Chapter 25 - Page 2

slave, who, heathen though he was, sought God, and the peace of God, and found them, doubt it not, long, long ago. Ask yourselves with Epictetus, Am I discontented with things which are in my own power, or with things which are not in my own power?--that is, discontented with myself, or with things which are not myself? Am I discontented with myself, or with things about me, and outside of me? Consider this last question well, if you wish to be true Christians, true philosophers, and, indeed, true men and women.

But what is it that troubles you? What is it you want altered? On what have you set your heart and affections? Is it something outside you?-- something which is NOT you yourself? If so, there is no use in tormenting your soul about it; for it is not in your own power, and you will never alter it to your liking; and more, you need not alter it, for you are not responsible for it. God sends it as it is, for better, for worse, and you must make up your mind to what God sends. Do I mean that we are to submit slavishly to circumstances, like dumb animals? Heaven forbid. We are not, like Epictetus, slaves, but free men. And we are made in God's image, and have each our spark, however dim, of that creative genius, that power of creating or of altering circumstances, by which God made all worlds; and to use that, is of our very birthright, or what would all education, progress, civilisation be, save rebellion against God? But when we have done our utmost, how little shall we have done! Canst thou,--asks our Lord, looking with loving sadness on the hurry and the struggle of the human anthill--canst thou by taking thought add one cubit to thy stature? Why, is there a wise man or woman in this abbey, past fifty years of age, who does not know that, in spite of all their toil and struggle, they have gone not whither they willed, but whither God willed? Have they not found out that for one circumstance of their lives which they could alter, there have been twenty which they could not, some born with them, some forced on them by an overruling Providence, irresistible indeed--but, as I hold, most loving and most fatherly, though often severe--even to agony--but irresistible still-- till what they have really gained by fighting circumstance, however valiantly, has been the MORAL gain, the gain in character?--the power to live the heroic life, which

"Is not as idle ore, But heated hot with burning fears, And bathed in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd, with the shocks of doom, To shape and use."

Ah! if a man be learning that lesson, which is the primer of eternal life, then I hardly pity him, though I see him from youth to age tearing with weak hands at the gates of brass, and beating his soul's wings to pieces against the bars of the iron cage. But, alas! the majority of mankind tear at the gates of brass, and beat against the iron cage, with no such good purpose, and therefore with no such good result.