always sensible of their need of salvation, but the proud in spirit are "clean in their own eyes." Their goodness is like the morning cloud and the early dew, yet they say, Stand by thyself; I am holier than thou. "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." What a sublime rebuke to the spirit of this world! It is a grand contrast to the uneasy desires of greedy covetousness; to the disposition of the gay; to the degradation of the impure; to the senseless pleasures of the ambitious, when new fires ignite their hopes only to plunge them into deeper darkness. The Bible's happiest soul is he who has most of its peculiar mind and character. Not on account of earthly riches, for he may be one of the Lord's poor, who, like his blessed Master, has "no place to lay his head." Not because he has sought and obtained honor from men, but because he sought and "seeks the honor which cometh from God only." Not because he has much of this world, but because he is a Christian. He may not have the greatest capacity, but he has a state of mind that prepares him to rightly estimate and enjoy all that is worth enjoying. "To the upright there ariseth light in the darkness." They are wisely guided, comforted and encouraged in the most gloomy wilderness. They are not oppressed with doubts; sorrow does not crush them. Darkness gives place to light, and the seeming evil turns to good. They often sip honey from the most bitter flowers. They yield not to fear, for they believe in God, and are assured, by a thousand contrasts, that "all things work together for good to those who love God." One of the never-failing sources of happiness for which we are under obligations to Jesus the Christ is the mind and character which he requires of us. "A good man shall be satisfied from himself."

"Man was created for an active life. Effort is the true element of a well regulated mind. Undisturbed soil becomes hard and unproductive. Its bosom is shut up against the dews and the rains, and also against the warm rays of the sun. So it is with the mind when it is closed up and deprived of healthy action; this man lives for himself alone, and only the baser passions spring up in his breast. His soul is too narrow for Christian benevolence; sympathy and emotion are disabled and all his nobler faculties languish. Action, from intelligent and benevolent principles, is a great fountain of happiness. Few streams of bliss equal those which flow from charitable exertions. Benevolence and well-doing are great inducements to future exertions, because of the fact that they are their own reward in a thousand different ways. The seed thus sown brings back an hundred fold, and a rich harvest to others, which adds to the abundance of our own happiness. But where shall we go for those principles of action? Shall we search for them in nature? Can reason alone discover them? Are they found in the teachings of philosophy? Are they gathered from observation? Does not our world need Revelation to make known the true aim and end of our being?" Cicero said, "Those who do not agree in stating what is the chief end, or good, must of course differ in the whole system of precepts for the conduct of human life." He also says there was so great a dissention among the philosophers, upon this subject, that it was almost impossible to enumerate their different sentiments. So it came to pass that exertions for benevolent ends were seldom, if ever, put forth by pagans in pagan lands—they knew nothing of the happiness springing from such a source.

Great efforts from great motives are the glory and blessedness of our nature. In the Bible only men have learned what great motives and efforts are. There we find food to sustain them and wisdom to guide them. Nowhere in the pages of infidel philosophy can we find such an injunction as this: "Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." Where else do we find this Christian maxim: "None of us liveth to himself, and none of us dieth to himself; but whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we die, we die unto the Lord." He or she alone is the happy one who is taught to consider the nature and tendencies of human conduct, and whether it will stand the test before God, and advance the ends of his truth and love in the world; who makes the Lord's will the ends of his or her life and lives to please God and show forth his praise. Such a life is necessarily a happy one, because it is one full of goodness. There is daily joy in such daily activity. No man can be wretched while acting from the principle of communicative goodness. Such are happy whatever their sphere or occupation may be. Their aims are high. Their objects sustain them and their impulses encourage or strengthen them. Their anticipations are joyous and their reflections are tranquil. They look backward with delight and forward with hope. Their conscience approves them. They have not buried their talents. They are not encumberers of the ground.

They live to bless the children of men. When they die they will to them their counsel, their example and prayers. Benevolent habits are a great source of happiness, for which we are indebted to the religion of Christ.

It is vain to attempt to persuade ourselves that human misery does not exist. We can not get away from it by arming ourselves with stoical insensibility. Evils lie all about us; we ourselves are made to feel them. If we open our eyes upon the pages of time we see a continuous series of beings who appear for a short time and then pass away. Their beds are bedewed with tears, and soon the emblems of death are hung about their doors. O, what wonderful scenes lie between the cradle and the grave! What hours of sadness and gloom! Here, in the midst of life, we realize disappointments, losses, painful diseases and heart-rending discouragements, defeated hopes and withered honors. Here are good reasons for the interposition of redeeming love. Does the God who loves us sympathize with us in our woes? We are liable at every step in life to great individual and domestic calamities. No hour can be free from the fear that what we value the most on the earth may be snatched away to-morrow.

Trees and flowers grow to their full stature, fill up their measure of time, and pass away. Beasts and birds are more rarely cut off with disease. Their lives are not embittered with the expectation of death; the knowledge of the past and the present is all they have; they have no knowledge of the morrow; they live contented in their ignorance and indifference, and, at last, sink into the deep, unending night, "being made to be taken and destroyed."

But this is not the history of man. He perishes from the cradle to the tomb—"suffers a hundred deaths in fearing one." He is conscious of the dangers that beset him. He is hedged in on every side. Death is constantly destroying his fondest hopes and causing him the sorest grief. It bursts the ties that bind heart to heart, and the dearest fellowships are severed, and the joys of a blessed life are wrapped in the gloom of death. All there was of earthly bliss in the bygone now makes up his anguish. Is it possible that life and death walk "arm-in-arm?" Yes; even while we are happy in the enjoyment of one, the other comes and casts the fearful mantle over all our earthly prospects. Seal up this blessed volume of life, and I know not from whence the light is to spring which would cheer this gloomy picture. Without this, man would be in a grade of blessedness beneath the brutes that perish. It would be better to be anything than rational without the religion of Jesus Christ and the intelligence of the Bible. The Scriptures inform us that these things have a cause, that they come from God's