now and for ever, in the souls of a hundred other invalids or mourners, who may have marked it in the same manner, and who shall estimate its glory and its good! It is clear that the conviction I speak of arises from the supposition--indispensable and, I believe, almost universal,--that pain is the chastisement of a Father; or, at least, that it is, in some way or other, ordained for, or instrumental to good. The experience of men leaves this belief uncontested, and incontestable. Otherwise, evil and pain would be, in their effects on sufferers, long-lived, if not as immortal as good. If we believed our sufferings to be inflicted by cruelty or malice, our pains would immediately take a permanent existence by becoming connected with our passions of fear, revenge, &c.; though still--as is known to students of the human soul,--the evil, however long sustained, must be finally absorbed in the good. We, of our age and state of society, however, have to do with none who believe pain to be inflicted by the malignity of a superior being. Those who are not so happy as to recognise in it a mere disguise of blessings otherwise unattainable, receive it, under some of the various theories of necessary imperfection, as something unavoidable, and therefore to be received placidly, if not gratefully. These would admit, as cheerfully as the adorers of a chastening Father, the richness of my wealth, as I lie, on New Year’s Eve, surrounded by the treasures of the departing year,--the kindly Year which has utterly destroyed for me so much that is terrible and grievous, while he leaves with me all the new knowledge and power, all the teachings from on high, and the love from far and near, and even the frailest-seeming blossom of pleasure that, in any moment, he has cast into my lap.