And yet, alas, to me to-day the image seems to miss the one thing needful; how all the images of guide and guardian and shepherd fail when applied to God! For here the shepherd is but a little wiser, a little stronger than his flock. He sees their difficulties, he feels them himself. But with God, He is at once the Guide, and the Creator of the very dangers past which He would lead us. If we felt that God Himself were dismayed and sad in the presence of evils that He could not touch or remedy, we should turn to Him to help us as He best could. But while we feel that the very perplexities and sufferings come from His hand, how can we sincerely ask Him to guard us from things which He originates, or at least permits? Why should they be there at all, if His concern is to help us past them; or how can we think that He will lead us past them, when they are part of His wise and awful design? And thus one plunges again into the darkness. Can it indeed be that God, if He be all-embracing, all-loving, all-powerful, can create or allow to arise within Himself something that is not, Himself, alien to Him, hostile to Him? How can we believe in Him and trust Him, if this indeed be so? And yet, looking upon that little flock to-day, I did indeed feel the presence of a kind and fatherly heart, of something that grieved for my pain, and that laid a hand upon my shoulder, saying, "Son, endure for a little; be not so disquieted!" March 8, 1891. Something--far-off, faint, joyful--cried out suddenly in the depths of my spirit to-day. I felt--I can but express it by images, for it was too intangible for direct utterance--as a woman feels when her child's life quickens within her; as a traveller's heart leaps up when, lost among interminable hills, he is hailed by a friendly voice; as the river-water, thrust up into creeks and estuaries by the incoming tide, is suddenly freed by the ebb from that stealthy pressure, and flows gladly downwards; as the dark garden-ground may feel when the frozen soil melts under warm winds of spring, and the flower-roots begin to swell and shoot. Some such thrill it was that moved in the silence of the soul, showing that the darkness was alive.