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the avaricious to alms-giving, they who had never wept gain the gift of tears, and the hard-hearted become merciful. Pain has an undefined element of power, and of depth, which is the source of all heroism and grandeur. No one has felt this mysterious contact without being thereby animated: the child acquires the manliness of the youth, the youth the maturity and gravity of manhood, men the strength of heroes, and heroes the sanctity of saints.

On the contrary, he who turns aside from pain to court pleasure, commences to descend; and the career of his degradation is rapid and continuous. From the height of sanctity he falls into the abyss of sin; from glory he sinks to infamy; his heroism is changed into weakness, and through the habit of yielding, he loses even the remembrance of firmness, and by falling so often he loses the faculty of rising again. Indulgence in pleasure deprives him of all vitality, paralyzes the elasticity and vigor of all the muscles of his body, and all the energies of his soul. In sensual gratification there is a corrupting and enervating power, which slowly and silently kills its victim. Woe to those who respond to this syren but perfidious voice! Woe to those who, when pleasure allures with her perfumes and flowers, remain without fear, for they shall soon cease to be masters of themselves, and shall helplessly fall into that swoon of seeming death, in which she wraps the senses of those who are intoxicated with the aroma of her flowers and the vapors of her perfumes! Then, the unhappy victim either miserably succumbs to this infatuation or he is altogether transformed by it. The child never attains adolescence, the adult withers into