te Nothing rather than in the perfect Will, were it not that he
does not, can not see the Wisdom or the Will, except he draw nigh
thereto.

I shall be answered:

"We do not prefer. We mourn the change which yet we can not resist. We
would gladly have the God of our former faith, were it possible any
longer to believe in Him."

I answer again:

"Are you sure of what you say? Do you in reality mourn over your lost
faith? For my part, I would rather disbelieve with you, than have what
you have lost. For I would rather have no God than the God whom you
suppose me to believe in, and whom therefore I take to be the God in
whom you imagine you believed in the days of your ignorance. That those
were days of ignorance, I do not doubt; but are these the days of your
knowledge? The time will come when you will see deeper into your own
hearts than now, and will be humbled, like not a few other men, by what
you behold."

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BUTCHER'S SHOP.

About four years previous to the time of which I am now writing, and
while yet Mr. Drake was in high repute among the people of Cowlane
chapel, he went to London to visit an old friend, a woman of great
practical benevolence, exercised chiefly toward orphans. Just then her
thoughts and feelings were largely occupied with a lovely little girl,
the chain of whose history had been severed at the last link, and lost
utterly.

A poor woman in Southwark had of her own motion, partly from love to
children and compassion for both them and their mothers, partly to earn
her own bread with pleasure, established a sort of _creche_ in her two
rooms, where mothers who had work from home could bring their children
in the morning, and leave them till night. The child had been committed
to her charge day after day for some weeks. One morning, when she
brought her, the mother seemed out of health, and did not appear at
night to take her home. The next day the woman heard she was in the
small-pox-hospital. For a week or so, the money to pay for the child
came almost regularly, in postage-stamps, then ceased altogether, and
the woman heard nothing either from or of the mother. After a fortnight
she contrived to go to the hospital to inquire after her. No one
corresponding to her description was in the place. The name was a common
one, and several patients bearing it had lately died and been buried,
while others had recovered and were gone. Her inquiries in the
neighborhood had no b