" Train up a child in the way he should go : and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
The various lots of man in this world seem to be dealt out very unequally. That of some people appears to be cast in a sunny plain of uninterrupted prosperity and enjoyment, where there is nothing to do but go forward jauntily, taking little care for the morrow. That of others is undoubtedly thrown amid difficulties, and troubles, and sorrows; hardly a step of it can be taken but rocks jut out ahead, impeding the course, and thorns press into the foot. It is just possible that there may be less real difference in the two lots than is presented on their surface. If we could look into the heart of the most favoured as God looks into it, we might find there some hidden corroding anxiety or care; that ugly monster known familiarly amidst us as the " skeleton in the closet/' And, it may be, that within the breast of the most careworn and apparently unfortunate—in that hidden life, hidden from the world — there reigns some compensating element of soothing peace. One thing is certain: that natures are not all formed to feel in a like degree. While the shock of some great trouble, whether anticipated or falling unexpectedly, as the case may happen, is passed over lightly by one man—hardly seen when it comes; to another it is as a terrible agony, shattering the spirit for the time, leaving its marks until death. But—whatever the lot, sunny or stormy, light or heavy, fair or dark, the race of life must be run, and we must fulfil our common duties in it. It has been getting rather a fast race of late years. What with business and pleasure, with out-of-door occupations and in-door cares, with trie calls of society and the obligations of home and family, life seems to be one swift, bustling, heated course, in which there is never a moment to spare, night or day. It is said in that great Book—some few of us have become too busy to read it— that in the latter days we shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. Most certainly it would seem as if that prophecy had been written for the present time. We not only run to and fro in the literal interpretation of the words, and in a marvelous degree, from land to land, from country to country, over the seas and the waters, but we are running to and fro at home hourly and daily, giving ourselves no repose. The world was never so full of bustle as it is now ; the career of men and women never so fast. " If I could, I would do so-and-so, but there's no time even to think of it" is a common assertion, often heard.
