for that which no power in the world can restore, ever lessens the
individual's faith in himself, weakens his efforts to develop himself
for the future to the perfection of his possibilities.

Nature in her beautiful love and tenderness, says to man, weakened and
worn and weary with the struggle, "Do in the best way you can the
trifle that is under your hand at this moment; do it in the best spirit
of preparation for the future your thought suggests; bring all the
light of knowledge from all the past to aid you. Do this and you have
done your best. The past is forever closed to you. It is closed forever
to you. No worry, no struggle, no suffering, no agony of despair can
alter it. It is as much beyond your power as if it were a million years
of eternity behind you. Turn all that past, with its sad hours,
weakness and sin, its wasted opportunities as light; in confidence and
hope, upon the future. Turn it all in fuller truth and light so as to
make each trifle of this present a new past it will be joy to look back
to; each trifle a grander, nobler, and more perfect preparation for the
future. The present and the future you can make from it, is yours; the
past has gone back, with all its messages, all its history, all its
records to the God who loaned you the golden moments to use in
obedience to His law."




VII

The Royal Road to Happiness