times, to crush within her all selfishness; and the result had been the
result of all such effort when it is staunch and honest--to show that
that against which she was warring was no mere mood or bad habit, to be
overcome by directing the life on a nobler plan, but a living thing,
with a vitality so strong that it seemed as if God Himself must have
given it life. She stood now baffled, as she had often been before, by
her invincible enemy. Where was the selfless temper of mind that was her
ideal? Certainly not within her. She was too candid to suppose for a
moment that the impatient scorn she felt for those with whom she had
been talking approached in any way to that humility and love that are
required of the Christian. She felt overwhelmed by surging waves of evil
within. It was at the source the fountain ought to be sweet, and there
ambition and desire for pleasure rose still triumphant; and the current
of her will, set against them, seemed only to produce, not their
abatement, but a whirlpool of discontent, which sucked into itself all
natural pleasures, and cast out around its edge those dislikes and
disdains which were becoming habitual in her intercourse with others. It
was all wrong--she knew it. She leaned her head against the cold pane,
and her eyes grew wet with tears.

There is no sorrow on earth so real as this; no other for which such
bitter tears have been shed; no other which has so moved the heart of
God with sympathy. Yet there came to Sophia just then a strange thought
that her tears were unnecessary, that the salvation of the world was
something better than this conflict, that the angels were looking upon
her discouragement in pained surprise.

She had no understanding with which to take in this thought. As she
looked at it, with her soul's eye dim, it passed away; and she, trying
in vain to recall the light that it seemed to hold, wondered if it would