If you live for your children, they may be smitten down and leave you desolate, or, what is far worse, they may desert you and leave you worse than childless in a cold and unfeeling world.
It is a principle of our nature that feelings once excited turn readily from the object by which they are excited to some other object which may for the time being take possession of the mind.
Mr. Lincoln's elevation shows that in America every station in life may be honorable; that there is no barrier against the humblest; but that merit, wherever it exists, has the opportunity to be known.
Not in purity or in holiness merely, for in Paradise man was holy, and he shall be holy when redeemed through the sacrifice of Christ and made an heir of heaven.
Passing into practical life, illustrations of this fact are found everywhere; the distant, or the unseen, steadies and strengthens us against the rapid whirl of things around us.
If we look at the realm of knowledge, how exceedingly small and limited is that part acquired through our own senses; how wide is that we gain from other sources.
Taking it in its wider and generic application, I understand faith to be the supplement of sense; or, to change the phrase, all knowledge which comes not to us through our senses we gain by faith in others.
