my confession, but something has come over me since I
entered this church, and now I cannot."

"What has come over you, my child?" asked the priest.

"I feel that what is said about God in a place like this, that He is a
kind and beneficent Father, who is just and merciful and pities the
sufferings of His children, is untrue. It is all wrong and false. _God
does not care_."

The priest did not answer me immediately, but after a moment of silence
he said in a quivering voice:

"My child, I feel just like that myself sometimes. It is the devil
tempting you. He is standing by your side and whispering in your ear, at
this moment."

I shuddered, and the priest added:

"I see how it is, my daughter. You are suffering, and those you love are
suffering too. But must you surrender your faith on that account? Look
round at the pictures on these walls [the Stations of the Cross]. Think
of the Great Sufferer, the Great Martyr, who in the hour of His death,
at the malicious power of the world, cried, '_Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani_: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'"

I had dropped to my knees by now, my head was down, and my hands were
clasped together.

"You are wrong, my child, if you think God does not care for you because
He allows you to suffer. Are you rich? Are you prosperous? Have you
every earthly blessing? Then beware, for Satan is watching for your
soul. But are you poor? Are you going through unmerited trouble? Have
you lost some one who was dearer to you than your heart of hearts? Then
take courage, for our holy and blessed Saviour has marked you for His
own."

I know nothing of that priest except his whispering voice, which, coming
through the grating of the confessional, produced the effect of the
supernatural, but I thought then, and I think now, that he must have
been a great as well as a good man.

I perfectly recollect that, when I left the church and passed into the
streets, it seemed as if his spirit went with me and built up in my soul
a resolution that was bright with heavenly tears and sunshine.

Work! Work! Work! I should work still harder than before. No matter how
mean, ill-paid, and uncongenial my work might be, I should work all day
and all night if necessary. And since I had failed to get my child into
an orphanage, it was clearly intended that I should keep her with me,
for my own charge and care and joy.

This was the mood in which I returned to the house of the Jew.

It w