6S8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



closures ; and to the man who will eat the bread that has been by the 

 labor of other hands j^rocured for him without paying an equivalent, 

 the kingdom of heaven is forever shut. 



The personal pain, lauguishment, and imbitteredness, do not spoil 

 for the brave man his appreciation of life, but by persistent faith and 

 well-doing he subdues and converts contrarieties into furtherances. 

 Socrates and Paul and Cromwell and Milton did not break their hearts 

 or give up the tight. Lessing, after all the languor and sickness of 

 Wolfenbiittel, refused to die, though he bore in his heart the deadly 

 ravages of fate, till he had first presented to his ungrateful country 

 his large-hearted offering of " Nathan der Weise." Nor was he ego- 

 istically looking forward to a world of happiness beyond the grave, as 

 compensation for his sufferings, as reward for his magnanimous services. 



" He heeded not reviling tones, 

 Nor sold his heart to idle moans, 

 Though cursed and scorned, and bruised with stones." 



Think what sort of world it would be without the pain and perse- 

 cution. When in our church-pews our ears are tickled with the sweet 

 eloquence about heaven, where there will be no tragedy, no pain, no 

 tears, no trial of temper, no tempers, no passions, no black, all white, 

 only white, everlasting singing, and so on, does not every masculine 

 heart feel the most melancholy misgivings about the concern ? would 

 he not willingly sell out on that policy even at a liberal discount, could 

 he but invest with the realized capital in this troublous yet withal 

 interesting planet ? 



The truth is, the mixture and antithesis is the aj^petizing quality 

 in the fare of life. The dangers, misunderstandings, jealousies, errors, 

 and seductions, on the one hand ; on the other hand the joy in 

 healthy relations to the sensuous world, and in the esthetic contem- 

 plation of it, the sense of the ludicrous and ridiculous evermore tickled 

 by the wonderful conjunctions of the sublime and vulgar in human 

 affairs, the feeling of heaven in true relations to our fellow men and 

 women, in work accomplished and duty performed, the highest bliss 

 of all in the recognition of, and nearer and nearer identification with, 

 the Supreme Spirit; the sense, in short, of a hell on the one hand to 

 be shunned, and a heaven on the other to be enjoyed whoever vivid- 

 ly realizes all this will not underrate life on this planet, but infinitely 

 prize it. 



Yes, this earth is dear to mortal men, not merely in spite of its 

 tears and crosses, but also on account of them. The bitterest expe- 

 riences we pass through need but to drift to the due distance in the 

 past, and they assume a wonderfully interesting guise. Strangely, 

 tenderly aftecting in the retrospect are our riotous " Hal " days, our 

 sigliing Venus and Adonis fit, our sultry Werther fever, our sweet and 

 bitter Faust period, and all the other dear illusions which beset us on 

 our devious path. 



