nd cruel, explaining nothing to him. And thus the child said in
himself, "I am in his power, and he must do his will upon me; but I
neither trust nor love him, for I cannot see the reason of what he
does; though if he would but tell me the reason, I could obey him and
submit to him joyfully." These hard thoughts he nourished and fed upon;
and his guardian came no more to him for good or for evil; and the
child, much broken by his hard usage and his angry thoughts, crept
about neglected and spiritless, with nothing but fear and dismay in his
heart.

So the imagination shaped itself in my mind, a parable of the sad,
strange life of man.

"Perfect Love!" If it were indeed that? Yet God does many things to His
frail children, which if a man did, I could not believe him to be
loving; though if He would but give us the assurance that it was all
leading us to happiness, we could endure His fiercest stroke, His
bitterest decree. But He smites us, and departs; He turns away in a
rage, because we have broken a law that we knew not of. And again, when
we seem most tranquil and blest, most inclined to trust Him utterly, He
smites us down again without a word. I hope, I yearn to see that it all
comes from some great and perfect will, a will with qualities of which
what we know as mercy, justice, and love are but faint shadows--but
that is hidden from me. We cannot escape, we must bear what God lays
upon us. We may fling ourselves into bitter and dark rebellion; still
He spares us or strikes us, gives us sorrow or delight. My one hope is
to cooperate with Him, to accept the chastening joyfully and
courageously. Then He takes from me joy, and courage alike, till I know
not whom I serve, a Father or a tyrant. Can it indeed help us to doubt
whether He be tyrant or no? Again I know not, and again I sicken in
fruitless despair, like one caught in a great labyrinth of crags and
precipices.

February 14, 1891.

Then the Christian teacher says: "God has given you a will, an
independent will to act and choose; put it in unison with His will."
Alas, I know not how much of my seeming liberty is His or mine. He
seems to make me able to exert my will in some directions, able to make
it effective; and yet in other matters, even though I see that a course
is holy and beautiful, I have no power to follow it at all. I see men
some more, some less hampered than myself. Some seem to have no desire
for good, no dim perception of it. The outcast