ll be able to track His
footsteps even where we did not expect to find Him. We shall learn that
His methods are simpler and better than ours, that His thoughts are
surer, deeper, higher than all our schemes and plans. I am constantly
finding that ordinances, customs, beliefs, which I used to despise as
strange, antiquated, or useless, are yet the very ones which I need, that
my fathers knew better than I my needs, that above all God Himself had
provided institutions and customs, and had waited until I was old enough
to learn their use and to bless Him as I used them. So, as we know a man
better, we feel that we must pray for him and his the more. As we become
the friends of the Word, we feel we must pray that His will may be done
ever more and more--His purposes realised by us and ours. Let us then
not begin by criticising the world and God; let us first be the friends
of God, and then in the light of undying friendship and prayer begin to
criticise. {91} We must be the friend of a man before we understand his
life; we must be the friends of Jesus Christ before we understand His
life now upon earth.

I used to skate: I don't now. I obey herein one of the great maxims of
my life: 'If you want to get a thing well done, _don't_ do it yourself.'
I consider that K----, in this as in other similar pursuits, performs the
ancient and 'sacred duty of delegation.' I have no doubt that he does it
admirably. Why must people try what they can't do well? Why not leave
it to those who like it and can do it well? The wretched
public-school-boy conception of dull uniformity is an abomination to me!
If K---- does the walking, you do the thinking; G---- does the dandy,
M---- the grumbling, S---- the jack-in-the-box, G---- the running, M----
the philosopher, and D---- the little vulgar boy--allow me to do what
after all is the hardest of all tasks, 'to do nothing gracefully.' (I am
afraid that I begin by trying 'to do nothing--gracefully,' but end by
'doing nothing gracefully.' You see the difference!) I believe in
division of labour--let each man do what he is made to do best--and those
who feel their vocation to be nothing but receiving the results of the
labour of others--why, let them try to do it with the best grace they
can! Forgive me if such be my case.

_To J. L. D._

Christ's College, Cambridge: May 15, 1893.

I think you are right in believing in the intense worth of sympathy. But
'sympathy' is the Greek