e hands
to clutch what must be left, and so to contradict the very law under
which we live!

Then another of the well-worn commonplaces which are so believed by us
all that we never think about them, and therefore need to be urged, as I
am trying, poorly enough, to do now--another of the commonplaces that
spring from this image is that life is continuous. Geologists used to be
divided into two schools, one of whom explained everything by invoking
great convulsions, the other by appealing to the uniform action of laws.
There are no convulsions in life. To-morrow is the child of to-day, and
yesterday was the father of this day. What we are, springs from what we
have been, and settles what we shall be. The road leads somewhither, and
we follow it step by step. As the old nursery rhyme has it--

'One foot up and one foot down,
That's the way to London town.'

We make our characters by the continual repetition of small actions. Let
no man think of his life as if it were a heap of unconnected points. It
is a chain of links that are forged together inseparably. Let no man
say, 'I do this thing, and there shall be no evil consequences impressed
upon my life as results of it.' It cannot be. 'To-morrow _shall be_ as
this day, and much more abundant.' We shall to-morrow be more of
everything that we are to-day, unless by some strong effort of
repentance and change we break the fatal continuity, and make a new
beginning by God's grace. But let us lay to heart this, as a very solemn
truth which lifts up into mystical and unspeakable importance the things
that men idly call trifles, that life is one continuous whole, a march
towards a definite end.

And therefore we ought to see to it that the direction in which our life
runs is one that conscience and God can approve. And, since the rapidity
with which a body falls increases as it falls, the more needful that we
give the right direction and impulses to the life. It will be a dreadful
thing if our downward course acquires strength as it travels, and being
slow at first, gains in celerity, and accrues to itself mass and weight,
like an avalanche started from an Alpine summit, which is but one or two
bits of snow and ice at first, and falls at last into the ravine, tons
of white destruction. The lives of many of us are like it.

Further, the metaphor suggests that no life takes its fitting course
unless there is continuous effort. There will be crises when we have to
run