that faith may play a part in their work as well? When the health-giving medicine pours along our veins, what does it mean but that everywhere it leaves destruction behind it, and that the organisms of disease which have, with delighted zest, been triumphing in their chosen dwelling and rioting in the instinctive joy of life, sadly and mutely resign the energy that animates them, or sink into sleep. It is all a balance, a strife, a battle. Why such striving and fighting, such uneasy victory and deep unrest should be the Father’s will for all His creatures, I know not; but that it _is_ a condition, a law of His own mind, I can reverently believe. When we sing the _Benedicite_, which I for one do with all my heart, we must be conscious that it is only a selection, after all, of phenomena that are impressive, delightful, or useful to ourselves. Nothing that we call, God forgive us, noxious, finds a place there. St. Francis, indeed, went further, and praised God for “our sister the Death of the Body,” but in the larger _Benedicite_ of the universe, which is heard by the ear of God, the fever and the pestilence, the cobra and the graveyard worm utter their voices too; and who shall say that the Father hears them not? [Sidenote: THE JOY OF THE WORLD] If one believes that happiness is inch by inch diminishing, that it is all a losing fight, then it must be granted that we have no refuge but in a Stoic hardening of the heart; but when we look at life and see the huge preponderance of joy over pain—such tracts of healthy energy, sweet duty, quiet movement—indeed when we see, as we often do, the touching spectacle of hope and joy again and again triumphant over weakness and weariness; when we see such unselfishness abroad, such ardent desire to lighten the loads of others and to bear their burdens; then it is faithless indeed if we allow ourselves to believe that the Father has any end in view but the ultimate happiness of all the innumerable units, which He endows with independent energies, and which, one by one, after their short taste of this beautiful and exquisite world, resign their powers again, often so gladly, into His hand. [Sidenote: OUR INSIGNIFICANCE]