“Thou shalt win Glory.” “In the skies, Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes Lest they should look on vanities.” “Thou shalt have Knowledge.” “Helpless dust, In thee, O Lord, I put my trust: Answer Thou for me, Wise and Just.” “And Might.” “Get thee behind me. Lord, Who hast redeemed and not abhorred My soul, oh! keep it by thy Word.” And what a cry is this? Who has not felt it in his heart? It is entitled “Good Friday”: “Am I a stone and not a sheep, That I can stand, O Christ! beneath Thy Cross, To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep? “Not so those women loved Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee; Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly; Not so the thief was moved; “Not so the Sun and Moon Which hid their faces in a starless sky, A horror of great darkness at broad noon,―― I, only I. “Yet give not o’er, But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock; Greater than Moses, turn and look once more And smite a rock.” It would seem that the heart which can utter feelings like these should be safely housed in the one true fold. There, and there only, can such hearts find room for expansion; for there alone can they find the food to fill them, the wherewith to satisfy their long yearnings, the light to guide the many wanderings of their spirits, the strength to lift up and sustain them after many a fall and many a cruel deceit. Outside that threshold, however near they may be to it, they will in the long run find their lives empty. With George Eliot, they will find life only a sad satire and hope a very vague thing. Like her heroine, Dorothea Brooke, the finer feelings and aspirations of their really spiritual and intensely religious natures will only end in petty collisions with the petty people around them, and thankful they may be if all their life does not turn out to be an exasperating mistake, as it must be a failure, compared with that larger life that they only dimly discern. How truly Miss Rossetti discerns it may be seen in her sonnet on “The World”: “By day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair: But all night as the moon so changeth she; Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy, And subtle serpents gliding in her hair. By day she wooes me to the outer air, Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety: But through the night, a beast she grins at me, A very monster void of love and prayer. By day she stands a lie: by night she stands, In all the naked horror of the truth, With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands. Is this a friend indeed; that I should sell My soul to her, give her my life and youth, _Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell?_”