a sigh for the joys that
once loitered there, but are now forever gone? Does he not rather feel a
little ashamed, when you remind him of those days? Does he not feel that
it trenches somewhat on his dignity? Yet the regret of maturity for its
past joys amounts to nothing less than this. Such regret is regret that
we cannot lie in the sunshine and play with our toes,--that we are no
longer but one remove, or but few removes, from the idiot. Away with
such folly! Every season of life has its distinctive and appropriate
enjoyments, which bud and blossom and ripen and fall off as the season
glides on to its close, to be succeeded by others better and brighter.
There is no consciousness of loss, for there is no loss. There is only a
growing up, and out of, and beyond.

Life does turn out differently from what was anticipated. It is an
infinitely higher and holier and nobler thing than our childhood
fancied. The world that lay before us then was but a tinsel toy to the
world which our firm feet tread. We have entered into the undiscovered
land. We have explored its ways of pleasantness, its depths of dole, its
mountains of difficulty, its valleys of delight, and, behold! it is very
good. Storms have swept fiercely, but they swept to purify. We have
heard in its thunders the Voice that woke once the echoes of the Garden.
Its lightnings have riven a path for the Angel of Peace.

Manhood discovers what childhood can never divine,--that the sorrows of
life are superficial, and the happinesses of life structural; and this
knowledge alone is enough to give a peace which passeth understanding.

Yes, the dreams of youth were dreams, but the waking was more glorious
than they. They were only dreams,--fitful, flitting, fragmentary visions
of the coming day. The shallow joys, the capricious pleasures, the
wavering sunshine of infancy have deepened into virtues, graces,
heroisms. We have the bold outlook of calm, self-confident courage, the
strong fortitude of endurance, the imperial magnificence of self-denial.
Our hearts expand with benevolence, our lives broaden with beneficence.
We cease our perpetual skirmishing at the outposts, and go inward to the
citadel. Down into the secret places of life we descend. Down among
the beautiful ones in the cool and quiet shadows, on the sunny summer
levels, we walk securely, and the hidden fountains are unsealed.

For those people who do nothing, for those to whom Christianity brings
no revelat