Ruth Arnold

And yet she was hardly sure that she was a Christian; and although she longed to set her mother's mind at rest upon that point, she could not venture to do so just yet. Like many another child of pious parents, she had been trained to love good and hate evil; she had been taught to pray and to desire to live a Christian life; she had long since begun the never-ending conflict against evil and tried to rule her life and actions by God's Word; and yet she could not tell whether the promptings and impulses towards the Saviour which often came to her heart, were merely the result of the loving sanctified home-influence which had surrounded her from her birth, or if she had indeed become a disciple, though but a feeble one, of the meek and lowly Jesus.

In the quiet calm of a summer day, when the wind scarcely ruffles the waters of the bay, it is difficult to say whether the fair ship riding at anchor will prove herself seaworthy. It is when the storm rises in its fury and the billows dash over her