The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

60

60 THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

"64Oh, that isn't right," replied my mother; "4you
shouldn't say that. If you can't be happy one Sunday
here, what will you do when you go to heaven? Don't you
know your papa tells you Heaven is one eternal Sunday? "
After thinking a moment in a child's fashion, I uttered
the only hope that presented itself to me:
"11Well, I won't worry about it now, for perhaps I shan't
have to go there!"1
Undoubtedly, I often received impressions that my
religious instruictors did not intend to give. But in some
way, I had come to regard God as only a judge,- who tried
human beings, condemned or acquitted them, and sent them
to ~reward or punishment. But Jesus Christ, the beloved
Son of God, loved the world so much that he died to save
it, and he would save everybody if he could. To this forgiving, loving, all-befriending Saviour would I pray; and I
ceased addressing my prayers night and morning to God,
and instead of beginning my petitions, "1Our Father who
art in heaven," I addressed them to "1Our Jesus who art in
heaven." My father became aware of this and sought to
change my custom. But he only succeeded when I was
required to pray aloud in his presence. In his absence I
continued to address my prayers to Jesus. My mother
never condemned me for it. Once she said, "1God the
Father is good and to be loved as well as Jesus Christ.
He doesn't want any one to be lost."
When I was between seven and eight years old, I was
taken to my mother's chamber one wintry March morning
to welcome a newly-arrived sister. I bent down to kiss the
plump, rosy, sleeping baby. Then the thought flashed