ed out at terrible expense of suffering, and apparently
by the total sacrifice of myriads of sensitive creatures. I see
unflinching order, general good-will, but no sympathy, no mercy. Storms,
earthquakes, volcanoes, sickness, death, go on without regarding us.
Everywhere I see the most hopeless, unrelieved suffering,--and for aught
I see, it may be eternal. Immortality is a dreadful chance, and I would
rather never have been.--The Doctor's dreadful system is, I confess,
much like the laws of Nature,--about what one might reason out from
them.

"There is but just one thing remaining, and that is, as Candace said,
the cross of Christ. If God so loved us,--if He died for us,--greater
love hath no man than this. It seems to me that love is shown here in
the two highest forms possible to our comprehension. We see a Being who
gives himself for us,--and more than that, harder than that, a Being who
consents to the suffering of a dearer than self. Mary, I feel that I
must love more, to give up one of my children to suffer, than to consent
to suffer myself. There is a world of comfort to me in the words, 'He
that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all things?' These words speak to my
heart. I can interpret them by my own nature, and I rest on them. If
there is a fathomless mystery of sin and sorrow, there is a deeper
mystery of God's love. So, Mary, I try Candace's way,--I look at
Christ,--I pray to Him. If he that hath seen Him hath seen the Father,
it is enough. I rest there,--I wait. What I know not now I shall know
hereafter."

Mary kept all things and pondered them in her heart. She could speak to
no one,--not to her mother, nor to her spiritual guide; for had she not
passed to a region beyond theirs? As well might those on the hither side
of mortality instruct the souls gone beyond the veil as souls outside a
great affliction guide those who are struggling in it. That is a mighty
baptism, and only Christ can go down with us into those waters.

Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor only marked that she was more than ever
conscientious in every duty, and that she brought to life's daily
realities something of the calmness and disengagedness of one whose soul
has been wrenched by a mighty shock from all moorings here below. Hopes
did not excite, fears did not alarm her; life had no force strong enough
to awaken a thrill within; and the only subjects on which she eve