I dropped it on the grave, unable to go on.

I cast myself on the grass-covered mould, and pressed it to my bosom, as if there was vitality in the cold clods.
"Oh, my mother!" I exclaimed, and strange and dreary sounded my voice in that breathing stillness.

"Has God heard thy prayers?
Will he hear the cries of the fatherless?
Will he have pity on my forsaken youth ?" I would have given worlds to have realized that this mighty God was near; that he indeed cared with a father's love for the orphan mourner, committed in faith to his all-embracing arms.

But I still worshipped him as far-off, enthroned on high, in the heaven of heavens, which cannot contain the full glory of his presence.

I saw him on the burning mountain, in the midst of thunder and lightning and smoke,--a God of consuming fire, before whose breath earthly joys and hopes withered and dried, like blossoms cast into the furnace.
But did not God once hide his face of love from his own begotten Son?
And shall not the _eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani_ of the forsaken heart sometimes ascend amid the woes and trials and wrongs of life, from the great mountain of human misery, the smoking Sinai, whose clouded summit quakes with the footsteps of Deity?
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