hereby. We measure worth
by prominence and fame; but the destiny of the simplest and vilest
of the human race is as august, as momentous as the destiny of the
mightiest king or conqueror; it is not our admiration of each other that
weighs with God, but our nearness to, our dependence on Him. Yet, even
so, we must not deceive ourselves in the matter. We must be sure that it
is the peace of God that we indeed desire, and not merely a refined kind
of leisure; that we are in search of simplicity, and not merely afraid
of work. We must not glorify a mild spectatorial pleasure by the name of
philosophy, or excuse our indolence under the name of contemplation.
We must abstain deliberately, not tamely hang back; we must desire the
Kingdom of Heaven for itself, and not for the sake of the things that
are added if we seek it. If the Scribes and Pharisees have their reward
for ambition and self-seeking, the craven soul has its reward too, and
that reward is a sick emptiness of spirit. And then if we have erred
thus, if we have striven to pretend to ourselves that we were careless
of the prize, when in reality we only feared the battle, what can we
do? How can we repair our mistake? There is but one way; we can own
the pitiful fault, and not attempt to glorify it; we can face the
experience, take our petty and shameful wages and cast ourselves afresh,
in our humiliation and weakness, upon God, rejoicing that we can
at least feel the shame, and enduring the chastisement with patient
hopefulness; for that very suffering is a sign that God has not left us
to ourselves, but is giving us perforce the purification which we could
not take to ourselves.

And even thus, life is not all an agony, a battle, an endurance; there
are sweet hours of refreshment and tranquillity between the twilight
and the dawn; hours when we can rest a little in the shadow, and see the
brimming stream of life flowing quietly but surely to its appointed end.
I watched to-day an old shepherd, on a wide field, moving his wattled
hurdles, one by one, in the slow, golden afternoon; and a whole burden
of anxious thoughts fell off me for a while, leaving me full of a quiet
hope for an end which was not yet, but that certainly awaited me; of
a day when I too might perhaps move as unreflectingly, as calmly,
in harmony with the everlasting Will, as the old man moved about his
familiar task. Why that harmony should be so blurred and broken, why we
should leave undone the t