should be strong and well laid; but has no value excepting as it is
the support of a worthy building. The Lord is very explicit in all his
teachings on the subject of life, and it is hardly possible that any one
could faithfully study his words, and then exalt abstract doctrine into
the place that belongs of right to Christian life.

Whoever studies the direct teachings of the Lord, recorded by the
Evangelists, and makes them the rules of his Thoughts, must necessarily
be wise. Everything connected with daily life, if his mind be really
permeated with these teachings, takes its proper place before him. He
sees what has a transient, and what a permanent value,--what is merely
temporal, and what eternal; and so learns to appreciate the relative
value of all things. Everything that occurs becomes a subject for his
thoughts to work upon, and while working in heavenly light his mind
grows in wisdom day by day. This action of Thought will not be confined
to events as they occur around him, but whatever is read, all the events
of the past, all art and science, are brought under the same analysis.
The thoughtless person reads merely for the amusement of the moment,
remembers little of what he reads, and that little to no purpose. A
fact is, to such a man, a mere fact standing by itself, and having no
relation to anything else. However much he may read, the thoughtless man
can never be instructed. He is of those who, seeing, perceive not, and
who, hearing, do not understand. The thoughtful person, on the contrary,
reads everything with a purpose. His mind works upon what he reads, and
he is instructed and made intelligent, even though he may see only
with the light of this world. His intelligence will, however, be very
different and very inferior in degree to that of the man who looks at
objects in the light of heaven. He will measure things by an uncertain,
varying standard, and will appreciate things only according to their
temporal value. He will, therefore, never become truly wise. With those