Stepping Heavenward

During the past few weeks, I have been reading "Stepping Heavenward" by Elizabeth Prentiss for the third or fourth time. Each time I read it, I learn so much and am so inspired by it. It is written in the form of a diary of a girl named Katherine ("Katy") Mortimer. I highly recommend it to anyone, and especially any young woman, who is seeking to follow after Christ. I have so many favorite excerpts from it that I would practically have to copy out the whole book in order to record them all here, but I have posted an excerpt on another site, and thought I would post that here as well since I have already written it.

In the following excerpt, Katy is recording an section from a Q&A book that Miss Clifford - a friend of hers - read to her on one of her visits:

"I wish to know if it is best to record, on my tablets, the faults and the sins I have committed, in order not to run the risk of forgetting them. I excited in myself to repentance of my faults as much as I can; but I have never felt any real grief on account of them. When I examine myself at night, I see persons far more perfect than I, complain of more sin; as for me, I seek, I find nothing; and yet it is impossible there should not be many points on which to implore pardon every day of my life."

"Reply: You should examine yourself every night, but simply and briefly. In the disposition to which God has brought you, you will not voluntarily commit any considerable fault without remembering and reproaching yourself for it. As to little faults scarcely perceived, even if you sometimes forget them, this need not make you uneasy. As to the little grief on account of your sins, it is not necessary. God gives it when it pleases Him. True and essential conversion to the heart consists in a full will to sacrifice to God. What I call full will is a fixed, immovable disposition of the will to resume none of the voluntary affections that may alter the purity of the love to God and to abandon itself to all the crosses that it will perhaps be necessary to bear, in order to accomplish the will of God always and in all things. As to the sorrow for sin, when one has it, one ought to return thanks for it; when one perceives it to be wanting, one should humble one's self peacefully before God without trying to excite it by vain efforts. You find in your self-examination fewer faults than persons more advanced and more perfect do; it is because your inferior light is still feeble. It will increase, and the view of your infidelities will increase in proportion. It suffices, without making yourself uneasy, to try to be faithful to the degree of light your possess and to instruct yourself by reading and meditation. It will not do to try to forestall the grace that belongs to a more advanced period. It would only serve to trouble and discourage you and even to exhaust you by continual anxiety; the time that should be spent in loving God would be given to forced returns upon yourself, which secretly nourishes self-love."