your pardon, madam, but I am afraid the neighbors were in the
right, and that so many misfortunes could never have happened to you
without you had committed a great many sins to deserve them; for I
always thought that God is so just that he punishes us for all our
bad actions, and rewards us for all our good ones." "So he does,
Betty; but he does it in his own way, and at his own time, and not
according to our notions of good and evil; for his ways are not as
our ways. God, indeed, punishes the bad, and rewards the good; but
he does not do it fully and finally in this world. Indeed he does
not set such a value on outward things as to make riches, and rank,
and beauty, and health, the reward of piety; that would be acting
like weak and erring men, and not like a just and holy God. Our
belief in a future state of rewards and punishments is not always
so strong as it ought to be, even now; but how totally would our
faith fail, if we regularly saw every thing made even in this world.
We shall lose nothing by having pay-day put off. The longest voyages
make the best returns. So far am I from thinking that God is less
just, and future happiness less certain, because I see the wicked
sometimes prosper, and the righteous suffer in this world, that I am
rather led to believe that God is more just and heaven more certain:
for, in the first place, God will not put off his favorite children
with so poor a lot as the good things of this world; and next,
seeing that the best men here below do not often attain to the best
things; why it only serves to strengthen my belief that they are not
the best things in His eye; and He has most assuredly reserved for
those that love Him such 'good things as eye has not seen nor ear
heard.' God, by keeping man in Paradise while he was innocent, and
turning him into this world as soon as he had sinned, gave a plain
proof that he never intended the world, even in its happiest state,
as a place of reward. My father gave me good principles and useful
knowledge; and while he taught me by a habit of constant employment
to be, if I may so say, independent of the world; yet he led me to a
constant sense of dependence on God--" "I do not see, however,"
interrupted Mrs. Betty, "that your religion has been of any use to
you. It has been so far from preserving you from trouble, that I
think you have had more than the usual share."

"No," said Mrs. Simpson; "nor did Christianity ever pretend to
exempt its fo