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end, with the wine-cup lifted up, drinking the lees—the mouldy lees of it— 1 
with a sardonic “hurrah!” he drinks , and drinking dies! 
This is the song of life which this great transcendentalist gives us, 
and it is the history of so many noble minds* and tender hearts without 
the influence of religious faith—“without God in this world!” (Ephes. 
ii., 12.) 
So called, because it blossoms sometimes on thorn-bushes.—It sym¬ 
bolizes 
Peace and Rest amidst One’s Especial Trial and Sorrow. 
H EAR reader, I here take the “thorn” as a type of any great trial which^ 
perhaps, is daily pressing upon those who shall read this page: bodily 
pain, in some; disappointed hopes and ambitions, in others; separation 
from dear friends, it may be, or their loss by death; the frustration of some 
cherished plan on which some have set their heart ; domestic jars and dis¬ 
comforts; poverty and privations; heavy cares and anxieties about the 
means of livelihood, and the like; in short, by the “thorn” I here mean 
each mans especial trial and sorrow ,—the thing which detracts from the 
happiness of his life,—the thing as to which he would be ready to say, “Oh, 
if that trouble were only gone,—if I were but delivered from that , it would 
♦Lacordaire tells us that a merely temporary darkening of even a great mind is not 
always a symptom of evil. It may be that God has willed it, in order that He may come very 
near to it , and reveal His glory in its conversion, that man may he convinced that of himself 
he can do nothing, hut that he owes everything to God! It is often the same with nations as 
with individuals; for instance, error will of itself fall to the ground, and the truth shine 
forth in its splendor. Then the fate of a nation becomes decisive when but two alternatives 
lie before it—either to surrender itself entirely to the side of faith, or to commit itself forever 
to the cause of unbelief. That is to say, will it choose to perish in ignominy or rather to 
triumph with the truth f 
