circle, we must speak only pleasant words. We should see to it that we plant nothing, the legitimate fruits of which we shall not be willing and glad to see borne in the lives of our children. If our children are bad, the fault is, ninety-nine cases in a hundred, our own, in some way. If we would reform society, or make it better in any respect, our quickest way to do it is to reform and make ourselves better. If I would reap courtesy and hospitality and kindness and love, I must plant them; and it is the sum of all arrogance to assume that I have a right to reap them without planting them. A man who receives courtesy without exercising it, reaps that which he has not sown. He is a thief, and ought in justice to be kicked out of society. Blessings on the man who sows the seeds of a happy nature and a noble character broadcast wherever his feet wander, who has a smile alike for joy and sorrow, a tender word always for a child, a compassionate utterance for suffering, courtesy for friends and for strangers, encouragement for the despairing, an open heart for all-love for all-good words for all! Such seed produces after its kind in all soils, when it finds. lodgment; and that which the sower fails to reap, passes into hands that are grateful for the largess.

LESSON V.

TRUTH AND TRUTHFULNESS.

For truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as a sunbeam."
MILTON.

"Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?"-MATTHEW PRIOR.

Ο

"Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like

A star new-born that drops into its place,

And which, once circling in its placid round,

Not all the tumult of the earth can shake."-LOWELL.

NE of the rarest powers possessed by man is the

power to state a fact. It seems a very simple thing to tell the truth, but, beyond all question, there is nothing half so easy as lying. To comprehend a fact in its exact length, breadth, relations, and significance, and to state it in language that shall represent it with exact fidelity, are the work of a mind singularly gifted, finely balanced, and thoroughly practiced in that special department of effort. The greatness of Daniel Webster was more apparent in his power to state a fact, or to

present a truth, than in any other characteristic of his gigantic nature. It was the power of truth that won for him his forensic victories. Whenever he was truest to truth, then was truth truest to him. He was a man who implicitly believed in the power of truth to take care of itself when it had been fairly presented; and the failures of his life always grew out of his attempts to make falsehood look like truth-a field of effort in which the most gifted of his cotemporaries won the most brilliant of his triumphs.

The men are comparatively few who are in the habit of telling the truth. We all lie, every day of our lives—almost in every sentence we utter-not consciously and criminally, perhaps, but really, in that our language fails to represent truth, and state facts correctly. Our truths are half-truths, or distorted truths, or exaggerated truths, or sophisticated truths. Much of this is owing to carelessness, much to habit, and, more than has generally been supposed, to mental incapacity. I have known eminent men who had not the power to state a fact, in its whole volume and outline, because, first, they could not comprehend it perfectly, and, second, because their power of expression was limited. The lenses by which they apprehended their facts were not adjusted properly, so they saw every thing with a blur. Definite outlines, cleanly cut edges, exact apprehension of volume and weight, nice meas

urement of relations, were matters outside of their observation and experience. They had broad minds, but bungling; and their language was no better than their apprehensions-usually it was worse, because language is rarely as definite as apprehension. Men rarely do their work to suit them, because their tools are imperfect.

There are men in all communities who are believed to be honest, yet whose word is never taken as authority upon any subject. There is a flaw or a warp somewhere in their perceptions, which prevents them from receiving truthful impressions. Every thing comes to them distorted, as natural objects are distorted by reaching the eye through wrinkled window-glass. Some are able to apprehend a fact and state it correctly, if it have no direct relation to themselves; but the moment their personality, or their personal interest, is involved, the fact assumes false proportions and false colors. I know a physician whose patients are always alarmingly sick when he is first called to them. As they usually get well, I am bound to believe that he is a good physician; but I am not bound to believe that they are all as sick at beginning as he supposes them to be. The first violent symptoms operate upon his imagination and excite his fears, and his opinion as to the degree of danger attaching to the diseases of his patients is not worth half so much as that of any sensible old nurse. In fact, nobody thinks

of taking it all; and those who know him, and who hear his sad representations of the condition of his patients, show equal distrust of his word and faith in his skill, by taking it for granted that they are in a fair way to get well.

It is impossible for bigots, for men of one idea, for fanatics, for those who set boundaries to themselves in religious, social, and political creeds, for men who think more of their own selfish interests than they do of truth, and for vicious men, to speak the truth. We are all, I suppose, bigots to a greater or less extent. We all have a creed written in our minds, or printed in our books; and to this we are more or less blindly attached. We set down an article of faith, or adopt an opinion, and nothing is allowed to interfere with it. If a sturdy fact comes along, and asks admission, we turn to our creed to see if we can safely entertain it. If the creed 66 says No," we say "No," and the fact is turned out of doors, and misrepresented after it is gone. Our creeds are our dwellings. They come next to us, and nothing can come to us, or go out from us, without going through our creeds. The simple fact of the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross, reaching the mind through various creeds, and passing out again, goes through as many phases as there are creeds, ranging through a scale which at one extreme presents a God dying to redeem the lost millions of a world,