Still further, let your memory and imagination be here exercised to assist in reconciling you to your present lot.  Can you not remember a time when you wanted money still more than you do now?—­when you had a still greater difficulty in obtaining the things you reasonably desire?  To those who have acquired the art of contentment, the present will always seem to have some compensating advantage over the past, however brighter that past may appear to others.  This valuable art will bring every hidden object gradually into light, as the dawning day seems to waken into existence those objects which had before been unnoticed in the darkness.

Lastly, your imagination, well employed, will make use of your partial knowledge of other people’s affairs to picture to you how much worse off many of those are,—­how much worse off you might yourself be.  You, for instance, can still accomplish much by the aid of self-denial; while many, with hearts as warm in charities, as overflowing as your own, have not more to give than the “cup of cold water,” that word of mercy and consolation.

You may still further, perhaps, complain that you have no object of exciting interest to engage your attention, and develop your powers of labour, and endurance, and cleverness.  Never has this trial been more vividly described than in the well-remembered lines of a modern poet:—­

    “She was active, stirring, all fire—­
    Could not rest, could not tire—­
    To a stone she had given life! 
    —­For a shepherd’s, miner’s, huntsman’s wife,
    Never in all the world such a one! 
    And here was plenty to be done,
    And she that could do it, great or small,
    She was to do nothing at all."[3]

This wish for occupation, for influence, for power even, is not only right in itself, but the unvarying accompaniment of the consciousness of high capabilities.  It may, however, be intended that these cravings should be satisfied in a different way, and at a different time, from that which your earthly thoughts are now desiring.  It may be that the very excellence of the office for which you are finally destined requires a greater length of preparation than that needful for ordinary duties and ordinary trials.  At present, you are resting in peace, without any anxious cares or difficult responsibilities, but you know not how soon the time may come that will call forth and strain to the utmost your energies of both mind and body.  You should anxiously make use of the present interval of repose for preparation, by maturing your prudence, strengthening your decision, acquiring control over your own temper and your own feelings, and thus fitting yourself to control others.

Or are you, on the contrary, wasting the precious present time in vain repinings, in murmurings that weaken both mind and body, so that when the hour of trial comes you will be entirely unfitted to realize the beautiful ideal of the poet?—­