ss,
harsh, inflicting the irreparable stroke of death, where a man would
be concerned with desiring amendment more than vengeance. The simple
questions with which the man Friday poses Robinson Crusoe, and to which
he receives so ponderous an answer, are the questions which naturally
arise in the mind of any thoughtful child. Why, if God be so kind and
loving, does He not make an end of evil at once? Yet, because such
questions are unanswerable by the wisest, the child is, for the
convenience of his education, made to feel that he is wicked if he
questions what he is taught. How many children will persevere in the
innocent scepticism which is so natural and so desirable, under a sense
of disapproval? One of my own earliest experiences in the ugly path of
religious gloom was that I recognised quite clearly to myself that I did
not love God at all. I did not know Him, I had no reason to think
Him kind; He was angry with me, I gathered, if I was ill-tempered or
untruthful. I was well enough aware by childish instinct that my mother
did not cease to love me when I was naughty, but I could not tell about
God. And yet I knew that, with His terrible power of knowing everything,
He was well aware that I did not love Him. It was best to forget about
Him as much as possible, for it spoiled one's pleasure to think about
it. All the little amusements and idle businesses that were so dear to
me, He probably disapproved of them all, and was only satisfied when I
was safe at my lessons or immured in church. Sunday was the sort of day
He liked, and how I detested it!--the toys put away, little ugly books
about the Holy Land to read, an air of deep dreariness about it all.
Thus does religion become a weariness from the outset.

How slowly, and after what strange experience, by what infinite delay of
deduction, does the love of God dawn upon the soul! Even then how faint
and subtle an essence it is! In deep anxiety, under unbearable strain,
in the grip of a dilemma of which either issue seems intolerable, in
weariness of life, in hours of flagging vitality, the mighty tide begins
to flow strongly and tranquilly into the soul. One did not make oneself;
one did not make one's sorrows, even when they arose from one's own
weakness and perversity. There was a meaning, a significance about it
all; one was indeed on pilgrimage; and then comes the running to the
Father's knee, and the casting oneself in utter broken weakness upon the
one Heart th