ccepting them, and living in them and through them. One might as
truly, it seems, take upon oneself to deny that there was any such
colour as red in the world, and tell people that whenever they saw or
discerned any tinge of red, it was a delusion; one can only use one's
faculty of perception; and if sorrow and suffering are a delusion, how
do I know that love and joy are not delusions too? They must stand and
fall together. The reason why I believe that joy and love will in the
end triumph, is because I have, because we all have, an instinctive
desire for them, and a no less instinctive fear and dread of pain and
sorrow. We may, indeed I believe with all my heart that we shall,
emerge from them, but they are no less assuredly there. We triumph over
them, when we learn to live bravely and courageously in them, when we
do not seek to evade them or to hasten incredulously away from them. We
fail, if we spend our time in repining, in regretting, in wishing the
sweet and tranquil hours of untroubled joy back. We are not strong
enough to desire the cup of suffering, even though we may know that we
must drink it before we can discern the truth. But we may rejoice with
a deep-seated joy, in the dark hours, that the Hand of God is heavy
upon us. When our vital energies flag, when what we thought were our
effective powers languish and grow faint, then we may be glad because
the Father is showing us His Will; and then our sorrow is a fruitful
sorrow, and labours, as the swelling seed labours in the sombre earth
to thrust her slender hands up to the sun and air. . . .

We two sate long in a corner of the quiet lamp-lit room, talking like
old friends--once or twice our conversation was suspended by music,
which fell like dew upon my parched heart; and though I could not
accept my fellow-pilgrim's thought, I could see in the glance of her
eyes, full of pity and wonder, that we were indeed faring along the
same strange road to the paradise of God. It did me good, that talk; it
helped me with a sense of sweet and tender fellowship; and I had no
doubt that God was teaching my friend in His own fatherly way, even as
He was teaching me, and all of us.

July 19, 1891.

In one of the great windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, there
is a panel the beauty of which used to strike me even as a boy. I used
to wonder what further thing it meant.

It was, I believe--I may be wholly wrong--a picture of Reuben, looking
in an agony o