not rarely happens; but with a good will and pure
intention she can never be misled. When God sees this good disposition
He overlooks all the rest, and accepts as done what the soul would
assuredly do if circumstances seconded her good will."

Nevertheless, as things go in this world, the good will may encounter
the most peculiarly trying experiences. The most entire and absolute
devotion of thought and interest, of love, friendship, regard,--whatever
may be,--pouring itself out lavishly, asking nothing but to give of the
best the soul conceives, meets the experience of total indifference in
return. Had it given coldness instead of ardent regard, selfish scheming
instead of infinite and vital interest and absorbing devotion, the
result could not be less devoid of response or recognition. Nor is this,
perhaps, as life goes, an exceptional experience, though the
multiplication of instances does not tend to make any single one less
bitter or less tragically sad. Loss is common, but that statistical
truth does not make one's own losses less disastrous or less difficult
to bear.

Yet, accepting all these experiences that are encountered as absolute
facts in life, facts from which there is no appeal, and for which, alas,
there is no mitigation, what remains? One may feel as if he would gladly
give up the whole business of trying to live at all, but that is not a
matter that is optional with the individual. One has to live out his
appointed days in this phase of being, and it is only the person of
defective intellect as well as defective moral power who will not take
the gift of life and make the best--not the worst--of it. Mr.
Longfellow's familiar lines,

"Not enjoyment and not sorrow
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us further than to-day,"

have often been pronounced trite, but they contain a vital philosophy.
It is not enjoyment, or the reverse, which is the aim; but development.
And the culture of the soul lies in these mingled experiences; in the
baffled efforts, the devotion that gives itself without return or
response,--it lies in the doing and the giving, and not in the
receiving. Nor does one fare onward uncompanioned by the friends and
helpers unseen, as well as by those in this visible world.

"'Mortal,' they softly say,
'Peace to thy heart!
We, too, yes, mortal,
Have been as thou art,

Hope-lifted, doubt-depressed,
Seeing in part;
Tried,