miserable beings that walked the earth. . . . Without enjoyment, without pleasure, without hope, and without sympathy with the world." 15 But the unfailing remedy, for those who will but try it, is the absolute control of thought. "Never let the mind dwell upon anything disagreeable — turn it to something else." "Great and heroic effort was necessary at first and for a long time." But " with a proper discipline of oneself in this way, ever keeping the passions in perfect subjection, contentment and happiness are attainable by all." 16 I do not read that he ever attained them, but others may by following his precepts. He fought for them, at any rate.
Stoical self-control was not his only refuge. He had one higher—God. In his youth he declined to be educated for the ministry and I do not think he was ever consistently satisfied as to speculative religion. But he seems to have had a keen and mighty sense of the divine in spiritual things and in his hours of agony he seeks solace there and finds it. He devotes a portion of every day to communion with God in prayer and gets from it comfort in his anguish, light in the valley of dark shadows, and the growth of a kindlier, sweeter temper towards his fellow-men.17 In old age, in sickness, in solitude, in prison, he sums up thus the mighty help that God has been to him: "That the Lord is a strong hold in the day of trouble I know. But for his sustaining grace, I should have been crushed in body and soul long ere this." 18
