The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1884-01-16
EXAMINE Your LABELs--Our sub
soribers are requested to examine their
Sa6ets, and remit where the year has e1-
pired.

a
worldly basis. Life, this human life,
we mean, has been tried now these six
thousand years, in many countries, and
by many characters. There has been,
among men of sense, but one unani-
NOUS verdict-"V Vanity of vanities, all
is vanity" Emptiness-disappoint
-ashes-gall-wor Hap
piness has been sought by the pursuit
of power; but Charles " and Bona
parte, or Louis XIV, were not happy
men. 1t has been sought by wealth;
but wealth cannot "minister to mind
diseased, nor pluck from the memory a
rooted sorrow" Stewart, the New
York merchant, was not a happy man,
we judge. Mr. Delmonico, the great
millionaire restaurateur, and stock
SPECTATOR lost his mind, and died
few days ago Of exposure
The rich man has the govt, or he
is paralysed, like other men. He
dies, and has to leave all his fine rooms
and his servants behind him. He is
rarely blessed in his children. Another
set of people seek happiness by dancing
the German and going to concerts and
the theatre. These people are the but
terfiies of humanity, and enjoy them
selves precisely as the other butterflies
do, except that, after their life has been
snuffed out in the candle they have to
submit their accounts to commission
er In Heavens Chancery. Another
character who seeks his happiness by
another path is the literary man-such
a man as Burns, or Byron, or Shelley,
or Heinrich Heine or Voltaire, or Wal
ter Scott, or Macaulay, or George Eliot.
All these people were wretched.-
Another class seek happiness by &C
curing knowledge. But there is no
reason to believe that the philosophers
attain happiness any more thar tic
humber class of people. Darwin died
processing that he hardly knew wheth-
er there was a God or not, and that he
could not say whether he had any soul
or not; and John Stuart Mill, and Pro
fessor Clifford, died in very much the
same state of mind.
What do men live for, then?
They cannot help it. Here they are,
and in forty years there will be another
crop.
1t is like the waves chasing each
other on the ocean.
And how beautiful is this human life!
how full Of emotion, of projects, of as
pirations, of alternating hopes and fears,
Of love, of unselfsh devotion, of bitter
tears, Of unspeakable pain, of delicate
fancies, Of rare intellectual achieve
ments
1t reminds one of night when there
IS not cloud in the sky, and the moon
is shining with full lustre, and the
earth, when all is hushed in sleep, rests
like some beautiful dreamer, whose
breathings alone attest the presence of
life. The picture perfectly faultless,
and yet so sad For we know that in
a moment out of the bosom of that
scene the storm may leap, and destruc-
ton follow upon the calm and tranquil
aspect which marks the face of nature.
We know that beneath the moonlight
that falls with such silvery richness on
the sleeping city, there are thousands
of aching and anguished hearts, whom
no words Of passionate affection can
pacify.
There is a class who have threaded
this maze, who have reconciled these
opposing aspects, and who, in a higher
sense than Burns hero calmly ride the
agitated waves, "oer all the ills Of life
victorious" and whose sun at last sets
in blaze of glory, amid its tints Of
crimson and gold, pushing all the clouds
and mists aside.
A man must anchor his ship to the
eternal shores if there is to be any
comfort or any peace He must look
80 some Rock higher than himself He
must, amid the surge and wild uproar
Of the waves Of life, have a Friend of
great power to repair to, or his heart
must break in the vain effort to meet
the exgencies of existence. No man
can stand the strain Of human life, who
thinks and who understands the true