must determine our fitness for the realization of happiness. There have been happy kings and miserable subjects; though, in most cases, happiness has fled the royal phantoms of the Palace, to dwell with the toil-scarred realities of the Cottage. Learning has been allied with Misery, and Ignorance with Contentment; but in the majority of instances, the culture of the Intellect has favored the harmonious and blissful action of Life's elements, while the neglect of such culture has been attended by discords and calamities innumerable. Philosophers teach us that the mind creates whatever beauty or deformity it beholds in Nature. Hence, if the inward condition of Life is what it should be, its heavenly beauty will be reflected upon the most unpropitious circumstances, transforming them, and rendering them acceptable. Here is the secret of that wonderful serenity and meek submission of spirit, with which men have wrestled with Poverty, with Persecution and with Death, At peace with themselves, they were victorious over outward trials. The Kingdom of Heaven established in their souls, they grasped its omnipotent power, and faced adversity with the calm demeanor and heroic fortitude of a God! But, on the other hand, if the inward condition of Life be discordant, dark and chaotic, its lurid reflection will discolor all forms of beauty, pervert the brightness of promise, and blunt the sense of possession. By virtue of an economy as immutable as the Justice of God, it is ordained that the bad man shall see no glory in the Firmament and no beauty in the Earth, and shall have no sympathies with Nature in her august repose, and no sympathies with men in their gigantic achievements. It is ordained that neither wealth nor power shall bring him contentment—that ghosts shall haunt his festivals, that plagues shall infest his palaces, that ghastly visions shall appall his slumbers, that air-drawn daggers, prophetic of nameless woes, shall marshal him into abysses of darkness and abysses of horror. It is ordained that friends shall forget the art of pleasing, and that enemies shall multiply like the locust on doomed lands,that Passion shall grant but a momentary and haggard oblivion to Wretchedness, and that Pleasure shall fly before avenging Remorse forever! Behold then, the only means of becoming truly and permanently happy! Begin with your own heart:-harmonize its demands-adjust it to its appointed sphere -enshrine within it the Example of Christ, and illuminate its territory with the guiding Spirit of God. Thus shall you calmly mingle with the resistless current of Being, and, in willing affinity to the Universe, experience all its diversity of sensation and all its depth of rapture. Thus shall your spirit chord with the strain of eternal harmony, contributing its appropriate volume of praise, while it unfolds to its native element the treasured loveliness that never dies. "Oh, where, our Savior! sweeps the line Is it where northern meteors shine, Is it where sunny skies grow dim XII THE LEVER OF REFORM.. Love is the weapon which Omnipotence reserved to conquer rebel man, when all the rest had failed. Reason he parries. Fear he answers blow for blow. Future interest he meets with present pleasure. But Love, that sun against whose melting beams winter cannot stand; that soft, subduing slumber which wrestles down the giant; there is not one creature in a million, not one thousand men in all the earth's quintillion, whose clay-heart is hardened against Love. MARTIN F. TURPER. THERE is but one true Power, and that is of God, an essence of His Nature, sanctioned by His Example, accorded with His Purposes, and blessed by His Spirit. It is the power which created, which sustains, and which redeems, all things. It is the power which made the world vocal with the mystic pulses of Life, when its Majestic Paternity brooded over the awakening Universe; and which is tempering those pulses, in all their |