child cries for father's boots-big, but uncomfortable; but when you buy a pair for your child you would not heed it if it cried for a very large pair. It is not the gift, it is the disposition. A heap of letters in a printing-office is not a book, although it furnishes that of which books are made. It is not health or constitution which forms the end of life, but it is character, and this is preeminently the gift of God; character in its highest sense, character which puts the crown upon the brow of weakness, and the absence of which leaves strength lost, ruined, and powerless. Do not tell me of your lot, your glorious lot. An old proverb says, "Tell me who is your executor." Suddenly comes calamity, suddenly rises soul. And, therefore, while you may be unable to find comfort in your lot you may find it in the Providence which governs it. The Lord disposes. God has never given up His control over the affairs of men, and it is only when He is forgotten that He seems to be far remote from them; it is impossible that He who created could retire from the control or direction of this strange and vast circle of being. God still "sits upon the circle of the earth," to Him still "the inhabitants are as grasshoppers, and He taketh up the isles as a very little thing." Nature may not always, perhaps, adequately represent Him in His higher attributes, -as how should it ?-but neither her ways or yours are ever hid from Him.

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Falling back, then, upon those ideas of fortune and misfortune, of lucky and unlucky, it seems true, on the whole, to say life is what we make it. A thousand instances will perhaps seem to contradict it, but it will only be in seeming, not really, apparently, not actually; man has considerable command over the chances in life. "Luck has but a slender anchorage ;" the soul in man is greater than any circumstance around him can be, but then he must have a soul. A good Dutch proverb says, "Fortune lost, nothing lost; courage lost, much lost; honour lost, more lost; soul lost, all lost." Of course, the proverbs teem which talk of the ills of life. Misfortunes come on horseback, and go away on foot ;""Misfortune, wood, and hair grow throughout the year;" "Misfortunes come by forties;" "Ill-luck comes by pounds, and goes away by ounces; " and again, "Ill-luck comes by fathoms, and departs by inches; "Whither goest thou, misfortune? I go where I can find more; "If my father had made me a hatter men would have been born without heads." The Arab proverb is like it, "If I were to deal in winding-sheets no one would die ;" "He fell on his back, and so he broke his nose." These are illustrations of the way in which the unlucky people have revenged themselves. But another class of proverbs inculcates a different view of life, and teach us that the failure of life arises very greatly from the vanity in man which refuses rightly to harmonise his capacities with his necessities. Our most thoughtful modern poet seems

in a wise way to have reckoned life up thus, even when he describes in pathetic language a moment of grief-ful failure in his poem called "The Last Ride Together: "

"And yet she has not spoke so long!

What if heaven be that, fair and strong
At life's best, with our eyes upturned
Whither life's flower is first discerned,
We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
What if we still ride on, we two,
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,

And Heaven just prove that I and she

Ride, ride together, for ever ride?"

The poem must be read that its whole meaning may be appreprehended in its sustaining, strengthening philosophy of life, but one other verse is so pertinent to the teaching that a wise and thoughtful mind will not be crushed beneath the pressure of its calamities, that it may be quoted

"Fail I alone in words and deeds?

Why, all men strive, and who succeeds?
We rode it seemed my spirit flew,
Saw other regions, cities new,

As the world rushed by on either side.
I thought, All labour, yet no less
Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
Look at the end of work, contrast
The petty done, the undone vast,

This present of theirs, with the hopeful past.
I hoped she would love me. Here we ride."

This is a wise man's sum of the noble failure of life, the unsuccess
which lower and lesser natures call ill-luck and misfortune: there
is all the difference between taking a narrow, short, and valley view
of life and regarding it from the heights and the mountains. And
that is an invigorating Hebrew proverb which says, "When the tale
of bricks is doubled Moses comes.' " "Ill is the eve of well," "When things
come to the worst they will mend," "By dint of going wrong, things
come right," only it is true that "Our worst misfortunes are those
which never befall us ;" and many moralise upon, and tremble at, possi-
bilities to their own lives which are not experiences, or even shudder
at the misfortunes which gather around other lots, without medi-
tating how assuredly they are often the results of an inevitable law
which they themselves have broken. The Scotch say,
"You put
your finger in the fire, and then tell us it was your fortune." There is
an inertia in some men's natures which bids them ascribe to fate,
to the motions of the planets, or to some fortuitous assemblage of
chances. What was the result of their own folly or weakness?
Shakespeare ridicules this well: "This is the excellent foppery of
the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of
our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the

moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominence; drunkards and liars by a forced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a Divine thrusting on; an admirable evasion of man to lay his disposition on the charge of a star."

There are some proverbs which have a very practical bearing on the wise use and control of life, so that it may be saved from the illustration of great weakness or great folly; that is a very suggestive one, The strength of the chain is in the weakest link," and hence it may often happen that what seems to be most despicable is in reality the most powerful; not in itself, but from the fact that weakness, harnessed to strength, will very often reduce strength to its own level. "The beast that goes well is never without some one to try his paces;" and although, says the proverb, " It is better to strive with a stubborn ass than carry the wood on your own shoulders," yet there have been stubborn asses who have worn out 'high-mettled steeds. "The rotten apple spoils its companion," and "The right hand is slave to the left," "The thread breaks where it is thinnest."

