rows of life will be a sealed book to you. "I prayed
the Lord," says George Fox, "that he would baptize my heart into a sense
of the conditions and needs of all men."

But our Lord, Who Himself suffered under the trial of loneliness, sends
all of us friends whom we do not deserve. We can trust to Him to give us
the friends we need, just when we need them, and just as long as we need
them, as surely as we trust Him for daily bread. He may be keeping His
best to the last; nay, the best may never come to us in this life at all;
but it is as true now as when St. Anselm said it, eight hundred years
ago:--

"In Thee desires which are deferred are not diminished, but rather
increased; no noble part, though unfulfilled on earth, is suffered to
perish in the soul which lives in Thee, but is deepened and hollowed out
by suffering and yearning and want, that it may become capable of a larger
fulfilment hereafter."

The hunger of the heart is as natural, and therefore as much implanted by
God, as the hunger of the body. Neither must be gratified unlawfully; but
when God sends food to either we should accept it thankfully, without
either asceticism or greediness, and use the strength it gives us as a
means of service. Does not the essence of the wrong sort of love consist
in our looking on the affection we receive, or crave for, as a self-ending
pleasure, instead of as a gift which is only sent to us to make us
happier, and stronger to serve others?

We do not need to be always self-questioning as to how far we are using
our happiness for others. We do not count our mouthfuls of food, we feed
our bodies without thinking of it, and so we should do to our hearts; but
we are often not healthy-minded enough to go right unconsciously, though
some happy souls there are--

"Glad hearts, without reproach or blot,
Who do God's work, and know it not."

The Fall brings us under the curse; the tree of knowledge of good and
evil has entailed upon us the necessity of self-knowledge; and if we find
our hearts out of joint, and craving for more love than we get, we should
examine ourselves as to whether we use the love we do get, like the
runner's torch handed on from one to the other; whether the glow of our
happiness warms us to pass on light and heat to others, or whether we
absorb it all ourselves.

And if we know that we are selfish in the matter,--what then? We cannot
make ourselves unselfish by a wish; we cannot win love at w