ly eliminated by despair."

In the same connection, he wrote a letter to a friend whose wild and
wayward life had injured his health, and wrote in the greatest agony
of mind:

"Words are such wretched things, my dear friend, in crises like this.
I can only beg of you, with all my heart, to resolutely set your face
against thinking what might have been. Try to feel, I will not say
happy, but stronger in the thought that your punishment is atoning
for your past every hour. Throw remorse and fear down, if you can;
they are only keeping you from God. Many, too many souls are in a far
worse case. Some have more to reproach themselves with. On some it
has come with what appears to be fearful injustice. Accept your
present condition; brace yourself to bear it. I know how much can be
borne. Give your sufferings to God nobly. Your patience is none the
less noble because you have brought this on yourself; nay, it makes
it even nobler....

"Don't say that many worse sinners go unpunished. How can you tell?
How do you know they are not suffering? There are only, I suppose,
two men in the world, besides yourself, who know that you are
suffering now, and why. God visited me with suffering once; He has
brought me through, and I have never ceased to thank Him for it; and
He will bring you through, too, dear friend, I know. 'Pro jucundis
aptissima quaeque dabunt di; carior est illis homo quam sibi.'
That thought has left me patient, if not glad, in many a bitter
hour.... You are never out of my thoughts."

And this letter leads me naturally to the second great principle that
pervaded all his writings--"the education of individuals."

"One is inclined to believe that there is a great deal of hopeless
irremediable suffering in the world--suffering of a kind that seems
wantonly inflicted, purposeless anguish.... That 'regret must hurt
and may not heal' is a terrible thought, which, when we get our first
glimpse of human anguish, seems almost sickeningly true. But I have
seen a great deal lately of such suffering, and it amazes me to
discover how _extraordinarily_ rare it is to find the victim taking
this view of his case. Either it seems to be a due reward for past
action--that 'invita religio' which wells up in the blackest heart,
or the sufferer gains a kind of onlook into sweet plains beyond, into
which the troubled passage is taking him, and which can only thus be
reached....

"Of animal suffering, unconscious tortures, it is h