THE IDEAL OF A TRUE LIFE. 277 -- hut or a mansion. He has lived to little purpose indeed, if he has not long since realized that wealth and renown are not the true ends of exertion, nor their absence the conclusive proof of ill-fortune. Whoever seeks to know if his career has been prosperous and brightening from its outset to its close, if the evening of his days shall be genial and blissful, should ask not for broad acres, or towering edifices, or laden coffers. Perverted Old Age may grasp these with the unyielding clutch of insanity; but they add to his cares and anxieties, not to his enjoyments. Ask rather, Has he mastered and harmonized his erring passions? Has he lived a True Life? A True Life! - of how many lives does each hour knell the conclusion! and how few of them are true ones! The poor child of shame, and sin, and crime, who terminates. her earthly being in the clouded morning of her scarce budded yet blighted existence, the desperate felon whose blood is shed by the community, as the dread penalty of its violated law, the miserable debauchee, who totters down to his loathsome grave in the spring-time of his years, but the fulness of his festering iniquities, these, the world valiantly affirms, have not lived true lives! Fearless and righteous world! how profound, how discriminating are thy judgments! But the base idolater of self, who devotes all his moments, his energies, his thoughts, to schemes which begin and end in personal advantage, -the grasper of gold, and lands, and tenements, — the devotee of pleasure, — the man of ignoble and sinister ambition, - the woman of frivolity, extravagance and fashion, the idler, the gambler, the voluptuary, on all these and their myriad compeers, while borne on the crest of the advancing billow, how gentle is the reproof, how charitable the judgment of the world! Nay, is not even our dead christianity, which picks its way so daintily, cautiously, and inoffensively through the midst of slave-holding and drunkard-making, and national faith-breaking, which regards with gentle rebuke, and is regarded with amiable toleration by some of the foremost vices of the times, is it not too often oblivious of its paramount duty to teach men how to live worthily and nobly? Are there not thousands to whom its inculcations, so far as duties to man are concerned, are substantially negative in their character? — who are fortified by its teachings, in the belief that to do good is a casualty and not a frame of being,—who are taught by it to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, when they thrust themselves upon the charity of portly affluence, but as an irksome duty, for which they should be rewarded, rather than a blessed privilege for which they should be profoundly grateful? Of the millions now weekly listening to the ministrations of the christian pulpit, how many are clearly, vividly impressed with the great truth, that each, in his own sphere, should live for mankind, as Christ did, for the redemption, instruction, and exaltation of the race, and, that the power to do this in his proper sphere, abides equally with the humblest as the highest? How many centuries more will be required to teach, even the religious world, so called, the full meaning of the term CHRISTIAN? A true life must be simple in all its elements. Animated by one grand and ennobling impulse, all lesser aspirations find their proper places in harmonious subservience. Simplicity in taste, in appetite, in habits of life, with a corresponding indifference to worldly honors and aggrandizement, is the natural result of the predominance of a divine and unselfish idea. Under the guidance of such a sentiment, virtue is not an effort, but a law of nature, like gravitation. It is vice alone that seems unaccountable, monstrous, well-nigh miraculous. Purity is felt to be as necessary to the mind as health to the body, and its absence alike, the inevitable source of pain. A true life must be calm. A life imperfectly directed, is made wretched through distraction. We give up our youth to excitement, and wonder that a decrepit old age steals upon us so soon. We wear out our energies in strife for gold or fame, and then wonder alike at the cost and the THE IDEAL OF A TRUE LIFE. 279 "Is not the life more than worthlessness of the meed. meat?" Ay, truly! but how few have practically, consistently, so regarded it? And little as it is regarded by the imperfectly virtuous, how much less by the vicious and the worldling! What a chaos of struggling emotions is exhibited by the lives of the multitude? How like to the wars of the infuriated animalculæ in a magnified drop of water, is the strife constantly waged in each little mind! How Sloth is jostled by Gluttony, and Pride wrestled with by Avarice, and Ostentation bearded by Meanness! The soul which is not large enough for the indwelling of one virtue, affords lodgment, and scope, and arena for a hundred vices. But their warfare cannot be indulged with impunity. Agitation and wretchedness are the inevitable consequences, in the midst of which, the flame of life burns flaringly and swiftly to its close. A true life must be genial and joyous. Tell me not, pale anchorite, of your ceaseless vigils, your fastings, your scourgings. These are fit offerings to Moloch, not to Our Father. The man who is not happy in the path he has chosen, may be very sure he has chosen amiss, or is selfdeceived. But not merely happier, he should be kinder, gentler, and more elastic in spirits, as well as firmer and truer. "I love God and little children," says a German poet. The good are ever attracted and made happier by the presence of the innocent and lovely. And he who finds his religion averse to, or a restraint upon the truly innocent pleasures and gayeties of life, so that the latter do not interfere with and jar upon its sublimer objects, doubt whether he has indeed "learned of Jesus." may well LINES FOR MY COUSIN'S ALBUM. BY HORATIO HALE. NAY, ask me not how long it be Since love's sweet witchery on me stole : In truth it always seemed to me A portion of my very soul; I know the springs where love was nursed, "T was not beneath the cloudless skies Of youth's sweet summer; long before, Had waked the tender flower, "T was not in childhood's merry May, When dews were fresh and skies were fair, And life was one long sunny day, Undimmed by thought or care; Oh no! the stream whence love is fed And feeling's purest, holiest flowers The heart's fine music sweetest rings, I think my being and my love, Like oak and vine together sprung, And round my heart-strings clung; Oh! never, till life's latest sigh, ALL men are equally happy. We judge from appearances, but could we examine each other's relative situation, and look into each other's heart, not one in a million would be willing to exchange with his neighbor. We know our own miseries, but are unacquainted with the distresses of others. HAPPINESS is an ignis fatuus, pursued by all, never overtaken by any one; when it appears within our reach, a moment's reflection finds it at a great distance. "He who breathes, must suffer, And he who thinks, must mourn." THE first pursuit of man is happiness. Each takes a different road. All at last meet at the goal of disappoint ment. II. VANITY. MEN usually wish to be considered to excel in those qualities which they do not possess. The celebrated Dr. Johnson, so clumsy in his deportment and awkward in his behavior, in early life was more solicitous to be considered as a graceful dancer, and possessing easy manners, than as a man of science. MEN will sooner give large sums to erect a monument and endow hospitals, to emblazon their names, than spare a cent to the miserable mendicant, asking alms at their door. |