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and to know that one has in part succeeded. The experience is the same in all efforts of reform. The first result is to stir up and encounter opposition.

Suppose for a moment that the reader is impatient, and, seeing the error of his ways, decides to exercise self-control. Very likely he will lose his patience on the first occasion, and act or speak impulsively. Discouragement naturally follows; and the reader forgets one of the great laws of growth, -- the law, namely, that a period of darkness, of regeneration, of sharp contact with all that can rouse itself into opposition, follows the reception of new light, of greater power. Conservatism and habit are ever ready to rise and say that there shall be no reform. All healthy changes are evolutionary, not revolutionary. We forget that an idea, like a seed, has life, and, if sown in the mind, will grow. We forget the outcome. We often falsely accuse ourselves of sin, when the relapse is really due to a firm determination to be better. If we keep the end in view, if we have an ideal outlook, we may let the disturbance be what it may. Quiet persistence is the word. Each effort to renew our ideal adds to its evolutionary power. " Keep your eye fixed on the eternal, and your intellect will grow," says Emerson.
 
One's first real success in attaining this inner repose sometimes comes alone with nature when,