"Suppose you have to live with people who were perfectly uncongenial; who misunderstood you and who were always getting into your way as stumbling blocks?"
"If I were living with them and they made me unhappy I would ask God to relieve me of this trial if He thought it best. If He did not think it best, I would then try to find out the reason. He might have two reasons. one would be the good they might do me. The other the good I might do them."
"But in the case I was supposing, neither party can be of the least use to the other."
"You forget perhaps the indirect good one may gain by living with uncongenial, tempting persons. First such people do good by the very self denial and self control their mere presence demands. Then, their making one's home less homelike and perfect than it would be in their absence, may help to render our real home in heaven more attractive...we only know ourselves and what we really are, when the force of circumstances bring us out into the open."
"It is very mortifying and painful to find out how weak I am."
"That is true. But our mortifications are some of God's best physicians, and do much toward healing our pride and self conceit."
- Stepping Heavenward (Elizabeth Prentiss)
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