THE ABOVE is a most interesting and illuminating illustration of how a true server of Christ comes forward at a time of great need and gives herself as a living sacrifice for others.

We want you to see what probably happened. In the terrible accident to this mother of eight fatherless children, think you she was not being watched over and cared for as much as might be by loving hearts in the spirit realm? And in the dire need of these helpless little ones, think you her passionate prayer was not heard and answered?

A lovely soul must have immediately come forward and volunteered to take the place of the soul originally chosen for this new babe about to be born—if it was not already ordained that this was to be her manner of entrance into physical life, giving her opportunity to perfect herself in service. For everything that followed was an evidence of her loving self-sacrifice in order to give the souls of these children—her flesh brothers and sisters only, for “they seemed made of coarser clay”—their chance in life.

Note that “she rarely smiled,” that it was “as though she bore a burden on her back,” even during childhood; and how in her ninth year, when her time of real service was evidently to begin, “nothing of the seeming, knowing ‘nothing of the mother who had died at her birth, nor had anyone spoken to her of her brothers and sisters,” she asked to see them and actually spoke their names.

Then note how with them she was evidently in a strained listening attitude of mind, “as though she were trying to hear someone speak,” and how soon after that she was given the wonderful and unusual opportunity as a young girl to earn sufficient money so that at her eighteenth year she had provided for all her sisters and brothers and established them in situations that insured their future welfare.

All this certainly proves that because of this wonderful sacrifice, she was surely and lovingly guided and helped from the spirit side of life, that her soul was conscious all the time of what she was doing and must do and never permitted her human self to doubt or hesitate as to what was the part it must play; and then how, when her work was finished, that self was given its reward in the happiness of a perfect love and a brilliant marriage.

A beautiful lesson may be found in this true story, of how the soul knows what it comes into this life to do, and how it makes its