as well as social happiness, I would propose the cultivation of a spirit of love. The more we love, the less our thoughts and interests are centred in self; and consequently the less we suffer from all those little personal slights, vexations, and disappointments, which so often imbitter the cup of life. The more we love, also, the more we forgive; and to whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much; so that nothing is more true, than that love begets love in return. Thus, then, our energies are drawn out into those kindred charities, which, whether given or received in the true spirit of generous affection, have power to lighten every burden we have to bear, and to sweeten every draught of which we have to drink. The more we love, the more we enjoy the inestimable privilege of being able to ask a blessing upon what we desire, and upon what we do; because we can neither lie down at night, nor rise to the duties of the day, without bearing in our hearts the remembrance of that sweet fellowship, which binds together the whole human race as one family, under the protection of our Father who is in heaven.
How little is understood of the real value and right exercise of love, by those morbid miserable beings, who fix their whole hopes of happiness upon one, or two, or many, and think they are loving, while they are only thirsting to be loved—only waiting in anxious and fretful expectation for evidence that they are so; or recoiling from the world with disappointment and spleen on every cause for suspicion that they are not. Such persons generally keep a strict account against society, of what they consider due to themselves, as well as of what they receive. Yet they forget to compare it with another account—with what is due from them, and what they actually give.
But there is no calculation, and there needs no account, on the part of those whose hearts have been imbued in early childhood with the true spirit of love. To such it becomes as the very breath of life, for without being able to love, they would pine and wither. If, in the interchange of kind offices they occasionally find themselves neglected, what is that to them? In their love they seek only the good and the happiness of others, and that is generally more or less in their power to promote. If the beings
