the father of all poets; he who first strove to learn the secret of sun and star was the father of all astronomers.

XV. Decay of Peoples.

I have called this "simple account of man in early times" by the title of the "Childhood of the World," because the progress of the world from its past to its present state is like the growth of each of us from childhood to manhood or womanhood.

Although the story has, on the whole, flowed smoothly along, we must not leave out of sight the terrible facts which have sometimes checked the current. History, in books and in ruins, teaches that there have been. tribes and nations (some of the nations so great and splendid that it seemed impossible for them ever to fall) which have reached a certain point, then decayed and died. And since man has lived so many thousands of years on the earth, there must have risen and fallen races and tribes of which no trace will ever be found.

The cause of the shameful sin and crime of which every place in this world has been more or less the scene, has sometimes been man's ignorance of what is due to his God and his fellow-man, but more often his wilful use of power to do evil, forgetting, in his folly and wrong-doing, that the laws of God change not, that Sin is a fair-dealing master and pays his servants the wages of death. They have disobeyed the law of love, and hence have arisen cruel wars and shocking butcheries; captures of free people and the crushing of their brave spirits in slavery. They have disobeyed the laws of health, and the plague or "black death" has killed tens of thousands, or gluttony and drunkenness have destroyed them. They have loved money and selfish ease (forgetting the eternal fact that not one of us can live by bread alone, but that we live our lowest if that be the end and aim of our life), and their souls, lean and hungry, have perished.

But although the hand on the clock-face of progress has seemed now and then to stand still or even to go back, it is a great truth

for our comfort and trust that the world gets better and not worse. There are some people who are always sighing for what is not or cannot be; who look back to the days of their childhood and wish them here again; who are ever talking of the "good old days" when laughter rang with richest mirth, when work was plentiful and beggars scarce, and life so free from care that wrinkles never marked the happy face. Do not listen to these people; they have either misread the past or not read it at all. Like some other things, it is welllooking at a distance, but ill-looking near. We have not to go far back to the "good old times," to learn that kings and queens were worse lodged and fed and taught than a servant is now-a-days.

It is very foolish and wrong to either wish the past back again, or to speak slightingly of it. It filled its place; it did its appointed work. Even out of terrible wars blessings have sometimes come, and that which men have looked upon as evil has been fruitful in good. We cannot see the end as well as the beginning:

God alone can do that. The true wisdom is to see in all the steps of this earth's progress the guiding hand of God, and to believe that He will not leave to itself the world which for His own pleasure He has created.

nothing walks with aimless feet."

For

To you and to every one of us, God gives work to do; and if He takes it away, it is that others may do it better, and so the wellbeing of all be secured.

Let us always strive to do thoroughly the work which we find nearest to our hand; though we may think it small and trifling, it is not so in the sight of Him who made the dewdrop as well as the sun, and who looks not so much upon the thing we have to do, as upon the way and the spirit in which we do it.

PART II.

XVI. Introductory.

IN seeking to show you by what slow steps man came to believe in one all-wise and allgood God, I wish to fix one great truth upon your young heart about Him; for the nobler your view of Him is, the nobler is your life likely to be.

Now you would think your father very hard and cruel if he loaded you with all the good things he had, and sent your brothers and sisters, each of them yearning for his love and kisses, to some homeless spot to live uncared for and unloved, and to die unwept.

And yet this is exactly what some people have said that God does. They have spoken of Him, who has given life to every man, woman, and child, without power on their part