this view of his case. Either it seems to be a due reward for past
action—that 'invita religio' which wells up in the blackest heart,
or the sufferer gains a kind of onlook into sweet plains beyond, into
which the troubled passage is taking him, and which can only thus be
reached....

"Of animal suffering, unconscious tortures, it is harder to speak—of
the innocent, for so they are, victims of lust and brutality in
Babylon here, whose sense of suffering is almost gone, and is
succeeded by nothing but the desire for rest; all this seems so
meaningless, so futile....

"It is one of the problems I take up and let drop—take up and let
drop a thousand times; but all sacrifice seems essentially good, and
I do not throw the enigma aside in anger; I will wait for it to be
explained to me.

"Ah, death, death, if we are enlightened enough by that time, what a
storehouse of secrets, dear secrets you will have to tell us! I
thrill all through, in moments like these, to think of it."

"Of course," he said to me once, "there are times when we can only
wait and hope; changing our posture, like a sick man, from time to
time, to win a little ease; but when we reach a fresh standpoint, a
fresh basis—which, thank God, one does from month to month—we are
inclined to say with Albert Dürer, 'It could not be better
done.'"

He was very fond of the doctrine of Special Providences.