obscure; so that not only in
the vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow which we cannot
pierce, it is true of this cloudy life of ours, that "man walketh in a
vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."

And least of all, whatever may have been the eagerness of our passions, or
the height of our pride, are we able to understand in its depths the third
and most solemn character in which our life is like those clouds of
heaven; that to it belongs, not only their transience, not only their
mystery, but also their power; that in the cloud of the human soul there
is a fire stronger than the lightning, and a grace more precious than the
rain; and that, though of the good and evil it shall one day be said
alike, that the place that knew them knows them no more, there is an
infinite separation between those whose brief presence had there been a
blessing, like the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to water the
garden, and those whose place knew them only as a drifting and changeful
shade, of whom the Heavenly sentence is, that they are "wells without
water; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of
darkness is reserved forever."

To those among us, however, who have lived long enough to form some just
estimate of the rate of the changes which are, hour by hour in
accelerating catastrophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the arts,
and the creeds of men, it seems to me that, now at least, if never at any
former time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its
powers and responsibilities, should present themselves with absolute
sadness and sternness. And although I know that this feeling is much
deepened in my own mind by disappointment, which, by chance, has attended
the greater number of my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason
distrust the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against an
exaggerated degree of it; nay, I rather believe that in periods of new
effort and violent change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine; and
that in the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may
see the colors of things with deeper truth than in the most dazzling
sunshine....

You know, there is a tendency in the minds of many men, when they are
heavily disappointed in the main purposes of their life, to feel, and
perhaps in warning, perhaps in mockery, to declare, that life itself is a
vanity. Because it has disappointed them, they think its nature is of
disa