situdes of life; are arrested in their spiritual and intellectual development by perpetual perplexities and discords around them; are victims of circumstances, of disease, of disaster, of licentiousness, and at last suffer and die martyrs to the wrongs and selfishness of individuals and society. Some are engaged in commercial war, and others, implicated from youth to old age, in professional wars. Is this man's mission? According to the interior life and the material constitution of man, there is a general mission for each individual. For this reason, we should be enlightened concerning ourselves, the powers and spheres of the mind, that we may give society a healthy constitution, and thus gratify the desire for social peace and unity.

We should be devoted to truth, charity, beauty, patriotism, humanity, and so employ our activities in the pursuit of generous aims. High above the clashing tumult of a semi-barbarian age stood the natural apostles of humanity-Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Raphael, Michael Angelo and many others -flinging a luminous beauty over the tragedy of the times, foreshadowing an era of refinement, of science, of civilization and universal liberty. All the friends of humanity still press forward to that era.

The abundance of light exhibits the evils of darkness and imperfections. He is living to but little purpose whose sympathies are contracted and unelastic, confined only to personal ambitions. The chief end of life on earth is to fill the measure of the soul with the largest amount of the noblest experience and the truest and purest endeavor; the chief end of life is the fruition of being-to do good, be happy, get wisdom and aspire calmly toward perfection.

Is life one dreary round of care?

Do thorns lie thickest in the way,
And pains our sweetest joy impair
From night to night and day to day?

Do flattering hopes awake our trust
And beck'ning garlands win the eye
Only to trail anon in dust,

Unmindful of the tear or sigh?

Aye, more than this; misfortune's wrath
At times, like lightning cleaves the sky,
Thus shedding woe along the path

Our inmost strongholds to defy.
But is this all? Beyond the wreck,
Wait not the deeps of gold and pearl,
All heaven's dome with stars to deck

And fields of holiest calm unfurl?
Then, what if hours are racked with pain,
And baffling waves against us roll?
If steadfast loyalty remain,

Triumphant song shall fill the soul.

OUT OF SUFFERING COMES THE SERIOUS MIND.

He is the divinest man whose heart is tenderest to the touch of human woe. A delicate tenderness comes of deep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature. Leave science to the wise, pride to the nobles, luxury to the rich. Have compassion on humble wretchedness. The smallest and most despised being may, in himself, be worth as much in real, if not reputed, value, as thousands of the powerful and proud. Take care not to bruise the delicate souls. Believe that pity, forgiveness, intimacy, expansion, tenderness and tears are the finest things in the world. To live is nothing; to be powerful, learned, illustrious, is little; to be useful is not enough. He alone has lived who has wept at a benefit given or received.

Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,

Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed hath sate,

He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.

God, through the voice of nature, calls the mass of men to be happy. He calls a few among them to the grander task

of sad, heroic martyrdom. Great trials either elevate and purify or crush and sink the sufferer. A great sorrow has sometimes been the starting-point of a new career. He who has never felt a sorrow, has never known what it is to live.

Life shows many phases of martyrdom. The artist, the musician, the needle-woman, the orphan, the deformed, the insane! What living martyrs these! Open the history of individuals and behold the martyrs to envy, to jealousy, to misunderstanding, to a bad temper, to a bad marriage, to the selfishness of individuals and society, and many more, that are self-crucified; such nail themselves to the cross.

The sum of life is not always sweet. Suffering is inevitable as long as crudeness exists. Our griefs are too manyour joys are too few. Some people have groaned away their life, and others have extorted groans. We are all, alike, condemned to groan

The tender for another's pain, the unfeeling for his own.

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and best, but like a forward child that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet until it falls asleep, and then the care is over. Why, when all is bright and happy, should a gloom.

Be spread around us? Oh! blind and thoughtless soul !
'Tis the same power that reigns, and the same love

Is traced alike in sunshine and in shade:

The cloud that bears the thunder in its folds

Comes on the errand of good will to man!

Oh! we should cling too close to earth, and love
Too well its pleasures and delight,

Were there no shadows on its scenes of light

No sorrow mingled with its cup of joy.
If sweet fulfillment followed all our hopes,
Like the unfoldings of a spring-flower bud,
We should not seek a better world than this;
Where, then, would be the reachings of the soul
For higher pleasures, and those purer joys
That have no other dwelling-place but heaven?

W

TRUTH CAN NEVER DIE! MAN IS IMMORTAL!

A solemn murmur in the soul

Tells of the world to be

As travelers hear the billows roll

Before they reach the sea.

Consciousness is the only indubitable fact.

Self-existence

is the primary demonstration of existence. A single human form is a perfect organization, representative, and reflection of all the lower compounds in nature. And thus man is progressively developed from all below him. Herein lies the external evidence that man possesses an actuating and organized essence, which no other form possesses. And this will continue to retain its individuality, because it is the perfect form and perfect soul of all the lower degrees of

creation.

The date of human life is too short to recompense the cares which attend the most private condition; therefore it is that our souls are made, as it were, too large for it, and extend themselves in the prospect of a larger and longer

existence.

The soul leaves this world, freighted with all its wealth for its eternal home.

My own life should teach me this,

That life shall live forevermore,
Else earth is darkest at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is.

The life of our home trembles with mournful memories. Some of us have such painful experiences that life can never be bright or cheerful again. We cannot move ourselves to worldly worth. The light that cheers other minds has gone out for us. Great sorrows and misfortunes come with such crushing weight as to destroy all power of feeling, and we almost cease to truly love our kindest earthly friends, because the dear ones are absent.

The most dire of all calamities is the death of children. We might justly compare the attraction for our early dead. to the delicate anemone, which the poet has described as springing up from the dying Adonis :

Still here the fate of lovely forms we see,

So sudden fades the sweet anemone!
The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey,
Their fragile beauties droop and pine away;
The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long,

Which owe to winds their name, in Grecian song.

Let my friend die of age, when the candle burns out; then death is natural, and the nearer we are to nature, the more fitting and beautiful and welcome it will seem. As in this life we woke into consciousness in the arms of the loving, so we may hope our own next waking will be bosomed by the Eternal Love which has provided this shelter for us here.

The hand that unnerved Belshazzar, derived its most horrifying influence from the want of a body; and death itself is not formidable in what we do know of it, but in what we do not know absolutely.

Death is the crown of life,

Were death denied, man would live in vain;
Were death denied, to live would not be life.

Nature is everywhere harmonious with herself, and, when understood, she brings our inductive minds into friendship with a tangible, substantial, spiritual world. The spiritual portion of a man's head teaches that his soul hath a God, and that there are bright spirits beyond the grave.

Whatever may be strange in our other state of being, one thing is certain, we shall be the same all our knowledge, thoughts, ways of thinking, reflection, memory, love of those who live here-these we shall carry with us or we shall not be the same. And if we believe we are to be the