rs' shelves as "The
Complete Letter-writer" or "Handbook of Behavior." And nobody can
calculate what might be the moral and spiritual results if it could only
become the fashion to pursue this branch of the fine arts. Surliness of
heart must melt a little under the simple effort to smile. A man will
inevitably be a little less of a bear for trying to wear the face of a
Christian.

"He who laughs can commit no deadly sin," said the wise and sweet-hearted
woman who was mother of Goethe.

Spiritual Teething

Milk for babes; but, when they come to the age for meat of doctrine, teeth
must be cut. It is harder work for souls than for bodies; but the
processes are wonderfully parallel,--the results too, alas! If clergymen
knew the symptoms of spiritual disease and death, as well as doctors do of
disease and death of the flesh, and if the lists were published at end of
each year and month and week, what a record would be shown! "Mortality in
Brooklyn, or New York, or Philadelphia for the week ending July 7th." We
are so used to the curt heading of the little paragraph that our eye
glances idly away from it, and we do not realize its sadness. By tens and
by scores they have gone,--the men, the women, the babies; in hundreds new
mourners are going about the streets, week by week. We are as familiar
with black as with scarlet, with the hearse as with the pleasure-carriage;
and yet "so dies in human hearts the thought of death" that we can be
merry.

But, if we knew as well the record of sick and dying and dead souls, our
hearts would break. The air would be dark and stifling. We should be
afraid to move,--lest we might hasten the last hour of some neighbor's
spiritual breath. Ah, how often have we unconsciously spoken the one word
which was poison to his fever!

Of the spiritual deaths, as of the physical, more than half take place in
the period of teething. The more one thinks of the parallelism, the closer
it looks, until the likeness seems as droll as dismal. Oh, the sweet,
unquestioning infancy which takes its food from the nearest breast; which
knows but three things,--hunger and food and sleep! There is only a little
space for this delight. In our seventh month we begin to be wretched. We
drink our milk, but we are aware of a constant desire to bite; doubts
which we do not know by name, needs for which there is no ready supply,
make us restless. Now comes the old-school doctor, and thrusts in his
lancet too soo