Those whom we love are not given to us merely for our joy or our happiness. Their truest ministry consists in being to us revealers of the divine. They quicken in us the seed of better thoughts, help us to estimate rightly the things that are worth trying for and the things that are not worth trying for; help us to become more equal to the standard of our own best insight, and grow into our truer selves. And this influence abides when they are gone. Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households. In a storm at sea when the peril is extreme, the captain lashes himself to the mast in order that he may bring the vessel safely through the raging seas. So, in times of great affliction, we should lash ourselves to the mast of the ship of life, by the cord of duty. The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff. The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore--namely, that really we have no claim on a long life; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span--for short it is at best. The wine of pleasure which once we quaffed so passionately, where is it now? The cup is empty and only the lees remain, and they are as wormwood to the taste. The flowers which we wove into chaplets at our feasts to wreathe ourselves withal, they are withered and noxious. But the good deeds we have done, the nobler traits of character we have developed--these are imperishable. As in every battle, so in the great battle of Humanity, the fallen and wounded, too, have a share in the victory; by their sufferings they have helped, and the greenest wreaths belong to them. We conceive of ourselves as somehow identical in being with those who are to come after us; for it is in the nature of spirit that its separate members, dispersed though they be in space and time, are still, in essence, one. So that we may say concerning those who come after us, and who will reap the benefit of our labours, that we ourselves shall attain to increasing perfection in them. All of us have felt after some great bereavement the beneficent influence of mere work. Even the mechanical part of our daily tasks affords us some relief. The knowledge that something must be done prevents us from brooding over our griefs, and forces us back into the active currents of life.