Yet I know there are those who will read this sentence with tears, and with complaint. I know there are those whose existence has been a long struggle with sickness and trial--whose lives have been crowded with great griefs and disappointments--who sit in darkness and impotency while the world rolls by them. They have seen no joy and felt no content since childhood, and many of them look with genuine pity upon children, because the careless creatures do not know into what a heritage of sin and sorrow they are entering. I have only to say to them, that the noblest exhibitions of manhood and womanhood I have ever seen, or the world has ever seen, have been among their number. A woman with the hope of heaven in her eyes, incorruptible virtue in her heart, and honesty in every endeavor, has smiled serenely, a million times in this world, while her life and all its earthly expectations were in ruins. Patient sufferers upon beds of pain have forgotten childhood years ago, and, feeding their souls on prayer, have looked forward with unutterable joy to the transition from womanhood to angelhood. Men, utterly forsaken by friends-- contemned, derided, proscribed, persecuted--have stood by their convictions with joyful heroism and calm content. Nay, great multitudes have marched with songs upon their tongues to the rack and the stake. The noblest spectacle the world affords is that of a man or woman, rising superior to sorrow and suffering-- transforming sorrow and suffering into nutriment--accepting those conditions of their life which Providence prescribes, and building themselves up into an estate from whose summit the step is short to a glorified humanity. Before me hangs the portrait of an old man--the only man I ever loved with a devotion that has never faded, though long years have passed away since he died. His calm blue eyes look down upon me, and I look into them, and through them I look into a golden memory--into a life of self-denial--into a meek, toiling, honest, heroic Christian manhood--into an uncomplaining spirit--into a grateful heart--into a soul that never sighed over a lost joy, though all his earthly enterprises miscarried. The tracery of care and of sickness is upon his haggard features, but I see in them, and in the soul which they represent to me, the majesty of manliness. While I look, the kittens still play at the door, and the noise of shouting children is in the street; but ah! how shallow is the life they represent, compared with that of which this dumb canvas tells me! It is better to be a man or a woman, than to be a child. It is better to be an angel than to be either. Let us look forward--never backward. LESSON IV. REPRODUCTION IN KIND. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." ST. PAUL TO THE GALATIANS. "Ye shall know them by their fruits: Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL.