of English officers, their wives and children; then merchants and missionaries and travelers were slaughtered.  For weeks the strife went on.  If once the English soldier had pillaged the Indian villages, now, in turn, the English quarters were pillaged.  “Blind of eye and hard of heart,” said the sage statesman.  “Retribution hath been visited upon us,” said the great leader.  “Our jealousy and greed hath ended with that sword being sharpened against ourselves.”  The note of conviction is in the voice of this statesman, but what saith be save this:  “What a man soweth, that also shall he reap!”

All young hearts may well remember that it is safe to do right, but dangerous to sow wrong!  No matter how smooth, how soft and sweet, seem the paths of sin, know that beneath every flower there lurks a spider, beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns and thickets.  For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem unobservant and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection from honor shall find at last that God never slumbers, that his laws never sleep.  Go east or go west.  Nature is upon the track of the wrong-doer.  Could the sage of old sit down to converse with each youth who to-day walks on the street, perchance he would find many who, through excess, are draining away the rich forces of nerve and brain and blood.

Daily they deny reason its book, taste its music, love its noble companionship.  At last, when the harp of the physical senses begins to give way, and they fall back upon the mental faculties for pleasure, then these faculties that have been starved shall, in turn, make men suffer.  In that hour reason or memory shall say:  “Because I called and ye refused; because I stretched out my hand and no man regarded, therefore I will laugh at your calamity.  I will mock at your desolation when your fear cometh as destruction and your desolation as whirlwind.”  In Daniel Webster’s words of disappointed ambition, “I still live,” we see that a statesman sows what he reaps.  In Goethe’s fearful cry for “more light” we see that the poet who sows darkness shall reap darkness.  In Lord Byron’s piteous “I must sleep now” we see that he who sows morbidness and passion reaps feverishness and shame.  The law is inexorable.  He who sows foul thoughts shall reap the foul countenance of a fiend.  He who sows pure thoughts shall reap the sweetness and nobility of the face of Fra Angelico.  He who sows reflection shall reap wisdom.  He who sows sympathy shall reap love.  The good Samaritan who sows tenderness to the man wounded by the wayside shall reap tenderness when angels stoop to bind up his broken heart.

THE LOVE THAT PERFECTS LIFE.

“Love is the fulfilling of the law.”—­Romans, xiii, 10.

“Men may die without any opinions, and yet be carried into Abraham’s bosom, but if we be without love, what will knowledge avail?  I will not quarrel with you about opinions.  Only see that your heart be right with God.  I am sick of opinions.  Give me good and substantial religion, a humble, gentle love of God and man.”—­John Wesley.