Let not the more favoured ones, on whom from their cradles the blessed
light of divine truth has steadily shone, smile at this poor child's
ignorance, but rather try to show their gratitude for higher
privileges, by seeking to impart some of the light shed on them so
abundantly to those who are still wandering in darkness.

On Nelly's listening heart Mr. Raymond's sermon did not fall so
fruitlessly as some might have expected. For God is, for all, the
hearer and answerer of prayer, and He never leaves unheard the weakest
cry to Him. As the lonely child once more sought her comfortless home,
she felt a stirring of new hope within her, and scarcely minded her
mother's rough words when she demanded, "What have you been doing out
so late? No good, I am sure!"

Mrs. Connor had been enlarging, among sympathizing friends, on the
hardship of her having to support her husband's child when he did so
little himself for his family. "My goodness! all he gives us wouldn't
half pay Nelly's board," she had declared; and as her grievances were
still fresh in her mind, she greeted her step-child with even more
asperity than usual.

But as Nelly crept away to her hard little bed, perhaps some angel,
sent to minister to the motherless child, may have known that the
"good-for-nothing," ignorant little girl, oppressed with the feeling
of her own sinfulness, and full of the thought of her new-found
heavenly Friend, was nearer the kingdom of heaven than the petted,
admired, winning Stella Brooke, who had never yet learned her need of
the Saviour, who came "not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance."