the other hand, we must never allow imagined consolations, or compensatory delights, in some other world to reconcile us to the endurance of resistible evils in this. We must never distress ourselves because we cannot fully understand the moral principles on which the universe is conducted. It would be vastly more reasonable in an ant to expect to understand the constitution of the sun.

We must be sure to give due weight in our minds to the good side of every event which has two sides. A fierce northeaster drives some vessels out of their course, and others upon the ruthless rocks. Property and life are lost. But that same storm watered the crops upon ten thousand farms, or filled the springs which later will yield to millions of men and animals their necessary drink. A tiger springs upon an antelope, picks out the daintiest bits from the carcass, and leaves the rest to the jackals. We say, Poor little antelope! We forget to say, Happy tiger! Fortunate jackals! who were seeking their meat from God, and found it. A house which stands in open ground must have a sunny side as well as a shady. Be sure to live on the sunny side, and even then do not expect the world to look bright, if you habitually wear graybrown glasses.

We must assiduously cultivate a just sense of the proportion between right and wrong, good and evil in this world. The modern newspaper press is a serious obstacle to habitual cheerfulness, because it draws constant attention to abnormal evils and crimes, and makes no account of the normal successes, joys and well-doings. We read in the morning paper that five

houses, two barns, three shops and a factory have burned up in the night; and we do not say to ourselves that within the same territory five hundred thousand houses, three hundred thousand barns, as many shops and a thousand factories, have stood in safety. We observe that ten persons have been injured on railways within twenty-four hours, and we forget that two million have traveled in safety. Out of every thousand persons in the city of Cambridge twenty die in the course of a year, but the other nine hundred and eighty live; and of the twenty who die some have filled out the natural span of life, and others are obviously unfit to live. Sometimes our individual lives seem to be full of troubles and miseries-our own or those of others. Then we must fall back on this abiding sense of the real proportion between the lives sorrowful and the lives glad at any one moment; and of the preponderance of gain over loss, health over sickness, joy over sorrow, good over evil, and life over death.

I shall not have succeeded in treating my subject clearly if I have not convinced you that earthly happi ness is not dependent on the amount of one's possessions or the nature of one's employment. The enjoyments and satisfactions which I have described are accessible to poor and rich, to humble and high alike, if only they cultivate the physical, mental and moral faculties through which the natural joys are won. Any man may win them who by his daily labor can earn a wholesome living for himself and his family. I have not mentioned a single pleasure which involves unusual

expense, or the possession of any uncommon mental gifts. It follows that the happiness of the entire community is to be most surely promoted, not by increasing its total wealth, or even by distributing that wealth more evenly, but by improving its physical and moral health. A poorer population may easily be happier than a richer, if it be of sounder health and morality.

In conclusion, let me ask you to consider whether the rational conduct of life on the this-world principles here laid down would differ in any important respect from the right conduct of life on the principles of the Christian gospels. It does not seem to me that it would.