Reader, the path which we have indicated is the path not of sanctity only, but of peace also. We shall never serve God with a quiet mind, unless we more or less tread in this path. It is a miserable thing to be the sport and prey of interruptions; it wastes the energies of the human spirit, and excites fretfulness, and so leads us into temptation, as it is written, “Fret not thyself, else thou shalt be moved to do evil.” But suppose the mind to be well grounded in the truth that God’s foresight and fore-arrangement embrace all which seems to us an interruption—that in this interruption lies awaiting us a good work in which it is part of his eternal counsel that we should walk, or a good frame of mind which he wishes us to cultivate; then we are forearmed against surprises and contradictions; we have formed an alchemy which converts each unforeseen and untoward occurrence into gold; and the balm of peace distills upon our heart, even though we be disappointed of the end which we had proposed to ourselves. For which is better, safer, sweeter—to walk in the works which God hath before ordained, or to walk in the way of our own hearts and in the sight of our eyes? Ah, reader! let us seek to grasp the true notion of Providence, for in it there is peace and deep repose of soul. Life has often been compared to a drama. Now, in a good drama there is one plot, variously evolved by incidents of different kinds, which until the last act present entanglement and confusion. Vice has its temporary triumphs, virtue its temporary depressions. What of that? You know it will come right in the end. You know there is an organizing mind which unfolds the story, and that the poet will certainly bring the whole to a climax by the ultimate indication of righteousness and the doing of poetical justice upon malefactors. To this end every shifting of the scene, every movement of the actors, every by-plot and underplot is made to contribute. Wheel within wheel is working together toward this result. Well, life is God’s great drama. It was thought out and composed in the Eternal Mind before the mountains were brought forth, or even the earth and the world were made. In time God made a theater for it, called the earth; and now the great drama is being acted thereon. It is on a gigantic scale—this drama. The scenes are shifting every hour. One set of characters drops off the stage, and new ones come on to play much the same part as the first, only in new dresses. There seem to be entanglements, perplexities, interruptions, confusions, contradictions without end; but you may be sure there is one ruling thought, one master design, to which all these are subordinate. Every incident, every character, however apparently adverse, contributes to work out that ruling thought. Think you that the Divine Dramatist will leave anything out of the scope of his plot? Nay, the circumference of that plot embraces within its vast sweep every incident which time ever brought to birth.