will be to her husband and her children and to society a well-spring of pleasure. She will bear pain and toil and anxiety, for her husband's love is to her a tower and a fortress. Shielded and sheltered therein, adversity will have lost its sting. She may suffer, but sympathy will dull the edge of her sorrow. A house with love in it and by love I mean love expressed in words and looks and deeds, for I have not one spark of faith in the love that never crops out is to a house without love as a person to a machine. The one is life, the other is mechanism. The unloved woman may have bread just as light, a house just as tidy, as the other, but the latter has a spring about her, a joyousness, an aggressive and penetrating and pervading brightness, to which the former is a stranger. The deep happiness at her heart shines out in her face. She is a ray of sunlight in the house. She gleams all over it. It is airy and gay and graceful and warm and welcoming with her presence. She is full of devices and plots and sweet surprises for her husband and her family. She has never done with the romance and poetry of life. She is herself a lyric poem, setting herself to all pure and gracious melodies. Humble household ways and duties have for her a golden significance. The prize makes the calling high, and the end dignifies the means. Her home is a paradise, not sinless, nor painless, but still a paradise; for "love is heaven, and heaven is love."

Why will men not see the priceless jewel that can be their sure possessing? How can a man be willing to bind to himself a body of death, to walk through the dreary years with a heavyhearted, duty-bound, care-burdened, disappointed woman, to whom life has become a monotonous round of uninteresting necessities, when, by a timely thoughtfulness, a little attention, a little love lovingly expressed, he might secure the constant, healing, beautiful ministrations of

With something of an angel light"?

It is madness to let slip away a love so rich in blessing, so easily retained, so capable of boundless broadening and deepening and strengthening, yet men continually do it. Reaching out after wealth, they grasp pebbles, and trample under their feet the "mountain of light." Looking for ease, they push aside the downy couch, and lay their cheeks upon a pillow set with thorns. Unutterably blind, they will not see the angel that folds its white wings by their fireside, and with insane presumption they brush roughly against their heavenly visitant, or with equally insane indifference turn coldly away from it, till the pure robes are defiled, the white wings droop, and the sad angel fades away forever. O the phantoms of dead joys that flit through unhaunted houses! O the hopes that lie buried under still lighted hearthstones! O the murdered possibilities strewn thick along the

ways, over the lowlands and the uplands of life, — stark corses to which no Messiah shall ever say, "Arise!" Through all the land you shall scarcely find a house in which there is not one dead. There is no speech nor language; their voice is not heard; but the shore is sorrowful with the wreck of brave barques; the sea is dark with ships that started proudly, every banner streaming from the mast-head, every sail spread to catch the smallest gale, but that lie now dismantled and becalmed in the dead sea of Sargossa, or float listlessly down the unreckoning tide, or rush wildly over the rocks to swift destruction.

P

XII.

PRAYING.

RAYING is one of those things about which it seems useless to

argue. Nothing is easier than to make out a case against its necessity, or benefit, or reasonableness. Any one can say that, if God indeed arranged matters before the foundation of the world, he will not be turned aside by the wishes of people who very often do not know what it is that they wish, and who consequently make the most unreasonable requests; and any one can answer back, that in this original arrangement allowance might have been made for praying,

that our prayers may be as truly a part of the gearing of the universe as events, and that consequently, so far from being useless, they are essential. But this is not the strong point. It is enough to say, and to know, that God has commanded it. Though we should see no resulting good, we should submit to, and have faith in, a

Furthermore, we all,

"Thus saith the Lord." whether we do or do not believe that prayer effects any outward results, do implicitly believe that its reflex influence is beneficial. We know that the state of mind and heart which sincere prayer produces, is favorable to love and hope and faith and humility and benevolence, and all virtue. It cannot be supposed that God would lure us to prayer by false pretences, hold out answer to prayer as the main inducement to prayer, while in fact the prayer has no bearing whatever on the object prayed for; that we should have it or not, just the same, whether we did or did not pray for it, and although we do derive benefit from it, it is an entirely different benefit from the one held out to us. The idea is monstrous. It is an insult to the purity and integrity of the Deity. How could He who forbids us to do evil that good may come, do it himself? Would it be consonant to his character to lead us to the performance of a duty by a falsehood, while the truth, if known, would make the duty absurd? If any one thing is plainly taught in the Bible, it is that prayer will be answered. Nor is the argument less strong, even if we reject the inspiration of the Bible. So long as we admit that prayer has a beneficent reflex influence, we are constrained to admit that human nature is so constructed that an act which is a continual and stupendous absurdity is a continual and stupendous