of usefulness
because he is himself unhappy. If he does do this he is ignoble. Life is
a divine dream. It is a divine responsibility, primarily between each
soul and God. It is one's business to live bravely, with dignity, with
faith, with generosity of consideration and good will, with love,
indeed, which is the expression of the highest energy. Yet, with his
personal world in ruins, what shall he do? He must learn that supreme
lesson of all time and eternity,--the lesson to accept and to joyfully
embrace the will of God as thus revealed to him, in an inscrutable way.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Supreme Illumination.]

Until he shall learn to accept this experience as divine, and offer his
gratitude to God for pain as sincerely as he offered it for experiences
of joy and of beauty, he cannot enter upon the Life Radiant. For the
radiant life is only achieved through these mingled experiences as all
equally accepted from the Divine Power.

"Ah, when the infinite burden of life descendeth upon us,
Crushes to earth our hopes, and under the earth in the graveyard,
Then it is good to pray unto God, for His sorrowing children
Turns He ne'er from the door, but He heals and helps and consoles them.
Yet is it good to pray when all things are prosperous with us;
Pray in fortunate days, for life's most beautiful fortune
Kneels before the Eternal's gate, and with hands inter-folded,
Praises, thankful and moved, the only Giver of blessings."

The Life Radiant comes when one can as sincerely thank God for pain as
for joy; when, after long groping in the darkness, clinging, indeed, to
his faith in God (for without that he could not live an hour, though
that faith be totally without sight), he suddenly realizes how a great
sorrow has wrought in him a great result; that it has perfected and
crystallized all that was nebulous in his faith, and that it has
absolutely brought him into perfect rest in the Divine Will; that it has
forged that indissoluble link which forevermore identifies his will with
the will of God, and thus opens to him a realm fairer far than a "World
Beautiful"--even a World Divine. Only in this finer ether is revealed to
him the Life Radiant; in the atmosphere made resplendent and glorious by
this revelation of the soul's union with God. It is a life only
experienced after one who has seen before him the Promised Land is led
into the Wilderness instead, and wh