Another way in which denial and defeat and thwarted desires or plans can be met is one still higher and greater, and is that path by which true spiritual advancement is made. This is, not despair and hopelessness because an apparently impassable wall arises across the pathway; not even mere content, and cordial or joyful submission however noble that attitude may be; but there is a loftier state in which the denial can be met; it is not merely an acceptance of God's manifest leading that is so informed with faith that it becomes ceaselessly joyful, but it is to even discern in limitation, in denial, new and sublime opportunities.
One's dearest hopes are suddenly, by circumstances and conditions entirely outside his control, totally cut off. What then? At that moment an entire world of new possibilities opens, and it rests with the man himself to develop these into something far greater than the scope of his former hope or expectation could reveal. He can bring to bear a power of spiritual energy that shall transform the very ill-fortune itself into one transcendently beautiful and even angelic. He can lift all the factors of his individual problem to the divine plane of love. For love is the spiritual alchemy,--not merely the love for friends and for those near and dear to us; not merely the love for those who are agreeable and winning and whose high qualities inspire it,--but love, love and good will for all. The command to love one's enemies is not an idle nor even an impossible one. The whole law--the whole philosophy, it may be--of life can be read in the counsel, "As ye have therefore opportunity, do good unto all men." Do good,--do the right thing, the kind, the generous thing, regardless of return (for which one usually cares little or not at all), or even of recognition (for which one usually cares a great deal), regardless of the recognition,--let the good be done. Let one, finding himself suddenly confronted by disaster or defeat, resolve: All that has been, every factor and every circumstance that has led up to this moment, shall be for good and never for evil. It shall be for good to each and all and every one involved in it. Even loss or sadness shall be transmuted into gain and joy on a higher than the mere earthly plane. For life "shall be kept open, that the Father's life may flow through it." Always may one realize the profound truth that "the going down of the walls between our life and our Lord's life, though it consisted of the failure of our dearest theories and the disappointment of our dearest plans,--that, too, could be music to us if through the breach we saw the hope that henceforth our life was to be one with His life, and His was to be ours."