ather than a physical
being--as the air is the habitat of the bird, or the water of the fish.
When the divine statement is made, "Without Me ye can do nothing," it is
simply that of a literal fact. The gloom, the depression, the irritation
that so often prevail and persist in mental conditions, do not arise,
primarily, from any outward trial or perplexity; they are the
result--the inevitable result--of the soul's lack of union with God; the
lack of that _rapport_ between the spirit of man and the divine spirit
in which alone is exhilaration and joy. When this union is forged, when
the human will rests perfectly in the divine will, one then absolutely
knows, with the most positive and literal conviction, that "all things
work together for good to them that love God." The assurance is felt
with the unchallenged force of a mathematical demonstration. Not merely
that the pleasant and agreeable things work together for good, but
_all_ things--pain, loss, sorrow, injustice, misapprehension. Then one
realizes in his own experience the significance of the words, "We glory
in tribulation, also." One has heard all one's life, perhaps, of "the
ministry of sorrow," and similar phrases, and he has become a trifle
impatient of them as a sort of incantation with which he has little
sympathy. At the best, he relegates this order of ministry to the rank
and file of humanity; to those whose lives are (to his vision) somewhat
prosy and dull; and for himself he proposes to live in a world
beautiful, where stars and sunsets and flames and fragrances enchant the
hours, where, with his feet shod with silver bells, he is perpetually
conscious of being

"Born and nourished in miracles."

He is perfectly confident that every life can be happy, if it will; and
he regards sorrow as a wholly stupid and negative state which no one
need fall into if only he have sufficient energy to generate a perpetual
enchantment. Thus he dances down the years like the daffodils on the
morning breeze, singing always his hymn to the radiant goddess:

"The Fairest enchants me,
The Mighty commands me,"

pledging his faith at the Altar of Perpetual Adoration that one has only
but to believe in happiness and make room for it in his life in order to
live in this constant exhilaration. Then, one day, he awakens to find
his world in ruins. Sorrow, pain, loss, have come upon him, and have
come in the one form of all others that seems most impossible to bear.
If i