onting the problem, to
diminish the pressure of the shadow. A man could throw himself, could
he not, in utter confidence before the feet of God, claiming nothing,
demanding nothing but the sense of perfect acquiescence in His Will and
Deed? The secret again was, not to forecast and forebode, but to live
in the day and for the day, practising labour, kindliness, gentleness,
peace. That was a true image, the image of those old pilgrims who
gathered the manna for their daily use; little or much, it sufficed;
and no one might, through indolence or prudence, evade the daily labour
by laying up a store; the store vanished in corruption. So it was with
all ambitious dreams, all attempts to lay a jealous hand on what might
be; it was that which poisoned life. Those far-reaching plans, those
hopes of ease and glory, that wealth laid up for many years, they were
the very substance of decay. Even fear itself must be accepted, when
it was wholesomely and inevitably there; but not amplified, added to,
dwelt upon. How rarely was one in doubt about the next, the immediate
duty. And one could surely win, by patient practice, by resolute
effort, the power of casting out of the moment the shadow of the uneasy
days ahead. How simple, how brief those very uneasinesses turned out
to be! Things were never as bad as one feared, ever easier than one
had hoped. It was a false prudence, a foolish calculation, to think
that by picturing the terrors of a crisis one made it easier when it
came; just as one so sadly discounted joys by anticipation, and found
them hollow, disappointing husks when they lay open in the hand.

Hugh rose up from his thoughts and walked to the window. The day was
dying, robed in a solemn pomp. The fields were shrouded in mist, but
the cloud-rims in the west were touched with intense edges of gold;
Hugh thought of the little churchyard that lay beyond those trees,
where, under the raw mould heaped up so mutely, under the old wall,
beside the yew-tree, in the shadow of the chancel-gable, lay the
perishing vesture of the spirit of his friend, banished from light and
warmth to his last cold house. How lonely, how desolate it seemed; and
the mourners too, sitting in the dreary rooms, with the agony of the
gap upon them, the empty chair, the silent voice, the folded papers,
the closed books! How could God atone for all that, even though He
made all things new? it was not what was new, but what was old, for
which