ntensify them. In the present case the
trials would, perhaps, not have existed without the cares and the
ill-health; while the latter, even in the entire absence of the former,
would have occasioned severe suffering.

_To Mrs. Frederick Field, New York, Jan. 8, 1871._

'If I need make any apology for writing you so often, it must be this--I
can not help it. Having dwelt long in an obscure, oftentimes dark
valley, and then passed out into a bright plane of life, I am full of
tender yearnings over other souls, and would gladly spend my whole time
and strength for them. I long, especially, to see your feet established
on an immovable Rock. It seems to me that God is preparing you for great
usefulness by the fiery trial of your faith. "They learn in suffering
what they teach in song." Oh how true this is! Who is so fitted to sing
praises to Christ as he who has learned Him in hours of bereavement,
disappointment and despair?

What you want is to let your intellect go overboard, if need be, and to
take what God gives just as a little child takes it, without money and
without price. Faith is His, unbelief ours. No process of reasoning can
soothe a mother's empty, aching heart, or bring Christ into it to fill
up all that great waste room. But faith can. And faith is His gift; a
gift to be won by prayer--prayer persistent, patient, determined;
prayer that will take no denial; prayer that if it goes away one day
unsatisfied, keeps on saying, "Well, there's to-morrow and to-morrow and
to-morrow; God may wait to be gracious, and I can wait to receive, but
receive I must and will." This is what the Bible means when it says,
"the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by
force." It does not say the eager, the impatient take it by force, but
the violent--they who declare, "I will not let Thee go except Thou bless
me." This is all heart, not head work. Do I know what I am talking
about? Yes, I do. But my intellect is of no use to me when my heart
is breaking. I must get down on my knees and own that I am less than
nothing, seek _God_, not joy; _consent_ to suffer, not cry for relief.
And how transcendently good He is when He brings me down to that low
place and there shows me that that self-renouncing, self-despairing
spot is just the one where He will stoop to meet me!

My dear friend, don't let this great tragedy of sorrow fail to do
_everything_ for you. It is a dreadful thing to lose children; but a
_lost