Obeying the Call by Pansy Author:Isabella Alden Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IIL BURDENS. '"NDER the influence of the sermon, and the prayers, and the glorious music, life grew to be rose-colour to Marion before she reached ... more »home that Sabbath evening. She came home with springing step, and with her heart full of plans and possibilities for the future. Not even the dismalness of her unattractive room and desolate surroundings had power to drive the song from her heart. She went about humming the grand tune with which the evening service had closed: " In the cross of Christ I glory, Towering o'er the wrecks of time." As she sang, her whole soul thrilled with the joy of glorying in such a theme, and her last thought, as she closed her eyes for the night, was about a plan of work that she meant to carry out. What could have happened in the night to so change the face of the world to her ! It looked soutterly different in the morning. School was to open, and she shrank from it, dreaded it. The work looked all drudgery, and the plans she had formed the night before seemed impossibilities. The face of nature had changed wonderfully. In place of radiant sunshine there was falling a steady, dismal rain; and nothing but umbrellas, and water-proofs, and rubber over-coats, and dreariness, were abroad. It was not that she felt utterly dismal and desolate ; it was not that she had forgotten her late experiences; it was not that she did not know that she had the Friend who is " the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;" it was simply that she could not feel it, and joy in it as she had done only yesterday; and her religious life was too recent not to be swayed by feeling and impulse. The fact that there was a clear sun shining above the clouds, and a strong and firm mountain up in the sunshine, on which it was her privilege to stand, despite ...« less