so." But the answer has been
disappointment. The old, ay, perhaps the most common lesson of life, is
disappointment.

And now I ask, is it not an intended lesson? Evidently it comes in as
an element in the Providential plan in which we are involved. For we
see its disciplinary nature,--its wise and beneficial results in harmony
with that Plan. Consider whether it is not the fact, that the entire
discipline of life grows out of a succession of disappointments. That
youthful dream, in which life has stretched out like a sunny landscape
with purple mountain-chains--is it not well that it is broken up, and we
strike upon rugged realities? Does not all the strength of manhood, and
the power of achievement, and the glory of existence, depend upon these
things which are not included in the young boy's vision of a happy
world. Welcome, O! disappointment of our hope that life would prove a
perpetual holiday. Welcome experience of the fact that blessing comes
not from pleasure, but from labor! For in that experience alone was
there ever anything truly great or good accomplished. We can conceive no
possible way by which one can be made personally strong without his
own effort;--no possible way by which the mind can be enriched and
strengthened where it is lifted up, instead of climbing for itself;--no
way, therefore, in which life could be at all a worthy achievement,
if it were merely a plain of ease, instead of holding every ward of
knowledge and of power under the guard of difficulty and the requisition
of endeavor.

And it is equally true that the greatest successes grow out of great
failures. In numerous instances the result is better that comes after a
series of abortive experiences than it would have been if it had come at
once. For all these successive failures induce a skill, which is so much
additional power working into the final achievement. Nobody passes at
once to the mastery, in any branch of science or of industry; and when
he does become a master in his work it is evident, not only in the
positive excellence of his performance, but in the sureness with which
he avoids defects; and these defects he has learned by experimental
failures. The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument
has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys. And if a man
derives skill from his own failures, so does he from the failures of
other men. Every unsuccessful attempt is, for him, so much work done;
for he will