the suffering
present. All my personal belief in Christ, all my intense faith in His
constant direction of affairs, all my habit of continual prayer and of
realisation of His Presence--all were against me now. The very height
of my trust was the measure of the shock when the trust gave way. To me
He was no abstract idea, but a living reality, and all my heart rose up
against this Person in whom I believed, and whose individual finger I
saw in my baby's agony, my own misery, the breaking of my mother's
proud heart under a load of debt, and all the bitter suffering of the
poor. The presence of pain and evil in a world made by a good God; the
pain falling on the innocent, as on my seven months' old babe; the pain
begun here reaching on into eternity unhealed; a sorrow-laden world; a
lurid, hopeless hell; all these, while I still believed, drove me
desperate, and instead of like the devils believing and trembling, I
believed and hated. All the hitherto dormant and unsuspected strength
of my nature rose up in rebellion; I did not yet dream of denial, but I
would no longer kneel.

As the first stirrings of this hot rebellion moved in my heart I met a
clergyman of a very noble type, who did much to help me by his ready
and wise sympathy. Mr. Besant brought him to see me during the crisis
of the child's illness; he said little, but on the following day I
received from him the following note:--

"_April_ 21, 1871.

"My Dear Mrs. Besant,--I am painfully conscious that I gave you but
little help in your trouble yesterday. It is needless to say that it
was not from want of sympathy. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to
say that it was from excess of sympathy. I shrink intensely from
meddling with the sorrow of any one whom I feel to be of a sensitive
nature. 'The heart hath its own bitterness, and the stranger meddleth
not therewith.' It is to me a positively fearful thought that I might
awaken such a reflection as

"'And common was the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.'

Conventional consolations, conventional verses out of the Bible, and
conventional prayers are, it seems to me, an intolerable aggravation of
suffering. And so I acted on a principle that I mentioned to your
husband that 'there is no power so great as that of one human faith
looking upon another human faith.' The promises of God, the love of
Christ for little children, and all that has been given to us of hope
and comfort, are as de