But to cheer and encourage us sometimes, amid all this depressing history of failures, which may well serve to keep us humble, there is another analogy with the rising tide besides that of its endless endeavours and endless failings. There is, as with the waters, _an advance upon the whole_, though they seem to keep at much the same point, and to be doing little but ceaselessly recede and fail. You might mark, were you a watching angel, how this point is reached, and that passed; and how, though (and better for them here and now) the sighing waters perceive it not, each day’s expiring and almost despairing, but still earnest and prayerful efforts, have increased a little upon the shore to-day, and deepened and secured yesterday’s work. And quiet earnestness seems recommended by this thought: for have we not seen some impetuous waves come dashing in, as though to take the shore at one rush? And it is these most commonly which, meeting steady and sustained resistance, and feeling the strength which excitement had lent dying out from them; it is these impatient spirits that then lose heart most deeply, and sink back the farther, and sometimes quite fall away with a shrill and bitter cry, and lose themselves in the Deep, too dismayed to return,--rather, too little really in earnest to face the necessity of the daily, hourly strife--the inch by inch advance, the little by little, the day of small things. If we are humbly in earnest, and if we are stedfastly, quietly striving, with unyielding watch and instant prayer, and faithful use of every means of grace, then we may hope, amid that which seems sometimes scarce anything but a sad history of failures, that thus there may be yet _advance upon the whole_. But now I remember that there is, in appearance, and to the unpractised or uncareful beholder, little difference between the tide that is advancing and that which is going down. Still the endless hurry of flocking waves, still the appearance of life and purpose, still the advance and retreat upon the shore--and what is the difference? If there are many, many broken, defeated, and baffled endeavours, why so there were when the tide was rising. Ay, but there we found advance,--here we find retrogression--_upon the whole_. Alas! how great is the danger that is subtle and unseen; and in a spiritual falling back, it is the very slightness and imperceptibility of the loss of ground that makes the case so perilous. They have given over their watchfulness, their close observation of marks; the breath of prayer has fallen to a stillness; the waves seem to gleam and ripple and rustle as of old, and how shall the unearnest heart and the unwatchful eye ever know that _the tide is going down_?--a sinking so gradual, so stealthy, with such slight difference from day to day.