ldren see him; and natural he should let them know that he still saw
and cared for those they had lost sight of. The whole thing seems to me
reasonable; I can believe it. It implies indeed a world of things of
which we know nothing; but that is for, not against it, seeing such a
world we need; and if anyone insists on believing nothing but what he
has seen something like, I leave him to his misery and the mercy of
God."

If the world had been so made that men could easily believe in the
maker of it, it would not have been a world worth any man's living in,
neither would the God that made such a world, and so revealed himself
to such people, be worth believing in. God alone knows what life is
enough for us to live--what life is worth his and our while; we may be
sure he is labouring to make it ours. He would have it as full, as
lovely, as grand, as the sparing of nothing, not even his own son, can
render it. If we would only let him have his own way with us! If we do
not trust him, will not work with him, are always thwarting his
endeavours to make us alive, then we must be miserable; there is no
help for it. As to death, we know next to nothing about it. "Do we
not!" say the faithless. "Do we not know the darkness, the emptiness,
the tears, the sinkings of heart, the desolation!" Yes, you know those;
but those are your things, not death's. About death you know nothing.
God has told us only that the dead are alive to him, and that one day
they will be alive again to us. The world beyond the gates of death is,
I suspect, a far more homelike place to those that enter it, than this
world is to us.

"I don't like death," said Davie, after a silence.

"I don't want you to like, what you call death, for that is not the
thing itself--it is only your fancy about it. You need not think about
it at all. The way to get ready for it is to live, that is, to do what
you have to do."

"But I do not want to get ready for it. I don't want to go to it; and
to prepare for it is like going straight into it!"

"You have to go to it whether you prepare for it or not. You cannot
help going to it. But it must be like this world, seeing the only way
to prepare for it is to do the thing God gives us to do."

"Aren't you afraid of death, Mr. Grant?"

"No, I am not. Why should I fear the best thing that, in its time, can
come to me? Neither will you be afraid when it comes. It is not the
dreadful thing it looks."

"Why should it look drea