nothingness.  We stood together on these cliffs—­wives whose husbands were wrestling with the storm, mothers who were yearning for the sons they had borne.  We saw the boats fight nearer and nearer through the mad spray and the tearing blasts.  One after another we saw them crushed and sunken by the hand of the wind.  Many of us went to our homes with bitterness at heart.  We could not tell why those innocent men should have been snatched out of life; we could not tell why the innocent sufferers who remain should bear their sorrow through all the years until the release of death comes.  Our thoughts were the thoughts that Job cherished in the black depths of his agony.  But let me counsel you; let me ask you to remember that although death is here and pain is here—­although every moment of our lives brings some new mystery—­yet in the end there shall be peace.  Our little sufferings count as nothing in the sum of the universe.  The ills that we cry out against are only but as the troubles of children, and over all watches the Father who cared for Job in the desert, and who took to His own breast the souls of those who went down in the storm that crushed so many hopes of so many men and women in this our little village.  I ask you only to trust.  I give you no arguments.  I only beg you to feel.  Crush your questionings.  Force yourself to believe in your own insignificance; force yourself to think that suffering has a wise end, and that even our pains, which are so great to us, are part of the scheme of a Master who is moulding the universe to His own plans.  When once you have attained this central attitude of calm and trust, then for the rest of your life you will know nothing but joy.  The thought of death will be no more like to the horror of a nightmare, but you will meet the great change even as you meet the deep black sleep of tired men.  You will know, while thought remains, that you have not lived in vain, and you have not died in vain, for somewhere in God’s providence there shall be rest for you, and immortal peace.”

The thin frame of the speaker quivered as he spoke, and his long fingers writhed with a motion that gave emphasis to his ringing tones.  Hob’s Tommy had never heard anything like this before.  He sat stupefied, and felt as though some music not heard of hitherto were playing and giving him gladness.  The congregation broke up, and old William Dent said to one of his cronies, “Watty was grand this afternoon.  Ay, they may talk about the fine preachers with the Greek and the Latin, but I want to hear a man like that.”  Musgrave and Hob’s Tommy walked back over the moor in the twilight after the second service, and the giant spoke not a word all the way until they reached the bridge that crossed the little river.  The dying twilight made the sluggish water like silver, and the trees were just beginning to moan with the evening wind.  Tommy stood in the middle of the bridge, and looked—­looked into the dark depths of the water, and then let his eye trace the silver path of the river where it vanished in the soft purple tints of the wood.  He said, “If I was to drop over here now, Mr. Musgrave, do you think God would take me?” And Musgrave said—­