You cannot long continue miserable, when you feel the power you have of making so many of your fellow-creatures happy.

You are ill, exhausted now, and therefore all around you looks so full of gloom and pain, yet when this shall have passed, you will not reject the comfort that remains.

Have you not an approving conscience to support you, the consciousness that you have proved your love and gratitude to the parents you so fondly love?
and think you He, who looks with an eye of favour on the faintest effort of His creatures, made for His sake, and in His spirit, will permit this strength to pass unaided?
No, dearest, He will assist and strengthen you; He can take even from this bitter trial its sting." "I know it, I feel it," murmured Emmeline, still clinging to her cousin, as if she found comfort in her presence and her words.

"I know well that this trial in itself is as nothing compared with those endured at this very hour by thousands of my fellow-creatures, and knowing this makes me the more wretched, for if I am thus repining and miserable, how dare I hope my prayers will be heard ?" "Yet doubt it not, my own Emmeline; our Father in heaven judgeth not as man judgeth.

Man might condemn this appearance of weakness in you now, but God will not, for he knows the individual strength of His creatures, and in love and mercy chasteneth accordingly.