Mr. Savage's weekly sermons are regularly printed in pamphlet form in "Unity Pulpit." Subscription price, for the season, $1.50; sing e copy, 5 cents.

GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher,

141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass.

CHEERFULNESS.

BEFORE I have gone far, some one will be saying,- perhaps some one is saying mentally even now,- It is all well enough for you to talk about and advocate cheerfulness. You are in good health, you are fairly prosperous in your work, you have recently lost no near friend, you have love in your life, friendships surround you on every hand, you have hope for the future, you hold a theory of the universe which tends to trust it is very easy, then, for you to practise cheerfulness. But what of others differently situated, who have passed through experiences, who have burdens to bear, concerning which you practically know nothing, who have reasoned out for themselves a philosophy of life that has in it more of shadow than of sunshine,- what of all these? There are thousands of persons in the world to whom talk of cheerfulness is only mockery.

It is not levity, it is not careless good nature, it is not selfish joy in the things one has himself, a selfish forgetting of others, that I advocate. It is cheerfulness, that state of mind which is born of courage and at least of some hope.

Let us note a few of the cases of those who might be pardoned for not looking cheerful, and contrast them, if we may, with some others who, in equally difficult circumstances, have conquered, and stand with uplifted look and undaunted courage.

What of the men and women whose health is broken? There are many who, having come to youth or early manhood, find themselves suddenly disabled. Illness takes away their power. Their ambitions seem to them now inaccessible dreams. They cannot accomplish the things that they had planned and hoped for. Perhaps an added drop.

of bitterness is in the fact that they are dependent on somebody else,― not even able to win their own way in the world; at any rate, not able to play their part as they had expected to do it. This man meant to win his way in the law or in business; he had schemes for accomplishing reforms for humanity; he had dreamed out a book which promised fame if he could but write it. Can I ask him to be cheerful, or would it be right if from this time on through the rest of his life he carried shadow not only in his own heart, but in his face, his brow one look of gloom? Would it do any good for him to take that attitude toward life? I only ask the question: I do not answer it now.

Let me tell you what I know concerning some cases of chronic lifelong illness, and of the conquest over such conditions. I have in mind at this moment a woman whom I have known for years. It is many a year since she has been able to walk; and, when she has walked at all, it has been by the aid of crutches. Her husband, years ago, met a tragic death that produced a shock from which she never recovered. Through no fault of her own she has seen a small fortune dwindle and slip out of her hands. Not able to enter into the life of the world, her dreams are only dreams henceforth. Here, certainly, is a case where the lack of cheer might be at least excused; and yet she is one of the brightest, cheeriest, noblest, strongest persons I know. It is an inspiration simply to look on her face. is comforting and uplifting to hear her speak. Never in all the years that I have known her has she spent the time with me even to tell me of her sorrows. I have never heard one whisper of repining nor one word of complaint. Much that I know about her I have learned from others, not from her own lips. It is a joy to be in her presence. There is complete victory over her condition; and thousands of those who are well and strong might take lessons of her in the matter of cheer.

I know another, again a woman. It is years since she has been able to walk; and these years have been spent

either in her bed or bolstered in an easy-chair. Disease has made her limbs misshapen, pain has been her constant companion. Yet the artist soul of this woman has created such beauty of face and feature that angels might be glad to look as she does. Her husband, too, is dead; but, before he died, she had been in this condition for several years. And he has told me that always, when he came home from his business, he knew that he should find she had prepared to greet him with gladness, with cheer, never with complaints; never a word to make his home-coming a shadow; never any comparisons between his happiness and freedom and ability to go and come as he would and her cheerless confinement. He never went home expecting to find the house an unpleasant place on account of her illness, but always went with glad anticipation of finding, in her brightness and courage, strength, if he needed it, on his own account. These things, then, and such as these, are possible; and they do exist. And I leave it for you to say whether this is not unspeakably better, whatever the provocation or the cause, than the opposite way of meeting the evils of life, letting them sour and imbitter the soul, letting them discourage and take the heart out of us.

But that is not all. Here is a man in mid-life who, after slowly accumulating a fortune, has had it suddenly stripped from him, perhaps leaving him hardly with the courage to begin again, and wondering whether he must not go through the rest of his life on the lower and discouraging level of comparative poverty. For we all know that the poverty of those who have been above it is unspeakably harder to bear than that of those who have never climbed to the height and fallen again. I know of cases like these where, on the one hand, the men have been discouraged and disheartened, and have gone to the bad. If they have not gone to the bad, as we say, morally, they have never looked up again. They have carried a hopeless face and heart. They have never seemed able to rally, but have been a burden to themselves and to wife, children, and friends.

On the other hand, I have a man in my mind whose name would be familiar to you, should I mention it. After slowly and painfully accumulating a fortune which he expected was to release him from the necessity of money-making, and set him free for a career on which his heart was set, he had it taken from him, at a blow, in one hour, leaving him where he was twenty years before. But he did not abate one jot of heart, hope, or courage. He did not curse God; and he did not curse the world. He did not drape the heavens in black, he did not drape his own life in shadow. He did not make it harder for wife or child. He did not even curse the one who, with malice and purpose, stripped him of his gains. From that day to this he has been slowly climbing again, regaining his foothold, and all the time with patience and courage, with sweetness of heart and with sweetness on his lips, with charity for all mankind, with readiness to help his fellows, and consecrate himself ever to the noblest ends.

These two courses, then, are possible. I need not ask you which is the better.

But there are sorrows worse than this. There are people who are carrying a living sorrow, through the mistakes, the treachery, the falseness, of some one whom they love, some one who stands close to them, some one on whom they are dependent. It may be husband, it may be wife, it may be child, it may be a close bosom friend; but it is a living sorrow, unspeakably worse than the death of the dearest friend one has on earth. But I know people here, again, who have taken such a sorrow in one of two different ways; people who, because one has been false, have lost faith in everybody, who believe that, however fair the outside seems, all is rotten within. It is as though one should find a single tree decayed at the core, and straightway write it down as a creed that there is no tree on the face of the earth that is not in a like condition. I have known others who have carried a life sorrow in another fashion, who have been made tender and charitable by it, whose whole nature has grown