Take, for instance, one of the least mundane of things, the knowledge we painfully acquire, and the possession of which breeds in us such lively satisfaction.  If it is our duty to acquire knowledge and to impart it, we must acquire it; but it is the faithfulness with which we toil, not the accumulations we gain that are blessed to us—­“knowledge comes but wisdom lingers,” says the poet—­and it is the heavenly wisdom of which we ought to be in search; for what remains to us of our equipment, when we part from the world and migrate elsewhere, is not the actual stuff that we have collected, whether it be knowledge or money, but the patience, the diligence, the care which we have exercised in gaining these things, the character, as affected by the work we have done; but our mistake is to feel that we are idle and futile, unless we have tangible results to show; when perhaps the hours in which we sat idle, out of misery or mere feebleness, are the most fruitful hours of all for the growth of the soul.

The great savant dies.  What is lost?  Not a single fact or a single truth, but only his apprehension, his collection of certain truths; not a single law of nature perishes or is altered thereby.  We measure worth by prominence and fame; but the destiny of the simplest and vilest of the human race is as august, as momentous as the destiny of the mightiest king or conqueror; it is not our admiration of each other that weighs with God, but our nearness to, our dependence on Him.  Yet, even so, we must not deceive ourselves in the matter.  We must be sure that it is the peace of God that we indeed desire, and not merely a refined kind of leisure; that we are in search of simplicity, and not merely afraid of work.  We must not glorify a mild spectatorial pleasure by the name of philosophy, or excuse our indolence under the name of contemplation.  We must abstain deliberately, not tamely hang back; we must desire the Kingdom of Heaven for itself, and not for the sake of the things that are added if we seek it.  If the Scribes and Pharisees have their reward for ambition and self-seeking, the craven soul has its reward too, and that reward is a sick emptiness of spirit.  And then if we have erred thus, if we have striven to pretend to ourselves that we were careless of the prize, when in reality we only feared the battle, what can we do?  How can we repair our mistake?  There is but one way; we can own the pitiful fault, and not attempt to glorify it; we can face the experience, take our petty and shameful wages and cast ourselves afresh, in our humiliation and weakness, upon God, rejoicing that we can at least feel the shame, and enduring the chastisement with patient hopefulness; for that very suffering is a sign that God has not left us to ourselves, but is giving us perforce the purification which we could not take to ourselves.