nce;
but whether office comes by birth, as in monarchies, or by election, as
in republics, it does not bring peace. An office is not considered a
high one if all can occupy it. Only when few in a generation can hope to
enjoy an honor do we call it a great honor. I am glad that our Heavenly
Father did not make the peace of the human heart to depend upon our
ability to buy it with money, secure it in society, or win it at the
polls, for in either case but few could have obtained it, but when He
made peace the reward of a conscience void of offense toward God and
man, He put it within the reach of all. The poor can secure it as easily
as the rich, the social outcasts as freely as the leader of society, and
the humblest citizen equally with those who wield political power.

To those who have grown gray in the Church, I need not speak of the
peace to be found in faith in God and trust in an overruling Providence.
Christ taught that our lives are precious in the sight of God, and poets
have taken up the thought and woven it into immortal verse. No
uninspired writer has exprest it more beautifully than William Cullen
Bryant in his Ode to a Waterfowl. After following the wanderings of the
bird of passage as it seeks first its southern and then its northern
home, he concludes:

Thou art gone; the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form, but on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

Christ promoted peace by giving us assurance that a line of
communication can be established between the Father above and the child
below. And who will measure the consolations of the hour of prayer?

And immortality! Who will estimate the peace which a belief in a future
life has brought to the sorrowing hearts of the sons of men? You may
talk to the young about death ending all, for life is full and hope is
strong, but preach not this doctrine to the mother who stands by the
death-bed of her babe or to one who is within the shadow of a great
affliction. When I was a young man I wrote to Colonel Ingersoll and
asked him for his views on God and immortality. His secretary answered
that the great infidel was not at home, but enclosed a copy of a speech
of Col. Ingersoll's which covered my question. I scanned