different from mortal Life! There was the beautiful face; calm, satisfied, self-possessed, sublime; and with eyes looking far away. I see it yet, the crimson sunset warming the grey stone; and a great hawthorn tree, covered with blossoms, standing by. Yes, there was Immortality; and you felt, as you looked at it, that it was MORE MADE OF LIFE!

CHAPTER IX.

CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO CARRIED WEIGHT

IN LIFE.

WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON THOSE WHO NEVER HAD A

CHANCE.

OU drive out, let us suppose, upon a certain day. To your surprise and mortification, your horse, usually lively and frisky, is quite dull and sluggish.

He does not get over the ground as

he is wont to do. The slightest touch of whipcord, on other days, suffices to make him dart forward with redoubled speed; but upon this day, after two or three miles, he needs positive whipping, and he runs very sulkily with it all. By and bye his coat, usually smooth and glossy and dry through all reasonable work, begins to stream like a water-cart. This will not do. There is something wrong. You investigate; and you discover that your horse's work, though seemingly the same as usual, is in fact

immensely greater. The blockheads who oiled your wheels yesterday have screwed up your patent axles too tightly; the friction is enormous; the hotter the metal gets, the greater grows the friction; your horse's work is quadrupled. You drive slowly home; and severely upbraid the blockheads.

No

There are many people who have to go through life at an analogous disadvantage. There is something in their constitution of body or mind; there is something in their circumstances; which adds incalculably to the exertion they must go through to attain their ends; and which holds them back from doing what they might otherwise have done. Very probably, that malign something exerted its influence unperceived by those around them. They did not get credit for the struggle they were making. one knew what a brave fight they were making with a broken right arm; no one remarked that they were running the race, and keeping a fair place in it too, with their legs tied together. All they do, they do at a disadvantage. It is as when a noble race-horse is beaten by a sorry hack; because the race-horse, as you might see if you look at the list, is carrying twelve pounds additional. But such men, by a desperate effort, often made silently and sorrowfully, may (so to speak) run in the race; and do well in it; though you little think with how heavy a foot and how heavy a heart. There are others, who have no chance at all. They are like a

horse set to run a race, tied by a strong rope to a tree; or weighted with ten tons of extra burden. That horse cannot run, even poorly. The difference between their case and that of the men who are placed at a disadvantage, is like the difference between setting a very near-sighted man to keep a sharp look-out, and setting a man who is quite blind to keep that sharp look-out. Many can do the work of life with difficulty; some cannot do it at all. In short, there are PEOPLE WHO CARRY WEIGHT IN LIFE; and there are some WHO NEVER

HAVE A CHANCE.

And you, my friend, who are doing the work of life well and creditably: you who are running in the front rank, and likely to do so to the end; think kindly and charitably of those who have broken down in the race. Think kindly of him who, sadly over-weighted, is struggling onwards away half-a-mile behind you; think more kindly yet, if that be possible, of him who, tethered to a ton of granite, is struggling hard and making no way at all; or who has even sat down and given up the struggle in dumb despair. You feel, I know, the weakness in yourself which would have made you break down if sorely tried like others.

You

know there is in your armour the unprotected place at which a well-aimed or a random blow would have gone home and brought you down. Yes, you are nearing the winning-post, and you are among the

first; but six pounds more on your back, and you might have been nowhere. You feel, by your weak heart and weary frame, that if you had been sent to the Crimea in that dreadful first winter, you would certainly have died. And you feel, too, by your lack of moral stamina, by your feebleness of resolution, that it has been your preservation from you know not what depths of shame and misery, that you never were pressed very hard by temptation. Do not range yourself with those who found fault with a certain great and good Teacher of former days, because he went to be guest with a man that was a sinner. As if He could have gone to be guest with any man who was not!

There is no reckoning up the manifold impedimenta by which human beings are weighted for the race of life; but all may be classified under the two heads of unfavourable influences arising out of the mental or physical nature of the human beings themselves, and unfavourable influences arising out of the circumstances in which the human beings are placed. You have known men who, setting out from a very humble position, have attained to a respectable standing: but who would have reached a very much higher place but for their being weighted with a vulgar, violent, wrong-headed, and rude-spoken wife. You have known men of lowly origin, who had in them the makings of