husband all he wanted, in full measure. But as he went on day after
day repeating this prayer, and I naturally made it with him, I came
to see that this most precious of earthly blessings had been and must
be God's gift, and that while we both looked at it in that light, and
felt our dependence on Him for it, we might safely encounter together
all the assaults made upon us by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
I believe we owe it to this constant prayer that we have loved each
other so uniformly and with such growing comfort in each other; so
that our little discords always have ended in fresh accord, and our
love has felt conscious of resting on a rock and that that rock was
the will of God."

"It is plain, then," said Helen, "that you and Ernest are sure of one
source of happiness as long as you live, whatever vicissitudes you
may meet with. I thank you so much for what you have said. The fact
is you have been brought up to carry religion into everything. But I
was not. ~ My mother was as good as she was lovely, but I think she
felt and taught us to feel, that we were to put it on as we did our
Sunday clothes, and to wear it, as we did them, carefully and
reverently, but with pretty long, grave faces. But you mix everything
up so, that when I am with you I never know whether you are most like
or most unlike other people. And your mother is just so."

"But you forget that it is to Ernest I owe my best ideas about
married life; I don't remember ever talking with my mother or any one
else on the subject. And as to carrying religion into everything, how
can one help it if one's religion is a vital part of one's self, not
a cloak put on to go to church in and hang up out of the way against
next Sunday?"