in spite
of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to
get enough patience and charity toward our stumbling, falling
companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way
in which a strong determined soul can learn it--by getting his
heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share
not only the outward consequence of their error but their inward
suffering.

This compassion for human suffering is conspicuous throughout, and it is
regarded as the most effective means of binding men together in common
sympathy and helpfulness. Sorrow is regarded as the true means of man's
elevation, as that purifying agent which is indispensable to his true
development. This teaching is fully depicted in the chapter headed "The
Hidden Dread," and in which Hetty's flight is described. We are told in
that chapter that this looks like a very bright world on the surface, but
that as we look closer within man's nature we find sorrow and pain untold.

What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the
valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign
countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our
English Loamshire: the rich land tilled with just as much care, the
woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come
on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in
Loamshire--an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has
stood, perhaps, by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad
sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear
brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this
world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image
of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this
joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms,
or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood,
there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps
a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from
swift-advancing shame; understanding no more of this life of ours than
a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on
the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such
things are sometimes hidden among the sunn