‘Now of course I have not exactly the same kind of landscape before me as I had at thirteen. I am in my forty-sixth year, have known care and sorrow, and have at present but feeble health. And yet, dear, I don’t want to exchange my landscape; I have no wish to go back. I have found that middle age has its deep joys, as well as early youth its sparkling ones. Sometimes I ask myself,--“Now, in my present position, if I had no pleasure in religion, if everything connected with that were cut off, what would be left me?--what would life be to me?” O Leila, what a tasteless, what a bitter thing! We want delights that will not grow old, that will never pall, that will be just as fresh and lovely at eighty as at eighteen. Religion is not merely, as some seem to fancy, to prepare us for death, but to be the happiness of life. It calls indeed for the sacrifice of self-will in a hundred little ways; but it repays those little sacrifices a hundred times over. Just think what it is to realise such thoughts as these,--“The Lord Jesus loves me! I am His own! I shall see Him one day, and be with Him!” How can such thoughts ever lose their sweetness?’