dalize my brother, I shall never eat meat in aeternum." And here it is the suicide's selfishness shows itself. His life has become a burden, difficulties confront him, disgrace stares him in the face, he becomes sentimental and morose, he despairs, and ends it all in death. And men, mind you, are wonderfully imitative; suicide easily becomes epidemic, and will you tell me that he who leads that grim march to destruction has nothing to answer for for those who follow? But what cares he? What thought has he of the children left destitute, of the heartbroken wife, of the mother's gray hairs bowed in shame and sorrow, of the hundreds financially ruined by his folly, and the thousands of young souls scandalized by his mad act? Men say, " What courage he must have had to do it," but truth to say, he was an arrant coward. He shirked life's sacred duties; when the moment came for him to charge on the rank and file of this world's difficulties he turned and fled like a hireling. We may bend and we may bleed under life's crosses, but the silent, patient bearing of them calls out the noblest qualities of our natures and is the true test of heroism. The man who, with the eyes of his country on him, amid the frenzy of battle and to the sound of martial music, seeks glory at the cannon's mouth, would probably prove anything but a heroin the long drawn-out endurance of this world's trials, with no hope of commendation or reward this side of the grave. Courage cannot be tested in a single act, least of all the act of a suicide.
Brethren, it remains to briefly point out the cause
