fe&y ft f JVE COALS, I FROM THK DISCOURSES OF T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D. D. AUTHOR OF "THE MASQUE TORN OFF," "NIGHT SIDES OF CITY I.IKK," "FOES OF SOCIETY," "TRAPS FOR MEN," "CRUMBS SWEPT UP," "AROUND THE TEA TABLE," ETC., ETC. COLLATED BY LYDIA E. WHITE. COMPILATION AUTHORIZED BY DR. TALMAGE. CHICAGO. FAIRBANKS & PALMER PUBLISHING CO. 1886. COPYRIGHTED BY L. T. PALMER, 1885. PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. In issuing " Live Coals " from our press we do it in the firm conviction that the Christian community of the English-speaking world will appreciate this volume. The work embraces the most popular and powerful discourses of Dr. Talmage, as delivered by him during the past year in the Brooklyn Tabernacle and elsewhere, and are here for the first time collated and published in book form These interesting discourses are written in his most powerful descriptive powers sparkling with graceful imagery, and illustrated with interesting anecdotes. They will be found the keenest, sharpest, and most vigorous specimens of oratory ever written, and for originality, force and splendor will bear a favorable comparison with the greatest pulpit pro- ductions of any age or country. The work has been divided into four sections or parts. I. Coals for- the Individual. II. Coals for the Church Militant. III. Coals for the Moral Realm. IV. Coals for the National Arena. They are Dr. Talmage's best efforts in his earnest aggressive war- fare upon the foes of society and the State, they ex- pose the traps and pitfalls that beset the youth of vi PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. our land on every hand, every page burning with eloquent entreaty for a better and purer life, possess- ing an intense, soul-absorbing interest to all who desire the advancement and higher development of the human race. The editor of the Christian Age, London, England, truly voices the sentiment of all admirers of Dr. Talmage when he said : " For knowl- edge of human life, and the adaptation of Divine truth to the whole being of man intellectual, emo- tional, moral, practical and for the power of apply- ing that truth, we know not his equal." CONTENTS. PREFACE 5 / TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 BIOGRAPHY. Birthplace Date of Birth Parents Reminiscences of his Child- hood, as given at London, Eng., Aug. 12, 1885 Anecdotes of Family A Great Revival The Reformed Dutch Church Conversion College Days Theological Seminary Early Ministerial Life- -Pas- torate at Belleville, N. J. At Syracuse, N. Y. At Philadelphia, Pa. Call to Brooklyn The Old Tabernacle Present Stately Edifice The Tabernacle Audiences The Newspapers The Lay College Pastoral Work Secular Criticism Foreign Criticism Visit to Eng- land in 1885 AtWesleyan Chapel, London At Presbyterian Synod Hall, Ediiiburg Editorial Criticism The Welcome Home Dr. Talmage's Address 25 SECTION I. COAI^S FOR THE INDIVIDUAL. CHAPTER I. BUSINESS LIFE. The General Impression God's Intentions A School of Energy God's Demands Anecdote of a Millionaire A School of Patience Of Useful Knowledge Traders Manufactures A School of In- tegrity Temptations of To-Day Honesty Scarcity of Commercial Honesty Men who Have Conquered Heavenly Rewards 43 CHAPTER II. GNATS AND CAMELS. The Grub The Camel Religious Work Humor The Infini- tesimals The Magnitudes Large versus Small Thefts Prison for Small Crimes Palaces for Large Crimes Nervousness and Dyna- vii Vlll CONTENTS. mite Dishonest Fruit Dealers False Crop Reports Society Needs Reconstruction False Statements to Assessors All More or Less Guilty 51 CHAPTER III. THE INSIGNIFICANT. Trouble Develops Character Is an Educator A Young Doctor Grecian Mythology Past National Distresses Adversity Proves Friendship Life a Game Paths < Hardship