r I
can ask of you, and I know I have no right to prefer the request; but
it would be kind of you if you could occasionally. One needs all the
help one can get in this strange life up here. Now I will end. I have
written you a strange, unreserved letter. Forgive me. How I wish this
dreadful war was at an end! U----'s going was a blow to me; but I am
sure he did the right thing. I admire and love that man. . . .

_To G. J. C._

Castleton, Swanage: 1900.

. . . You will not have misinterpreted my silence. I could not answer
your letter until I had secured a time for quiet thought and for
prayer. When I try to write, I feel the uselessness of words. I am
doing better when I am praying for you than when I am writing to you.
Yet I must write. . . . It is strange that God should have made us
thus. To those whom He honours most He gives largest capacity for
love, and therefore largest capacity for suffering. It is still more
strange that we would not wish to be {124} without the love in spite of
the agony which it brings. It must be because

All loves are shadows cast
By the beautiful eternal hills
Of Thine unbeginning past.

I feel this truth 'in seasons of calm weather.' But at other times I
ask myself, I ask God, angrily, Why should some men have no obstacle to
their love? Why should another suffer more than any one can tell--more
than, it sometimes seems to me, can ever be requited? I cannot answer
the question. But I often think of the great unsatisfied heart of God,
and then I think of this poor unsatisfied heart made in His image, and
I feel that He understands me, and that I understand Him better than I
used to do, before this terrible hunger of love began.

I pray God that He will deal tenderly with you, G----, and I am sure
that He will. It cuts me to the heart to think of your suffering, and
I would stop it this moment if I could. So would God--for He loves you
more than I do--unless it were the best thing for you. It is written
of the Son of man, _emathen aph on epathen_. May the same words be
true of you and of me! God bless you and give you Light and Peace!

Peace is something more than joy,
Even the joys above;
For peace, of all created things,
Is likest Him we love.

[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrase in the above paragraph was
transliterated as follows: _emathen_--epsilon, mu, alpha, theta,
epsilon, nu; _aph_--alpha, phi; _on_--emega, nu; _epathe