them by telling them falsely that God will not punish them. In both body and mind, in disease and remorse, they have already ample proof that sin brings its own punishment, and that, as 'Ali says, "The ¹ sweetness of this world of thine is poisoned, therefore thou eatest not honey but with poison."

Other men fancy that for them happiness consists in the acquisition of worldly wealth. They heap up treasure upon treasure. The more they have, the more do they long for, and nothing ever satisfies them. At length Death catches them in its snare and plunders them for ever of their wealth and of all that they have laid up for themselves. Even in youth we are not sure of life for a day: the only thing we are sure of is death.

The² young man longeth that his friend may not die,
And yet no way is there not to die.

Stripped of all their treasures and destitute of all hope for the future, naked and hopeless, men are compelled to journey forth from this caravansarai of transitoriness towards the dwelling of permanence. In the dying ears of those who have put their trust in riches there ring such words as these:

"Go to, now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out: and the cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter."

Riches are not always gained by cruelty, fraud, and oppression, but they cannot truly satisfy man's higher nature, however they may have been acquired, and at death no man may carry them away with him. Death shows us things in their true colours, and enables us to perceive the worthlessness of those things for which men strive most eagerly. The poet's words are well known:

"Everyone's¹ death, my child, is of the same kind as he is himself: to the enemy an enemy, and to the friend a friend." And again:

"Who² in all the world that strung the bow of oppression did not become the target for an arrow of an eternal curse? Who that in untrustworthy Time planned a method of wrong did not himself become Time's object of warning?"

Others there are who hope to gain true happiness by the acquisition of human learning. They do not sufficiently consider that all that man has learnt of earthly things, being based upon that which is transitory, must itself grow antiquated and pass away. The human spirit is eternal, and can never be rendered permanently happy by the possession of transitory knowledge, for: "To³ sharpen mind and heart is not the way: none but the broken-hearted gains the King's grace."

It has therefore well been said: "If any man thinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth not yet as he ought to know. But if any man loveth God, the same is known of him."

Some fancy that they shall find happiness in the honour and glory and greatness of this world; others seek it in still other ways. But all men are at one in