“I think it is the failure of our faith,” she said gently. “The chilly feeling that God has let go of us and that there are none to help.” “Exactly so,” answered Mr. Somerset, “and I daresay all of us have known that feeling more than once. It calls our very humility and littleness to its aid, so that we ask, ‘Who am I that God should remember me?’ But can any sane mind look upon another, the lowest, the worst and the most abject, and deliberately say, ‘Who is he that God should remember him?’ I think not. We can feel that would be the vilest blasphemy against God. It would at once strip God of all that makes Him good, ay, or great either, with that wonderful greatness, before which earth’s highest and lowest and best and worst are all the same. No, Mrs. Challoner, in realising the fellowship of others in suffering, we at once realise that God must know all about it, and that there must be some wise purpose in it, and if so for that other, then for ourselves too.” “Did not some philosopher say that death, being universal, could be no evil?” asked Lucy. “I think it was the poet Schiller said so,” returned Mr. Somerset, “and I believe it is the consciousness of this, however little realised, which keeps life brave and bright and sane in the perpetual presence of death. The ‘solidarity of humanity,’ though the phrase is one which they may scarcely understand, is the secret treasure of the humble. It never occurs to them to be surprised and shocked when those evils befall them which they always knew befell others. In their eyes ‘it is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth to Him _good_,’ always ‘good,’ you may observe. ‘It is all in the day’s work,’ they tell one, when their lot is hardest.” Lucy thought of Mrs. May, and of the strength and comfort she had gathered, more than a year ago, from that good woman’s calm outlook on events, and her fixed conviction that there is inward strength at command sufficient to lift us elastic after any outward blow. It seemed to Lucy that she too might rise equal to the sublime suspenses and sorrows of life if only her strength and spirits were spared the perpetual corrosion of petty cares and worries which fretted them away as moths consume a garment. Then the wiser reflection came—that neither were such petty cares and worries special to her; they too entered into every lot; one could not doubt that brave cheery Mrs. May had her full share. The same inward strength must be as ready and able to bear the perpetual little trials as the occasional great ones, if only we invoke it and know how to use it. The great ocean of Divine love and strength is always waiting to flow into our smallest trials, if we would but hold them ready.