it. Whoever is deeply imbued with this spirit is alive to the welfare of those around him. He watches with a jealous eye any possible causes of discord or injury in the social system. He emerges from self, as it were, lives a disinterested life, and is in his best mood when others share his happiness and prosperity. His car opens wide and his purse-strings relax at the cry of distress and poverty. "My brother!" is the exclamation oftenest upon his lips, and a brother's weal is the moving principle of his heart. LIVE IN PEACE. "Let us have peace!" should be the motto of every lover of humanity the world around. To obtain peace we should be ready to sacrifice all personal prejudices, jealousies and antipathies. There are all sorts of people in the world, and many that are not patient or sweet-spirited, besides some who are positively uncongenial, distasteful, and offensive to us. But we should remember that for all our dislikes and occasions for resentment, our own self-consequence or fastidiousness may be as much responsible as the natural ugliness, indiscretions, follies, or wrongs of our neighbor. It is possible to be too critical. Nothing is easier than to pick flaws in the lives and characters of others. We cannot weigh motives well enough to enable us to interpret all speech and conduct. Better get rid of the critical habit altogether than to misjudge and injure our fellow men. We must likewise accommodate ourselves to ceaseless differences of opinion in respect to every-day topics. In politics, science and a hundred passing occurrences, men differ, and have a right to differ. It is abominable conceit for a man to set up his own way of thinking for a universal standard, and then proscribe and pettily persecute all who fail to attain to it. The gift of speechlessness is worth cultivating. Learn to hold your tongue. If your neighbor talks provokingly better keep quiet than quarrel. A soft answer turneth away wrath. If you cannot וי wer softly, don't speak at all. There is real majesty in silence provocation. The man who ruleth his own spirit is greater conqueror of a city. "Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Show your Choke back angry words. Repress bitterness. neighbor that even as you rule yourself, so you might, if you deigned to do it, conquer him. Study tact. Let good-nature have a chance to bubble up. A happy and pleasant remark on a different subject may avert the storm. A flash of wit may prevent the lightning of wrath. To provoke a smile is better than to occasion a frown. There are some wrongs which of course must be noticed, but there is a right way to give them attention. This is not by wrangling. Charity must fill our own hearts before we cast the devil out of others, lest he find a place to lodge within us. Get the beam out your own eye. Be prepared to see your offending neighbor just as he is. Perhaps he intended no real wrong. Find out first. Perhaps he is suffering wrong from others. Maybe he imagines you have wronged him. Like enough his nerves are unstrung by business care or other perplexities. Approach him at the right point and learn how he stands. Longfellow says: "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." Don't fear your neighbor, however rough his appearance or loud his speech. Remember the fable of the fox and the lion. A fox met a lion in the forest for the first time and was frightened nearly to death. When he met him the second time he was still much alarmed, but not to the same extent as at first. On seeing him the third time, he so increased in boldness that he went up to him and opened a familiar conversation. Acquaintance always softens prejudices. Don't be easily offended. Mere words can harm you only when you suffer them to irritate you. Don't be revengeful. Injustice reacts upon itself. He who does the wrong is the one that loses most. All wrongs will some time be righted. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." peace except the right to serve Not for life itself may we let Be ready to sacrifice anything for God and do good to your neighbor. these sacred privileges go. They are enjoined from on high, and we must serve God rather than men. As you obtain mercy so you must show mercy. Let God's patience with you be the standard of your patience with others. You differ from the common lot if you do not continually try God's faithfulness toward you, and tax his patience with you. Notwithstanding your neglect, your ingratitude and sin, his mercy never fails. The Koran says that two angels guard every man on the earth, one watching on either side of him, and when he sleeps they fly up to heaven with a written report of all his words and actions during the day. Every good thing he has done is recorded at once, and repeated ten times, lest some item may be lost or omitted from the account. But when they come to a sinful