it, for, sure, that which belonged to his nature could not be evil
or of small account in the eyes of him who made him in his own
image. But alas! that image had, no matter how, been so defaced,
that the will of the man might even now be setting itself up against
the will of the God! Did his love then spring from the God-will or
the man-will? Must there not be some God-way of the thing, all
right and nothing wrong?--But he could not compass it, and the
marvel to himself was that all the time he was able to go on
preaching, and that with some sense of honesty and joy in his work.

In this trouble more than ever Wingfold felt that if there was no
God, his soul was but a thing of rags and patches out in the
masterless pitiless storm and hail of a chaotic universe. Often
would he rush into the dark, as it were, crying for God, and ever he
would emerge therefrom with some tincture of the light, enough to
keep him alive and send him to his work. And there, in her own seat,
Sunday after Sunday, sat the woman whom he had seen ten times, and
that for no hasty moments, during the week, by the bedside of her
brother, yet to whom only now, in the open secrecy of the pulpit,
did he dare utter the words of might he would so fain have poured
direct into her suffering heart. And there, Sunday after Sunday, the
face he loved bore witness to the trouble of the heart he loved yet
more: that heart was not yet redeemed! oh, might it be granted him
to set some little wind a blowing for its revival and hope! As often
as he stood up to preach, his heart swelled with the message he
bore--a message of no private interpretation, but for the healing of
the nations, yet a message for her, and for the healing of every
individual heart that would hear and take, and he spoke with the
freedom and dignity of a prophet. But when he saw her afterwards, he
scarcely dared let his eyes rest a moment on her face, would only