y little
good grain. Theology deals with dreams and phantasies, and gives no
guidance to practical men. The whole truth or life may be summed up in
a few words. Happiness is the only good, suffering the only evil, and
selfishness the only sin. And the whole duty of man may be expressed
in one sentence, slightly altered from Voltaire--Learn what is true in
order to do what is right. If a man can tell you anything about these
matters, listen to him; if not, turn a deaf ear, and let him preach to
the wind.

The only noble things in this world are great hearts and great brains.
There is no virtue in a starveling piety which turns all beauty into
ugliness and shrivels up every natural affection. Let the heart beat
high with courage and enterprise, and throb with warm passion. Let the
brain be an active engine of thought, imagination and will. The gospel
of sorrow has had its day; the time has come for the gospel of gladness.
Let us live out our lives to the full, radiating joy on all in our own
circle, and diffusing happiness through the grander circle of humanity,
until at last we retire from the banquet of life, as others have done
before us, and sink in eternal repose.

ON RIDICULE.

Goldsmith said there are two classes of people who dread
ridicule--priests and fools. They cry out that it is no argument, but
they know it is. It has been found the most potent form of argument.
Euclid used it in his immortal Geometry; for what else is the _reductio
ad absurdum_ which he sometimes employs? Elijah used it against the
priests of Baal. The Christian fathers found it effective against the
Pagan superstitions, and in turn it was adopted as the best weapon of
attack on _them_ by Lucian and Celsus. Ridicule has been used by Bruno,
Erasmus, Luther, Rabelais, Swift, and Voltaire, by nearly all the great
emancipators of the human mind.

All these men used it for a serious purpose. They were not comedians
who amused the public for pence. They wielded ridicule as a keen rapier,
more swift and fatal than the heaviest battle-axe. Terrible as was the
levin-brand of their denunciation, it was less dreaded than the Greek
fire of their sarcasm. I repeat that they were men of serious aims, and
indeed how could they have been otherwise? All true and lasting wit is
founded on a basis of seriousness; or else, as Heine said, it is nothing
but a sneeze of the reason. Hood felt the same thing when he proposed
for his epitaph: "Here lies o