Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/436

Rh the ideal meaning of the vast realms of finite life in whose fortunes he is at present mysteriously doomed to share. His comfort here lies in knowing that in all this life ideals are sought, and meanings temporally expressed, — with incompleteness at every instant, with the sorrow of finitude in every movement of the natural world, but with the assurance of the divine triumph in Eternity lighting up the whole.

In brief, then, nowhere in Time is perfection to be found. Our comfort lies in the knowledge of the Eternal. Strengthened by that knowledge, we can win the most enduring of temporal joys, the consciousness that makes us delight to share the world’s grave glories and to take part in its divine sorrows, — sure that these sorrows are the means of the eternal triumph, and that these glories are the treasures of the house of God. When once this comfort comes home to us, we can run and not be weary, and walk and not faint. For our temporal life is the very expression of the eternal triumph.