and Darkness The Hour of Conviction Alone No more Hunger or Thirst Persecu- tion of Christians The Reward The Importance of the Insignifi- cant Indolence The Gleaner 57 CHAPTER IV. PAUL IN A BASKET. Great Results Hang by Slender Tenure Paul's Life His Great Work Moses' Tiny Craft Rescue ot'John Wesley Pitcairn Islan i Infinity made up of Infinitesimals What you "do, do Well Un- recognized and Unrecorded Services Paul's Rescuers Early Strug- gles of Ministers The Son at College The Sacrifices of the Family Early Influences and Prayers 69 CHAPTER V. THE NEEDLE. The Praises of the Needle Operatives Its Triumphs Its Cruel- ties Its Charities Practical Benevolence Earnest Christian Man Against Theorists Female Benevolence Written on every Page of History The Women of the Civil War The Unmissed Josephine's Funeral The Grief of the French Poor 76 CHAPTER VI. THE SECRET OUT. The Amalekites Saul's Success Agag's Life Spared Wratli of God Samuel not Deceived The Hypocrisy of Saul Hypocrisy Always Exposed Hypocrites in the Church The Venom of Eccle>- iastical Courts Ottocar and Randolphus I Hypocrisy not Confined to the Church Putting oft" Sin on Others Extermination Necessary Mere Profession Amounts to Nothing Value of a Church Certifi- cate in Wall Street The Church up with the Times What we Need 81 CHAPTER VII. THE EVE. An Imperial Organ The Marvels of the Human Eye Eyes of Animals and Reptiles The Window of the Soul God's Preparation CONTENTS. IX for its Reception Its Residence The Contrivances of the Eye Its Elaborate Gearing The Retina The Tear Gland Wonderful Hy- draulic Apparatus Anecdotes Bell's Treatise on the Human Hand The Recoil of the Question The Great Searching, Overwhelming Eye of God 89 CHAPTER VIII. THE EAR. Architecture of Nations The Human Ear Its Overmastering Architecture Scientists The External Ear The Middle Ear The Internal Ear The Hidden Machinery of the Ear Defies Human In- spection Vibrations per Second A Life Long Study The Musical Composers Its Attempted Conquest Its Wonders Planned by Jehovah The Sacred Touch Look for God in the Infinitesimal Nearness of God The Phonograph The Ear of God 97 CHAPTER IX. YOUR PEDIGREE. A Mighty Question Blue Blood Characteristics from Genera- tion to Generation The Blood of Nationalities Law of Heredity Personal Responsibility Christian Ancestry Early Association The Unwritten Will of the Christian Parent Vast Responsibility Imposed A Trustee The Unwritten Will of the Wicked Evil Parentage Overcoming its Stigma An Heir of Immortality.. . 109 CHAPTER X. HOME. Piety at Home Faithfulness in an Insignificant Sphere The Definition of Home by Different Persons The Contented Home The Wretched Home Pirvate Character Reputation Bad Temper at Home Affable in Public Home a Refuge A Political Safe- Guard Christian Hearth-Stone Home a School Words and Deeds Brightest Place on Earth Cheerfulness Decorations of the Home Good Cheer 121 CHAPTER XI. IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? The Evolutionist's Guess Ask the Young Man Ask the Man of Forty How to Decide the Question Mere Money Getting a Failure The Disease of Accumulation Worldly Approval Intel- ligence Social Position High Social Life A Life that is Worth Living Opportunities and Responsibilities Peter Cooper Grace Darling The Reward 131 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. SOLICITUDE Cause of Parental Solicitude Parental Imperfection Conscious Insufficiency The Result of too Strict Discipline Too Great Se- verity Too Lenient Childish Sinfulness Nagging at Children Temptations A Farewell to Innocence Traps set for the Young Sin Invades the Sacred Precincts of Home No Statistics Compiled of Ruined Homes The Alleviations Immediate Correction Inno- cent Hilarity 140 CHAPTER XIII. ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. Various Ways of Lying Acquired and Natural The Tendency in Rural Districts The Producer Plotting of Speculators God Help the Merchants Fortunes Made by Dishonesty Large Fortunes Made Honestly Dishonesties of Speech The Merchants Cus- tomers Artisans Insincerity of Society False Statements of De- nominations Misrepresentations of Individual Churches No such Thing as a Small Sin 150 CHAPTER XIV. THE BALANCE SHEET. Short Allowances Taking Stock Christian Liabilities A Title Deed Refinement of Life Sweet Sounds of the World The Vi- cissitudes of Life All Things for our Good The Christian's Assets in this World and the Next Death, a Black Messenger Not a Ruffian No Tears "All are Yours" The Invalid's Reward That Glo- rious Consummation 159 CHAPTER XV. THE NOONTIDE OF LIFE. The Best Part of Life's Journey Tranquilitv and Repose Youth Manhood Old Age Wholesale Slander Looking Backward Do Your Best All Events are Connected The Picture Galleries of the Past Satan's Appetite The Home Gallery Looking Forward Going Through A Look Beyond Faith's Strength 166 CHAPTER XVI. A SCROLL OF HEROES. Merits Acknowledged Historical Heroes Heroes of Common, Everyday Life The Sick-Room Heroes The Heroes of Toil The Slain by the Needle Heroes who have Endured Domestic In- CONTENTS. XI justices Social Wrecks A Perpetual Martyrdom The Drunkard's Wife Heroes of Christian Charity Melrose Abbey The Righteous Never Forsaken The Great Chaplain's Cheer 174 CHAPTER XVII. THE BURDENS LIFTED. Wells of Water Dr. Talmage Leaving Home A Practical Re- ligion Necessary Business Burdens A World of Burden Bearing Toiling for Others the Incentive Grip, Gouge & Co. God's Interest in one's Business The Story of a Young Accountant God's Sym- pathy A Weight of Persecution and Abuse High and Holy En- terprise Always Abused The Treachery of the Befriended A Cynic The Ill-Treated in Good Company 182 CHAPTER XVIII. THE DAY WE LIVE IN. What this Age Expects of Every One- An Aggressive Christian The Prince of Wales' Visit Piety too Exclusive The Cactus of North Carolina Self-Examination A Stalwart Christian Character The Century Plant Average of Human Life The Years Re- quired in Earning a Livelihood The Years Spent in Sleep and Recreation The Years Spent in Childhood and Sickness The Time Left for Exclusive Service of God Responsibilities not Discharged by Liberal Giving Avoid Reckless Iconoclasm Scoffing Storm the Fortress of Sin Work for All Unbounded Faith Fall of Tyranny The March of the Hosts of the Living God 189 CHAPTER XIX. THE OLD FOLKS' VISIT. The Blessings of a Parental Visit Poor Relations Father of i-,arge Wealth Should Retain Possession The Undutiful Son Share Success with Parents The Praises of the Unmarried Sister- hoodA Queen of Self-Sacrifice The Maiden Aunt The Bible Narratives of Unfilial Conduct Ruth and Naomi 200 CHAPTER XX. ORDINARY PEOPLE. A Religion for Ordinary People The Vast Majority The Women at the Head of Households Food Providers Decide the Health of the World The Martyrs of Kitchen and Nursery Ordi- nary Business Men Gray Hairs at Thirty Ages Rapidly Divine Grace Wanted Possess the Friendship of Christ Ordinary Farmers Christ's Best Parables Drawn from the Farmer's Life The Stone Mason The Carpenters The Physicians If Ordinary, Thank God Xll CONTENTS. You are not Extraordinary Abuse and Slander of the Extraordinray Be Content with Things we Have 205 CHAPTER XXI THE LACHRYMAL. The Lachrymals of the Ancients The Story of Paradise and the PeriThe Re'turn of the Lost Sheep The Wanderer The Falling Tear Unreported The City Missionary The Parents' Solicitude The Training of Children The Heavenly Record Sanctified Sor- rows Gems of Light Bright Jewels of Heaven God's Bottle.. 