“Everything has gone,” said a New York business man in despair, when he reached home.  But when he came to himself he found that his wife and his children and the promises of God were left to him.  Suffering, it was said by Aristotle, becomes beautiful when any one bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of mind.

When Garrison was locked up in the Boston city jail he said he had two delightful companions,—­a good conscience and a cheerful mind.

    “To live as always seeing
      The invisible Source of things,
    Is the blessedest state of being,
      For the quietude it brings.”

“Away with those fellows who go howling through life,” wrote Beccher, “and all the while passing for birds of paradise!  He that cannot laugh and be gay should look to himself.  He should fast and pray until his face breaks forth into light.”

Martin Luther has told us that he was once sorely discouraged and vexed at himself, the world, and the church, and at the small success he then seemed to be having; and he fell into a despondency which affected all his household.  His good wife could not charm it away by cheerful speech or acts.  At length she hit upon this happy device, which proved effectual.  She appeared before him in deep mourning.

“Who is dead?” asked Luther.

“Oh, do you not know, Martin?  God in heaven is dead.”

“How can you talk such nonsense, Kaethe?  How can God die?  Why, He is immortal, and will live through all eternity.”

“Is that really true?” persisted she, as if she could hardly credit his assertion that God still lived.

“How can you doubt it?  So surely as there is a God in heaven,” asserted the aroused theologian, “so sure is it that He can never die.”

“And yet,” said she demurely, in a tone which made him look up at her, “though you do not doubt there is a God, you become hopeless and discouraged as if there were none.  It seemed to me you acted as if God were dead.”

The spell was broken; Luther heartily laughed at his wife’s lesson, and her ingenious way of presenting it.  “I observed,” he remarked, “what a wise woman my wife was, who mastered my sadness.”

Jean Paul Richter’s dream of “No God” is one of the most somber things in all literature,—­“tempestuous chaos, no healing hand, no Infinite Father.  I awoke.  My soul wept for joy that it could again worship the Infinite Father....  And when I arose, from all nature I heard flowing sweet, peaceful tones, as from evening bells.”

IV.  TAKING YOUR FUN EVERY DAY AS YOU DO YOUR WORK.

Ten things are necessary for happiness in this life, the first being a good digestion, and the other nine,—­money; so at least it is said by our modern philosophers.  Yet the author of “A Gentle Life” speaks more truly in saying that the Divine creation includes thousands of superfluous joys which are totally unnecessary to the bare support of life.