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 only masticates  her  baby's  food  but  swallows  it  besides, the  infant  dies. And given  a  heart  once  cold or dead,  all  attempts  at  prayer  are  as  a  sounding* brass or  a  tinkling  cymbal. But a  tongue,  a  mind,  and heart delicately  attuned  to  prayer  lift  like  sweet music their  happy  possessor  heavenward. Like a man  on  a  lofty  tower,  we  begin  to  appreciate  the  littleness of  earthly  things. Our judgments  are  comparative, and  so  accustomed  becomes  the  prayerful man to  the  contemplation  of  God's  greatness,  that  he learns  soon  to  despise  this  little  world,  to  bear  misfortune with  equanimity  and  prosperity  with  indifference. In the  words  of  the  Psalmist:  "He  hath made  the  Most  High  his  refuge,  and  no  evil  can  come to  him."

Watch and  pray  and  visit  the  fatherless  and widows in  their  tribulation. Brethren, practical benevolence is  the  third  round  in  the  ladder  of  perfection, the  final  requisite  in  a  religion  clean  and  undefiled  before  God  and  the  Father. The truly  religious are  essentially  altruistic. In playing  the  good Samaritan or  humanity's  Simon  of  Cyrene,  they  forget their  own  and  lighten  their  neighbor's  burdens. " Man  born  of  woman,  liveth  a  short  time  and  is filled  with  many  miseries." Such is  humanity's  biography. Torture at  birth,  misery  through  life,  at death  agony. In driving  our  first  parents  from  paradise God  said:  "  Cursed  be  the  earth,  thorns  and thistles  shall  it  bear  you,"  and  that  curse  has  echoed down the  ages  in  one  unbroken  series  of  human  woes. Divine and  human  wisdom  agree  that  the  yoke  is