man--no matter whether he toil with brain or hand--who feels that his wife understands him, defends and protects him, and keeps the home bright with love, though tempests may sweep across the path that leads him into the world! There is a lesson here which belongs to men. Mary's lack of appreciation did not turn Jesus from his work. It permitted his true character to appear to better advantage. It tore down the scaffolding of Mariolatry, and permitted the God-man to stand forth in his grand proportions. "Wist ye not I must be about my Father's business?" said Jesus. Many men make trouble at home an excuse for going to the bad. It is not an excuse. The design of home trouble may be to send a man to Jesus; to make the tendrils of love twine about the heavenly rather than the earthly. It surely is not to induce a man to twine his affections about the devilish and earthly. It is not manly thus to do. _Man moves in three circles_. The first is that of Self; the second that of Family; the third that of Country. A man who properly performs duties that pertain to himself, we shall not call noble. By neglecting family he becomes less than a man. By performing them never so well he comes not to merit applause. Distinctive nobleness begins with the third class. It is when he rises above self and family, when he looks abroad on the family of mankind, that he takes the altitude which in a man is distinctively great; when he feels no longer the little necessities which compel, or the little pleasures which allure, and yet is able to contemplate men as a great brotherhood of immortals, with a gaze analogous to Him in whose image he is made; when he can look on the world through the light of eternity, and is willing to suffer all things, and to endure all things, that by him and through him blessings may reach others,--then it is he does that which it is the high privilege of man on this earth to do, and becomes a power to which under God humanity owes all it has achieved in time. "I serve" is the law of the living forces of mankind. Each man and woman has a place. If they fill it, they furnish a channel along which God's beneficent purposes find their way to a lost world. If they do not fill it, they are set aside, and the verdict of the world is, Served them right.