verybody and
slinging pious Billingsgate about: or I lose my own temper about something,
and feel I have made a hash of my life--and then I wonder what is the foul
poison that has got into things, and what is the dismal ugliness that seems
smeared all over life, so that the soul seems like a beautiful bird caught
in a slime-pit, and trying to struggle out, with its pinions fouled and
dabbled, wondering miserably what it has done to be so filthily hampered."

He stopped for a minute, and I could see that his eyes were full of tears.

"It is no good giving up the game!" he said. "We are in the devil of a
mess, no doubt: and even if we try our best to avoid it, we dip into the
slime sometimes! But we must hold fast to the beautiful things, and be on
the look-out for them everywhere. Not shut our eyes in a rapture of
sentiment, and think that we can:

"'Walk all day, like the Sultan of old, in a garden
of spice!'

"That won't do, of course! We can't get out of it like that! But we must
never allow ourselves to doubt the beauty and goodness of God, or make any
mistake about which side He is on. The marvel of dear old Mrs. Chetwynd is
just that beauty has triumphed, in spite of everything. With every kind of
trouble, every temptation to be dispirited and spiteful and wretched, that
fine spirit has got through--and, by George, I envy her the awakening, when
that sweet old soul slips away from the cage where she is caught, and goes
straight to the arms of God!"

He turned away from me as he said this, and I could see that he struggled
with a sob. Then he looked at me with a smile, and put his arm in mine.
"Old man," he said, "I oughtn't to behave like this--but a day like this,
when the world looks as it was meant to look, and as, please God, it
_will_ look more and more, goes to my heart! I seem to see what God
desires, and what He can't bring about yet, for all His pains. And I want
to help Him, if I can!

"'We too! We ask no pledge of grace,
No rain of fire, no heaven-hung sign.
Thy need is written on Thy face--
Take Thou our help, as we take Thine!'

"That's what I mean by worship--the desire to be _used_ in the service
of a Power that longs to make things pure and happy, with groanings that
cannot be uttered. The worst of some kinds of worship is that they drug you
with a sort of lust for beauty, which makes you afraid to go back and pick
up your spade. We mustn't swoon in happiness or delight,