A. The question of an appointed time seems important chiefly to the right understanding of God's love. Between us and the understanding of that love bereavement is often a great obstacle. Oftener still it is a great puzzle. I do not have to catalogue the conditions in which the taking away of men, women, and children, sorely needed here if for no other purpose than to love, has moved us to deep perplexity, or to something like a doubt of God. We have probably all known cases where such tragedy has driven sufferers to renounce God altogether, and to curse Him. Some of us who have been smitten may have come near to doing this ourselves, or may have done it. VII I have already spoken of the Caucasian's habit of shuffling off on God those ills for which he will not face the responsibility himself, and I am inclined to think that this is one of them. In my own experience the explanation of "God's Will" made to the mother of a little family left fatherless, or to the parents of a dead baby, or to a young man with a young wife in her coffin, has always been revolting. I have made it; I have tried, on the faith of others, to think it must be so. I have long since ceased to think it, and feel happier for not crediting the Universal Father with any such futile tricks. I should not go so far as to say that we human beings have misapplied the laws of life in such a way as to kill those who are dear to us; rather, I think, we have never learned those laws except in their merest rudiments. We are not yet prepared to do more than bungle the good things offered us on earth, and more or less misuse them. We misuse them ourselves; we teach others to misuse them; we create systems of which the pressure is so terrible that under it the weak can do nothing but die. We give them no chance. We squeeze the life out of them. And then we say piously, "The blessed Will of God!" As an illustration of what I mean let me cite the two following cases among people I have known: A young lady belonging to a family of means was found to be suffering from incipient tuberculosis. The doctors ordered her to Saranac. To Saranac she went, with two nurses. Within eighteen months she was home again, quite restored to health. This was as it should have been. At the same time I knew a car-conductor, married some six or seven years, and the father of three children. He, too, was found to be suffering from incipient tuberculosis. He, too, was ordered to Saranac. But having a wife and three children to support, Saranac was out of the question. He went on conducting his car till his cough became distressing, whereupon he was "fired." A minimum allowance from his church kept the family from starvation, while the nearest approach to Saranac that could be contrived was an arrangement by which he slept with his head out the window. In course of time he died, and his widow was exhorted to submit to the Will of God. VIII