but
ambitiously resolved to wait for something higher, and so missed the
tide. Men in the church have taken the wrong path at some critical time,
and doomed themselves to all the pangs of disappointed ambition. But I
think a sincere man in the church has a great advantage over almost all
ordinary disappointed men. He has less temptation, reading affairs by
the light of after-time, to look back with bitterness on any mistake he
may have made. For, if he be the man I mean, he took the decisive step
not without seeking the best of guidance; and the whole training of his
mind has fitted him for seeing a higher Hand in the allotment of human
conditions. And if a man acted for the best, according to the light he
had, and if he truly believes that God puts all in their places in
life, he may look back without bitterness upon what may appear the
most grievous mistakes. I must be suffered to add, that, if he is able
heartily to hold certain great truths and to rest on certain sure
promises, hardly any conceivable earthly lot should stamp him a soured
or disappointed man. If it be a sober truth, that "all things shall work
together for good" to a certain order of mankind, and if the deepest
sorrows in this world may serve to prepare us for a better,--why, then,
I think that one might hold by a certain ancient philosopher (and
something more) who said, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am,
therewith to be content."

* * * * *

You see, reader, that, in thinking of _People of whom More might have
been Made_, we are limiting the scope of the subject. I am not thinking
how more might have been made of us originally. No doubt, the potter
had power over the clay. Give a larger brain, of finer quality, and
the commonplace man might have been a Milton. A little change in the
chemical composition of the gray matter of that little organ which is
unquestionably connected with the mind's working as no other organ of
the body is, and, oh, what a different order of thought would have
rolled off from your pen, when you sat down and tried to write your
best! If we are to believe Robert Burns, some people have been made more
of than was originally intended. A certain poem records how that which,
in his homely phrase, he calls "stuff to mak' a swine," was ultimately
converted into a very poor specimen of a human being. The poet had no
irreverent intention, I dare say; but I am not about to go into the
field of