Gradually, thinking on from point to point, we shall yet come to perceive that all true happiness and nobleness are near us and yet neglected by us. The delights of nightly assemblies instead of the day, of costly and wearisome music, of costly and burdensome dress, of chagrined contention for place, or power, or wealth, or the eyes of the multitude; and all the endless occupation without purpose, and idleness without rest, of our vulgar world, are not, it seems to me, enjoyments we need be ambitious to maintain.

To watch the corn grow and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray-these are the things that make men happy; they have always had this power; they never will have power to do more. The world will discover this. It has made its experiments in every direction but the right one, and it seems that it must at last try the right one in a mathematical necessity. Experience, culture, and religion will give the true impulse.

Development and culture-soul-growth-are the aim and tendency of life. Through the body we are connected with the material world around, and from this source we derive our earliest lessons in truth. The mind begins its studies here, Objects, animate, and inanimate, engage its earliest attention, but do not hold it long. Rising above them, it penetrates the unseen, rousing the spiritual nature in its rapid progress, till questions of duty and destiny, of glory and right, press upon it, and eternity and infinity are disclosed to its view.

Thus life becomes more than existence; its weight is more than the weight of years. The divine Teacher gave a hint of its meaning when he said, Life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment. And again, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all things needful shall be added. Jesus did not ignore the life that now is; he simply stamped it with the measure of its value. The significance of His instructions is that nothing of worth in the lower is lost by striving after the treasures of the higher. The greater includes the lesser. A title to the invisible and higher is good for the possession of the visible and lower. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.

Would you make the most of life? Choose its highest road, its divinest form. This will put you in harmony with the natural laws that insure success. "It will clothe you," as the Interior expresses it, "with virtues and graces that are essential conditions of getting along in the world. The records of poverty and crime tell us the wicked are the unfortunate. Those who have yielded to the lower nature are in troubles manifold and in exact ratio to such yielding. Those on the other hand who live for the higher nature and who serve God, have at their doors the best rewards and success of this life. Virtue, integrity and holiness at last win the race against their opposites. As in Roman armies the conquered nations had to serve, so the armies of the kingdom, the things of this world conquered for Christ became servants to the soul.

"Such a life secures this world for us, by moderating the wants of the lower nature. Lower passions are never full, so the man who lives for this world will be able to write Solomon's words over it all. It is too empty to fill the heart; every road of merely human ambition leads to Alexander's tears and despair.

"There are two roads to human happiness. One is the road that promises to take us to all we want. That road is endless. It is chasing the mirage. The cruel city of our worldly aims flies on. The other way to happiness is the road that takes us to a contented mind, and simple wants and absorbing spiritual aims. On this path it is all the same, so far as happiness goes, whether we own a kingdom, or only the narrow outlook through the window of the sick-room, if only God fill us with a sweet and holy content. Prosperous times have come. They will take us only toward bitterness and sorrow, unless we serve ourselves by first of all serving God."

The perfect man in Christ is the perfect man in the world. His physical, mental, and moral powers are in full force, but subject to law. "In this completed restoration," says Rev. Dr. J. P. Newman, “nothing but sin is destroyed. All that is natural is regulated, purified, exalted. To such God re-appears in the fellowship of his presence, conscience is strengthened, and its dictates are obeyed; the affections are cleansed and enshrine the Holy One; the will is emancipated, and responds to the Divine law. All passions find

It is holy living. It is the the relations and concerns of

their contentment in normal indulgence. All desires have their appropriate gratifications. All temptations are met with instant recoil. The equipoise of the soul is restored. Love is supreme. Rest is perfect. Christ is all and in all. Out of such a condition flows a life, 'holy, guileless, and undefiled,' for holiness is an act. It is perfect obedience in love to a law that is 'holy and just and good.' It is more than devotion. spirit of devoutness carried into all life. It is self-abnegation, which seeks no other reward than the consciousness of duty done. It is calmness amid turbulence, meekness amid provocation, humility amid the pride and fashion of life. It is the reign of love amid the anarchy of this world's hate. It is the charity that thinketh no evil. It is a brotherly kindness that worketh no ill to man. It is benevolence incarnated. It is a horizon which takes in the whole of each day, so that conversation is pure as the breath of prayer; laughter as holy as a psalm of praise; the pursuit of wealth, pleasures, honor, saintly as the Eucharistic feast."

This is the golden way of life. It is the King's highway, richly strewn with branches of palm and laurel crowns. Princes travel here-princely men, and no royal blood so pure as theirs. Queens honor this road-queenly women, and none of earth so sure of lasting thrones. This is the life that culminates in life immortal. George Eliot owned it true, though the immortality she pictured was not beyond the stars. This may be ours, crowned even yet with higher good.

"Oh, may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence: live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.

So we inherit that sweet purity

For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,

That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burthen of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,

And what may yet be better-—saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude
Divinely human, raising worship so

To higher reverence more mixed with love-
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread for ever.

This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty—
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible,
Whose music is the gladness of the world."