or your good, but for theirs. How far you might fail
through human weakness, in shame for the past, despair at the little
that could in the remnant of life be accomplished, or the intolerable
pain of broken affection, would depend wholly on the degree in which
your nature had been depressed or fortified by the manner of your past
life. But I think there are few of you who would not spend those last
days better than all that had preceded them.

85. If you look accurately through the records of the lives that have
been most useful to humanity, you will find that all that has been done
best, has been done so;--that to the clearest intellects and highest
souls,--to the true children of the Father, with whom a thousand years
are as one day, their poor seventy years are but as seven days. The
removal of the shadow of death from them to an uncertain, but always
narrow, distance, never takes away from them their intuition of its
approach; the extending to them of a few hours more or less of light
abates not their acknowledgment of the infinitude that must remain to be
known beyond their knowledge,--done beyond their deeds: the
unprofitableness of their momentary service is wrought in a magnificent
despair, and their very honour is bequeathed by them for the joy of
others, as they lie down to their rest, regarding for themselves the
voice of men no more.

86. The best things, I repeat to you, have been done thus, and
therefore, sorrowfully. But the greatest part of the good work of the
world is done either in pure and unvexed instinct of duty, "I have
stubbed Thornaby waste," or else, and better, it is cheerful and helpful
doing of what the hand finds to do, in surety that at evening time,
whatsoever is right the Master will give. And that it be worthily done,
depends wholly on that ultimate quantity of worth which you can measure,
each in himself, by the test I have just given you. For that test,
observe, will mark to you the precise force, first of your absolute
courage, and then of the energy in you for the right ordering of things,
and the kindly dealing with persons. You have cut away from these two
instincts every selfish or common motive, and left nothing but the
energies of Order and of Love.

87. Now, where those two roots are set, all the other powers and desires
find right nourishment, and become to their own utmost, helpful to
others and pleasurable to ourselves. And so far as those two springs of
action are