happy those who can cast their care on the Saviour, and realize that He careth for them.

This sweet experience was not gained without an effort, even by so spiritual a nature as Charlotte Elliott. Let none of my young readers think that the careful training of pious parents, the possession of a gentle temper and kindly natural disposition, will be enough in themselves, to secure comfort during the tedious, wearing trials of oft-recurring or long-continued sickness. It needs the special grace of a lively faith in all being ordered by a heavenly Father^s love, before the blessing is fully realized that He is near to sustain and comfort, and that in the darkest hour His voice sounds in the depths of the spirit, "It is I; be not afraid." This triumph over bodily affliction is only gained if, and when, it has been earnestly sought; and so we read that there was a time in Charlotte Elliott's early youth when she was not in the full enjoyment of that hope through believing which alone brings peace.

Her opportunities of meeting highly-intellectual people in circles of fashionable life, though often restricted by delicacy of constitution, were yet frequent enough to exercise a great fascination over her mind, and might have led her to prize worldly amusements and intellectual triumphs as a chief good; in which case there must inevitably have followed a bitter sense of hardship and loss, when