Yet, in biography, we do not so often find traces of
those struggles depicted in the loftier fiction. One reason may be that
the contest is often entirely within, and so a man may have won his
spiritual freedom without any outward token directly significant of the
victory; except, if he be an artist, such expression as it finds in
fiction, whether the fiction be in marble, or in sweet harmonies, or in
ink. Nor can we determine the true significance of any living act; for
being ourselves within the compass of the life-mystery, we cannot hold
it at arm's length from us and look at its lines of configuration. Nor
of a life can we in any measure determine the success by what we behold
of it. It is to us at best but a truncated spire, whose want of
completion may be the greater because of the breadth of its base, and
its slow taper, indicating the lofty height to which it is intended to
aspire. The idea of our own life is more than we can embrace. It is not
ours, but God's, and fades away into the infinite. Our comprehension is
finite; we ourselves infinite. We can only trust in God and do the
truth; then, and then only, is our life safe, and sure both of
continuance and development.
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