Nothing can
extricate us from this dilemma, except the belief that what we
think evil is not really evil at all, but hidden good; and thus we
have firm ground under our feet at last, and can begin to climb out
of the abyss. And then we feel in our own hearts how indomitable is
our sense of our right to happiness, how unconquerable our hope;
how swiftly we forget unhappiness; how firmly we remember joy; and
then we see that the one absolutely permanent and vital power in
the world is the power of love, which wins victories over every
evil we can name; and if it is so plain that love is the one
essential and triumphant force in the world, it must be the very
heartbeat of God; till we feel that when soon or late the day comes
for us, when our swimming eyes discern ever more faintly the
awestruck pitying faces round us, and the senses give up their
powers one by one, and the tides of death creep on us, and the
daylight dies--that even so we shall find that love awaiting us in
the region to which the noblest and bravest and purest, as well as
the vilest and most timid and most soiled have gone.
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