He asks on, the questioning devil; he cares nothing what he says. We long
to tell some one, that they may share our pain. We do not yet know that
the cup of affliction is made with such a narrow mouth that only one lip
can drink at a time, and that each man's cup is made to match his lip.
One day we try to tell some one. Then a grave head is shaken solemnly at
us. We are wicked, very wicked, they say we ought not to have such
thoughts. God is good, very good. We are wicked, very wicked. That is
the comfort we get. Wicked! Oh, Lord! do we not know it? Is it not the
sense of our own exceeding wickedness that is drying up our young heart,
filling it with sand, making all life a dust-bin for us?
Wicked? We know it! Too vile to live, too vile to die, too vile to creep
over this, God's earth, and move among His believing men. Hell is the one
place for him who hates his master, and there we do not want to go. This
is the comfort we get from the old.
And once again we try to seek for comfort. This time great eyes look at us
wondering, and lovely little lips say:
"If it makes you so unhappy to think of these things, why do you not think
of something else, and forget?"
Forget! We turn away and shrink into ourself. Forget, and think of other
things! Oh, God! do they not understand that the material world is but a
film, through every pore of which God's awful spirit world is shining
through on us? We keep as far from others as we can.
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