“When I am dead and gone,
    And the mold upon my breast,
    Say not that he did well or ill,
    Only ‘He did his best.’”
        —­DR. TALMAGE.

* * * * *

GOODNESS.

    Goodness needs no lure: 
    All compensations are in her enshrined,
    Whatever things are right and fair and pure,
    Wealth of the heart and mind.

    Failure and Success,
    The Day and Night of every life below,
    Are but the servants of her blessedness,
    That come and spend and go.

    Life is her reward,
    A life brim-full, in every day’s employ,
    Of sunshine, inspiration, every word
    And syllable of joy.

    Heaven to thee is known,
    If Goodness in the robes of common earth
    Becomes a presence thou canst call thine own,
    To warm thy heart and hearth.

    Clothed in flesh and blood,
    She flits about me every blessed day,
    The incarnation of sweet womanhood;
    And age brings no decay.

* * * * *

XXXIX.

ILLUSIONS

“THEREFORE TRUST TO THY HEART, AND WHAT THE WORLD CALLS ILLUSIONS.”—­LONGFELLOW.

This curious sentence of Longfellow’s deserves reading again.  He is an earnest man, and does not mean to cheat us; he has done good work in the world by his poems and writings; he has backed up many, and lifted the hearts of many, by pure thought; he means what he says.  Yet, what is altogether lighter than vanity?  The human heart, answers the religionist.  What is altogether deceitful upon the scales?  The human heart.  What is a Vanity Fair, a mob, a hubbub and babel of noises, to be avoided, shunned, hated?  The world.  And, lastly, what are our thoughts and struggles, vain ideas, and wishes?  Vain, empty illusions, shadows, and lies.  And yet this man, with the inspiration which God gives every true poet, tells us to trust to our hearts, and what the world calls illusions.  And he is right.

Now there are, of course, various sorts of illusions.  The world is itself illusive.  None of us are exactly what we seem; and many of those things that we have the firmest faith in really do not exist.  When the first philosopher declared that the world was round, and not a plane as flat and circular as a dinner-plate or a halfpenny, people laughed at him, and would have shut him up in a lunatic asylum.  They said he had an “illusion;” but it was they who had it.  He was so bold as to start the idea that we had people under us, and that the sun went to light them, and that they walked with their feet to our feet.  So they do, we know well now; but the pope and cardinals would not have it, and so they met in solemn conclave, and ordered the philosopher’s book to be burnt, and they would