to old age.

The present life does not rise to its best and then decline
to its worst; "the best is yet to be, the last of life,
for which the first was made."

The indecisions, perplexities, and yearnings, the hopes and fears
of youth, I do not remonstrate against. They are the conditions
of vitality and growth, distinguish man's life from
the limited completeness of the "low kinds" of creation,
"finished and finite clods untroubled by a spark"; and should be prized
as inseparable from his high rank in existence.

Life would have nothing to boast of, were man formed but to experience
an unalloyed joy, to find always and never to seek. Care irks not
the crop-full bird, and doubt frets not the maw-crammed beast.
But man is disturbed by a divine spark which is his title to
a nearer relationship with God who gives than with his creatures
that receive.

The rebuffs he meets with should be welcomed. Life's true success
is secured through obstacles, and seeming failures,
and unfulfilled aspirations. He is but a brute whose soul is conformed
to his flesh, whose spirit works for the play of arms and legs.
The test of the body's worth should be, the extent to which
it can project the soul on its lone way.

But we must not calculate soul-profits all the time.
Gifts of every kind which belong to our nature should prove their use,
their own good in themselves. I own that the past was for me