I very well remember, some twenty-five years since, in days when it was possible to have a very long coach ride, travelling some hundred and twenty miles from England into South Wales; we had gone along for some time rather slowly on our journey; but in the midst of a wild, waste place, the name of which I remember was "Cold Blow," at the wayside inn we had changed horses; and as we mounted to our places, again prepared for a start, I said to my neighbour, as I looked upon our fresh relay of steeds, "Now we shall get along." "I don't believe it a bit," said my companion; "look at that offsider, those other three horses will be kept in check by him. They won't be allowed to go a bit faster than he chooses. He'll hold in their agility for the journey." And so, indeed, it proved. He was the bete noir upon that pilgrimage, and the strength of the team was dependent upon the weakness or perversity of the one. It is so in life-the strength of life is in the weakest power; this governs the life, holds its back, and enervates and enfeebles all the other faculties. A munificent endowment of genius is impoverished by some alloy which taints it; a magnificent strength is impaired and enfeebled by some deteriorating affection; the lordship of a fine intellect a commanding will is rendered ineffective by some feebleness of the body, some disease which takes the spring and energy from life. The first seems as if it would promote to great honour, while the last keeps back from honour. Thus in innumerable instances we see how the strength of the whole chain depends upon the weakest link in the chain. Every link beside

men of

was strong and good excepting that, and there at last it snapped. "The Country Parson" in one of his best papers speaks of "men who carried weight in life," and in another discourse of “ whom more might have been made." Both of these classes of persons remind us of the strength of the chain in the weakest link. We are amazed at some men who do not as we say get on better; perhaps if we knew all we should be amazed if they got on at all, that they do not give up or fall down in a fit of sheer despair. Some indeed do. It is not merely in virtue of a man being an animal or a beast that he flies to suicide; it is the irritating horse by his side. It will not allow the steed to fly because he is harnessed to it. It is the fear of that weaker link related to so many stronger and able to bear; and even when we are amazed at the folly of some men the amazement is caused from the knowledge of the contradiction between great powers and idle enterprises.

The proverb says, "If it is not just and right it is all wrong." Perhaps this was originally applied to some cantankerous creatures who must have everything exactly their own way, or otherwise find everything to be utterly and entirely wrong. But there is a sense in which the proverb has a far deeper and higher truth. What a consequence would follow if trains were not just right at starting! We see this especially illustrated on some of the great junctions where the lines diverge into manifold directions. Dr. James Hamilton wisely says, "At Preston, at Malines, at many such places the lines go gently asunder. So fine is the angle that at first the paths are almost parallel, and it seems of small moment which you select. But a little farther on one of them turns a corner or dives into a tunnel, and now that the speed is full the angle opens up, and at the rate of a mile a minute the divided convoy flies asunder. One passenger is on the way to Italy, another to the swamps of Holland. One will step out in the Irish Channel, the other in London. It is not enough that you book for the better country. You must keep the way, and a small deviation may send you entirely wrong. A slight deflection from honesty, a slight divergence from perfect truthfulness, from perfect sobriety, may throw you on a wrong track altogether, and make a failure of that life which should have proved a comfort to your family, a credit to your country, a blessing to mankind. Beware of the bad habit!"

And no doubt cheerfulness is one of those overcoming powers in life before which the most inveterate obstacles give way; or to change the image cheerfulness is a good tonic, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." So also says Dr. Livingstone in his first volume of travels when in circumstances of the most trying emergency. Weary, worn, destitute, and in a region which could

furnish little help, he quotes the proverb and goes on. And in simple homely life cheerfulness conquers. Jerry's countenance was plainness to the fullest extent. "Never mind," said Jerry, "I shall not be troubled by the ladies. My face is my ægis." In ninetynine cases out of a hundred such a conclusion would have been correct, but Jerry was fated to stumble over the solitary exception, inasmuch as a young and rather handsome heiress, forgetting his defects of feature and physiognomy, and seeing only his contented disposition and intellectual worth, fell in love with him one day, and he, very good-naturedly reciprocating the compliment, married her. Proceeding home in a carriage from the church where the union had just been performed, the vehicle upset, threw out the bride, but, what was worst of all, broke a leg of the bridegroom. It was especially mal à propos to break a limb upon such an occasion, and Jerry had as much reason to repine at the accident as any one similarly situated could have, but he bore it with his usual good nature. "Ah," said he, one day in the last quarter of his damaged honeymoon, in answer to an expression of regret, endearment, and sympathy, which had escaped his young wife, "'tis all for the best, Susy. I desired a little indoor life. Besides, but for this accident business would not have allowed me so much of your company. So, ha! ha! upon my word I look upon it as far from one of the most unfortunate events of my life. I do, indeed!" Susan's first child was, unfortunately, born blind. "Not so very unfortunate after all!" said Jerry. "It might have been worse. Let us thank an omniscient Providence that the dear little fellow is not club-footed. Surgery may perhaps remedy his sight, and if it can't-why-why, after all, the faculty of seeing is so often abused, so often a curse to its possessor! It changed Lot's wife to a lump of salt, you know!" Such is Jeremiah's philosophy, and for all trials, great or small, he makes it applicable. His wife broke a pitcher, a costly one. "Dear me! what a pity!" said she, provoked at her own carelessness. "Not a whit," responded Jerry. “I never liked that pitcher-such an awkward handle. I'll get another." His chimneys were contrary. There are few who can keep their patience in smoky rooms. Jeremiah, however, after fully ascertaining that with his house the nuisance was incurable, forthwith began to extol the virtues of the smoke, and it was not until after he had sold his bacon-making residence and purchased an abode more conducive to comfort, that he would allow that smoke was not an indispensable necessary to civilised life. His little blind boy withered and died, like a sunless rose, ere he could lisp "father." Susan had been a second time a mother, but her love for her firstborn burned brighest, for to the pure flame of maternal love was added interest for the darkness which haunted his