My own experience, the older I grow, and the more I see of life, is that I feel it to be a much more bewildering and even terrifying thing than I used to think it. To use a metaphor, instead of its being a patient educational process, which I would give all that I possessed to be able sincerely to believe it to be, it seems to me arranged far more upon the principle of a game of cricket--which I have always held to be, in theory, the most unjust and fortuitous of games. You step to the wicket, you have only a single chance; the boldest and most patient man may make one mistake at the outset, and his innings is over; the timid tremulous player may by undeserved good luck contrive to keep his wicket up, till his heart has got into the right place, and his eye has wriggled straight, and he is set. That is the first horrible fact about life--that carelessness is often not penalised at all, whereas sometimes it is instantly and fiercely penalised. One boy at school may break every law, human and divine, and go out into the world unblemished. Another timid and good-natured child may make a false step, and be sent off into life with a permanent cloud over him. School life often emphasises the injustice of the world instead of trying to counteract it. Schoolmasters tend to hustle the weak rather than to curb the strong. And then we pass into the larger world, and what do we see? A sad confusion everywhere. We see an innocent and beautiful girl struck down by a long and painful disease--a punishment perhaps appropriate to some robust and hoary sinner, who has gathered forbidden fruit with both his hands, and the juices of which go down to the skirts of his clothing; or a brave and virtuous man, with a wife and children dependent on him, needed if ever man was, kind, beneficent, strong, is struck down out of life in a moment. On the other hand, we see a mean and cautious sinner, with no touch of unselfishness and affection, guarded and secured in material contentment. Let any one run over in his mind the memories of his own circle, fill up the gaps, and ask himself bravely and frankly whether he can trace a wise and honest and beneficent design all through. He may try to console himself by saying that the disasters of good people, after all, are the exceptions, and that, as a rule, courage and purity of heart are rewarded, while cowardice and filthiness are punished. But what room is there for exceptions in a world governed by God Whom we must believe to be all-powerful, all-just, and all-loving? It is the wilful sin of man, says the moralist, that has brought these hard things upon him. But that is no answer, for the dark shadow lies as sombrely over irresponsible nature, which groans over undeserved suffering. And then, to make the shadow darker still, we have all the same love of life, the same inalienable sense of our right to happiness, the same inheritance of love. If we could but see that in the end pain