That aim clearly apprehended and persistently pursued gives
continuity to life, such as nothing else can do. How many of the
things that drew us to themselves, and were for a while the objects
of desire and effort, have sunk below the horizon! The lives that
are not directed to God as their chief end are like the voyages of
old-time sailors, who had to creep from one headland to another, and
steer for points which, one after another, were reached, left
behind, and forgotten. There is only one aim so great, so far in
advance that we can never reach, and therefore can never pass and
drop it. Life then becomes a chain, not a heap of unrelated
fragments. That aim made ours, stimulates effort to its highest
point, and therefore secures blessedness. It emancipates from many
bonds, and takes the poison out of the mosquito bites of small
annoyances, and the stings of great sorrows. It gleams ever before a
man, sufficiently attained to make him at rest, sufficiently
unattained to give the joy of progress. The pilgrims who had but one
single aim, 'to go to the land of Canaan,' were delivered from the
miseries of conflicting desires, and with simplicity of aim came
concentration of force and calm of spirit.




COMING IN


II


If life has a clear, definite aim, and especially if its aim is the