'How can I gain true happiness and eternal glory, and what must I do to be saved? Reader, have you never asked this important question? Has the longing for true rest and eternal bliss never entered your heart? And have you never amid this wicked world's sadness and sorrow, looked longingly towards heaven, and noticed with the eye of thought and reflection that, high above the clouds which, driven by the wind, are always changing and in movement, the sky has raised aloft over your head the canopy of its permanence and set up its fair curtains? And have you not considered that in that restful and glorious world the stars, which are changeless and unaltering in brightness, are beckoning to you to gain that true bliss and that eternal peace to the acquisition of which this transitory world cannot conduct you?' Nay, rather, that peace may descend from that world of permanence and stability and take up its abode in your restless heart. It is self-evident that the yearning of your heart has at some time aroused this question within you, and also has made you thoughtful about it; for there is no doubt that every one desires and longs to obtain rest of heart and true happiness. And, if you pay attention to your heart's desires and the motives of your actions, you will assuredly discover that the aim of all your wishes and doings is to gain eternal and permanent happiness, and to inherit real peace. And this is the one single desire which moves and influences every one and which is

the motive of men's actions; so that the king on his royal throne and the beggar asking alms at the street corner, the rich man and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, nay every individual in the world, all have this longing for happiness and strive to satisfy it. Only in this lies the difference, that one man seeks his happiness in one thing, another in another, and a third in something else. Yea, the longing for eternal happiness and peace is so firmly kindled in every man’s heart that it can by no means be extinguished.

Whence then has this restlessness come? Have you thought about it at all? If you have, it will certainly be evident to you that the reason of it is that your heart has not yet gained true peace and attained to eternal happiness. And, inasmuch as the rich and the great, nay even kings, though they have no lack of wealth and property and honour and this world's pleasures, but have rather a superfluity of all these things, yet are not content but seek for still more wealth and riches and pleasure and honour, they therefore bear witness to the fact that from all this world's wealth and riches and honour and pleasure they have not gained their heart's desire, and have not attained to true happiness. Thus, when you, having become needy and in distress, fancy that the reason of the heart's unrest is this want of the world's goods, these people are a clear and evident proof to you that its cause is something else. And, since every one has