thought to higher and better things: occupy the mind with good.

Bodily pain is caused by pressure upon some nerve of sensation. Withdraw the pressure, and the pain ceases. An excess of blood rushes to the spot or is arrested at the spot which has been cut or bruised; the blood presses hard upon the nerves, and perhaps produces heat, or inflammation. Relief comes from drawing away this excess of blood. Just so when the forces of thought and feeling are centred upon a sad fact, no matter what,-the mind suffers pain or grief from this abnormal pressure. Relief comes from turning the mental forces in another direction,-forward, outward, upward,-away from the sore point. We must make room for other thoughts, feelings, interests; and, if these are worthy of us, the process of healing will begin at once. Of course, to plunge into empty frivolity and dissipation-to try to drown or bury our woes in sensual indulgence, or to seek fortitude in coarse stimulants-is to trust to a remedy which is worse than the disease. "Hope thou in God." Find relief by bringing the being into the harmonies of law, light, and love.

Hence the curative effect of all honest

work, all wise use of our active faculties. Indeed, our disquiet is often caused by the uneasy stirring within us of powers not sufficiently exercised. Idle men and women, with genius or talent of any kind, are often victims of depression. Robert Leighton, a Scotch poet, speaks of his art as medicine:

"If I am long

Without the exercise of poesie,

My spirit ails, my body's somewhat wrong,
My heart beats, 'Woe is me!'"

But all his ailments leave, and body and mind come well again, when the stream of rhythmic thoughts begins to flow.

"And so, I doubt not, his creation makes

A healthier current in the Painter's veins,
Or that his marble inspiration takes
Away the Sculptor's pains.

"And Music, which usurps a sweet control
In any heart through which its marvel floats,
Is physic to the body and the soul

Of him that builds the notes.

"The spirit craves to do its noblest thing:
It is a poison in the blood supprest.

And thus the Arts are medicines, that bring
Healing and joy and rest."

Not the fine arts alone, but all the useful ones, have this curative virtue. All worthy industry, all occupation of mind or hand about our proper business, lightens care, soothes grief, heals hurts, and drives away the blue devils. "In idleness alone is perpetual despair." There is no peace for us in good-for-nothingness. If once the higher powers in us are awake, they chafe against our own sluggishness; they will not let us rest, they glare at us in our very dreams. But all such misery is mercy: it compels us to realize that we are not made in vain. Before the sunlight of honest occupation the shadows fly. We do not need to shun sadness nor to seek cheerfulness: the sadness goes of itself and the cheerfulness comes of itself, when we attend to our proper affairs. Indeed, we forget to mind our own moods, sad or glad :

"Not enjoyment and not sorrow
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day."

There is a deep social reason for much of this inward restlessness and urgency. All that is best in us struggles for expression because it does not belong to us alone. It belongs to others: the goods must be delivered. No gift, no talent, or faculty, is merely private property. The right use of our powers, our opportunities, and our time puts us in direct relation to our fellowbeings. Whether it be a day's work, a sermon, or a song, we owe it to somebody. Even a silent meditation in solitude may fit us for some truer service.

"What shall I say? In my heart words are springing

Transcending all speech, and as deep as the sea; All that is best in me breathes in my singing, Binding forever your spirits to me."

When we allow our best life to unfold and express itself in word or deed, or to go out from us as pure influence, we grow like God, whose utterance creation is. And always we find it more blessed to give than to receive. We are ourselves served best by serving others. Maggie Tulliver was helped out of dismal moods when "she learned to look at her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole." She read in Thomas à Kempis something like this: "The love of thyself doth hurt thee more

than anything else in the world." The cure of heart-ache, then, is to be found in occupations which take us away from our petty self-regardings, our self-pityings, our morbid broodings, and which connect our life with other lives and with other affairs, or merge our individual interest in the larger whole. Our private sorrows will look smaller when we accustom ourselves to care for the larger life of the world, for the good of the community, for the public welfare, for the spread of truth and righteousness among mankind. The man who keeps public spirit alive in his own bosom, or who really cares for those who are near to him, has such large and varied interests that he has neither time nor inclination to cosset and cuddle his own griefs.

