all its hopes and weaknesses to God, to try to put my hand in His, to pray that I may use the chances He gives me, and interpret the sorrows He may send me.  He knows me utterly and entirely, my faults and my strength.  I cannot fly from Him though I take the wings of the morning.  I only pray that I may not harden my heart; that I may be sought and found; that I may have the courage I need.  All that I have of good He has given me; and as for the evil, He knows best why I am tempted, why I fall, though I would not.  There is no strength like the abasement of weakness; no power like a childlike confidence.  One thing only I shall do before I sleep—­give a thought to all I love and hold dear, my kin, my friends, and most of all, my boys:  I shall remember each, and, while I commend them to the keeping of God, I shall pray that they may not suffer through any neglect or carelessness of my own.  It is not, after all, a question of the quantity of what we do, but of the quality of it.  God knows and I know of how poor a stuff our dreams and deeds are woven; but if it is the best we can give, if we desire with all our hearts what is noble and pure and beautiful and true—­or even desire to desire it--He will accept the will and purify the deed.  And in such a mood as this—­and God forgive us for not more often dwelling in such thoughts—­I can hope and feel that the most tragic failure, the darkest sorrow, the deepest shame are viewed by God, and will some day be viewed by ourselves, in a light which will make all things new; and that just as we look back on our childish griefs with a smiling wonder, so we shall some day look back on our mature and dreary sufferings with a tender and wistful air, marvelling that we could be so short-sighted, so faithless, so blind.

And yet the thought of what the new year may hold for us cannot be other than solemn.  Like men on the eve of a great voyage, we know not what may be in store, what shifting of scene, what loss, what grief, what shadow of death.  And then, again, the same grave peace flows in upon the mind, as the bells ring out their sweet refrain, “It is He that hath made us.”  Can we not rest in that?

What I hope more and more to do is to withdraw myself from material aims and desires; not to aim at success, or dignity of office, or parade of place.  I wish to help, to serve, not to command or rule.  I long to write a beautiful book, to put into words something of the sense of peace, of beauty and mystery, which visits me from time to time.  Every one has, I think, something of the heavenly treasure in their hearts, something that makes them glad, that makes them smile when they are alone; I want to share that with others, not to keep it to myself.  I drift, alas, upon an unknown sea; but sometimes I see, across the blue rollers, the cliffs and shores of an unknown land, perfectly and impossibly beautiful.  Sometimes the current bears me away from it; sometimes it is veiled in cloud-drift and weeping rain.  But there are days when the sun shines bright upon the leaping waves, and the wind fills the sail and bears me thither.  It is of that beautiful land that I would speak, its pure outlines, its crag-hollows, its rolling downs.  Tendimus ad Latium, we steer to the land of hope.