says,

"What are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the
inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled,
never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten. 'It is not in man that
walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man,
repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that
same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death: the heart
so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is
dead: it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure. David's life and
history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be
the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare
here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful
struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best.
Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet
a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true
unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! is not a
man's walking, in truth, always that: a 'succession of falls!' Man
can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle
onwards; now fallen, deep abased; and ever, with tears, repentance,
with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still
onwards. That his struggle be a faithful unconquerable one: this
is the question of questions."


THE SORROWS OF THE AFFECTIONS.

The loss by death of those we love has the first place in these
sorrows. Yet the feeling in this case, even when carried to the
highest, is not exactly despair, having too much warmth in it for