But it
is less than the whole of a work of a Christian. Your full triumph
as far as that particular occasion of duty is concerned will be to
find that you not merely repress inward tendencies to murmur--but
that you would not if you could alter what in any matter God has
plainly willed.... Here is the great work of religion; here is the
path through which sanctity is attained, the highest sanctity; and
yet it is a path evidently to be traced in the course of our daily
duties....

When we are thwarted in the exercise of some innocent, laudable,
and almost sacred affection, as in the case, though its scale be
small, out of which all of this has grown, Satan has us at an
advantage, because when the obstacle occurs, we have a sentiment
that the feeling baffled is a right one, and in indulging a
rebellious temper we flatter ourselves that we are merely as it
were indulgent on behalf, not of ourselves, but of a duty which we
have been interrupted in performing. But our duties can take care
of themselves when God calls us away from any of them.... To be
able to relinquish a duty upon command shows a higher grace than to
be able to give up a mere pleasure for a duty....

RESPONSIBILITY FOR GIFTS

The resignation thus described with all this power and deep feeling is,
of course, in one form of thoughts and words, of symbol and synthesis,
or another, the foundation of all the great systems of life. A summary
of Mr. Gladstone's interpretation of it is perhaps found in a few words
used by him of Blanco White, a heterodox writer whose strange spiritual
fortunes painfully interested and perplexed him. 'He cherished,' says
Mr. Gladstone, 'with whatever associations, the love of God, and
maintained resignation to His will, even when it appears almost
impossible to see how he could have had a dogmatic belief in the
existence of a divine will at all. There was, in short [in Blanco
White], a disposition _to resist the tyranny of self; to recognise the
rule of duty; to maintain the supremacy of the higher over the lower
parts of our nature_.'[136] This very disposition might with truth no
less assured have been assigned to the writer himself. These three
bright crystal laws of life were to him like pointer stars guiding a
traveller's eye to the celestial pole by which he steers.

When all has been said of a man's gifts,