218 CHAPTER XXII. SUNSET. A Dismal Thing The Gloomy Hour of Temptation The Strong Beneficent Influence of Jesus Necessary "Abide with Us" The Greatest Folly The Cry of a Child The Mother's Care The Sud- den Loss of Earthly Estate A Friend's Treachery The Accumula- tion of Mi -fortunes Trouble must be Met and Borne The Com- forting Influence of a Christian's Belief. 227 CHAPTER XXIII. THE FERRY BOAT OVER THE JORDAN. Trying to Extemporize a Way to Heaven The Miserable Work of Such The Ferry Boat to Come from the Other Side Thomas Walsh A Delusion Broken The Journev to Heaven is not Alone Last Testimony of the Faithful Only a Ferry No Great and Peril- ous Enterprise A Solid Landing A Real Place John's Material- istic Heaven Satisfactory The Welcome of Friends The Recog- nition of All The Romance in the Life of Judson 232 SECTION II. COALS FOR THE CHURCH MILITANT. 241 CHAPTER XXIV. DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY. The Rising Sun of Our Time The World without the Sun In- fidelitv and Atheism The World wi'hout Christianity Degrada- tion of Womanhood What Christianity has done for Woman What Infidelity Would Do The Death Bed of the Wicked The Mightiest Restraints of To day The Grand March of Infidelity W.'ll Infidelity Succeed? 243 CONTENTS. Xlll CHAPTER XXV. EVOLUTION. No Contest Between Science and Revelation Witnesses Pro and Con Herbert Spencer Huxley Darwin The Bible on Evolution A Question Propounded Theory of Evolution is Infidel Agassiz Boast of Evolutionists Their Theories Shattered Their Wander- ings Testimony Against Evolution A Magnificent Theory Sur- vival of the Fittest Spontaneous Generation No Natural Progress Natural Evolution Downward Develops Dishonesty Theory of Evolution Older than Christianity ".252 CHAPTER XXVI. THE MISSING LINK. The Ancestral Line The Brute Man The Brain of the Gorilla The Brain of the Hottentot Blood Globule A Different Creation Darwin's System Species Unchanged and Unchangeable Your Predecessors Evolution a Mystery Brutalizing in its Tendency Annihilation The Bible Narration Divine Evolution Monarchs of Earth Evolution from Contestant to Conqueror 267 CHAPTER XXVII. EVANGELISM VINDICATED. A Roman Evangelist Eating the Book The Creeds of the Peo- ple Evangelical Religion The Belief of the Different Denomina- tions How they are Slandered A Charmed Key Two Destinies Demanded by One's Common Sense The Trinity Justification by Faith Regeneration Reconstruction Easily Understood 276 CHAPTER XXVIII. SPLENDORS OF ORTHODOXY. An Inspired Bible No Element of Weakness Stood the Assaults of Time Errors in Transcribing Advanced Thinkers Freedom in Religious Thought and Discussion Change of Theories The Political Parties What I Believe to be Right What Orthodoxy Has Done The Influence of the Entire Bible Splendors of Charac- ter The Certitudes Palace and Penitentiary Advancements of Our Time 284 CHAPTER XXIX. MENDING THE BIBLE. A Risky Business Trie Book of Genesis Disbelief of Portions of the Bible Liberty of Discussion The Heinousness of Fault Finding The Old Gospel Ship Opposes Expurgation Implicit Be- lief Bible Miraculously Preserved A Matter of History The Cata- XIV CONTENTS. logue Unchanged for Ages All Attempts to Detract or Addto Failures The Bible Liked As It Is A Division Critics Severely Handled 263 CHAPTER XXX. THE GLORIOUS MARCH. The Glory of the Church The Church Ahead of the World Her Possessions The Blessings of the Poor The Church Com- pared to the Moon The Only Institution That Gives Light to the- World Weathered all Storms Light for all Classes and Conditions of People Compared to the Sun The Great Missions of Christ The Church Triumphant Religious Enthusiasm Christ as a Leader *.,.. 