that already the love that had hitherto been the chief joy of my being,
had begun to pale and fade. Was it possible I was ceasing to love my
uncle? What could any love be worth if mine should fail my uncle! Love
itself must be a mockery, and life but a ceaseless sliding down to the
death of indifference! Even if I never ceased to love him, it was just as
bad to love him less! Had he not been everything to me?--and this man,
what had he ever done for me? Doubtless we are to love even our enemies;
but are we to love them as tenderly as we love our friends? Or are we to
love the friend of yesterday, of whom we know nothing though we may
believe everything, as we love those who have taken all the trouble to
make true men and women of us? "What can be the matter with my soul?" I
said. "Can that soul be right made, in which one love begins to wither
the moment another begins to grow? If I be so made, I cannot help being
worthless!"

It was then first, I think, that I received a notion--anything like a
true notion, that is, of my need of a God--whence afterward I came to
see the one need of the whole race. Of course, not being able to make
ourselves, it needed a God to make us; but that making were a small thing
indeed, if he left us so unfinished that we could come to nothing
right;--if he left us so that we could think or do or be nothing
right;--if our souls were created so puny, for instance, that there was
not room in them to love as they could not help loving, without ceasing
to love where they were bound by every obligation to love right heartily,
and more and more deeply! But had I not been growing all the time I had
been in the world? There must then be the possibility of growing still!
If there was not room in me, there must be room in God for me to become
larger! The room in God must be made room in me! God had not done making
me, in fact, and I sorely needed him to go on making me; I sorely needed
to be made out! What if this new joy and this new terror had come, had