Such lives are rarely counted happy; the world pities, while it admires them; and there is often a note of commiseration even upon the lips of those who know them best. I cannot think that it ought to be so; that it is so, arises from the fact, that when we speak of happiness, we use the word in some shallow and conventional sense which does not answer to our best and deepest knowledge. For although one who lives so narrowed a life as I have described, and, like a caged lark, praises God in clear strains and out of a full heart, might well desire, were such a thing yet possible, a restored activity and an enlarged power of service, it would almost always be for others' sake rather than her own; not that she might multiply occasions of pleasure, but that she might extend the ministry of love. The truth is, that such an one has penetrated far more deeply than most into the true secret of human happiness; learning that, so far as external things go, it stands much more in the limitation than in the satisfaction of desire; and that for the things within, to lie close to God, and to be able to do and bear all His will with a complete and ready assent, is the single sufficient source of a Peace which the world can neither give nor take away. And then there is a grace of character which is one of the rarest gifts of healthy, active life; but which, wherever it shews itself, is almost always a plant of God's own rearing and tending,—I mean a willingness to live or die, as He pleases; and a genuine conviction, that whatever He pleases in this respect is wisest, kindest, best. How little do we feel this, my brethren, we who come here for an hour's repose from the world's turmoil! Our life's work, we think, is half undone; our best hopes have not yet reached fruition; our vital capacity is still unexhausted; a thousand interests claim us. If God called us now, we should obey the call with sorrowful reluctance, and innumerable backward glances to the work and love in which our hearts are centred. Not so with those who have long dwelt in the silence and the seclusion which lie between life and death. It is the counterpoise of their suffering and the reward of their patience, that to them there is no terror, but a great deliverance, in God's last message. It opens the door of the prison-house, and sets the captive free. It is the summons to exchange pain for peace, and enforced quietness for the vigour and the joy of service. The God who has straitened them so long is He who now sets their lives in a large place; and from the twilight of faith they pass into the noon of sight. Amen.
