n she said,--

"Well, I don't see how any woman can help living very well without it, if
it doesn't come to her. I don't see how any human being--man or woman,
single or married--can help being glad to be alive under any conditions.
It is such a glorious thing to have a soul and a body, and to get the most
out of them. Just from the purely selfish point of view, it seems to me a
delight to live; and when you look at it from a higher point, and think
how much each human being can do for those around him, why, then it is
sublime. Look at Parson Dorrance, Lizzy! Just think of the sum of the
happiness that man has created in this world! He isn't lonely. He couldn't
think of such a thing."

"Yes, he is, too,--I know he is," said Lizzy, impetuously. "The very way
he takes up my children and hugs them and kisses them shows that he longs
for a home and children of his own."

"I think not," replied Mercy. "It is all part of the perpetual overflow of
his benevolence. He can't pass by a living creature, if it is only a dog,
without a desire to give it a moment's happiness. Of happiness for himself
he never thinks, because he is on a plane above happiness,--a plane of
perpetual joy." Mercy hesitated, paused, and then went on, "I don't mean
to be irreverent, but I could never think of his needing personal
ministrations to his own happiness, any more than I could think of God's
needing them. I think he is on a plane as absolutely above such needs as
God is. Not so high above, but as absolutely."

"How are you so sure God is above it?" said Lizzy, timidly. "I can't
conceive of God's being happy if nobody loved him."

Mercy was startled by these words from Lizzy, who rarely questioned and
never philosophized. She opened her lips to reply with a hasty reiteration
of her first sentiment, but the words died even before they were spoken,
arrested by her sudden consciousness of the possibility of a grand truth
underlying Lizzy's instinct. If that were so, did it not lie out far
beyond every fact in life, include and control them all, as the great
truth of gravitation outlies and embraces the physical universe? Did God
so need as well as so love the world, that he gave his only begotten Son
for it? Is this what it meant to be "one with God"? Then, if the great,
illimitable heart of God thus yearns for the love of his creatures, the
greater the heart of a human being, the more must he yearn for a fulness
of love, a completion of the cycle