Alas! how unsatisfactory are even the choicest blessings of life! Wealth brings only care, and the millionnaire toils all his life for--his food and clothes and lodging; dies unregretted, and is soon forgotten. Honor brings not content, and does but increase the thirst it seeks to assuage. The poor and the unknown are generally happier than the wealthy and famous. 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity and vexation of spirit;' and what was true of human nature when 'the preacher' wrote, is true to-day. Admit that life is but a succession of pleasures that can never pall, and the world one vast Elysian field, and that the care of the soul requires the abnegation of every delight, and spreads a gloomy pall over all the brightness of earth; yet even in that case, a life wholly devoted to spiritual interests were but a weary, temporary pilgrimage, which we should gladly endure for a season, in the hope of the golden crown and never-ending bliss in the world beyond, could we but look upon the future life in the light of _reality_. Ah! there is the difficulty, for we are 'of the earth earthy,' and, although we may fervently _believe_, cannot comprehend, cannot _realize_ eternity. To too many Christians of the present day eternity, heaven, God, are not a tangible reality, but rather a poetic dream, floating in the atmosphere of faith, but which their minds cannot grasp. Hence they worship an idea rather than a reality. The noblest pleasures of life, in fact the only real, permanent, exalting, and, I might add, _developing_ pleasures, are divided into two classes, those of the heart, and those of the intellect. Yet both, though different in their action, spring from the same central truth. The happiest man is he whose life is spent in doing good, seeking no other reward than the gratification of beholding the true happiness of his fellow beings. His pleasures are of the heart, and he only is the true Christian of our day and generation. For he who so ardently loves his fellow men cannot but love his God.