al,
feckless, no one's enemy but their own, and yet preserving through it
all a kind of simple good-nature, always ready to share things with
others, never knowing how to take advantage of any one, trusting the
most untrustworthy people; or if they were girls, getting into trouble,
losing their good name, perhaps living lives of shame in big
cities--yet, for all that, guileless, affectionate, never excusing
themselves, believing they had deserved anything that befell them? These
were the sort of people to whom Christ was so closely drawn. They have
no respectability, no conventions; they act upon instinct, never by
reason, often foolishly, but seldom unkindly or selfishly. They give all
they have, they never take. They have the faults of children, and the
trustful affection of children. They will do anything for any one who is
kind to them and fond of them. Of course they are what is called
hopeless, and they use their poor bodies very ill. In their last stages
on earth they are often very deplorable objects, slinking into
public-houses, plodding raggedly and dismally along highroads, suffering
cruelly and complaining little, conscious that they are universally
reprobated, and not exactly knowing why. They are the victims of
society; they do its dirty work, and are cast away as offscourings. They
are really youthful and often beautiful spirits, very void of offence,
and needing to be treated as children. They live here in great
happiness, and are conscious vaguely of the good and great intention of
God towards them. They suffer in the world at the hands of cruel,
selfish, and stupid people, because they are both humble and
disinterested. But in all our realms I do not think there is a place of
simpler and sweeter happiness than this, because they do not take their
forgiveness as a right, but as a gracious and unexpected boon. And
indeed the sights and sounds of this place are the best medicine for
crabbed, worldly, conventional souls, who are often brought here when
they are drawing near the truth."

"Yes," I said, "this is just what I wanted. Interesting as my work has
lately been, it has wanted simplicity. I have grown to consider life too
much as a series of cases, and to forget that it is life itself that one
must seek, and not pathology. This is the best sight I have seen, for it
is so far removed from all sense of judgment. The song of the saints may
be sometimes of mercy too."

XXIV

"And now," said A