“A still heart is not always a _cold_ heart, Gusty, or even a _quiet_ heart. I have tamed my heart to the will of Providence—I have learned in His school, and thrown down in impatience no task that He has set me—rebelled against no discipline He has ordained for me; and my life has gone smoothly, pleasantly, happily. I have gained some calm wisdom; I am thirty-six years old, yet my face is as smooth, my eye as clear, my hair as black and moist as in girlhood. I have minded God for my father, and He has very gently led me up the steeps of life. Believe me, Gusty, it is our rebellion against Him that makes all our troubles. God’s will is paramount, absolute, its end is our good, and He will keep us in our path if it be by ‘a hedge of thorns;’ seek to escape God’s providence and in your struggle you break and bruise yourself, and lose your strength. If, in the words of Scripture, you ‘kick against the pricks,’ you will be wounded. It rests with us, Gusty, to go God’s way willingly and pleasantly, or to go in it rebelliously and painfully, for go God’s way we must. The further we stray from it the longer and more fearful will be the forced journey back to it and the more we wrestle against God’s laws and will, the more fatigued and bruised we will be, of course without the glory and the anguish of coming off victors. Now, Gusty, _my_ faith in God was only lip-acknowledged, before a slight circumstance made it heartfelt. It was this:—You were an infant of six weeks old. You had a tumor rising under your ear. It grew very large and painful. When I had to dress it it put you in an agony, and you would struggle violently and look up into my face with an imploring, reproachful expression, as though you would inquire _why I_ tortured you—_I_ whom you depended upon and whom you loved, and who loved you—why _I_, your mother, tortured you. That was your expression—I read it plainly in your countenance, Gusty, and I wept at your silent reproach. Your father was standing by me, and he said, ‘Emily, what is it?’ I replied, ‘I weep—I weep because this child cannot understand that I _must_ do this—that I _pain_ him to _cure_ him.’ But while I spoke, Gusty, darted down this truth into my heart-strings from Heaven. And so God, the pitiful father, wounds to heal His children, and would make them understand, but that they are querulous and still cry ‘why, why suffering? since God has power and love?’ Alas! we cannot understand, the dulness is ours, or we _must_ not understand, for the probation is ours, for some reason that will one day be revealed. It may be not from the deficiency of God’s power or will to reveal, but from a deficiency of our ability now to receive the revelation of the secret of suffering; and we wait or rebel—struggle against or reproach Providence for suffering, even as the tortured, writhing, and screaming child silently reproached its loving and grieving mother for her tender dressing of its tumor.