the spirit which circumstances would only
bind and crush in every effort to rise. That is no folly which prepares
us for reverses, and fortifies us against change and vicissitude. That
is no folly which takes away the sting from affliction--which has kept
me, Guy, as once before you said, from driving a knife into your heart,
while it lay beating against the one to which yours had brought all
manner of affliction. Oh, believe me, the faith and the feeling and the
hope, not less than the fear, which has made me what I am now--which has
taught me to rely only on the one--which has made me independent of all
things and all loves--ay, even of yours, when I refer to it--is no idle
folly. It is the only medicine by which the soul may live. It is that
which I bring to you now. Hear me, then--Guy, hear the prayer of the
poor Ellen, who surely has some right to be heard by you. Kneel for me,
and with me, on this dungeon floor, and pray--only pray."

"And what should I pray for, and what should I say--and whom should I
curse?"

"Oh, curse none!--say anything you please, so that it have the form of a
prayer. Say, though but a single sentence, but say it in the spirit
which is right."

"Say what?"

"Say--'the Lord's will be done,' if nothing more; but say it in the true
feeling--the feeling of humble reliance upon God."

"And wherefore say this? His will must be done, and will be done,
whether I say it or not. This is all idle--very idle--and to my mind
excessively ridiculous, Ellen."

"Not so, Guy, as your own sense will inform you. True, his will must be
done; but there is a vast difference between desiring that it be done,
and in endeavoring to resist its doing. It is one thing to pray that his
will have its way without stop, but quite another to have a vain wish in
one's heart to arrest its progress. But I am a poor scholar, and have no
words to prove this to your mind, if you are not willing to think upon
the subject. If the danger is not great enough in your thought--if the
happiness of that hope of immortality be not sufficiently impressive to
you--how can I make it seem different? The great misfortune of the
learned and the wise is, that they will not regard the necessity. If
they did--if they could be less self-confident--how much more readily
would all these lights from God shine out to them, than to us who want
the far sense so quickly to perceive and to trace them out in the thick
darkness. But it is my prayer,