Stepping Heavenward (1869) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Ernest: Add a description of this character.
• Katherine
• Martha
• Mrs. Cabot
• Little Ernest
• James: Katy's fun older brother
• Katy
• Helen
• Amelia
• Dr. Elliott
• Mrs. Campbell
• Mrs. Embury
• Susan Green
• Miss Clifford
• Mr. Underhill
• Emma
• Jenny
• Kate
• Raymond
• Mary
• Mrs. Jones
• John
• Mrs. Brown
• Bridget
• Lucy
• Mrs. Winthrop
• Sarah

Quotes edit see section history

• “But there is an undercurrent of peace that is not entirely disturbed by any outside event. In spite of my follies and my shortcomings, I do believe that God loves and pities me and will yet perfect that which concerns me.”

  Katy

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• God notices the most trivial act, accepts the poorest, most threadbare little service, listens to the coldest, feeblest petition, and gathers up with parental fondness all our fragmentary desires and attempts at good works.

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• duty looks more repelling at a distance than when fairly faced and met.

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• Surely your first duty, next to pleasing God, is to please your mother, and in every possible way to sweeten and beautify her life. You may depend upon it that a life of real heroism and self—sacrifice must begin and lay its foundation in this little world, wherein it learns its first lesson and takes its first steps.'

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• I think a mother, especially, ought to learn to enter into the gayer moods of her children at the very moment when her own heart is sad. And it may be as religious an act for her to romp with them at the time as to pray with them at another.'

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• The only true way to live in this world, constituted just as we are, is to make all our employments sub serve the one great end and aim of existence, namely, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. But in order to do this we must be wise task—masters, and not require of ourselves what we cannot possibly perform. Recreation we must have. Otherwise the strings of our soul, wound up to an unnatural tension, will break.'

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• God's children please him just as well when they sit patiently with folded hands, if that is His will, as when they are hard at work.

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• You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings towards Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it, you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful human beings to prefer His pleasure to our own, or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love to Him can or does make us obedient to Him.'

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• 'I do wish I could make you love to pray, my darling child,' mother went on. 'If you only knew the strength, and the light, and the joy you might have for the simple asking. God attaches no conditions to His gifts. He only says, 'Ask!''

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• The coming of each new child strengthens and deepens my desire to be what I would have it become; makes my faults more odious in my eyes, and elevates my whole character. What a blessed discipline of joy and of pain my married life has been; how thankful I am to reap its fruits even while pricked by its thorns!

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• I suppose to those who look on from the outside, we must appear like a most unhappy family, since we hardly get free from one trouble before another steps in. But I see more and more that happiness is not dependent on health or any other outside prosperity. We are at peace with each other and at peace with God; His dealings with us do not perplex or puzzle us, though we do not pretend to understand them.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Una
• Providence

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Elizabeth Prentiss (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.4

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Christianity › Worship & Devotion › Devotionals
• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Spirituality › Inspirational
• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Spirituality › Devotionals
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• librivox.org: Brief summary of book, audio reading of each chapter