On the other hand, it is only fair to remark that human nature shows marvelous elasticity and capacity to forget. The really wonderful thing is that men and women are so well able to forget the trials and sorrows through which they pass. When we think how heavy these are in nearly every life--how bitter the partings are as we journey along the pathway, how much disappointment and loss there are in the experiences of even the more fortunate--the marvel is that there are so many happy faces and that the sorrows of humanity are so soon forgotten in the enjoyment of other things. As the vegetation soon springs up on the battlefield, as ruined houses are transformed into fertile hillocks, and the plain where man and horse rolled in awful carnage becomes ere long the harvest field of the farmer, so the pains and griefs of human life are buried under the new labors and pleasures which beckon to themselves the human mind. Thank God it is so. He has made us thus elastic and self-governing that we may not be cast down. Otherwise history would stop, and earth become a graveyard; and the fact that this is part of our natural constitution indicates that it is wise and right to turn from even the keenest trial and the most sacred grief to the summons which the Father brings to us to further work. For it is impossible to suppose that these evil events are sent to us for their own sake. That would be an outrageous impugnment of the goodness and mercy of God, especially when he has distinctly declared that he does not willingly afflict or grieve the child of man. They are meant to discipline our souls--to show us truth more clearly, to open to our minds the realities of life, and to guide us into the ways of thinking and acting which are better than those we followed before. And if so, then they will do their work only when they are themselves relatively forgotten in the new life to which they introduce us.