But cheerfulness needs its explanation. It implies something. A man is not cheerful without some underlying philosophy of life to sustain him, some pillar of faith or hope at his back. When a man faces life dauntless and smiling, he does so because some inward and, it may even be, unconscious faith or hope thus finds its expression. What that faith is, different men will describe in different ways. But however much the descriptions vary, it all comes back to this in the end, that the man who is living bravely and cheerfully is expressing by his conduct at any rate his faith in the Fatherhood and good Providence of God. He knows that "God’s in His Heaven"; at any rate he believes so. He believes that things do not just fall out by chance, but that a Father Hand controls all, and a Father Heart cares even for the sparrow’s unheeded fall. The God who rules all makes no mistakes. And is not that a cardinal part of the faith which Jesus brings near to all who are learning of Him? There are various adjectives used to qualify the title Christian. One hears, for example, of "earnest Christians," and earnestness is a very necessary quality, even though one does occasionally happen upon "earnest Christians" who are rather unlovable and irritating people. But there’s another adjective, not nearly so common--and yet it denotes a quality just as essential in those who have taken Christ’s gospel of God’s Love and Fatherhood to their hearts--namely, cheerful. A "cheerful Christian." Let us all try to be that kind of Christian at least. PRAYER "The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. Amen." R. L. STEVENSON. "(Jeremiah dwelt among the people that were left in the land.(" (JEREMIAH xl. 6.) XIII THE OVERCOMING OF PANIC Once upon a time Jeremiah the prophet had asked for only one thing, that he might get away from that strange cityful of perverse men to whom it was his hard lot to be the mouthpiece of a God they were forgetting. He was tired of them. "O that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men that I might leave my people and go from them."