And you, my friend, who are doing the work of life well and creditably,—­you who are running in the front rank, and likely to do so to the end, think kindly and charitably of those who have broken down in the race.  Think kindly of him who, sadly overweighted, is struggling onwards away half a mile behind you; think more kindly yet, if that be possible, of him who, tethered to a ton of granite, is struggling hard and making no way at all, or who has even sat down and given up the struggle in dumb despair.  You feel, I know, the weakness in yourself which would have made you break down, if sorely tried like others.  You know there is in your armor the unprotected place at which a well-aimed or a random blow would have gone home and brought you down.  Yes, you are nearing the winning-post, and you are among the first; but six pounds more on your back, and you might have been nowhere.  You feel, by your weak heart and weary frame, that, if you had been sent to the Crimea in that dreadful first winter, you would certainly have died.  And you feel, too, by your lack of moral stamina, by your feebleness of resolution, that it has been your preservation from you know not what depths of shame and misery, that you never were pressed very hard by temptation.  Do not range yourself with those who found fault with a certain great and good Teacher of former days, because he went to be guest with a man that was a sinner.  As if He could have gone to be guest with any man who was not!

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There is no reckoning up the manifold impedimenta by which human beings are weighted for the race of life; but all may be classified under the two heads of unfavorable influences arising out of the mental or physical nature of the human beings themselves, and unfavorable influences arising out of the circumstances in which the human beings are placed.  You have known men who, setting out from a very humble position, have attained to a respectable standing, but who would have reached a very much higher place but for their being weighted with a vulgar, violent, wrong-headed, and rude-spoken wife.  You have known men of lowly origin who had in them the makings of gentlemen, but whom this single malign influence has condemned to coarse manners and a frowzy, repulsive home for life.  You have known many men whose powers are crippled and their nature soured by poverty, by the heavy necessity for calculating how far each shilling will go, by a certain sense of degradation that comes of sordid shifts.  How can a poor parson write an eloquent or spirited sermon when his mind all the while is running upon the thought how he is to pay the baker or how he is to get shoes for his children?  It will be but a dull discourse which, under that weight, will be produced even by a man who, favorably placed, could have done very considerable things.  It is only a great genius here and there who can do great things, who can do his best, no matter at what disadvantage