One of the great discourses of Phillips Brooks had for its theme the lesson of not laying too much stress on the recognition of one's motives or on any return of sympathetic consideration. "Let me not think," said Bishop Brooks, "that I get nothing from the man who misunderstands all my attempts to serve him and who scorns me when I know that I deserve his sympathy. Ah! it would be sad enough if only the men who understood us and were grateful to us when we gave ourselves to them had help to give us in return. The good reformer whom you try to help in his reform, and who turns off from you contemptuously because he distrusts you, seeing that your ways are different from his, does not make you happy,--he makes you unhappy; but he makes you good, he leads you to a truer insight, a more profound unselfishness. And so (it is the old lesson), not until goodness becomes the one thing that you desire, not until you gauge all growth and gain by that, not until then can you really know that the law has worked, the promise has been fulfilled. With what measure you gave yourself to him, he has given himself--the heart of himself, which is not his favor, not his love, but his goodness, the real heart of himself to you. For the rest you can easily wait until you both come to the better world, where misconceptions shall have passed away and the outward forms and envelopes of things shall correspond perfectly with their inner substances forever." In the last analysis one comes to realize that happiness is a condition depending solely on the relation of his soul to God; that neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any living creature can separate him from it, because happiness and the love of God are one and identical, and it is not in the power of this world to give, or to take away, this sense of absolute oneness with the Divine life that comes when man gives himself, his soul and body, his hopes and aspirations and ideals, in complete consecration to the will of God. For this alone is happiness. It may not be ease nor pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. And to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial or desolation of spirit. It is the threshold of joy. It is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain during his progress on earth as well as in heaven. In fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave, until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without these. No one is fitted _for_ joy until he can live well _without_ joy. It is the law and the prophets. THE NECTAR OF THE HOUR. I share the good with every flower, I drink the nectar of the hour. --EMERSON. * * * * *