instruments, avenues, and seats of what may be truly called Pleasure. Life is itself joy or peace.

To such a felicitous nature the surrounding order is adjusted. We dwell amidst healthful influences, a productive earth, a quickening air, a refreshing light, and manifold other ministries of health and strength. To every sense there is an object;-light and the forms which it reveals, to the sight; sound, to the hearing; pleasantness of food and drink, to the taste; fragrant odors; complete circles and tissues of contact, everywhere and always present to the whole and every part of the body. As we rise above outward nature, higher influences still flow into us. Social attractions draw together and hold, as in concentric circles, the numberless relations of family, of neighborhood, of country, of friendship, of mankind. Nor stop we here. Let the celestial realm open to the waiting spirit. within us a greater element of being is evolved, so likewise it is met and encompassed by correspondences and inspirations of the upper sphere. The heavenly light, dearer than the sun or day, shines now throughout nature; everything, like the Divine Form on the mountain, is transfigured; the world, penetrated by the immortal life, becomes the image of heaven. As thus we rise from the lowliest state of man, along the ascending scale, to the summit ever towering

As

above us; as thus we mark, at each step of our ascent, the correspondences with his life, of all, whether natural or spiritual, elements, connections, courses;- we perceive the universe as one harmonious scene, one ever-opening sphere of enjoyments, numberless in themselves, infinite in their variety.

Surely then, some one may perhaps say, there is nothing asked of us but to revel in the benignity which encircles and fills us. And then a second thought arises, it may be, the very contrary to this: The description, so full of light and good cheer, comes of fancy, not of fact, and is contradicted everywhere by the stern presence of pain, and among men by the darker presence of sin. The latter suggestion will meet us often hereafter; let us look now for a while to the first. Shall we revel, as it intimates, in those pleasures which nature has sown like so many stars in the skies which overspread the earth and the soul? The true heart can never wait long

for the answer. For something nobler than revelry, do both man and nature exist. If we seek but this, we become false and disobedient to the spirit which blesses us with such affluence. For instance, let one nourishing his body say, This food is so sweet, I will live only to indulge the appetite which craves it and rejoices in it; he becomes the swinish glutton; he has turned away

from higher pursuits, to gain the lowest form of pleasure; he has deadened his intellect and his affections; nay, he has made himself almost incapable of enjoying the very thing which he substitutes for the true God and the purer service. He has chosen a slavery by which he is unmanned at the first, then robbed of the poor boon for which he sold his manhood. Just so with the drunkard, the debauchee, the slave to any sensual appetite. Or if with greater prudence he widens his range of pleasure, and, instead of sacrificing all to one, seeks to fill and round the whole circle, what then? His principle is not changed; only his application of it is enlarged. The nobler mind, the livelier soul, is still in thraldom; a brute of more perfect form is developed, the man is shrivelled and distorted in the monstrous abortion. If in such a case the mind should sometimes receive that partial culture with which low thoughts and base passions may be commingled, we have nothing essentially better; there is only a larger realm for corruption to invade and prostrate, a finer polish to cover and gild a deeper rottenness; and where thus the influences of heaven, the aspirations of religion, the humilities and the strengths of virtue, are excluded, there may be brilliant show, but the degradation is real, and the descent is as actual, only more splendid, into the region of death.

Precisely here we may begin, then, in contemplation of our human necessities and their Divine supplies. Pleasure is perhaps a greater trial than pain. The universe is so rich that we may lose the whole in hunting for the fragments. The flowers grow so thick, and even so full of beauty, down to the very lowest line of existence, that we may stop among them, and breathe in of their sweetness until we cease to ask for anything better. Let them grow for beauty and for joy; bless their presence and the Power which plants them and makes them so glorious; but suffer them never to withdraw us from the sea-side whence we look across the rolling waters toward our native home; suffer never the lotus-fruit to soothe us into forgetfulness of what seems so far away, what is yet so near, the promise and spirit of the Father, in which all is holy, all divine and immortal.

There was an ancient sect which has been usually thought to fall into just this error, the Epicurean. Yet so far had Epicurus proceeded toward the conception of nature in its entireness, that he laid it down for a fundamental principle, that without virtue there is no such thing as pleasure, and accordingly trained himself to the severest temperance, fulfilling, so far as appears, in his own character, whatever idea the age had attained of virtue. With this fundamental max

im, however, we are by no means secure from peril: if virtue be necessary to pleasure, then we may reduce it, forsooth, to an element or instrument of pleasure; thus estimating things, even virtue itself, by their subserviency to enjoyment, instead of making virtue supreme, and holding no pleasure of value but as effect or ministry of virtue. From such views we come to perceive a twofold peril in this benignant fact of pleasure: we may make it the great end of pursuit, — then it is pure selfishness, sometimes degenerating into the grossest indulgence; or we may yield passively to it as an overmastering power, sometimes turning our claim of freedom into mockery, then it is utter and hopeless enslavement. Thus is it possible for our ruin to come even of our bliss. It is only beauty which can be defaced, only greatness which can be belittled, only strength which can be weakened. It takes a Rome to totter and fall through excess of power. Man, greater than all imperial dominion, is imperilled by the felicity of his nature and its harmonies with the universe.

Even in pleasure, let us remember, we need support and a guide. If we want nothing else, we want always the Divine Shepherd. If the pastures are all fresh and green, so that we may feed and lie down as we will, yet the food may turn to poison, the rest may become death: the