n his experience,
isolated and shut off from his kind, in a peculiar horror of darkness
and doubt; as if the thoughts and difficulties at which he stumbled had
never strewn a human path before. I said but little to him; and,
indeed, there was but little to say. It was enough that he should
"cleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the
heart." I tried to make him feel that he was not alone in the matter,
and that other feet had trodden the dark path before him. No advice is
possible in such cases; "therein the patient must minister to himself";
the solution lies in the mind of the sufferer. He knows what he ought
to do; the difficulty is for him sufficiently to desire to do it; yet
even to speak frankly of cares and troubles is very often to melt and
disperse the morbid mist that gathers round them, which grows in
solitude. To state them makes them plain and simple; and, indeed, it
is more than that; for I have often noticed that the mere act of
formulating one's difficulties in the hearing of one who sympathises
and feels, often brings the solution with it. One finds, like
Christian in Doubting Castle, the key which has lain in one's bosom all
the time--the key of Promise; and when one has finished the recital,
one is lost in bewilderment that one ever was in any doubt at all.

A year has passed since that date, and I have had the happiness of
seeing health and contentment stream back into the man's face. He has
not overcome, he has not won an easy triumph; but he is in the way now,
not wandering on trackless hills.

So, in the mood of which I spoke at first--the mood in which one
desires to build up and renew--one must not yield oneself to luxurious
and pathetic reveries, or allow oneself to muse and wonder in the
half-lit region in which one may beat one's wings in vain--the region,
I mean, of sad stupefaction as to why the world is so full of broken
dreams, shattered hopes, and unfulfilled possibilities. One must
rather look round for some little definite failure that is within the
circle of one's vision. And even so, there sometimes comes what is the
most evil and subtle temptation of all, which creeps upon the mind in
lowly guise, and preaches inaction. What concern have you, says the
tempting voice, to meddle with the lives and characters of others--to
guide, to direct, to help--when there is so much that is bitterly amiss
with your own heart and life? How will you dare to prea