land are
groaning and suffering under afflictions, the result of a depressed
vitality,--neuralgia, with a new ache for every day of the year,
rheumatism, consumption, general debility; for all these a thousand
nostrums are daily advertised, and money enough is spent on them to
equip an army, while we are fighting against, wasting, and throwing
away with both hands, that blessed influence which comes nearest to
pure vitality of anything God has given.

"Who is it that the Bible describes as a sun, arising with healing in
his wings? Surely, that sunshine which is the chosen type and image of
His love must be healing through all the recesses of our daily life,
drying damp and mould, defending from moth and rust, sweetening ill
smells, clearing from the nerves the vapors of melancholy, making life
cheery. If I did not know Him, I should certainly adore and worship
the sun, the most blessed and beautiful image of Him among things
visible! In the land of Egypt, in the day of God's wrath, there was
darkness, but in the land of Goshen there was light. I am a Goshenite,
and mean to walk in the light, and forswear the works of darkness. But
to proceed with our reading."

* * * * *

"Our house" shall be set on a southeast line, so that there shall not
be a sunless room in it, and windows shall be so arranged that it can
be traversed and transpierced through and through with those bright
shafts of light which come straight from God.

"Our house" shall not be blockaded with a dank, dripping mass of
shrubbery set plumb against the windows, keeping out light and air.
There shall be room all round it for breezes to sweep, and sunshine to
sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all good souls who begin
life by setting out two little evergreen-trees within a foot of each
of their front-windows, that these trees will grow and increase till
their front-rooms will be brooded over by a sombre, stifling shadow
fit only for ravens to croak in.

One would think, by the way some people hasten to convert a very
narrow front-yard into a dismal jungle, that the only danger of our
New England climate was sunstroke. Ah, in those drizzling months which
form at least one half of our life here, what sullen, censorious,
uncomfortable, unhealthy thoughts are bred of living in dark, chilly
rooms, behind such dripping thickets? Our neighbors' faults assume a
deeper hue, life seems a dismal thing, our very religion g