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.
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