he vexed
condition of the devotees of prayer. It contained no word of criticism
of the Mormon creed, nothing that if read aloud could have disturbed
Halsey's peace. "Perchance," he had said, "as a medical man applies a
poultice or blister to a diseased body to draw out the evil, so to those
who pray and are too ignorant, _i.e._ opinionated, to follow perfectly
the greatest teacher of prayer, God may apply circumstances to bring all
the evil of heart to the surface, that in this life and the future it
may the more quickly work itself away." Susannah had so conned this
passage that she could now close her eyes and read it as written upon
the red dusk of their lids.

The next letter had been written a year later. He described a great
change in his life. He had gone to spend the winter in Hartford, on the
Connecticut River, to be under a new physician, and had there met with a
preacher called Mr. Horace Bushnell. This acquaintance was evidently
much to Ephraim. Susannah had made some complaint of the harshness of
the divine counsel in which he asked her to believe; his answer was to
send her Bushnell's sermons on the suffering of God. Ephraim had added:
"When you went from us, Susy, would you ever have been satisfied if we
had detained you by force? Yet that is what you ask of God. If you were
right in going, let the circumstance prove it; if we were right, let it
appear by time. So says God; and his friendship has eternity to work in;
so also has every human friendship. Let us wait, but in faith." This
ending, somewhat enigmatical to her, had yet recurred to her heart so
often that she knew the words by heart.

The next letter had been written more recently, after a long interval.
At the end of this letter Ephraim had said, "I am persuaded that what we
need to help our faith is never more knowledge, but always more love. I
cannot interpret this but by telling you of a fact which I feel to be
the key to a great--the greatest--truth. I know a man who believed in
God. He met a woman whom he loved, not as many love, but (I know not
why) with all the loves of his heart, as father, as mother, as brother,
friend, might love; as lover he loved her with all these loves. After
that he knew God with a knowledge that passed belief. He could argue no
more, but he _knew_. This I think is the sort of knowledge which guides
unerringly." Susannah remembered, if not the words, all that this
passage contained. She had wondered at it not a l