Nature is our mother, from whose gentle or severe lessons we must learn the problems of our own lives. And whenever we go to her for help or for instruction, we always find her working. She never sleeps. She never has a spare moment. “Without haste, without rest” is her eternal motto. When we, like fretful children, complain of long hours of toil, scant wages and short holidays, she silently points us to the Universe around us of which we are a part, and bids us set our minds “in tune with the Infinite.” The Sun never takes holiday. With steady regularity it performs its task. For countless ages it has worked without any attempt to swerve from its monotonous round of duty. It shines on the just and on the unjust alike; it gives life and joy equally to the gnat dancing in its beams, as to the human being who hails its glory and warmth as the simple expression of “a fine day.” It gets no wages. It receives very little in the way of thanks. Its duty is so evident and is always so well done, that by the very perfection of its performance it has exhausted the far too easily exhausted sense of human gratitude. Like a visible lamp of God’s love for us it generates beauty and brightness about us wherever we go,--and it invites us to look beyond the veil of creation to the Creator, who alone sustains the majestic fabric of life. In some ways God Himself may be resembled to the Sun, seeing that He receives very little of our gratitude. We are so wonderfully guided by His wisdom that we sometimes think ourselves wiser than He. Of our own accord we give Him scarcely any of our real working powers, and were it not that we are all, in the mass, unconsciously swayed by His command, the little we do give would be less. Our ideas of serving Him too often consist in attending various sectarian places of worship where quarrelling is far more common than brotherly love and unity. In these places of worship we pray to Him for Ourselves and our own concerns. We ask Him for all we can possibly think of, and we seldom pause to consider that He has already given us more than we deserve. It very rarely enters into our heads to realize that we are required to show Him some return--that we are bound to work--no matter in how small a degree--towards something in His vast design which has, or shall have, its place in the world’s progress. We continue to implore Him to work for Us,--just as if He needed our urging! We petition Him to give us food and other material comforts,--yet if we study the laws of Nature we shall learn that we are intended to Work for our food and for all the things we want. We must Work for them in common with the rest of all our fellows in the animal, bird, and insect kingdoms. What a man does, that he has. We have no need to ask God for what He has already given us. He has provided all that is necessary for our health and sustenance on the earth,--but we must earn it,--deserve it,--and