sier to do certain additional things than to make sacrifices. But in order to a true physical culture, there is no question that much that is customary with both sexes at the present day must be sacrificed. No law of fashion should stand in the place of God's laws. No deference to a miserable custom should turn night into day, or day into night. No expedient for producing an arbitrary and artificial comeliness should be employed at the expense of the comeliness of health. There should be

no indulgence of the taste which will create a diseased appetite. There should be no amusement that ends in nervous prostration, fever, or consumption. Not even the zeal for duty should lead to rash exposures, or unrelieved exertions.

And this suggests one of the few points upon which I wish to be more specific. I would dwell for a short time upon the uses and abuses of amusement. That relaxation from ordinary labor, that recreation, is not only proper but necessary, of course no one will

dispute. By keeping our powers strained for a long time without intermission, we not only weaken them, as the trite illustration of the bent bow teaches us, but may defeat the very object we have in view. The instrument which by judicious care we might have kept vigorous to the last, will become inoperative. We need relaxation. We need either to give these powers repose and set in play other faculties, or else to shift their objects. We need to relieve our limbs from their cramped or confined state, and to exercise them so that the blood shall leap refreshingly through the veins, and the aching brow feel the cool air, and the stifled lungs have free expansion. Or, if the body has become wearied by protracted effort, let us change the work. Suffer the physical powers to rest, and let the mind be employed, not in intense study, but in pursuits that will cheer, or soothe, or elevate it. This will infuse new life into the jaded powers, and maintain a proper balance in the system. Mere rest will not accomplish all this. We require

not sluggish repose, but change of action; not mere sleep, but exercise. Otherwise, one set of faculties becomes dwarfed, the other wearied; one rusts out, the other wears out. The tired body or mind requires cheerfulness, new life; and this will be created by judicious amusements. Let us seek, then, some pleasant social intercourse, or some communion with nature or art. Go out among the changing seasons. Receive the fragrance of flowers, draw breath from "the cool cisterns" of the morning or evening air; select that which is most convenient, that at the same time is healthful to body and mind, cheering yet innocent, that relieves you from, yet fits you for, sterner duty; and it shall be better for youyou will work better, you will accomplish more.

But there is another use in amusement. It prevents our becoming selfish and materialized. If we go on day after day, toiling for sustenance or gain, we become heedless of everything else, more and more wrapped up in self. abor, it is true, is the general lot of human

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ity. We must attend to it from the necessity of things; but precisely because this is so, we should introduce other elements of action. Were human beings generally idle, then to urge the benefit of amusement would be to recommend an evil instead of a good. But we are in danger from the opposite course. Now amusement, light as its agency may appear, may be the means of opening our eyes to the perception of something higher than mere sensual life, to other than pecuniary acquirements. We make a mistake in associating the idea of frivolity with that of amusement. I do not speak now of much that goes by the name of amusement- the folly and excess into which we sometimes plunge; but that which is really for the health of the body and the mind; and, I repeat, it is a mistake to associate the idea of such amusement with frivolity. It may be the means not only of physical invigoration, but of intellectual and moral culture. It may open up worlds of discovery that shall refine and

elevate us; it may unveil truths that we have neglected in our exclusive selfishness; and it may quicken our conception of the spiritual realities that lie behind our material circumstances. All these results may come through the avenues of amusement

through that which cheers and delights, through that which rests the tired body and relaxes the overtasked mind. For instance, there is a source of amusement that lies at hand for every one. I mean the gratification of the sense of beauty. Every one is more or less affected by the beautiful, apart from any consideration of usefulness. And this quick sense of the beautiful may be made the source of endless amusement. Art and nature unite to this end. There are books, and paintings, and statuary, and music. And, most glorious and most open of all, there are the sights and sounds of the material universe. If we are too poor to avail ourselves of artificial sources of culture, yet there are around us, in sea, and earth, and heaven, countless agencies for this purpose. The