It is a joy to recur, in memory or imagination, to any moral conflict, past or possible, in which all our faculties are needed, and wherein that force is at least conceived to be employed which must otherwise corrode us. But if any such enterprise actually presents itself--confronts us at the moment--how great is the blessing! It may bring toil and difficulty to ourselves, and doubt and blame from others; but if it be clear to ourselves, how keen is the sense of life it gives at some seasons, though it may overpower our weakness at others! It seems hard, when we are feeble and suffering, to have irksome labour to do, to have to oppose the wishes and feelings of some whom we love, and to arouse argument when our longing is for unbroken and lasting rest: but, if our duty be but clear to ourselves, (or for the most part clear, with doubts only in our most sickly hours,) what a new position we find ourselves in, permitted once more to take the offensive side against evil, in alternation with the weary perpetual defensive posture! Happy they, who have been brought up in allegiance to Duty, more or less strict; and happiest they whose loyalty has been the strictest! In the hour of nature’s feebleness, and apparent decay, they find themselves under the eye and hand of the Physician of souls, who has for them a cordial of heavenly virtue--of heavenly virtue for them, but of no virtue to such as have let their moral nature take its chance, and who, in their hour of extreme need, are no more capable of spiritual enterprise than of a bodily flight beyond the precincts of their pain. They must languish in self-corrosion; while they who happily find how Duty gives “power to the faint,” “mount up with wings as eagles.” With every emergency of singular or unpopular moral action, every occasion for saying with courage a true word, or advocating a neglected cause--with every opportunity, in short, of spiritual enterprise, they soar afresh, and their eyes kindle anew in the light of life.