"Can that soul be right made, in which one love begins to wither
the moment another begins to grow? If I be so made, I cannot help being
worthless!"
It was then first, I think, that I received a notion--anything like a
true notion, that is, of my need of a God--whence afterward I came to
see the one need of the whole race. Of course, not being able to make
ourselves, it needed a God to make us; but that making were a small thing
indeed, if he left us so unfinished that we could come to nothing
right;--if he left us so that we could think or do or be nothing
right;--if our souls were created so puny, for instance, that there was
not room in them to love as they could not help loving, without ceasing
to love where they were bound by every obligation to love right heartily,
and more and more deeply! But had I not been growing all the time I had
been in the world? There must then be the possibility of growing still!
If there was not room in me, there must be room in God for me to become
larger! The room in God must be made room in me! God had not done making
me, in fact, and I sorely needed him to go on making me; I sorely needed
to be made out! What if this new joy and this new terror had come, had
been sent, in order to make me grow? At least the doors were open; I
could go out and forsake myself! If a living power had caused me--and
certainly I did not cause myself--then that living power knew all about
me, knew every smallness that distressed me! Where should I find him? He
could not be so far that the misery of one of his own children could not
reach him! I turned my face into the grass, and prayed as I had never
prayed before.
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