For here, deepest of all, lies the worth of the symbol; that this life of ours is not a little fretful space of days, rounded with a sleep, but an integral part of an inconceivably vast design, flooding through and behind the star-strewn heavens; that there is no sequence of events as we conceive, that acts are not done or words said, once and for all, and then laid away in the darkness; but that it is all an ever-living thing, in which the things that we call old are as much present in the mind of God as the things that shall be millions of centuries hence. There is no uncertainty with Him, no doubt as to what shall be hereafter; and if we once come near to that truth, we can draw from it, in our darkest hours, a refreshment that cannot fail; for the saddest thought in the mind of man is the thought that these things could have been, could be other than they are; and if we once can bring home to ourselves the knowledge that God is unchanged and unchangeable, our faithless doubts, our melancholy regrets melt in the light of truth, as the hoar-frost fades upon the grass in the rising sun, when every globed dewdrop flashes like a jewel in the radiance of the fiery dawn. XVI. OPTIMISM We Anglo-Saxons are mostly optimists at heart; we love to have things comfortable, and to pretend that they are comfortable when they obviously are not. The brisk Anglo-Saxon, if he cannot reach the grapes, does not say that the grapes are sour, but protests that he does not really care about grapes. A story is told of a great English proconsul who desired to get a loan from the Treasury of the Government over which he practically, though not nominally, presided. He went to the Financial Secretary and said: "Look here, T----, you must get me a loan for a business I have very much at heart." The secretary whistled, and then said: "Well, I will try; but it is not the least use." "Oh, you will manage it somehow," said the proconsul, "and I may tell you confidentially it is absolutely essential." The following morning the secretary came to report: "I told you it was no use, sir, and it wasn't; the Board would not hear of it." "Damnation!" said the proconsul, and went on writing. A week after he met the secretary, who felt a little shy. "By the way, T----," said the great man, "I have been thinking over that matter of the loan, and it was a mercy you were not successful; it would have been a hopeless precedent, and we are much better without it."