During the suffering which accompanied the disappointment at which I have already hinted, I did not think it inconsistent with the manly spirit in which I was resolved to endure it, to seek consolation from such a source as the New Testament—­if mayhap consolation for such a trouble was to be found there.  Whereupon, a little to my surprise, I discovered that I could not read the Epistles at all.  For I did not then care an atom for the theological discussions in which I had been interested before, and for the sake of which I had read those epistles.  Now that I was in trouble, what to me was that philosophical theology staring me in the face from out the sacred page?  Ah! reader, do not misunderstand me.  All reading of the Book is not reading of the Word.  And many that are first shall be last and the last first.  I know now that it was Jesus Christ and not theology that filled the hearts of the men that wrote those epistles—­Jesus Christ, the living, loving God-Man, whom I found—­not in the Epistles, but in the Gospels.  The Gospels contain what the apostles preached—­the Epistles what they wrote after the preaching.  And until we understand the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ our brother-king—­until we understand Him, until we have His Spirit, promised so freely to them that ask it—­all the Epistles, the words of men who were full of Him, and wrote out of that fulness, who loved Him so utterly that by that very love they were lifted into the air of pure reason and right, and would die for Him, and did die for Him, without two thoughts about it, in the very simplicity of no choice—­the Letters, I say, of such men are to us a sealed book.  Until we love the Lord so as to do what He tells us, we have no right to have an opinion about what one of those men meant; for all they wrote is about things beyond us.  The simplest woman who tries not to judge her neighbour, or not to be anxious for the morrow, will better know what is best to know, than the best-read bishop without that one simple outgoing of his highest nature in the effort to do the will of Him who thus spoke.

But I have, as is too common with me, been led away by my feelings from the path to the object before me.  What I wanted to say was this:  that, although I could make nothing of the epistles, could see no possibility of consolation for my distress springing from them, I found it altogether different when I tried the Gospel once more.  Indeed, it then took such a hold of me as it had never taken before.  Only that is simply saying nothing.  I found out that I had known nothing at all about it; that I had only a certain surface-knowledge, which tended rather to ignorance, because it fostered the delusion that I did know.  Know that man, Christ Jesus!  Ah!  Lord, I would go through fire and water to sit the last at Thy table in Thy kingdom; but dare I say now I know Thee!—­But Thou art the Gospel, for Thou art the Way, the Truth, and the