"My friend," she wrote, "you and I and Fred, young, heedless, cynical, living in this reckless town of New York, may laugh sometimes at the old things like law and religion, when they say, 'Thou shalt not.' We may think that phrase was written for old fogies, and we may sneer at 'the wages of sin is death'; but, my friend, there comes to us some time knowledge that the law and religion are right. What they say we shall not do, we cannot do without suffering. Fred and I have learned that. The wages of sin is death."
It is worse than death; for what was Hell in
that great vision that John saw? Why, nothing
but the removal of all restraint. "He which is
filthy, let him be filthy still." He is unclean, let
him be unclean. He is unholy, let him be unholy.
Take all the restraints away. That is
Hell.
Away from the dark gates that open thither may another voice call us here to-day, the clear, strong, summoning voice of Him Who said of Himself: "I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. I do always those things that please my Father," and Who in the garden of Gethsemane, when the anguish was almost greater than He could bear, yet found rest when He prayed, "Father, not my will, but thine be done"; that out of the willfulness and capriciousness and the whim and mood of our little self-indulgent lives we may pass into the great, strong, steadfast, sovereign will that waits for us;
