We have no choice, then; if we would succeed eternally, we must follow the way of the cross. This is the only way to life—to that abundant, celestial life which our Creator has wished us to live. And it is the bearing of our cross, patiently and resignedly to the will of God, together with our other good works, that enables us to merit, in so far as we can, the joys of the kingdom of Heaven. But the sufferings and labors, so inevitable and necessary to our earthly state, which serve as a means to supernal rewards, have still another, deeper meaning, and serve another purpose. We cannot evade them, we must encounter them. They are not only unavoidable, but necessary to our dearest interests, as we see, since they are strewn as thorns and brambles all along the narrow way that leads to eternal life. We cannot choose them or lay them aside at will. We may, indeed, if we be foolish and impious enough, refuse to walk the narrow way of the just and choose the broad road that leadeth to destruction; but we shall not even thus escape the pains and perils inseparable from this mortal life. Or again, we may, in our folly, rebel against the crosses and labors that confront and pursue us; but whether we go this way or that, whether we will it or not, we can no more eschew all the evils of life than escape from the air that we breathe. The pressure, it is true, is not always upon us; we are not, without ceasing, weighed down by our labors and groaning to be delivered from the body of this death. There is interruption, there is passing pleasure, a rift in the clouds and a smile of the sunshine even for the darkest and poorest life. And yet withal, we know and we are conscious that we are ever under the sentence of death, that life is a fleeting shadow, that like “A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.”