It has been humorously remarked, that if persons only talked as little as they thought, what a silent world this would be. A very able thinker has also truly said: "The expression by a person of his opinions shows where he stopped thinking.

This goes to show that careful reflection and hard thinking are absolutely essential to secure clear, strong, forcible ideas; and then, too, we should also be able to select the proper words to express these ideas clearly, forcibly and concisely.

History demonstrates very conclusively that all men who have originated great and noble ideas, or who have made important discoveries or inventions, which have promoted the welfare of men, have done it by careful, patient, concentrated thinking on one subject for a long time.

Reflection is to the mind what artificial instruments are to the senses. It enables the mind to see, and discern clearly much more complicated and difficult problems of life, which could not, otherwise, have been mastered and understood.

Emanuel Sevedenborg has very profoundly remarked that, "It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false; this is the mark and character of intelligence.

Steam, electricity and the other great forces in Nature had just the same power and energy hundreds of years ago, that they now have; but we did not discover how to use and control these forces until recent times. So it is, largely, with the forces of the mind. They lie dormant for a long time, until some great kindred force, in life and Nature comes in direct contact with the intellectual forces of some great man and gives him con

structive and creative power to understand some of the great silent laws and forces governing the material universe, which constantly transform nature and life into higher and nobler being.

Our chief want in life is somebody to give us a "big push" to make us do what we can, as so many persons lack faith, hope, self-reliance, self-trust, and also the power and courage to live and act straight up to their own best convictions, regardless of what other persons may think or say. "He most lives, who thinks most, who feels the noblest, acts the best.

When we get our minds into a fine, healthy glow, we then get glimpses "of that immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, millioncolored, which beams over the universe as on the first morning'-; so that we may truly

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity."

History is only the marriage of thought to nature; and nature is the memory of the mind; and so every great institution is the incarnation of the thoughts of some great man or men. The latest writers on Evolution have, therefore, very properly put great stress on the constructive and creative faculties of our minds.

Language is probably the highest form of intelligence yet developed, and this is also merely "the incarnation of thought," as S. J. Coleridge puts it in his "Aids to Reflection,' or that words are the glasses through which we see ideas, as Joubert has it.

This all goes to show, most forcibly, then, how history repeats itself over dence of the intellects of men; and and over in the expansion and decaalso why we should always strive most earnestly to "hold fast to that which is good," as Saint Paul so tersely puts it.