with my husband! He is not my friend, but his: I will let him know how I resent his unfairness!” Whether God was good or bad she did not care--that was not a point she was concerned in; all she heeded was how he behaved to her--whether he took part with her husband or herself. He had torn from her the desire of her heart and left her desolate: she would worship him no longer! She had been brought up to believe there was a God, and had never doubted his existence: with her whole will and passion she opposed that which she called God. She had never learned to yield when wrong, and now she was sure she was right. Though hopeless she resisted. She cried out against God, but believed him by his own act helpless to deliver her, for what could he do against the grave? Powerless for her as unfriendly toward her, why should she worship him? Why should she pay court to one who neither would nor could give her what she wanted? What was he God for? Was _she_ to go to his house, and carry herself courteously, as if he were her friend! She would not! And that there might be no mistake as to how she regarded him, she would sit in her pew and read her novel, while the friends of God said their prayers to him! If she annoyed them, so much the better, for the surer she might hope that _he_ was annoyed! It may seem to some incredibly terrible that one should believe in God and defy him! But do none of us, who say also we believe in God, and who are far from defying him, ever behave like Mrs. Wylder? It is one thing to believe in a God; it is quite another to believe in God! Every time we grumble at our fate, every time we are displeased, hurt, resentful at this or that which comes to us, every time we do not receive the suffering sent us, “with both hands,” as William Law says, we are of the same spirit with this half-crazy woman. In some fashion, and that a real one, she must have believed in the God against whom she urged her complaint; and it is rather to her praise that, like Job, she did it openly, and not with mere base grumblings in her heart at her fireside. It is mean to believe half-way, to believe in words, and in action deny. One of four gates stands open to us: to deny the existence of God, and say we can do without him; to acknowledge his existence, but say he is not good, and act as true men resisting a tyrant; to say, “I would there were a God,” and be miserable because there is none; or to say there must be a God, and he must be perfect in goodness or he could not be, and give ourselves up to him heart and soul and hands and history. But what was parson Wingfold to do in the matter? Was he to allow the simple sheep of his flock to think him afraid of the squire's lady? or was he to venture an uproar in the church on a Sunday morning? His wife and he had often talked the thing over, but had arrived at no conclusion. He went to her now, and told her all that had passed. “Isn't it time to do something?” she said.