_Who Has Become Interested in the Metaphysical Thoughts of the Day_

Your letter bubbled with enthusiasm, and steamed with optimism. I am
rejoiced that you have come into so healthful a line of thought, for I
know of no one who was in more immediate need of it than you, when we
last met.

As your hostess, I could not tell you how wearing to the nerves your
continual reverting to your physical ills became: and I hope I did not
seem wholly unsympathetic to you when I so frequently made the effort to
change the conversation to more cheerful topics.

And now you tell me that you are astounded to find how universal is this
topic with all classes, and on all occasions when one or two human
beings gather together even in "His name." Your recital of the church
sewing-bee, where all the good Christian women described their diseases
and the different operations they and their friends had undergone, is as
amusing as it is distressingly realistic.

What a pity that the old theology fostered the idea that God especially
loved the people he afflicted with illness and poverty and trouble! It
has filled the world with egotistical and selfish invalids and idlers,
who have believed they were "God's chosen ones," instead of realizing
that they were the natural results of broken laws, which might be mended
by the aid of the God-power in themselves, once they understood it.

How Christians have reconciled the idea of a God of love with a God who
wanted his chosen ones to be sick and poor, is a problem I cannot solve.