The craving for sympathy is natural. enough, and it ought never to be treated harshly, nor thought of as a fault; but it easily becomes ignoble and very morbid, because very selfish. “Oh, if somebody only knew how much I suffer, and would suffer with me!" But would it not be quite as well if I could myself forget it,-put it out of my own sight as much as possible? Why should I wish to lay my burdens on others, or make their hearts ache because mine does? It might be very noble in them to share the pain; but would it be noble in me to put it on them? Better that I seek to lighten the load of some other than that I be looking around for some other to carry mine. Would it be worth while to occupy anybody's time with the recital of my private trials and ailments? What if everybody should engage in exchanging this kind of goods? Would the world be enriched by

such commerce?

Love is the true and sure cure of heartache, even if it is often the cause of it. But what is love? I think the genuine article is wise, unselfish interest in other people's welfare, interest in other lives than my own: it is to be happy in their happiness. If I have but little happiness of my own, this is one way to borrow some,-by being glad in the gladness of others. As age comes on, I can cheer my own wintry days with sunbeams gathered from the spring-time of young people and from the smiling faces of children. This will save me from the shame of casting a shadow across their life; the light in my face will be a reflection of their own.

"Hope thou in God." We are saved by hope,—that is, by looking forward, and not backward.

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,

once.

The saddest are these: 'It might have been.'" Well, then, if those words are so sad, why say them or dwell on them? Things might have been very different, it is true; but that is not worth saying or thinking more than John Weiss says, "An accomplished fact takes its place in the order of nature. against which it is sacrilege to complain." A healthy mind doesn't stop to look back long at success, much less at defeat. Such a mind turns promptly from what has been to what comes next, whatever it may be. If we are foolish and sentimental enough, we can get a deal of misery even out of our past blessings. Burns for once drops into a wail,

"Ye'll break my heart, ye little birds,
That warble from the flowery thorn;
Ye mind me of departed joys,

Departed never to return."

And why should the memory of departed joys turn to pain and break one's heart? Rather let us take them as pledges of more joys to come, as samples of the good things our Father has in store, even as the old Hebrews renewed heart and hope by singing. "Hitherto hath the Lord helped."

I am sure, too, that there is a fountain of heart's-ease in the brave acceptance of whatever sorrows and trials fall to our lot. When Jesus stands fronting the cross, he says to himself, as well as to his fainthearted followers, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?”

When a man takes on himself a heavy burden because he knows it belongs to him to carry it, he feels a glow of satisfaction because he can. The strength keeps coming to him. It almost seems as if the burden gave him wings. But, if he is sulky or cowardly, or if he whimpers and pities himself, or envies other people who seem to have no loads to carry, he will have plenty of heart-ache, and back-ache, too. There are many worse things in the world than burden-bearing; and we shall miss some of the best things if we try to find an easy path through life by shirking our proper tasks.

Humboldt thought, "It is quite possible to suffer many and great griefs, and yet not

but rather to find our moral and intellectual nature so purified and exalted thereby that we would not change this feeling for any other." Probably few of us can realize this in the midst of trouble. "No trial for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward it worketh the peaceable fruits of righteousness." Certainly, people who never taste anything but sweets, who are always and altogether comfortable and easy-going, are not the ones who make the world's noblest history. They are apt to be indifferent and content with animal satisfaction. Nothing rouses them to heroism or spurs them to seek moral excellence for themselves or for others. Suf

fering, or pain, taken alone, is not a good in itself. It is a condition of discipline. It develops fortitude and soul-strength. It reveals and cures weaknesses, and it schools us to sympathy. No great thing is accomplished without pains-taking,-a most significant word! Indeed, the world is continually redeemed and saved from evil by the brave souls who bring suffering on themselves because they are full of sympathy, full of self-sacrifice, and willing to bear the woes of others. Hear Coleridge:

"Was it meet,

When my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled, That I should dream away the intrusted hours On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart With feelings all too delicate for use?"

Think of Jesus in the garden on the night of his betrayal,-the last night of his life: "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." Just at that moment his enemies were jubilant, exultant. They had set a trap that was sure to catch him. They had found a traitor in his own company; for thirty pieces of silver they could buy his crucifixion! But, looking back on it all, who had the best of it? Better to drink the bitter cup with him, better to weep with him under the trees and to bleed with him on the cross, than to share the palace of the high priest and the banquet of Pilate.

