activities of earth are
bathed and freshened in the airs of heaven.

Such lives are rarely counted happy; the world pities, while it admires
them; and there is often a note of commiseration even upon the lips of
those who know them best. I cannot think that it ought to be so; that it
is so, arises from the fact, that when we speak of happiness, we use the
word in some shallow and conventional sense which does not answer to our
best and deepest knowledge. For although one who lives so narrowed a
life as I have described, and, like a caged lark, praises God in clear
strains and out of a full heart, might well desire, were such a thing
yet possible, a restored activity and an enlarged power of service, it
would almost always be for others' sake rather than her own; not that
she might multiply occasions of pleasure, but that she might extend the
ministry of love. The truth is, that such an one has penetrated far more
deeply than most into the true secret of human happiness; learning that,
so far as external things go, it stands much more in the limitation than
in the satisfaction of desire; and that for the things within, to lie
close to God, and to be able to do and bear all His will with a complete
and ready assent, is the single sufficient source of a Peace which the
world can neither give nor take away. And then there is a grace of
character which is one of the rarest gifts of healthy, active life; but
which, wherever it shews itself, is almost always a plant of God's own
rearing and tending,--I mean a willingness to live or die, as He
pleases; and a genuine conviction, that whatever He pleases in this
respect is wisest, kindest, best. How little do we feel this, my
brethren, we who come here for an hour's repose from the world's
turmoil! Our life's work, we think, is half undone; our best hopes have
not yet reached fruition; our vital capacity is still unexhausted; a
thousand interests claim us. If God called us now, we should obey the
call with sorrowful reluctance, and innumerable backward glances to the
work and love in which our hearts are centred. Not so with those who
have long dwelt in the silence and the seclusion which lie between life
and death. It is the counterpoise of their suffering and the reward of
their patience, that to them there is no terror, but a great
deliverance, in God's last message. It opens the door of the
prison-house, and sets the captive free. It is the summons to exchange
pain for peace,