have no cause for disquiet; its place will be speedily filled by a law that is greater still.  To attribute morality to fate is but to lessen the purity of our ideal; to admit the injustice of fate is to throw open before us the ever-widening fields of a still loftier morality.  Let us not think virtue will crumble, though God Himself seem unjust.  Where shall the virtue of man find more everlasting foundation than in the seeming injustice of God?

73.  Let us not cavil, therefore, at nature’s indifference to the sage.  It is only because we are not yet wise enough that this indifference seems strange; for the first duty of wisdom is to throw into light the humbleness of the place in the universe that is filled by man.

Within his sphere he seems of importance, as the bee in its cell of honey; but it were idle to suppose that a single flower the more will blossom in the fields because the queen bee has proved herself a heroine in the hive.  We need not fear that we depreciate ourselves when we extol the universe.  Whether it be ourselves or the entire world that we consider great, still will there quicken within our soul the sense of the infinite, which is of the life-blood of virtue.  What is an act of virtue that we should expect such mighty reward?  It is within ourselves that reward must be found, for the law of gravitation will not swerve.  They only who know not what goodness is are ever clamouring for the wage of goodness.  Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is of itself always an act of happiness.  It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul.  No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.  The upright man who perished in the catastrophe I mentioned was there because his soul had found a peace and strength in virtue that not happiness, love, or glory could have given him.  Were the flames to retreat before such men, were the waters to open and death to hesitate, what were righteousness or heroism then?  Would not the true happiness of virtue be destroyed? virtue that is happy because it is noble and pure, that is noble and pure because it desires no reward?  There may be human joy in doing good with definite purpose, but they who do good expecting nothing in return know a joy that is divine.  Where we do evil our reasons mostly are known to us, but our good deed becomes the purer for our ignorance of its motive.  Would we know how to value the righteous man, we have but to question him as to the motives of his righteousness.  He will probably be the most truly righteous who is least ready with his answer.  Some may suppose that as intellect widens many a motive for heroism will be lost to the soul; but it should be borne in mind that the wider intellect brings with it an ideal of heroism loftier and more disinterested still.  And this much at least is certain:  he who thinks