When Tennyson wrote with such fervour and conviction,
‘Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,’
he was repeating the message which had been given to him, just as Micah or Ezekiel, when the world was younger, repeated some cruder and more elementary message.”
“That is all very well, Mr. Stuart,” said the Frenchman; “you ask me to praise God for taking me out of danger and pain, but what I want to know is why, since He has arranged all things, He ever put me into that pain and danger. I have, in my opinion, more occasion to blame than to praise. You would not thank me for pulling you out of that river if it was also I who pushed you in. The most which you can claim for your Providence is that it has healed the wound which its own hand inflicted.”
“I don’t deny the difficulty,” said the clergyman slowly; “no one who is not self-deceived can deny the difficulty. Look how boldly Tennyson faced it in that same poem, the grandest and deepest and most obviously inspired in our
