LESSON LXXI, 1 DEAD SEA APPLES, or APPLES of Sodom, -a fruit of fair appearance, but dissolving into smoke and ashes when plucked. It resembles an orange in size and color; but the taste is bitter.-DEUT. xxxii. 32. DESIRE AND MEANS OF HAPPINESS. HORACE MANN.. T is a law of our nature to desire happiness. This law It is not a law to be proved by exceptions; for it knows no exception. The savage and the martyr welcome fierce pains, not because they love pain, but because they love some expected remuneration of happiness so well, that they are willing to purchase it at the price of pain,—at the price of imprisonment, torture, and death. 2. The young desire happiness, more keenly than any others. This desire is innate, spontaneous, exuberant; and nothing but repeated and repeated overflows of the lava of disappointment can burn or bury it in their breasts. On this law of our nature, then, we may stand as on an immovable foundation of truth. Whatever fortune may befall our argument, our premises are secure. 3. The conscious desire of happiness is active in all men. Its objects are easily conceivable by all men. But, alas! toward what different points of the moral compass do men look for these objects, and expect to find them! Some look for happiness above, and some below; some in the grandeur of the soul, and some in the grossness of the sense. Wherever it is looked for, the imagination adorns it with all its glowing colors. 4. Multitudes of those who seek for happiness, will not obtain the object of their search, because they seek amiss. Deceived by false ideas of its nature, other multitudes, who obtain the object of their search, will find it to be sorrow, and not joy; Dead Sea apples,' and not celestial fruits. Whether a young man shall reap pleasure or pain from winning the objects of his choice, depends not only upon his wisdom or folly in selecting those objects, but upon the right or wrong methods by which he pursues them. Nothing is more certain than that the range and possibility of happiness which God has provided, and placed within reach of us all, is still vaster than the desire of it in any and in all of His creatures. 5. We are finite, and can receive only in finite quantities; He is infinite, and gives in infinite quantities. Look outwardly, and behold the variety and redundancy of means which the Creator has prepared to meet and to satisfy all the rational wants of His children. So ample and multitudinous are the gifts of God, that He needed an immensity of space for their storehouse; and so various are they, and ascending one above another in their adaptation to our capacities of enjoyment, that we need an eternity to set out the banquet. 6. See how the means of sustenance and comfort are distributed and diversified throughout the earth! There is not a mood of body, from the wantonness of health to the languor of the death-bed, for which the alchemy of Nature does not proffer some luxury to stimulate our pleasures, or her pharmacy some catholicon to assuage our pains. What texture for clothing, from the gossamer thread which the silkworm weaves, to the silk-like furs which the windst of Zembla can not penetrate! As materials from which to construct our dwellings, what Quincys and New Hampshires of granite, what Alleghanies of oak, and what forests of pine belting the continent! What coal-fields to supply the lost warmth of the receding sun! 7. Notwithstanding the beautiful adaptation of the physical world to our needs, yet, when we leave the regions of sense and of sensuous things, and ascend to the sphere of the intellect, we find that all which had ever delighted us before, becomes poor and somber in the presence of the brighter glories that burst upon our view. Here fresh and illimitable fields open upon us; and, corresponding with the new objects presented, a group of new faculties to explore and enjoy them, is awakened within us. 8. The outward eye sees outward things, and the outside of things only; but the inward eye is emancipated from the bonds that bind its brother. The great panorama of the universe limits and bounds the outward organs that behold it; gives them all they can ask; fills them with all they can receive. Splendid and majestic as are the heavens and the earth to the natural eye, yet they are solid, opaque, impervious. But to the subtle and pervading intellect, this solid framework of the universe becomes transparent; its densest and darkest textures, crystalline. To the intellect, each interior fiber and atom of things is luminous. 9. To the intellect of man all recesses are opened, all secrets revealed. Sunlight glows where darkness gloomed. To this power, no hight is inaccessible, no depth unfathomable, no distance untraversable. It has the freedom of the universe. It can not be swallowed up in the waters of the sea; it can not be crushed by the weight of the earth; and, in the midst of the fiery furnace, One, whose form is like the Son of God, walks by its side. 10. So, too, all created things are governed by laws, each by its own. These laws the intellect of man can discover and understand, and thus make his dominion coextensive with his knowledge. So far as we understand these laws, we can bring all substances that are governed by them under their action, and thus produce the results we desire, just as the coiner subjects his gold-dust to the process of minting, and brings out eagles. 11. So far as we understand the Creator's laws, He invests us with His power. When knowledge enables me to speak with the flaming tongue of lightning across the continent, is it not the same as though I had power to call down the swiftest angel from Heaven, and send him abroad as the messenger of my thoughts'? When a knowledge of astronomy and navigation enables me to leave a port on this side of the globe, and thread my labyrinthine way among contrary winds, and through the currents and counter-currents of the ocean, and to strike any port I please on the opposite side of the globe, is it not the same as though God for this purpose had endued me with His all-seeing vision, and enabled me to look through clouds and darkness around the convex earth' ? 12. Nor does the intellect stop with the knowledge of physical laws. All the natural attributes of the Author of those laws. are its highest and noblest study. Its contemplations and its discoveries rise from the spirit that dwelleth in a beast to the spirit that dwelleth in a man, and from this to the Spirit that dwelleth in the heavens. Every acquisition of knowledge also, which the intellect can make, assimilates the creature to the all-knowing Creator. It traces another line on the countenance of the yet ignorant child, by which he more nearly resembles the omniscient Father. The human soul is DESIRE; the works and wisdom of God are a fountain of supply. If the soul of man is a void at birth, it is a void so capacious, that the universe may be transfused into it. LESSON LXXII. 1 Guten berg, JOHN, was born in 1400, near Mentz, in Germany; and died in 1468. He is supposed to have made his first experiment in the art of printing with movable types between 1434 and 1439; but it was in 1443 that he turned his great invention to account, and brought upon himself great persecution. There are some points not cleared up in the history of this invention; but it is now generally agreed that the honor belongs to John Gutenberg. A beautiful statue has been erected to his memory. THE INVENTION, OF PRINTING. OSBORNE. JOHN GUTENBERG. - RUPErt, a Usurer. Rupert. FRIEND John, what's wanted now? Ah! I can guess. 'Tis the old story, money! John. I bring you good security. Rup. Master Rupert, What's this? A family ring, solid, and set with diamonds! John. I shall redeem the ring! Rup. John. money. Recollect, When, John? As soon As I have perfected my great invention. Rup. Ah! John, that great invention, much I fear, Will come to naught. Take to some honest trade; Leave dreaming o'er thy scheme of movable types For multiplying copies of a book. * Florin, a silver coin varying in value from twenty-three to fifty-four cents. |