of the position had poignantly revealed to me.  A great task ought to be taken up with a certain buoyancy and eagerness of spirit, not in heaviness and sadness.  A certain tremor of nerves, a stage fright, is natural to all sensitive performers.  But this is merely a kind of anteroom through which one must needs pass to a part which one desires to play; but if one does not sincerely desire to play the part, it is clear that to attempt it merely from a sense of duty is an ill omen for success.  And so I felt sincerely and humbly that I ought not to feel compelled to attempt it.  The conviction came in a flash like a divine intuition, and was followed by a peace of mind which showed me that I was acting rightly.  I seemed too to perceive that the best work in the world was not the work of administration and organization, but humble and individual ministries performed in a corner without tangible rewards.  For such work I was both equipped and prepared, and I turned back to the fallentis semita vitae, which is the true path for the sincere spirit, aware that I had been truly and tenderly saved from committing a grave mistake.

Perhaps if one could have looked at the whole question in a simpler and larger-minded way, the result might have been different.  But here temperament comes in, and the very complexities and intricacies that clouded the matter were of themselves evidence that after all it was the temperament that was at fault.  Cecil Rhodes, it is recorded, once asked Lord Acton why Mr. Bent, the explorer, did not pronounce certain ruins to be of Phoenician origin.  Lord Acton replied with a smile that it was probably because he was not sure.  “Ah!” said Cecil Rhodes, “that is not the way that Empires are made.”  A true, interesting, and characteristic comment; but it also contains a lesson that people who are not sure should not attempt to make empires, or undertake tasks that involve the welfare of many.

And so there remains the duty to me, after my piece of experience, to gather up the fragments that remain, to interpret.  Dante assigns the lowest place in the lower world to those who refuse a great opportunity, but he is speaking of those who perversely reject a great task, which is plainly in their power, for some false and low motive.  But the case is different for those who have a great temptation put before them, and who, desiring to do what is right, have it brought home to them in a convincing way that it is not their opportunity.  No one ought to assume great responsibilities if he is not equal to them.  One of the saddest things ever said on a human deathbed was what was said by a great ecclesiastic, who had disappointed the hopes that had been formed of him.  In his last moments he turned to one who stood near him and murmured, “I have held a great post, and I have not been equal to it.”  The misery was that no one could sincerely contradict him.  It is not a piece of noble self-sacrifice to have assumed confidently