ey are swayed by gusts of passion, by blind
prejudice, by pretenders and quacks of all sorts. It is no less sad for
us to turn our eyes within and discover, perhaps not without surprise
and shame, how few of what we are self-complacent enough to call our
opinions are due to our own convictions.

If we ever are honest enough with ourselves to catch a glimpse of our
own unwisdom, the question of our text will press heavily upon us, and
may help to make us wiser by teaching us how foolish we are. An infinite
source of wisdom is open to us, and all the rich variety of our lives'
experiences has been lavished on us to help us, and what have we made of
it all?

But we may rise a step higher and remember that we are made moral
creatures. Therefore, whatever has not developed infant potentialities
in us, and made them moral qualities, has been experienced in vain. 'Not
enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end and way.' Life is meant to
make us love and do the good, and unless it has produced that effect on
us, it has failed. If this be true, the world is full of failures, like
the marred statues in a bad sculptor's studio, and we ourselves have
earnestly to confess that the discipline of life has too often been
wasted upon us, and that of us the divine complaint from of old has been
true: 'In vain have I smitten thy children, they have received no
correction.'

There is no sadder waste than the waste of sorrow, and alas! we all know
how impotent our afflictions have been to make us better. But not
afflictions only have failed in their appeal to us, our joys have as
often been in vain as our sorrows, and memory, when it turns its lamp on
the long past, sees so few points at which life has taught us to love
goodness, and be good, that she may well quench her light and let the
dead past bury its dead.

But we must rise still higher, and think of men as being made for God,
and as being the only creatures known to us who are capable of religion.
'Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.' And this
chief end is in fullest harmony with the lower ends to which we have
just referred, and they will never be realised in their fullest
completeness unless that completeness is sought in this the chief end.
From of old meditative souls have known that the beginning of wisdom is
the fear of the Lord, and that that fear is as certainly the beginning
of goodness. It was not an irrelevant rebuke to the question, 'What g