ain and danger."

"Oh, if you could prove to me that such is my weakness!" cried Hester.

"I believe that it is yours, and I know that it is my own, my Hester.
We must watch over one another. Tell me, is it not faithless to let our
hearts be troubled about _any_ possible evil which we cannot, at the
moment of the trouble, prevent? And are we not sacrificing, what is, at
the time, of the most importance--our repose of mind, the holiness, the
religion of the hour?"

"I know I have defiled the holiness of this hour," said Hester, humbly.
"But as my thoughts were troubled, was it not better to speak them? I
could not but speak them."

"You cannot but do and speak what is most honourable, and true, and
generous, Hester; and that is the very reason why I would fain have you
trust, for the future as well as the present, to the impulse of the
hour. Surely, love, the probation of the hour is enough for the
strength of every one of us."

"Far, far too much for me."

"At times, too much for all. Well, then, what have we to do? To rest
the care of each other's happiness upon Him whose care it is: to be
ready to do without it, as we would hold ourselves ready to do without
this, or that, or the other comfort, or supposed means of happiness.
Depend upon it, this happiness is too subtle and too divine a thing for
our management. We have nothing to do with it but to enjoy it when it
comes. Men say of it--`Lo! it is here!'--`Lo! there!'--but never has
man laid hold of it with a voluntary grasp."

"But we can banish it," said Hester.

"Alas! yes: and what else do we do at the very moment when we afflict
ourselves about the future? Surely our business is to keep our hearts
open for it--holy and at peace, from moment to moment, from day to day."

"And yet, is it not our privilege--said at least to be so--to look
before and after? I am not sure, however, that I always think this a
privilege. I long sometimes to be any bird of the air, that I might
live for the present moment alone."

"Let us be so far birds of the air--free as they, neither toiling nor
spinning out anxious thoughts for the future: but why, with all this,
should we not use our human privilege of looking before and after, to
enrich and sanctify the present? Should we enjoy the wheat-fields in
June as we do if we knew nothing of seed-time, and had never heard of
harvest? And how should you and I feel at this moment, sitting here, if
we had no recollect