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HEART CHORDS.

MY OBJECT IN LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

I AM.

"By the grace of God I am what I am." These are the words of St. Paul. But we cannot all use them in the full breadth of their meaning. Those only can adopt the words who have been true to the highest within them, or who, whatever they may once have been, have become at last blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke. For, alas! there are other factors in human lives besides the grace of God. Something-it may be much, it may be nearly all, of what we actually are-is due

not to the grace of God, but to the fraud and malice of Satan-not to the grace of God, but to the sin and folly of our own lives.

But we can all say, 66 I am what I am;" and it is of the first words, "I am," that I shall first speak. It has been said with deep truth that there are four words which man can apply to himself, and the utterance of which divides him from the lower animals-four words which are the only firm foundations on which we can base our attempts to climb to a higher existence-to raise ourselves on stepping-stones of our dead selves, aye, and even of our living selves, to better things. Those four words are, “I am," "I ought," "I can," "I will." Those four verbs, rightly interpreted, sum up our object in life.

"I am." When we try to understand who and what we are, the first and most obvious element of our existence which strikes us is the mortal body in which God has clothed us. It needs a very slight knowledge to be aware how wonderful a mechanism is the human body. Think of the eye alone-its exquisite structure,

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