thing the angel on the right says to the other, "Forbear to record that for seven hours; peradventure, as he wakes and thinks, in the quiet hours, he may be sorry for it, and repent and pray, and obtain forgiveness." From this beautiful representation learn how to bear with the sins of others. BE SELF-DENYING. Self-denial is the groundwork, the indispensable requisite for every Christian virtue. Without the habitual exercise of this principle we cannot be the followers of him "who pleased not himself." As soldiers of Christ we shall ever be called by conscience to the largest use of it, and we should arm ourselves with the highest considerations for the trial. "Who fights With passions and o'ercomes, he is endued. "You deny the body," says Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, " or you deny the soul. Deny the body, and the soul comes to the front and floods your life with sacred light, with heaven's pure splendor. Gratify the body, and the soul retires, and its hot tears fall in the hearing of God. Self-slaughter takes place some where; it is for us to say where it shall take place. It can take place in the cutting off of a hand, or in the thrusting of a dagger into the very fountain of life, and it lies within the power of the human will to say where the wound shall be inflicted. "There is a bloated man who never said 'No' to an appetite. You see it in his face. That is not the face of his childhood developed into noble age; that is another face; he is made now in the image and likeness of the devil. His very eye has a twist in it; his very speech has lost its music. He does not want to come into a pure home; he does not want to look upon the unsullied flowers; he does not care to listen to the birds singing their sweet song in the spring light. His affections are otherwhere. All the urgency of his life moves amid other directions; he is less a man than he ever was unhappy. "Here is a man who has crucified the flesh, the affections and the lusts thereof; he has cut off his right hand, plucked out his right eye, struck himself everywhere with heavy blows, but his soul throws over his maimed condition a sacred light, a beautiful expression. The form is rugged, the countenance is marred, but through it there is a soft, shining light, which tells that the soul is growing angelward and Godward, and every day sweetens his nature and prepares it for higher society." BE FIRM. "The noble mind unconscious of a fault, Like the firm rock that in mid-ocean braves The war of whirlpools and the dash of waves." Such a mind is needed amid the temptations, pleasures, and dangers of life. A will to say "No!" and abide by it; or "Yes!" and stick to it, is a desideratum with many. We want not the stupid firmness of ignorance and self-conceit, but the conscientious firmness of intelligent conviction: such a spirit of firmness as George the Third had when, in his great speech on the Roman Catholic ques-tion, he declared: "I can give up my crown, and retire from power; I can quit my palace, and live in a cottage; I can lay my head on a block, and lose my life: but I can not break my oath." Be firm in your good undertakings. Don't give up because of discouragements. Strike hard blows at sin. If your arm is weak, strike the oftener. Keep your foothold. Fasten your eye on your foe. Quail not though thou suffer. Remember that in every right eous cause "Though sharpest anguish hearts may wring, Though bosoms torn may be, Yet suffering is a holy thing; Without it what were we?" In adversity, be firm. "Never knock under-never! Always rally your forces for a more desperate assault. If calumny assail you, and the world-as it is apt to do in such cases-takes part with your traducers, don't turn moody or misanthropic, or worse still, seek to drown your unhappiness in dissipation. Bide your time. Disprove the slander if you can: if not, live it down. "If poverty comes upon you like a thief in the night, what then? Let it rouse, as the presence of the real thief would do, to energetic action. No matter how deep you have gone into hot water-always provided you do not help the father of lies to heat it-your case, if you are of the right kind of stuff, is not desperate, nor is it in accord with the divine order and sweep of things that life should have any difficulties which an honest, determined man, with heaven's help, cannot surmount." What we need is grace to say, with Paul, respecting all the trials, troubles, and allurements of life, "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself." We want such fortitude. Frank E. Hale describes : "Doth the tempter seek to entice thee astray? The tide draws near, with a fond embrace, The ripples smiling upon her face; But the rock resolves that he will not melt, And her blandishment is scarcely felt : So the tide sinks back, in shame, away. O, a noble victor, he! |