most common lesson of life, is disappointment.

And now I ask, is it not an intended lesson? Evidently it
comes in as an element in the Providential plan in which we
are involved. For we see its disciplinary nature, --its wise
and beneficial results in harmony with that Plan. Consider
whether it is not the fact, that the entire discipline of
life grows out of a succession of disappointments. That
youthful dream, in which life has stretched out like a sunny
landscape with purple mountain-chains --is it not well that
it is broken up, and we strike upon rugged realities? Does
not all the strength of manhood, and the power of
achievement, and the glory of existence, depend upon these
things which are not included in the young boy's vision of a
happy world. Welcome, O! disappointment of our hope that
life would prove a perpetual holiday. Welcome experience of
the fact that blessing comes not from pleasure, but from
labor! For in that experience alone was there ever anything
truly great or good accomplished. We can conceive no
possible way by which one can be made personally strong
without his own effort; --no possible way by which the mind
can be enriched and strengthened where it is lifted up,
instead of climbing for itself; --no way, therefore, in which
life could be at all a worthy achievement, if it were merely
a plain of ease, instead of holding every ward of knowledge
and of power under the guard of difficulty and the
requisition of endeavor.

And it is equally true that the greatest successes grow out
of great failures. In numerous instances the result is