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