NEVER BRING YOUR CARES INDOORS.
An aged believer, whom I have just seen on what is probably his dying bed, remarked to me that he had no cares, "and," added he, "I never have fretted, for I made it a rule never to bring my cares indoors." His house stands within his timber yard, and I smiled to think of his home as being a sacred inclosure, around which care might wander, but into which it could not enter. It might deal with the deals and concern itself with the planks, but could not come upon the carpet. How fine it would be if, when we scraped our boots, we cast care under the scraper; and, by a believing prayer, left it with the dust, which is the serpent's meat, and not ours! What is the use of fretting! It never coined a penny for our poverty, nor prepared a slice of meat for our hunger. It is a killing thing, and should be avoided by all who love life. We do not waste strength by labor, for there is a recuperative power within which restores us after activity; but we lose life by anxiety, and lose it fast. Worry is a form of suicide. Don't repine, for it takes so much out of you. A calm, contented life is worth far more to the insurance office, as the tables of probabilities go, than the life of one who drains his soul away by anxiety. Besides, a believer glorifies God by being always restful in faith. His peaceful life is a sermon with a quiet but irresistible eloquence in it, which wins men to a desire after its holy secret.—Selected.