We need not cultivate sadness, nor go out of our way to hunt for crosses; but we can meet our fate and face our trials as we take the changes of the weather, not trying to count the raindrops, nor minding the gusty flaws that blow across the road we must travel. Some degree of discomfort is an

In Browning's rendering of the old Greek play, when Queen Alkestes lies dead, the people gather at the palace gate, half paralyzed with gloom, but chattering mournfully, as if every little incident or aspect of the hour were of awful import. Then the hero Heracles appears on the scene, half man and half god, with his "great, interrupting voice." The private grief of King Admetus, as measured by his weeping friends, suddenly "Shrank to a somewhat pettier obstacle

I' the way of the world: they saw good days had been,

And good days, peradventure, still might be." "The gay cheer of that great voice"-the voice of the hero with "the irresistible, sound, wholesome heart"- flows among them like a breeze among vapors or like sunlight among shadows. His very presence lifts them above all clouds, so that they can look down and see how small a part of the infinite creation the clouds can ever cover. If any of us covet to be useful to our companions, what contribution can enrich them more than this "sweet, infectious health," this inspiration of courage and good cheer?

Perhaps, therefore, the best use I can make of this subject is to show what a poor subject it is, after all,-what small business it is to be feeling of our feelings and watching our moods, to see whether we have heartache or heart's-ease. "Happy, my brother?" exclaims Carlyle. "First of all, what difference is it whether thou art happy or not? To-day becomes yesterday so fast : all to-morrows become yesterdays; and then there is no question whatever of the happiness, but quite another question. Nay, thou hast such a sacred pity left, at least for thyself, thy very pains, once gone over into yesterday, have become joys to thee. Besides, thou knowest not what heavenly blessedness, what indispensable sanatory virtue is in them. Thou shalt only know it after many days, when thou art wiser."

While we sit brooding over our troubles and the hardships of our lot, the great world goes tranquilly on, the infinite sky hangs over us, the everlasting order abides, and "God is where he was." Can we not forget or endure our pestering "insect miseries" for a little while in the presence of the eternal

laws and eternal powers? If we keep our souls in patience, if we hold fast to our faith and hope and love, the soft streams of healing power will flow into us and through us. We shall receive and give out the infinite good. We shall share and promote the endless circulations of benefit.

INTERPRETING THE UNKNOWN BY THE KNOWN.

It seems to me that we can hardly overestimate the importance of endeavoring always to interpret the unknown by the known, and of always believing that we understand the remote best when we understand best that which is near at hand. Of this one thing we may be quite certain: that this universe is a universe, that it is not a house divided against itself. If we could travel hence to the remotest star, when we got there we should find that it was just as impossible for two straight lines to enclose a space as it is impossible on this earth of ours. If water existed there, we should find that water always found its own level and never ran up hill seeking it. If numbers existed there, we should find that two and two as certainly made four there as it is certain they make four here. We should find that what was love here was love there, that what was hate here was hate there, that what was unfair dealing here was unfair dealing there, that what was just dealing here was just dealing there. There are not two kinds of right, nor two kinds of justice, nor two kinds of morality. What is right and just and moral anywhere is right and just and moral everywhere. If the facts we grasp are beneficent facts, we may be sure that the facts beyond our grasp are equally beneficent.

And yet this same thing-interpreting the remote by the near-is just what men generally have signally failed in doing. If in nature "distance lends enchantment to the view," in religion it has generally been permitted to lend fear and horror to the view. What men could not understand they have generally invested with dread. The savage, unable to comprehend the causes of storms and to discern their beneficent purpose in the vast economy of things, when the storm comes, trembles before it and thinks the gods are angrily scolding him. Wider

knowledge so dissipates this fear that the loudest thunder can be heard without any dread at all. Extended knowledge brings to man the conviction that the universe, through all its known and unknown realms, means good to him, and not evil. The more knowledge man gets, the more is he able to see this. All experience is dead against the idea that we need stand in dread before

the unknown mystery of things. Wider knowledge, as we get it, reveals to us no baleful facts. The more we know of things, the more the baleful covering in which our ignorance had draped them falls away, and the more they are seen to be radiant with hope and beautiful with love for us. At one age of his history man stands in awe before the lightning and is able to see in it nothing save malevolence. At another age man blesses the lightning as one of his gentlest, most tractable and useful servants. Things appall us because we do not comprehend them. Ignorance alone brings fear, and fear always brings torment. If we could rightly comprehend the entire meaning of one single grain of dust, we could by its means comprehend the meaning of the universe. If the budding of a single flower or the quickening into life of but one dry seed can be shown to have a beneficent purpose in reference to but one child amid all the untold millions of children who call God "Father," then, as the universe is not a house divided against itself, there is no fact, from the falling of a raindrop to the rending of a world in twain, which is not equally beneficent in its purpose.

