"Ay," answered Mrs Rose, sobbing again, "and so I said to Mr Carter; but
he answered that I loved him more than myself, because I did say I would
rather to have died than he; and that was wicked, and idolatry."

Thekla knelt down, and passed her arm round her mother, drawing her to
herself, till Mrs Rose's head lay upon her bosom.

"Mother," she said, "whatsoever Mr Carter or any other shall say, I dare
say that this is not God's Gospel. There is an whole book of Scripture
written to bid us love; but I never yet fell in with any to bid us hate.
Nay, Mother dear, the wrong is not, assuredly, that we love each other
too much, but only that we love God too little."

"Thekla, thou art God's best gift to me!" said Mrs Rose, drying her
eyes, and kissing her. "It made me so miserable, _mi querida_ [my
darling--literally, my sought-for one], to think that God should be
displeased with him because I loved him too much."

"I wish Mr Carter would keep away!" answered Thekla, her eyes flashing
anew. "If he hath no better Gospel than this to preach to God's tried
servants, he might as well tarry at home."

"But, _hija mia_ [my daughter]! thou knowest God's Word _so_ well!--tell
me an other, if there be, to say whether it is wrong to grieve and
sorrow when one is troubled. I do not think God meaneth to bid us do
what we cannot do; and I cannot help it."

"Methinks, dear Mother," said Thekla, more quietly, "that Mr Carter
readeth his Bible upside down. He seemeth to read Saint Paul to say
that no chastening for the present is grievous, but joyous. An
unmortified will is one thing; an unfeeling heart an other. God loveth
us not to try to shake off His rod like a wayward and froward child; but
He forbiddeth us not to moan thereunder when the pain wringeth it from
us. And it may be the moan soundeth unto other at times that which it
is not. He knoweth. He shall not put our tears into the wrong bottle,
nor set down the sum of our groans in the wrong column of His book.
Hezekiah should scantly be told `I have seen thy tears,' if he did very
evil in shedding them; nor Moses twice over, `I have seen, I have seen
the affliction of My people, and am come down to deliver them,' if they
had sinned in being afflicted. When God wipeth away all tears from our
eyes, shall He do it as some do with childre--roughly, shaking the
child, and bidding it have done? `Despise not thou the chastening of
the Lord' cometh before `faint not w