PREFACE. THE sorrowful need a compassionate comforter, and those who are dark in their own counsel an understanding guide, an interpreter of confused notions. If any who open this book are disquieted by perplexities too vague to be accurately described, and beyond the reach of general advice, I entreat their attention while I endeavour to meet them. It is my earnest desire to be of use to such readers. The suggestions offered will have no pretension to originality; they must be, in great measure, echoes from the teaching of wiser men; but having myself passed through the uncertainties of youth with a troubled mind, I trust that experience may give to my words some force and facility of application, or, failing in this, may at least afford the quieting pleasure of sympathy. a You desire to be understood; for, though selfconsciousness begins to be intense, you find the inner and outer life still unharmonised: you think if some one could know your inexplicable difficulties, if the strangeness of your particular grief was recognised, there might be more peace within. You have much to suffer before you entirely believe that He who made and knows all that is in man can alone truly enter into the sorrow and heal the sickness of our souls. That He may make me in any degree a good messenger to you, who, with the battle before you, have not yet chosen the subordinate parts of your armour, is my prayer. The weapons, whose efficacy I shall insist upon, are those which our Creator has provided for us, and which only our own misuse can make altogether unsuccessful. Lest any, for whom this book can have no other interest than that of an exercise for their powers of criticism, should take it up, and be offended by the indecorum of an ever-recurring "I think,” "I believe," "I advise," I must so far anticipate their censure as to acknowledge that I cannot hope to escape it. Their approval I must forego. If, in consideration of my object, they grant me |