“I said just now, that I believe half the misery in our lives is owing to straining after happiness; and I think, too, that much of our sin is owing to our disturbing ourselves too much about our duty. Instead of yielding a glad obedience from hour to hour, it is the weakness of many of us to stretch far forward into the future, which is beyond our present reach, and torment ourselves with apprehensions of sin, which we should be ashamed of if they related to pain and danger.”
“Oh, if you could prove to me that such is my weakness!” cried Hester.
“I believe that it is yours, and I know that it is my own, my Hester. We must watch over one another. Tell me, is it not faithless to let our hearts be troubled about any possible evil which we cannot, at the moment of the trouble, prevent? And are we not sacrificing, what is, at the time, of the most importance—our repose of mind, the holiness, the religion of the hour?”
“I know I have defiled the holiness of this hour,” said Hester, humbly. “But as my thoughts were troubled, was it not better to speak them? I could not but speak them.”
“You cannot but do and speak what is most honourable, and true, and generous, Hester; and that is the very reason why I would fain have you trust, for the future as well as the present, to the impulse of the hour. Surely, love, the probation of the hour is enough for the strength of every one of us.”
“Far, far too much for me.”
“At times, too much for all. Well, then, what have we to do? To rest the care of each other’s happiness upon Him whose care it is: to be ready to do without it, as we would hold ourselves ready to do without this, or that, or the other comfort, or supposed means of happiness. Depend upon it, this happiness is too subtle and too divine a thing for our management. We have nothing to do with it but to enjoy it when it comes. Men say of it—‘Lo! it is here!’—‘Lo! there!’—but never has man laid hold of it with a voluntary grasp.”
“But we can banish it,” said Hester.
“Alas! yes: and what else do we do at the very moment when we afflict ourselves about the future? Surely our business is to keep our hearts open for it—holy and at peace, from moment to moment, from day to day.”
“And yet, is it not our privilege—said at least to be so—to look before and after? I am not sure, however, that I always think this a privilege. I long sometimes to be any bird of the air, that I might live for the present moment alone.”