To believe that, as known, things are beneficent, and the more beneficent the more they are known, that, therefore, all unknown things must be beneficent likewise; to believe that there are no facts, amid all the infinite storehouse of facts, which have for us a baleful purpose or a baleful meaning; to believe this in every moment of life and in the moment of death; to believe it of that as yet by us untrodden realm beyond death,— this is the last victory of Faith over the assailing legions of Doubt. What we know gives us no cause for fear. Why, then, should we stand trembling in cowardly fashion at the gate of the unknown region of things? This life is blessed. Why, then, fear to make entry into any and every other life? The presence of God, here and now,

is pleasant to us. What ground have we for the unworthy fear that in the other world his presence, there and then, will be unpleasant to us? His judgments, here and now, mean our good. What craven infidelity is there in the thought that there are judgments reserved for us in the arsenal of his omnipotence which will not mean our good? Suppose the rude savages who imagined that the Great Spirit was angrily scolding them, when it thundered, had been able to reason with themselves in something of this fashion: "We do not know to a dead certainty what causes this commotion about us. We do not know to a dead certainty that the Great Spirit is angry with us, and is scolding us in that altogether unaccountable noise which is rumbling over our heads. Let us interpret, then, the great things we do not know by means of the little things we know. Let us judge of the Great Spirit who is afar off by help of the facts which are very close at hand. We know that the earth on which

we live is good to us. It bringeth forth the bud, and the bud spreadeth itself out and becometh a flower; and although our children, at the thought that a pretty thing is lost to them, cry sometimes when the flower droops and dies, yet we know, being older and a little wiser than our children, that the flower droops and dies in order that the fruit the pretty flower-leaves sheltered may grow and ripen in the sun. We know that the dry seeds, which seem to us as dead as dust, spring forth into life, and become long grasses, which our squaws weave into garments for our bodies and into mats for our wigwams. We know it to be good that we should revere the ancient men of our tribe, for their words are weighty and they make our councils wise. We feel it to be well with us when we love our children, and when we try to guide them into all the good we have ourselves learned to love and to enjoy. All this that we know, is good: we will believe, then, that what we do not know, is good also. The Great Spirit made our ancient men wise. How much wiser must he himself be! The Great Spirit enables us to love our children and to desire good things for them. Surely, he will love us and desire good things for us; for we are children, too!"

If that sort of reasoning had been possible to the children of men in the early days of our human history, then the sweet inspira

tion, which welled up from the divinely loving heart to the golden lips of Jesus, would have been long anticipated. "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father, which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him!" But, as we cannot put old heads upon young shoulders, so we cannot put the heads of religious sages upon the shoulders of primitive barbarism. Barbarism, especially religious or theological barbarism, is wonderfully tenacious of life; and I am sorely afraid that it would be quite impossible to put anything like the full meaning of the most fruitful utterances of Jesus into the minds and hearts of those who, in our day, are most disagreeably certain that they know all that is to be known about him, and that they have become his peculiar favorites therefore! Man gets to his truth by very slow methods, and many saviors have to be crucified, much martyr blood has to be shed, and much painful travail has to be endured, before that praise is perfected which the very babes and sucklings of humanity are now beginning to lisp, and, in lisping, to understand.

Through the natural we reach the spiritual. By means of the known we interpret the unknown. By studying the near we comprehend the remote. When man has trembled in the presence of an event the causes of which he could not comprehend, if he had endeavored to interpret that event by means of the beneficent things about him which were too familiar to him to be in any wise strange, religion would never then have been made a torment and a fear. The altars of religion would never then have been made altars of cruelty. About the creeds of religion the smell of bloody sacrifice would never have lingered. Belief in a stony dogma would never then have been allowed to do duty for heroism in life. Inspiration, then, would never have been deemed a thing which could come to a sudden ending when John dreamed his last dream on Patmos !

Boston.

JAMES KAY APPLEBEE.

"Wake thou and watch! The world is

gray with morning light!"

"Truth for authority, not authority for truth."