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But I have sought the four-leaved shamrock for a long time, and never have found it; and so I am growing subdued to the conviction that I never shall.  Let us go back to the matter of Resignation, and think a little longer about that.

Resignation, in any human being, means that things are not as you would wish, and yet that you are content.

Who has all he wishes?  There are many houses in this world in which Resignation is the best thing that can be felt any more.  The bitter blow has fallen; the break has been made; the empty chair is left (perhaps a very little chair); and never more, while Time goes on, can things be as they were fondly wished and hoped.  Resignation would need to be cultivated by human beings; for all round us there is a multitude of things very different from what we would wish.  Not in your house, not in your family, not in your street, not in your parish, not in your country, and least of all in yourself, can you have things as you would wish.  And you have your choice of two alternatives.  You must either fret yourself into a nervous fever, or you must cultivate the habit of Resignation.  And very often Resignation does not mean that you are at all reconciled to a thing, but just that you feel you can do nothing to mend it.  Some friend, to whom you are really attached, and whom you often see, vexes and worries you by some silly and disagreeable habit,—­some habit which it is impossible you should ever like, or ever even overlook; yet you try to make up your mind to it, because it cannot be helped, and you would rather submit to it than lose your friend.  You hate the east-wind:  it withers and pinches you, in body and soul:  yet you cannot live in a certain beautiful city without feeling the east-wind many days in the year.  And that city’s advantages and attractions are so many and great that no sane man with sound lungs would abandon the city merely to escape the east-wind.  Yet, though resigned to the east-wind, you are anything but reconciled to it.

Resignation is not always a good thing.  Sometimes it is a very bad thing.  You should never be resigned to things continuing wrong, when you may rise and set them right.  I dare say, in the Romish Church, there were good men before Luther who were keenly alive to the errors and evils that had crept into it, but who, in despair of making things better, tried sadly to fix their thoughts upon other subjects:  who took to illuminating missals, or constructing systems of logic, or cultivating vegetables in the garden of the monastery, or improving the music in the chapel:  quietly resigned to evils they judged irremediable.  Great reformers have not been resigned men.  Luther was not resigned; Howard was not resigned; Fowell Buxton was not resigned; George Stephenson was not resigned.  And there is hardly a nobler sight than that of a man who determines that he will NOT make up his mind to the continuance of some great