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or business, on the farm or in the workshop; and happily we may carry peace of mind even into the most active life. To those who know how to live, life becomes every year more rich, more interesting, and more mysterious.

Work, indeed, should not be incessant. Schiller even laid it down that a man "is only completely a man when he is playing."* This is surely going too far. Every man, however, should give himself a good holiday once a year, and a day's holiday once a week. More than this, he should give himself a little holiday every day-an hour or two for self-examination, for thought, for brain rest, for exercise, and last, not least, for amusement. Every man at the close of the day should give himself a few minutes to think over what he has done, and what he might have, and ought to have, done. If he follows these simple rules he will have a good conscience, a good appetite, and peaceful slumbers.

Some of us perhaps at the present day do not suf ficiently appreciate the importance of leisure and of securing opportunities for meditation.

* Schiller's Essays.

We make life

too much of a rush and a bustle; even our games we turn into a business.

To work is the duty, but by no means the whole duty of man; yet he is, or ought to be, at his best when work is over for awhile and he has his time and his mind to himself. Our countrymen work well: I wish I could think that their days of rest were quite as wisely spent. The six days of labour are good and useful; but the seventh is, or should be, holy. On it the mind should soar above the world, aspire and be inspired; should rest peaceful, serene, and divine, wider and deeper than the ocean, and high as the heaven above.

England is not poorer, but richer, because our ancestors have, through many ages, rested from their labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. "While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on, quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, is repairing and winding up

so that he returns to his labour on Monday with clear On Peace and Happiness. 3

intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporeal vigour." *

We sometimes hear people say that they have nothing to do. But what a mistake! Our most important occupation, our most imperative responsibility, the improvement of oneself, the care of one's own soul, is always with us. We recognise the headship of a great school or the tutorship of a royal prince as a position of great importance and responsibility; but the keepership of oneself is to oneself a duty of even greater responsibility.

From this point of view our leisure hours are perhaps the most important time we ever have. The claims of a profession, of an office, of a business, the occupations which provide the requisites of life, are no doubt very important: they are what Germans call "bread and butter" duties, they are necessary for our material existence; but, after all, so far as the body is concerned, we are mere animals, and the body is only important as the temple of the soul.

St. Augustine wisely said: "Otium vestrum magnum

* Macaulay.

habet negotium."*

He might have said the greatest,

for "what is a man profited if he gain the whole world,

and lose his own soul?" And yet we hear of persons who have retired from the active labour of youth and middle age, and who find the time hang heavy on their hands because they imagine they have nothing to do, whereas in truth they have now at last the grand opportunity of devoting their whole time to the two supreme objects of existence-the promotion of the happiness of others, and the improvement of their own soul.

* "Your leisure is charged with a great business."

CHAPTER II.

THE BODY.

THE feeding of the five thousand with the loaves and fishes was a miracle in the sense of being against the ordinary course of nature, but the ordinary course of nature is itself marvellous. The way in which man is fed by the multiplication of grain, the increase of flocks and herds; the way in which corn and meat and milk are translated into flesh and blood and brain is, indeed, most wonderful. And when they are so changed, it is as miraculous how the blood nourishes the various organs.

But most mysterious of all are the relations between mind and body, the gulf between life and death. A railway signal is misread or overlooked, a horse runs away, a compass gets out of order, we miss our balance, a thousand and one possibilities of accident surround us every moment. And even in ourselves we carry the

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