not go over that ground again, but seek some new way. Every
disappointed effort fences in and indicates the only possible path of
success, and makes it easier to find. We should thank past ages and
other men, not only for what they have left us of great things done,
but for the heritage of their failures. Every baffled effort for freedom
contributes skill for the next attempt, and ensures the day of victory.
Nations stripped and bound, and waiting for liberty under the shadow of
thrones, cherish in memory not only the achievements of their heroes,
but the defeats of their martyrs; and when the trumpet-voice shall
summon them once more, as surely it will,--when they shall draw for
the venture of freedom, and unroll its glittering standard to the
winds,--they will avoid the stumbling blocks which have sacrificed the
brave, and the errors which have postponed former hopes. In public
and in private action, it is true that disappointment is the school of
achievement, and the balked efforts are the very agents that help us to
our purpose.

And, if life itself--life as a whole--seems to us but a series of
disappointments, is not this the very conviction we need to work out
from it, through our own experience? Do we not need to learn that this
life itself is not sufficient, and holds no blessing that will fill us
completely, and with which we may forever rest? The baffled hopes of our
mortal state;--what are they but vain strivings of the human soul, out
of the path of its highest good? The wandering bird, driven against
the branches, and beaten by the storm, flutters at last to the clear
opening, by which it mounts above the cloud, and finds its way to its
home. This life is not ordained in vain;--it is constituted for a grand
purpose, if through its lessons of experience we become convinced that
this life is not all. In the outset of our existence here, and merely
from the teaching of others, we cannot comprehend the great realities of
existence.

How the things that have grown familiar to our eyes, and the lessons
that have sounded trite upon our ears, become fresh and wonderful, as
life turns into experience! How this very lesson of disappointment lets
us in to the deep meanings of Scripture, for instance! The Christ of
our youth,--a personage standing mild and beautiful upon the
Gospel-page,----a being to admire and love; how be develops to our later
thought! how solemnly tender, how greatly real, he becomes to us, when