348 EFFECTS OF TRIAL CONCLUSION. THE PAST AND THE FUTURE. "Where burns the loved hearth brightest, Cheering the social breast? Where beats the fond heart lightest, Its humble hopes possest? Where is the smile of sadness, Of meek-eyed patience born, Worth more than those of gladness, Which mirth's bright cheek adorn? Pleasure is marked by fleetness, To those who ever roam, While grief itself has sweetness, At home, dear home!"-Barton. INFLUENCE OF TROUBLE ON DIFFERENT MINDS LESSONS I HAVE LEARNED DURING LIFE-NO MAN ABLE TO JUDGE BEFOREHAND WHAT IS BEST FOR HIM-HAPPINESS THE RESULT OF PRINCIPLE -CONTENTMENT-CONSTANT EMPLOYMENT-HUMAN NECESSITIES MET CHRISTIANITY A DOMESTIC AND PHYSICAL BLESSING INTELLECT AND THE GOSPEL--THE FUTURE-THE CHURCH A SOCIAL HOME-A HOME IN THE HEART-A HOME IN HEAVENFAREWELL! OCCASIONAL troubles have great power over men accustomed to health and prosperity; they sink under them, become sickly, dispirited, and gloomy, and are ready to interpret every seemingly untoward circumstance into the most dismal reading, as if all the archers in the universe stood, with drawn bow and ready arrow pointing at them; while men who are used to the music of sighs, with the accompaniment of tears, scarcely believe in their LESSONS LEARNED. 349 personal identity when glimpses of prosperity and joy fall upon their path. I have known several men of both classes. I myself should belong to the last named, but for one remedial fact-the possession of an unyielding hope, which has held my head above water, even when wave followed wave with untiring rapidity. The past, as the reader sees by this time, although I have not told him the half, has taught me several important lessons. This is the appropriate place in which to enumerate these lessons, before I mention those hopes respecting the FUTURE, which are the balm of my spirit amidst the perplexing mysteries of humanity, and bid a courteous farewell to those who have patiently listened to my narrative. First. I have learned that no man is able to judge, before the event, what is best for him. To borrow, and use metaphorically, a phrase from the lapsed science of astrology, from an early age I tried to construct a "horoscope" of my destiny. I schemed, planned, proposed; adopted this, and rejected that; endeavoured to draw the veil from the face of the future; and determined that no ordinary difficulty should check the course I wished to follow. Listening to the fallacious dreams of youthful poetry, I fancied a beautiful and happy future, a garden without a concealed serpent, a crystal lake without a sweeping hurricane. I had begun to live, after the almost lifeless existence of one of the feeblest of infancies, and found in imagination a new world, although, as will be remembered, its morbid action sometimes plunged me in great distress. But experience has taught me that all these efforts to anticipate the purposes of Divine Providence are worse than useless-worse, because they create a false idea of real life, and make trouble, when it comes, doubly painful to endure. That which we call disappointment, is only the thwarting of our plans, and the 350 FALLIBLE HUMAN JUDGMENT. setting aside of our ideas, to make room for the execution of the designs of the Lord God, whose thoughts and ways are above our thoughts and ways. The moral discipline through which it is necessary for a man to go, is never taken into account by the youth who creates his own future. That, though of all things the most important, is not an item in the aggregate of his intended experiences. The best thing is left out of the list. When planning her voyage across the ocean of life, Fancy omits the ballast; and were it not for the care of Him whose "way is in the sea, and whose footsteps are not known," the ship would inevitably founder. “All these things are against me!" is the natural cry of the grief-stricken; but they are only intimations that our pre-judgment of the best for us, was erroneous. We change our verdict when Time collects all the evidence, and places it before us; and then, if we be loyal men— loyal to the laws of the great King—we exclaim, “ All is well! What hath God wrought!" The impatient boy thinks the order and discipline of his father's house needlessly strict, and very irksome; he pants for liberty, unconscious that his idea of liberty would speedily entangle him in fetters from which his father's rule is intended to preserve him; he wishes to be a man, whilst utterly ignorant of the serious responsibilities which manhood involves; and he longs for the day when he shall be his own master, not knowing that no man is capable of ruling either himself or others, who has not first submitted to the rule and authority of parents or guardians. So in our non-age, our anticipations of the future are formed in the midst of entire ignorance of what is best for us, and, consequently, were there not a Father and a Guardian to correct our false notions, to shape our course, and to hold us in by strong and merciful HAPPINESS THE RESULT OF PRINCIPLE. 351 law, we should plunge into one of the thousand pitfalls which Fancy saw not in her aërial flight. And now, how different the retrospect of the man of forty, from the prospect of the boy of fifteen! Yet, if different, it is better for him. I would not have it otherwise, excepting sin, folly, and infirmity. There has been ONE to care for me, though I have not seen Him; and the great object of early desire has been realised, though the scenes through which I have reached it, and the circumstances in the midst of which I have found it, were utterly unthought of. Secondly. I have learned that happiness is not the result of position but of gracious principle. The colour and shape of the world depend very much upon the state of the eye that views it. The miserable at heart see nothing but dark colours and wretchedness. Everything is wrong with such persons. The earth is a land of woe. All men are bad. Sorrow is universal. Joy is insanity. Repose is impossible. The curse is omnipresent. Suicide is wisdom. The grave is the only palace in this doomed world. Or, with the lovers of pleasure, gold is God. Broad acres are Paradise. Horses and hounds are angels. Wine is nectar. Power is life. Fame is heaven. Hold, brethren! Ye are all wrong! This world is not Pandemonium, though it sometimes looks like it to him who wars against its true Sovereign; and it is not Heaven, though the man who thinks that happiness consists in external possession fancies so. The eye that is connected with a pure heart sees things differently. Happiness must dwell within, or be an entire stranger. She is particular in choosing her residence, and nothing short of the human heart will please her taste; but when she is admitted there, she pays liberally for her lodgings, for she imparts colours of beauty to everything without, and 352 THE HOME OF HAPPINESS. turns into blessed prophecy even the darkest scenes of being. She enrobes the globe, hurrying to eternity with its load of dead, and dying, yet immortal humanity, with a mantle of Divine love, and enables the eye of the poor man to see all the beauties of nature, and his heart to enjoy them, as truly as if he were proprietor of the whole. The chosen home of happiness is the heart; and if it be reconciled to the blessed Father, through the Son, how large it becomes, and how are its powers of enjoyment strengthened! Appropriation of all that is good, and rejection of all that is evil, become intuitive then! The man may be very poor, his name unknown on the banker's books, and his person strange to the merchant-princes of the world; but the flowers of the field bloom, and the songs of the forest are warbled, for him. Under his feet, and around his path, lie the works, and over his head dwells the bright smile of a "reconciled God.” He may be swimming against the stream, but the banks thereof are adorned with trees of his "LORD's planting." He may tremble at the face of a fellow-creature whose claim he cannot satisfy, but his conscience approves the principles he has adopted, and the oracle he believes whispers in his ear, "Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart." Human praise may seldom greet him, but the desire to have a conscience void of offence towards God and man holds him up in the warfare of life. The nobles of the nation may not hail him in the street, but the visits of ministering angels make his humble dwelling one of the portals of heaven. "A languid, leaden iteration reigns, And ever must, o'er those whose joys are joys |