is.

The conception of such a life as that of his lost friend, annihilated
with the vanishing of the touch of his hand and the sound of his voice,
was plainly an impossible one, and if one remembers all the bright
hopes, the extraordinarily brilliant future which, in the judgment of
all who knew him, were buried with that young life, it is impossible to
marvel at the change his death produced in the heart of his poet friend.

Now this temporary eclipse of faith is truthfully set forth in the
poem, together with the manifold reasons which weigh at times so
powerfully, even with the most devout minds, suggesting that the
universe is not "righteous at heart". We all know them well, for we
have felt them, and it is a comfort for us to be assured that minds
more penetrating, consciences more sensitive, and emotions far deeper,
have been enabled to withstand the shock which nature so rudely deals
at our moral instincts, and to believe with a fervour and enthusiasm
conquering all obstacles, that--

Good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.

It is "the heart-piercing, mind-bewildering" mystery of evil and pain
which has quenched the light in many a sincere and fervent heart. But
it is not for ever. Two things we may remember for our guidance amid
all this weltering sea of sorrow and distress. First, it is not all
nature. It is only a side of it; and if it is the most obvious, it is
only because it is a breach of the order and beneficence so uniformly
obtaining. And next, the holiest hearts, the spirits of the just made
perfect on earth were not adversely influenced by it. In spite of it
all, an elect spirit, such as Jesus of Nazara, could patiently endure a
life of austerity, and meet a death of unspeakable anguish with a
calmness and resignation seldom equalled and never surpassed. "Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit," is a serious rebuke to those who
suffer so little and complain so loudly that the times are out of
joint, the world as probably as not the work of malignity or
indifference, and that he is no God who does not stretch forth an
omnipotent hand to slay the accursed thing of evil where it stands.
This is in very deed "the crying of an infant in the night".