withdraws, and even hides Himself from those who love and follow Him."
They will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to human
weakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evil
imaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or to
some disease and exaggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodily
infirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Father
to perplex and mislead His children. The sun does not shine the less
because one side of our planet is in darkness. To borrow the words of
Augustine "Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made. Thou alone art
near to those even who remove far from thee. Let them turn and seek
thee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thy
creation." It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness,
and interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience by
the light of that central idea, that we can altogether escape the
dreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us in
dubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, through
miraculous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others be
mystified by it to their eternal loss.

I might mention other points of probable divergence between reader and
writer, and indicate more particularly my own doubtful parse and
hesitancy over some of these pages. But it is impossible for me to make
one to whom I am so deeply indebted an offender for a word or a
Scriptural rendering. On the grave and awful themes which she discusses,
I have little to say in the way of controversy. I would listen, rather
than criticise. The utterances of pious souls, in all ages, are to me
often like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yet
not without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slight
bitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest. Who has not felt at
times that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease to