would train up our young men, and with these characters she would fill our land. A short time after this, I was in Pittsburg. As I sat at my chamber window enjoying the mild, balmy air of one of the most lovely sabbath mornings in June, no sound disturbed the sacred silence, but the notes of a christian hymn, coming faintly, yet sweetly from an adjoining room. I listened and heard several youthful voices uniting with the rich voice of apparently the husband and father, in the following words: No more fatigue, no more distress, Nor sin, nor death, shall reach the place. And this, thought I, is a practical exhibition of christianity. These are the joys, the ennobling, purifying joys, which religion confers. These are the moral influences with which it would surround every individual of the human race. It would seem, that the infidel, himself, could not hesitate to choose under which he would have a son or a daughter educated. They whose hearts are attuned to the melody of such hymns, and who are nurtured under the influence of such a home, have entered the paths of peace. Many who will peruse these pages have, perhaps, long been seeking happiness in vain. Disappointment has thus far accompanied your search. You are dissatisfied with the present and have no joyful anticipations to light up the future. We would guide you in a better way. We would lead you to fountains of pure and unfailing joy. God has shown us where those fountains are, and if we follow His directions we shall not seek them in vain. The promotion of happiness is the great object which God has in view in all His operations. For this He made men free; for this He gave His law. Every sorrow which is sent to the human heart is sent in love, to promote real and permanent enjoyment. He never willingly afflicts. When the heart is crushed with the heaviest weight of affliction, the voice of God declares, that this affliction is the means which He is using to banish sorrow for ever, and to fill the heart with joy. Yes! God loves happiness, and is now, in every part of the universe, adopting those plans which to Him seem most effectual for the fulfilment of His benevolence. Do you question this assertion? Does your mind revert to some chamber of pain and death where God has sent the destroying angel to blight every earthly joy, and to accumulate anguish, which shall for years oppress the heart, by night and by day. Let us then enter this chamber, and study the meaning of this mystery. How pale the cheek and dim the eye of this little sufferer! Her feeble moan is so affectingly pensive, that tears gush from the eyes of every beholder. She is a mother's only daughter; the choicest treasure of all God's gifts. But the hand of death is upon her. Medical skill has been in vain. Prayers and tears have been unavailing. The last hour has come. The child is dying. Extended on her little bed, with folded hands and fixed eyes she is heavily drawing her last breath, as her spirit struggles to be free. The mother, half delirious with days and nights of sleeplessness and toil, is unfortified for the heart-rending scene. She is overwhelmed with agony,-unutterable agony. With frantic step she hurries to the bed, and covers the cheek of her dying child with burning kisses. She sinks into a chair by the bed-side, apparently exhausted with emotion, when suddenly anguish gives her new strength, and, wringing her hands, she hurries to and fro through the apartment, exclaiming, "My child is dying; my child is dying; oh! she must not die; God have mercy, have mercy, on her poor mother." Does God stay his hand? No! Look at the little sufferer. Her convulsions become more frequent and more severe. She tries to say "Dear mother." But she only arti. culates enough to let us know what she would say, and to plunge a new arrow of agony into the mother's heart. Even the groans of the dying child are lost in the loud lamentations of the distracted parent. Is this a picture of the imagination? No! They who are in the habit of visiting chambers of sickness know that we faintly paint from reality. Are such scenes unfrequent? No! They are occurring every hour of every day. God has but to say the word, and the disease is removed, and the child rises from her bed in health and beauty. It requires not the least exertion on the part of God to sweep away all this sorrow, and to fill the dwelling with the most rapturous joy. And why does not God do it? Because he loves to see his children happy. He has perhaps tried all other means to wean this mother's heart from sin, that she might be really and permanently happy in heaven. This is His last resort, to make her happy. He lays his hand upon her darling child, and He thus speaks to her in a voice more loud and more impressive than He could in any other way. And does He thus plead in vain? If He does, it is because she refuses to yield to the efforts which God makes to save her from sorrow, and to make her the child of uninterrupted and unending joy. This is the object God has in view. It is one of the most signal evidences of the efforts God makes to save from sorrow. In a few days call in to that dwelling again, and perhaps you will see the mother calm and peaceful. She speaks of God and heaven, in a manner which shows you at once that she has entered a new world of joy. She smiles, in the midst of her tears, as she speaks of that happy world to which she trusts her child has gone, and already, in gratitude, she blesses God that she has been afflicted. And in succeeding years, as she draws nearer her heavenly home, she thanks God with more fervour, that He, by the death of her child, led her to think of the salvation of her soul. And, when she is taking her departure from the world, she says that the choicest blessing she had on earth was the voice which came to her heart through her dying child. God assures us that He never willingly afflicts. He has filled heaven with joy, and, would we yield to his directions and His pleadings, He would imbue every heart with the spirit of heaven and fill earth with happiness. God has told us what feelings we must cherish, and what habits we must cultivate, if we would be happy. And He has urged us by the most powerful of all possible considerations to pursue the path He has thus marked out. He assures us that then we shall please Him, and exhibit to the uni |