If there be soundness and justice in this suggestion, it may afford consolation to a considerable class of men and women:  I mean those people who, feeling within themselves many defects of character, and discerning in their outward lot much which they would wish other than it is, are ready to think that some one thing would have put them right,—­that some one thing would put them right even yet,—­but something which they have hopelessly missed, something which can never be.  There was just one testing event which stood between them and their being made a vast deal more of.  They would have been far better and far happier, they think, had some single malign influence been kept away which has darkened all their life, or had some single blessing been given which would have made it happy.  If you had got such a parish, which you did not get,—­if you had married such a woman,—­if your little child had not died,—­if you had always the society and sympathy of such an energetic and hopeful friend,—­if the scenery round your dwelling were of a different character,—­if the neighboring town were four miles off, instead of fifteen,—­if any one of these circumstances had been altered, what a different man you might have been!  Probably many people, even of middle age, conscious that the manifold cares and worries of life forbid that it should be evenly joyous, do yet cherish at the bottom of their heart some vague, yet rooted fancy, that, if but one thing were given on which they have set their hearts, or one care removed forever, they would be perfectly happy, even here.  Perhaps you overrate the effect which would have been produced on your character by such a single cause.  It might not have made you much better; it might not even have made you very different.  And assuredly you are wrong in fancying that any such single thing could have made you happy,—­that is, entirely happy.  Nothing in this world could ever make you that.  It is not God’s purpose that we should be entirely happy here, “This is not our rest.”  The day will never come which will not bring its worry.  And the possibility of terrible misfortune and sorrow hangs over all.  There is but One Place where we shall be right; and that is far away.

* * * * *

Yes, more might have been made of all of us; probably, in the case of most, not much more will be made in this world.  We are now, if we have reached middle life, very much what we shall be to the end of the chapter.  We shall not, in this world, be much better; let us humbly trust that we shall not be worse.  Yet, if there be an undefinable sadness in looking at the marred material of which so much more might have been made, there is a sublime hopefulness in the contemplation of material, bodily and mental, of which a great deal more and better will certainly yet be made.  Not much more may be made of any of us in life; but who shall estimate what may be made of us in immortality?  Think of a