Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/309

 wounded hearts cry out, and refuse to be comforted.

But what do we know of the agony of those who see the impending blow coming, not from the beneficent and all-wise Father, whose right to the creature he has made we do not dispute, but from man, the petty instrument of a fallible judgment, stepping in between the Creator and the created? Who see the beloved one moving before them, in fullness of health, in unimpaired vigor of mind and body, and in undoubted love and faith, and yet know that before another sun shall set that precious life shall be crushed out by brute violence?

"Heaven in its mercy hides the book of fate"—but man, unpitying man, sets the inevitable hour fall before his victim's eye, and the terrible moments melt away, each one bearing off a visible portion of the life still palpitating in the heart.

Ah! we say such agony is too great to be borne. But it has been borne by hearts as tender and as loving as our own.

And how can human nature endure it? We know not—we only know that it has