like a casket of gems; it cheers
like a winter's fire; it carries sweet stimulus like returning
sunshine. We have all known a few great-hearted men and women who have
through years distributed their love-treasures among the little
children of the community and scattered affection among the poor and
the weak, until the entire community comes to feel that it lives in
them and without them will die. Happy the man who hath stored up such
treasures of mind and heart as that he stands forth among his fellows
like a lighthouse on some ledge, sending guiding rays far out o'er dark
and troubled seas. Happy the woman whose ripened affection and
inspiration have permeated the common life until to her come the poor
and weak and heart-broken, standing forth like some beauteous bower
offering shade and filling all the air with sweet perfume.

In crisis hours the patriot and martyr, the hero and the
philanthropist, die for the public good, but not less do they serve
their fellows who live and through years employ their gifts and
heart-treasures, not for themselves, but for the happiness and highest
welfare of others. Richter, the German artist, painted a series of
paintings illustrating the ministry of angels. He showed us the
child-angels who sit talking with mortal children among the flowers,
now holding them by their coats lest they fall upon the stairs, now
with apples enticing them back when they draw too near the precipice;
when the boy grows tall and is tempted, ringing in the chambers of
memory the sweet mother's name; in the hour of death coming in the garb
of pilgrim, made ready for convoy and guidance to the heavenly land.
Oh beautiful pictures! setting forth the sacred ministry of each true
Christian heart.

History tells of the servant whose master was sold into Algeria, and
who sold himself and wandered years in the great desert in the mere
hope of at last finding and freeing his lord; of the obscure man in the
Eastern city who, misunderstood and unpopular, left a will stating that
he had been poor and suffered for lack of water, and so had starved and
slaved through life to build an aqueduct for his native town, that the
poor might not suffer as he had; of the soldier in the battle, wounded
in cheek and mouth and dying of thirst, but who would not drink lest he
should spoil the water for others, and so yielded up his life. But
this capacity of sacrifice and sympathy is but the little in man
answering to what is