But my wife suffered for a time nearly as much as Connie. As long as she
was going about the house or attending to the wants of her family, she was
free; but no sooner did she lay her head on the pillow than in rushed the
cry of the sea, fierce, unkind, craving like a wild beast. Again and again
she spoke of it to me, for it came to her mingled with the voice of the
tempter, saying, "_Cruel chance_," over and over again. For although the
two words contradict each other when put together thus, each in its turn
would assert itself.

A great part of the doubt in the world comes from the fact that there are
in it so many more of the impressible as compared with the originating
minds. Where the openness to impression is balanced by the power of
production, the painful questions of the world are speedily met by their
answers; where such is not the case, there are often long periods of
suffering till the child-answer of truth is brought to the birth. Hence the
need for every impressible mind to be, by reading or speech, held in living
association with an original mind able to combat those suggestions of doubt
and even unbelief, which the look of things must often occasion--a look
which comes from our inability to gain other than fragmentary visions of
the work that the Father worketh hitherto. When the kingdom of heaven is at
hand, one sign thereof will be that all clergymen will be more or less of
the latter sort, and mere receptive goodness, no more than education and
moral character, will be considered sufficient reason for a man's occupying
the high position of an instructor of his fellows. But even now this
possession of original power is not by any means to be limited to those
who make public show of the same. In many a humble parish priest it shows
itself at the bedside of the suffering, or in the admonition of the closet,
although as yet there are many of the clergy who, so far from being able to
console wisely, are incapable of understanding the condition of those that
need consolation.