WHAT a habit we have of crediting all our ills to Providence! We are never willing to admit that our own inactivity, folly, and self-love have wrought out the dire results over which we mourn. We only see the shipwreck of our lives; we only hear the voices of the storm, and instead of owning that it was our indifferent and unskillful navigation that brought our craft upon the rocks, we fold our hands and cry out, blindly, "Strange and mysterious are thy ways, O Providence!" It is well to have faith and trust. It is well to be resigned to trials that cannot be avoided; but it is not well to hide our talents in a napkin, to take our fill of ease and pleasures, and bow down to the gods of pride and fashion, then shrink back from the consequences and say that the work is none of ours. Some of us really imagine that we are suffering the will of the Lord, because the flour barrel is empty and our coat is out at the elbows, when a little more self-denial, a little less folding of the hands for rest—these would raise us out of the slough of poverty, and set us on our feet, crowned with the gift of a goodly heritage. We eat rich unwholesome food, keep late hours, transgress all the laws of health, and when we pay the penalty with shattered nerves and broken constitutions, we wonder why we are not strong and vigorous as our neighbor who has lived moderately all his days. Because the neck and arms of our tender infants are soft and white and dimpled, we let them go bare and unprotected, then when some day we leave the little one out under the snow, we murmur that our Father hath been unkind. In too many such cases, with a little more flannel the family circle might be kept unbroken for many a year.—Sel. A good life is valuable, but a bad life often costs more. A man that don't know anything will tell it the first time he gets a chance.