“Mary,” she said, “I can’t help it,—­don’t mind what I say, but I must speak or die!  Mary, I cannot, will not, be resigned!—­it is all hard, unjust, cruel!—­to all eternity I will say so!  To me there is no goodness, no justice, no mercy in anything!  Life seems to me the most tremendous doom that can be inflicted on a helpless being! What had we done, that it should be sent upon us?  Why were we made to love so, to hope so,—­our hearts so full of feeling, and all the laws of Nature marching over us,—­never stopping for our agony?  Why, we can suffer so in this life that we had better never have been born!

“But, Mary, think what a moment life is! think of those awful ages of eternity! and then think of all God’s power and knowledge used on the lost to make them suffer! think that all but the merest fragment of mankind have gone into this,—­are in it now!  The number of the elect is so small we can scarce count them for anything!  Think what noble minds, what warm, generous hearts, what splendid natures are wrecked and thrown away by thousands and tens of thousands!  How we love each other! how our hearts weave into each other! how more than glad we should be to die for each other!  And all this ends—­O God, how must it end?—­Mary! it isn’t my sorrow only!  What right have I to mourn?  Is my son any better than any other mother’s son?  Thousands of thousands, whose mothers loved them as I love mine, are gone there!—­Oh, my wedding-day!  Why did they rejoice?  Brides should wear mourning,—­the bells should toll for every wedding; every new family is built over this awful pit of despair, and only one in a thousand escapes!”

Pale, aghast, horror-stricken, Mary stood dumb, as one who in the dark and storm sees by the sudden glare of lightning a chasm yawning under foot.  It was amazement and dimness of anguish;—­the dreadful words struck on the very centre where her soul rested.  She felt as if the point of a wedge were being driven between her life and her life’s life,—­between her and her God.  She clasped her hands instinctively on her bosom, as if to hold there some cherished image, and said in a piercing voice of supplication, “My God! my God! oh, where art Thou?”

Mrs. Marvyn walked up and down the room with a vivid spot of red in each cheek and a baleful fire in her eyes, talking in rapid soliloquy, scarcely regarding her listener, absorbed in her own enkindled thoughts.

“Dr. Hopkins says that this is all best,—­better than it would have been in any other possible way,—­that God chose it because it was for a greater final good,—­that He not only chose it, but took means to make it certain,—­that He ordains every sin, and does all that is necessary to make it certain,—­that He creates the vessels of wrath and fits them for destruction, and that He has an infinite knowledge by which He can do it without violating their free agency.—­So much the worse!  What a use of infinite knowledge What