It were a truism for one who believes in God to say that such
catastrophes, so rending, so frightful, never come but where they
are needed. The Power of Life is not content that they who live in
and by him should live poorly and contemptibly. If the presence of
low thoughts which he repudiates, yet makes a man miserable, how
must it be with him if they who live and move and have their being
in him are mean and repulsive, or alienated through self-sufficiency
and slowness of heart?
I cannot report much progress in Helen during the months of winter
and spring. But if one wakes at last, wakes at all, who shall dare
cast the stone at him--that he ought to have awaked sooner? What man
who is awake will dare to say that he roused himself the first
moment it became possible to him? The main and plain and worst,
perhaps only condemnation is--that when people do wake they do not
get up. At the same time, however, I can hardly doubt that Helen was
keeping the law of a progress slow as the growth of an iron-tree.
Nothing had ever yet troubled her. She had never been in love, could
hardly be said to be in love now. She went regularly to church, and
I believe said her prayers night and morning--yet felt no
indignation at the doctrines and theories propounded by George
Bascombe.
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