It is a mistake to consider marriage merely as a scheme of happiness. It is also a bond of service. It is the most ancient form of that social ministration which God has ordained for all human beings, and which is symbolized by all the relations of nature.

In the matter of faith, we have the added weight of hope to that of reason in the convictions which we sustain relating to a future state.

Heaven never defaults. The wicked are sure of their wages, sooner or later.

Pure felicity is reserved for the heavenly life; it grows not in an earthly soil.

Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force. The world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,--a Columbus of the skies.

Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying "swifter than a weaver's shuttle," or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils.

In the history of man it has been very generally the case that when evils have grown insufferable they have touched the point of cure.