life by which all things were, and by which they changed, growing by
transformation into a glory which was still indistinct to him, too far
off to be seen in any way except that its light came as the light comes
from stars which we say we see and have never really seen at all.

Through this joy and light the details of life began to show again. The
two forces which he had always supposed had moulded his life acted his
early scenes over again. His young mother, before the shadow of despair
had come over her, was seen waiting upon all his boyish footsteps with
cheerful love and patience, trying to guide and to help, but trying much
more to comfort and to please; and his father, with a strong body and
the strength of fixed opinion and formed habits, having no desire for
his son except to train and form him as he himself was trained and
formed, was seen darkening all the boy's happiness with unreasonable
severity, which hardened and sharpened with the opposition of years into
selfish cruelty. Toyner had often seen these scenes before; all that
was new to him now was that they stood in the vivid light of a new
interpretation. Ah! the father's cruelty, the irritable self-love, the
incapacity to recognise any form of life but his own, it was of
God,--not a high manifestation: the bat is lower than the bird, and yet
it is of God. Bart saw now the one great opportunity of life! He saw
that the whole of the universe goes to develop character, and the one
chief heavenly food set within reach of the growing character for its
nourishment is the opportunity to embrace malice with love, to gather it
in the arms of patience, convert its shame into glory by willing
endurance.

Had he, Bart Toyner, then really been given the power in that beginning
of life to put out his hand and take this fruit which would have given
him such great strength and stature, or had he only had strength just