we can enter amongst the number who are all in all to Him--constantly
consoled by Him. This condition of being all in all is demanded as
a right by all men and women in mutual love, yet we deny this right
to God: we are not even willing to attempt it! this failure to be
willing is the grave error we make. Our attitude to God is not one
of love, but of an expectancy of favours. An identical sacrifice
is demanded of us in marriage--father, mother, brothers, sisters,
friends: all these loves must become subservient to the new love,
and with what willingness and smiles this sacrifice is usually
made! Not so with our sacrifices to God--we make them with bitter
tears, hard hearts, long faces. Is He never hurt by this perpetual
grudgingness of love?

But I had not yet learnt any of this, and I could not accept, I could
not swallow this terrible cup. I thought of Christ in the Garden
of Gethsemane. He understood and knew all pain; I had His
companionship, but He offered me no cessation of this pain. It must
be borne; had He not borne His own up to the bitter end? I shrank,
appalled, from the suffering I was already in and the suffering that
lay before me. Relief from this agony, relief, relief! But there was no
relief. In utter darkness all must be gone through. At least I was not
so foolish as to attribute all this horror that was closing in upon the
world to the direct Will of God: I could perceive that, on the
contrary, it was the spirit of Anti-Christ, it was the will of Man with
his greeds, his cruelty, his self-sufficient pride, together with a host
of other evils, which had brought all this to pass. But could
not--would not--God deliver the innocent; must all alike descend into
the pit?

I tried to obtain relief by casting this burden on to Christ, and was
not able to accomplish it. I tried to draw the succour of God down
into my heart, and I tried to throw myself out and up to Him--I could
do neither: the vast barrier remained; Faith could not take me
through it.

A horrible kind of second sight now possessed me, so that, although
I never heard one word from my husband, I became aware of much
that was happening to him--knew him pressed perpetually
backwards, fighting for his life, knew him at times lying exhausted
out in the open fields at night. At last I began to fear for my reason; I
became afraid of the torture of the nights and sat up reading, forcing
my mind to concentrate itself upon the book--the near-to-h