But it brought home to me a deeper and a darker thing still—­the sad change and vicissitude of things, the absence of any permanence in this life of ours.  We enter it so gaily, and, as a child, one feels that it is eternal.  That is in itself so strange—­that the child himself, who is so late an inmate of the family home, so new a care to his parents, should feel that his place in the world is so unquestioned, and that the people and things that surround him are all part of the settled order of life.  It was, indeed, to me as a child a strange shock to discover, as I did from old schoolroom books, that my mother herself had been a child so short a time before my own birth.

Then life begins to move on, and we become gradually, very gradually, conscious of the swift rush of things.  People round us begin to die, and drop out of their places.  We leave old homes that we have loved.  We hurry on ourselves from school to college; we enter the world.  Then, in such a life as my own has been, the lesson comes insistently near.  Boys come under our care, little tender creatures; a few days seem to pass and they are young and dignified men; a few years later they return as parents, to see about placing boys of their own; and one can hardly trace the boyish lineaments in the firm-set, bearded faces of manhood.

Then our own friends begin to be called away; faster and faster runs the stream; anniversaries return with horrible celerity; and soon we know that we must die.

What is one to hold on to in such a swift flux of things?  The pleasures we enjoy at first fade; we settle down by comfortable firesides; we pile the tables with beloved books; friends go and come; we acquire habits; we find out our real tastes.  We learn the measure of our powers.  And yet, however simple and clear our routine becomes, we are warned every now and then by sharp lessons that it is all on sufferance, that we have no continuing city; and we begin to see, some later, some earlier, that we must find something to hold on to, something eternal and everlasting in which we can rest.  There must be some anchor of the soul.  And then I think that many of us take refuge in a mere stoical patience; we drink our glass when it is filled, and if it stands empty we try not to complain.

Now I am turning out, so to speak, the very lining of my mind to you.  The anchor cannot be a material one, for there is no security there; it cannot be purely intellectual, for that is a shifting thing too.  The well of the spirit is emptied, gradually and tenderly; we must find out what the spring is that can fill it up.  Some would say that one’s faith could supply the need, and I agree in so far as I believe that it must be a species of faith, in a life where our whole being and ending is such an impenetrable mystery.  But it must be a deeper faith even than the faith of a dogmatic creed; for that is shifting, too, every day, and the simplest creed holds some admixture of human temperament and human error.