I was called upon once in my ministerial duties to visit a woman who was in great distress of mind. I do not desire to meet many such as she was. A more forlorn or wretched-looking specimen of humanity it would be hard to find. She had a pale, haggard, careworn countenance, across which, during all my visits to her, there flitted not one ray of hope, one smile of gladness. She fancied she had committed the unpardonable sin, although she did not seem to have a very definite idea of what the nature of that sin was. She thought there was hope for every one, and an offer of mercy for every one, but herself. One day I asked her for her Bible. She handed it to me with a sigh. It was a small Bible, and on turning over the leaves I found it filled with slips of paper and bits of ribbon, which she had put in to mark familiar passages. A great many of the leaves had the corners turned down for the same purpose. I read quite a number of these texts, and found them to be the most terrible threatenings contained in the word of God. There were multitudes of exceedingly great and precious promises, but she did not seem to have touched one of them; she ignored them altogether. Reading simply the passages she had marked, one would be inclined to think there was no such thing as sunshine. I took the Bible in my hands, and shook these bits of paper and pieces of ribbon out of it. I turned up the corners, which she had turned down, and marked for her such passages as these: “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth from all sin.” “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” “He is able to save unto the uttermost, all that come unto God through him.” “Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” That Bible of hers was not intended to make her gloomy, and sad, and melancholy; on the other hand, it was intended to be to her the “glad tidings of great joy;” and had she used it aright, it would have been to her an overflowing fountain of comfort and happiness. Now it seems to me that a great many Christians treat Christianity the same way that the woman treated her Bible. They mark all the gloomy places they can gather up in their history of the life of faith, and let the bright, cheery ones go. For instance, they find a law in their members warring against the law of their minds, which brings them into captivity to the law of sin which is in their members, and right there they turn down a corner. Another place, they find that God was hiding his face behind a cloud, and there they turn down another corner. Another place, they find that if they are the children of God, they must cleanse themselves of all uncleanness of the flesh and spirit, and must perfect holiness in the sight of God. This requires a great deal of self-denial, and they turn down another corner. Another place, they find that the troubles that afflict the just, in number they may be, and down goes another corner; and so it is through their whole lives. Some have a corner turned down for every day they live a life of faith, and they are constantly reading these gloomy passages, and calling them to mind and talking about them, and meditating on them. Now I believe this is all wrong. Such representations of Christian life are not truthful. They are one-sided, very much so, and do an immense amount of injury. They are gloomy, fearing, doubting Christians who dwell so much on the dark spots in their history and ignore the sunshine. They hinder their own well-being, and instead of growing all over, instead of growing in every grace, they grow only in a few. They are patient Christians—very patient it may be; they are submissive Christians, very submissive to the will of God; but what about hope, and what about joy? These are the fruits of the Spirit, and ought to thrive as well as other fruits, ought to be as carefully tended, so that when the Master comes into his garden he may find his pleasant fruits. Besides that, these one-sided representations of Christianity have a bad effect on those we are trying to win. It is such representations that give point to the charge that is so often made by those upon whom we press claims, that religion is a heart-saddening thing. Imagine a man button-holing his friend, and saying, “Come along with me, move down into our country; the fields are full of thorns and thistles and swampy places. It is a splendid place to get chills and fever. There is any amount of sickness. We have an immense hospital, and it is always full.” Do you think the man would be inclined to go? That is bad enough. But it is just as bad for a Christian to say to his neighbor, “Come along with me, we have a sorrowful time of it; we enter the kingdom through much tribulation,” and say nothing at all about the joy, the happiness, the sunshine and the flowers. Christianity was not intended to make a man gloomy, and despondent, and melancholy at all. God gave it to us as a thing of joy, to make us happier and gladder at the heart than we were without it. Its whole tendency when received into the soul is to make man joyful. A man does not lose, but gains, when he becomes possessed of true religion, for “godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life which now is and that which is to come.” We who profess it ought for our own sakes to turn down the corners at its joyous passages, think about them more than we do, and let our light shine so that others will be led to glorify our Father who is in Heaven.—United Presbyterian.