darkness and impotency while the world rolls by them. They have
seen no joy and felt no content since childhood, and many of them
look with genuine pity upon children, because the careless
creatures do not know into what a heritage of sin and sorrow they
are entering. I have only to say to them, that the noblest
exhibitions of manhood and womanhood I have ever seen, or the
world has ever seen, have been among their number. A woman with
the hope of heaven in her eyes, incorruptible virtue in her heart,
and honesty in every endeavor, has smiled serenely, a million
times in this world, while her life and all its earthly
expectations were in ruins. Patient sufferers upon beds of pain
have forgotten childhood years ago, and, feeding their souls on
prayer, have looked forward with unutterable joy to the transition
from womanhood to angelhood. Men, utterly forsaken by friends--
contemned, derided, proscribed, persecuted--have stood by their
convictions with joyful heroism and calm content. Nay, great
multitudes have marched with songs upon their tongues to the rack
and the stake. The noblest spectacle the world affords is that of
a man or woman, rising superior to sorrow and suffering--
transforming sorrow and suffering into nutriment--accepting those
conditions of their life which Providence prescribes, and building
themselves up into an estate from whose summit the step is short
to a glorified humanity.

Before me hangs the portrait of an old man--the only man I ever
loved with a devotion that has never faded, though long years have
passed away since he died. His calm blue eyes look down upon me,
and I look into them, and through them I look into a golden
memory--into a life of self-denial--into a meek, toiling, honest,
heroic Christian manhood--into an uncomplaining spirit--into a