I walked to-day in sheltered wooded valleys; and at one point, in a very lonely and secluded lane, leant long upon a gate that led into a little forest clearing, to watch the busy and intent life of the wood. There were the trees extending their fresh leaves to the rain; the birds slipped from tree to tree; a mouse frisked about the grassy road; a hundred flowers raised their bright heads. None of these little lives have, I suppose, any conception of the extent of life that lies about them; each of them knows the secrets and instincts of its own tiny brain, and guesses perhaps at the thoughts of the little lives akin to it. Yet every tiniest, shortest, most insignificant life has its place in the mind of God. It seemed to me then such an amazing, such an arrogant thing to define, to describe, to limit the awful mystery of the Creator and his purpose. Even to think of him, as he is spoken of in the Old Testament, with fierce and vindictive schemes, with flagrant partialities, seemed to me nothing but a dreadful profanation. And yet these old writings do, in a degree, from old association, colour my thoughts about him. And then all these anxious visions left me; and I felt for awhile like a tiny spray of sea-weed floating on an infinite sea, with the brightness of the morning overhead. I felt that I was indeed set where I found myself to be, and that if now my little heart and brain are too small to hold the truth, yet I thanked God for making even the conception of the mystery, the width, the depth, possible to me; and I prayed to him that he would give me as much of the truth as I could bear. And I do not doubt that he gave me that; for I felt for an instant that whatever befell me, I was indeed a part of Himself; not a thing outside and separate; not even his son and his child: but Himself. XL After Death I had so strange a dream or vision the other night, that I cannot refrain from setting it down; because the strangeness and the wonder of it seem to make it impossible for me to have conceived of it myself; it was suggested by nothing, originated by nothing that I can trace; it merely came to me out of the void.