It is as
impossible you should understand it therefore, its sorrow, as that you
should understand God, who alone understands you. Be developed into the
divine idea of you; for your grief's sake let God have his way with you,
and not only will all be well, but you shall say, "It is well."
It was a sore and dreary time for Hester, alone in the room where she
had spent so many happy hours. She sat in a window, looking out upon the
leafless trees and the cold gloomy old statue in the midst of them.
Frost was upon every twig. A thin sad fog filled the comfortless air.
There might be warm happy homes many, but such no more belonged to her
world! The fire was burning cheerfully behind her, but her eyes were
fixed on the dreary square. She was hardly thinking--only letting
thoughts and feelings come and go. What a thing is life and being, when
a soul has become but the room in which ghosts hold their revel; when
the man is no longer master of himself, can no more say to this or that
thought, thou shall come, and thou shall go; but is a slave to his own
existence, can neither cease to be, nor order his being--able only in
fruitless rebellion to entangle himself yet more in the net he has
knotted around him! Such is every one parted from the essential life,
who has not the Power by which he lives one with him, holding pure and
free and true the soul he sent forth from the depths of his being.
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