The Doctor, though he played with many of his theories as if they were rather mushrooms of the fancy than fruits of the understanding, never expressed himself sportively upon this. He thought that it rested upon something more solid than the inductions of a speculative imagination, because there is a feeling in human nature which answers to it, acknowledges, and confirms it. Often and often, in the course of his painful practice, he had seen bereaved parents seek for consolation in the same conclusion, to which faith and instinctive reason led them, though no such hypothesis as his had prepared them for it. They believed it simply and sincerely; and it is a belief, according to his philosophy, which nature has implanted in the heart for consolation, under one of the griefs that affect it most. He had not the same confidence in another view of the same branch of his hypothesis, relating to the early death of less hopeful subjects. Their term, he supposed, might be cut short in mercy, if the predisposing qualities which they had contracted on their ascent were such as would have rendered their tendency toward evil fatally predominant. But this, as he clearly saw, led to the brink of a bottomless question; and when he was asked after what manner he could explain why so many in whom this tendency predominates, are, to their own destruction, permitted to live out their term, he confessed himself at fault. It was among the things, he said, which are inexplicable by our limited powers of mind. When we attain a higher sphere of existence, all things will be made clear. Meantime, believing in the infinite goodness of God, it is enough for us to confide in His infinite mercy, and in that confidence to rest.