"I can't conceive of God's being happy if nobody loved him." Mercy was startled by these words from Lizzy, who rarely questioned and never philosophized.

She opened her lips to reply with a hasty reiteration of her first sentiment, but the words died even before they were spoken, arrested by her sudden consciousness of the possibility of a grand truth underlying Lizzy's instinct.

If that were so, did it not lie out far beyond every fact in life, include and control them all, as the great truth of gravitation outlies and embraces the physical universe?
Did God so need as well as so love the world, that he gave his only begotten Son for it?
Is this what it meant to be "one with God"?
Then, if the great, illimitable heart of God thus yearns for the love of his creatures, the greater the heart of a human being, the more must he yearn for a fulness of love, a completion of the cycle of bonds and joys for which he was made.

From these simple words of a loving woman's heart had flashed a great light into Mercy's comprehension of God.

She was silent for some moments; then she said solemnly,-- "That was a great thought you had then, Lizzy.