structible courage of the soul awakes into the work of faith and love and hope with a power that seems to be supernatural, and there is more of the supernatural round about us than has as yet been revealed to man. Wait and plough with patience and in faith; for he that believeth in God, like God himself, does not make haste. To wait well on God is the last need in life. As says the "Latin Hymn,".

"Man's weakness waiting upon God

Its end can never miss,

For men on earth no work can do

More angel-like than this."

CHAPTER V.

WHAT MAKES HAPPY HOMES.

IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? - MORAL TRAINING. - MIXTURE OF RACES. -THE LAWS OF INHERITANCE. IDLE WORDS. "DRAGON'S TEETH."-- MOTHERS-IN-LAW.- THE CONDITIONS OF HAPPINESS. -EFFECTS OF SURROUNDINGS. - WHAT IS HOME WITHOUT A MOTHER?

Sweet is the smile of home, the mutual look,
When hearts are of each other sure.

KEBLE.

"Both naturalists and moralists declare that no instinct, human or simply animal, can vie in intensity with maternal love. Whereas all other passions spring from selfishness, the essence of maternity is selfabnegation."

A line of good or evil ushers in at last the glory or the terror of the world. GOETHE.

Science tries to read, is beginning to read, knows she ought to read, in the frame of each man the result of a whole history of all his life, of what he is, and what makes him so; of all his forefathers, of what they were, and what made them so. Each nerve has a sort of memory of its past life; is trained or not trained, dulled or quickened, as the case may be; each feature is shaped or characterised, or left loose and meaningless, as may happen; each hand is marked with its trade and life, subdued to what it works in, if we could but see it. WALTER BAGEHOT.

It is not Karma who rewards or punishes; but it is we who reward and punish ourselves, according to whether we work through and along with Nature, abiding by that law on which harmony depends, or breaking the law. - Buddhist Teachings.

Ir is a very plain and elementary truth, says Professor Huxley, drawing a moral from chess, that the life, the for

tune, the happiness, of every one of us, and more or less of those who are connected with us, depends upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair and just and patient; but also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, nor makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong show delight in strength; and one who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but without remorse.

If this truth were fully realised in all the relations of life, we would not need instruction as to what is requisite in character to make home the happiest spot on earth to those who dwell in it; but while all are ready to acknowledge that the breaking of a physical law entails a physical penalty, there are few so instructed in transcendental physics as to be willing to admit that the violation of a moral law or principle will just as surely and just as remorselessly inflict a moral penalty. By the disregard of the laws of Nature our greatest comforts may become our greatest afflictions, and the glory of a family may become the grief of it.

The foundations of a happy home are laid in love and charity, that charity which thinketh no evil, and which makes its possessor believe, and act up to, the Scripture precept that it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression. With love and charity the humblest home can be made a happy home; for love brings sympathy, and sympathy in each other's tastes and pursuits brings an everincreasing store of happiness to the family fund. George Eliot said that only by having people about us who raise

1

"Is life worth living?"

good feelings can we grow better. is a question that has often been asked, in view of the misery which is found in many homes as well as among the homeless. This question has also been put as a conundrum; the answer being, "That depends upon the liver." In both senses this double entendre is the best answer that can be given. Happy homes depend entirely upon the character or disposition of those who make up the home circle. Those who are able to take all experiences as they come by the handle, as the philosopher Thales advised, instead of by the blade, are the ones who make the happiest homes, provided the law of love prevails in the family circle. Those who take life easy are true philosophers, but how few there are who possess the power of being philosophical over their own family troubles! Some writer has said that he did not know any one who was not able to philosophise over his neighbour's troubles, nor any one who could look at his own troubles philosophically. Romeo spoke for humanity when he said,

"Hang up philosophy!

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more."

A French mother wrote: "I am persuaded that happiness lies in our own hands, and that with reason and philosophy one cannot be unhappy in this world; at least, not entirely so. I know of nothing except my children that could get the better of my reason and my philosophy." These words will find an echo in the hearts of those mothers who have had no interests in life that were not in some way identified with their children. There are many mothers who, lacking a sensitive organisation, are not disturbed by any slackness in the performance of filial duties. They are able to find amusement in the giddy whirl of society, and distraction for

all griefs in the vortex of a worldly life. Not in this class of women will be found the type of a mother who is able to mould her children's feelings by the mere force of pure and high example joined to the devotion of a love which truly "passeth all understanding." The father is often too much immersed in business to have leisure for thought; or too indolent, too fond of pleasure, to be capable of bestowing thought upon the education and instruction of his children. With the mother, whatever the father's position, rests the spiritual training of her child; that is, all of education which belongs to religious and moral principles, to sentiment and motive, and which is inspired by example as well as taught by instruction. In order to inspire her children with aspirations towards all that is true and beautiful, a mother must feel the grandeur and the worth of those pursuits which awaken the sense of the godlike in man's intellect, so magnificent in its reach, so glorious in its triumphs. A mother cannot impart what she does not herself feel. Great knowledge and extensive powers of mind are not required. It is sufficient if the mother is free from littleness; if she possesses that nice sense of the proportion and due relation of things which belong to a well-balanced mind, enabling her to feel the grandeur and beauty of what her understanding cannot fathom, saving her from the enjoyments of those narrow, selfish, little minds which indulge and delight in gossip. In childhood, moral training is almost entirely a matter of feeling and association. It depends on the home influences, whatever they may be, and is therefore the conscious or unconscious work of the parents, especially of the mother, long before one word of precept or of dogma can be understood. Later, when it becomes also a matter for the understanding, it depends much upon the degree of cultivation which that understanding has received. The same precepts, the same dogmas, may be taught to all;