Page 294 (1/1)

"Granting that the story I have told you is true, how did his disciples know that he came to their help? Did not the hushed winds prove it? Did not the quieted waters prove it? Did not his presence with them assure them of it? By equal proof I know that he can and will come to the aid of those who look to hihts and wilder storms than ever lowered over the Sea of Galilee, and I know by sih his all-pervading Spirit, has coain, and that I have the sa hand Not that reater than those of many others, but I have been weaker than others, and I have often been conscious of his sustaining pohen otherwise I would have sunk beneath my burden This is not a theory, Miss Anorant people It is the downright experience of rounds, is worth as ains the sympathy of little Bertha; it also coifted and cultivated minds in the world"

"Oh, that I could believe all this; but there is so lanced at her , and she asked: "If Christ is so strong to help and save, why is he not strong to prevent evil? Why is there a cry of agony going up fro to us? Why must mother suffer so? Why am I so shadowed by an awful fear? Life means so much to me I love it," she continued in low yet passionate tones "I love the song of birds, the breath of flowers, the sunlight, and every beautiful thing I love sensation I as I like or in the friends I love My joys thrill every nerve and fibre of ive theo life was as full of rich proh I will never cease to feel the pain of this great sorrow, and yet this horrible pit of death, corruption, and nothingness yawns at my very feet Mr Haldane," she said in a still lower andtone, "I have a terrible presentiment that I shall perish with this loathsome disease I may seem to you, who are so quiet and brave, very weak and cowardly; but I shrink from death with a dread which you cannot understand and which no language can express It is repugnant to every instinct ofIf I were old and feeble, if I had tasted all the joys of life, I ht submit, but not now, not now I feel with father that it is fiendish cruelty to give one such an intense love of life and then wrench it away; and, passionately as I love life, there is one far more dear There is that in your nature which has so won my confidence that I can reveal to you my whole heart Mr Haldane, I love one who is like you, ive it away in slow torture for his sake, if required How often my heart has thrilled to see his eyes kindle with his foolish admiration, the infatuation of love which makes its object beautiful at least to the lover And now to think that he does not knohat I suffer and fear, to think that I ain, to think that when he returns I may be a hideous mass of corruption that he cannot even approach Out upon the phrases 'beneficent nature,' and 'natural law' Lahich pers are must unnatural, and to endow one with such a love of life, such boundless capabilities of enjoying life, and then at the supreme moment when the loss will be most bitterly felt to snatch it away, looks to enuity than of a 'beneficent nature' I feel with father, it is fiendish cruelty"