But whatever may be the variety in regard to the mere externals of our
lives, how true it is about us all that even the most familiar duties
of to-day are not quite like the same duties when they had to be done
yesterday; and that the path for each of us--though, as we go along, we
find in it nothing new--is yet an untrodden path! For we are not quite
the same as we were yesterday, though our work may be the same, and the
difference in us makes it in some measure different.

But what mainly makes even the most well-beaten paths new at the
thousandth time of traversing them is our ignorance of what may be
waiting round the next turn of the road. The veil that hangs before and
hides the future is a blessing, though we sometimes grumble at it, and
sometimes petulantly try to make pinholes through it, and peep in to
see a little of what is behind it. It brings freshness into our lives,
and a possibility of anticipation, and even of wonder and expectation,
that prevents us from stagnating. Even in the most habitual repetition
of the same tasks 'ye have not passed this way heretofore.' And life
for every one of us is still full of possibilities so great and so
terrible that we may well feel that the mist that covers the future is
a blessing and a source of strength for us all.

Our march through time is like that of men in a mist, in which things
loom in strangely distorted shapes, unlike their real selves, until we
get close up to them, and only then do we discover them.

So for us all the path is new and unknown by reason of the sudden
surprises that may be sprung upon us, by reason of the sudden
temptations that may start up at any moment in our course, by reason of
the earthquakes that may shatter the most solid-seeming lives, by