forth in "The Gates Ajar" that I am glad to use this opportunity to
answer the question; though, indeed, I have been led to do so, to a
certain extent, in another place, and may, perhaps, be pardoned for
repeating words in which the question first and most naturally answered
itself:

"Those appeals of the mourning, black of edge and blurred with tears,
were a mass high beneath the hand and heavy to the heart. These letters
had the terrible and unanswerable power of all great, natural voices;
and the chiefest of these are love and grief. Year upon year the
recipient has sat dumb before these signs of human misery and hope. They
have rolled upon the shore of life, a billow of solemn inspiration. I
have called them a human argument for faith in the future life, and see
no reason for amending the term."

But why dwell on the little book, which was only the trembling
organ-pipe through which the music thrilled? Its faults have long since
ceased to trouble, and its friends to elate me. Sometimes one seems to
one's self to be the least or last agency in the universe responsible
for such a work. What was the book? Only an outcry of nature--and nature
answered it. That was all. And nature is of God, and is mighty before
Him.

Do I believe in the "middle march" of life, as the girl did in the
morning, before the battle of the day?

For nature's sake--which is for God's sake--I cannot hesitate.

Useless suffering is the worst of all kinds of waste. Unless He created
this world from sheer extravagance in the infliction of purposeless