301 CHAPTER XXXI. SHAMS IN RELIGION. The Religion the World Wants A Practical Religion What Such a Religion Will Do Adulteration of Articles of Commerce The Remedy Philanthropy Does Not Atone For Sin Mechanism Rectified Religion in Agriculture Religion in the Learned Profes- sionsReligion and Good Society Misbionary Work Among the Upper Classes The Marriage Relation A New Departure A Beautiful Theory Witnesses of Practical Religion 310 CHAPTER XXXII. THE BEAUTY OF RELIGION. The Crystal No Happen-So's in Theology Not a Slipshod Universe A House of Sorrow Superior in Transparency A Trans- parent Bible Surpasses in its Beauty Cross and Crown Beautiful in its Symmetry Not a Sta.e Religion Superior in its Transforma- tions Minerals Early Dissipation Chief Transforming Power not of this World-Kill Sin or it will Kill You 322 CHAPTER XXXIII. RELIGION AX ANTISEPTIC. Grace Like Salt Beyond Human Skill Beautiful and Beautify- ingA Healthy Religion What the Grace of God Will Do A Necessity of Life Must Have More Faith The Preservative of Governments The Trouble with Modern Philosophy The Morning Star of Jesus 335 CHAPTER XXXIV. THE SPICERY OF RELIGION. Theologians Agree Religion Compared A Glorious Inspiration -- Necessary to the Housekeeper An Inspired Religion Lugubri. CONTENTS. XV ous Christians a Damage to Christianity More Sunshine and Fresh Air Necessary Cheer the Sick and Poor The Two Ways of Meeting the Poor Church Music A New Crusade A Present and an Everlasting Redolence Chasing the Dead Comfort and Satisfaction 341 CHAPTER XXXV. LIVE CHURCHES. Financial Engagements Promptly Met Half Starved Pastors The Niggardliness of Many Churches Punctuality A Grand Delusion Congregational Singing The Methodist Church En- circles the World A Flourishing Sunday School Vast Multitudes Outside Those Little Feet That Spark of Iniquity Now a Great Army Only a Child Commodious and Appropriate Architecture A Soul Saving Church All Must do their Best 346 CHAPTER XXXVI. MUSIC IN WORSHIP. The Best Music The Scotch Covenanters The Animalculse have their Music The Music of the Bible The First Organist The White Robed Levites What is Appropriate Music Adaptive- ness to Devotion A Distinction Church Psalmody Correctness Spirit and Life Drawling and Stupidity Congregational Our Duty " Gloria in Excelsis." 359 CHAPTER XXXVII. ABOLITION OF SUNDAY. The Sabbath's Sanctity A Seventh Day Rest Necessary for Man and Beast Interesting Testimony Secular Amusements The Grog Shops The People's Rights Opposed to all Infractions A Paris Incident A French Sabbath Compared to an American The May Flower When it will be Destroyed 365 CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE BLOOD. Conscience A Personal Knowledge When Sin is Committed The Moral Man Not Exempt from Sin Astray in Many Directions The Bible's Charge The " Rider on the White Horse." Died for their Faith Different Kinds of Hands At the Sea Beach The Password at the Gate of Heaven 372 CHAPTER XXXIX. CAN THE UNPARDONABLE SIN BE COMMITTED IN OUR TIME? The Sin Against the Holy Ghost Not Possible to Commit that Sin Now An Irrevocable Sin Impossible to Correct Mistakes XVI CONTENTS. God Forgives but Nature Neves Correcting Bad Habits in Children - Incidents and Anecdotes Lost Opportunities Getting Good Usefulness Now is Your Time 378 CHAPTER XL. INTOLERANCE. Difference in Pronunciation Differences in Denominations Liberty of Conscience Agitation Tends to Purification and Moral Health Truth will Conquer Bigotry a Child of Ignorance Causes of Bigotry An Especial Mission People Disgusted Sectarianism How to Build Astor Library English Law Against the Jew Gospel Platforms How to Overthrow Intolerance Christian Charity 385 CHAPTER XLI. THE WITNESS STAND. Science against Inventions Science against the Resurrection of Christ A Play with the Skeptic Testimony versus Argument The Weapon Used in this Conflict We Are Witnesses What It Has Done for Us Conversion Alone Conquers Appetite Power of the Cconforter The World Powerless to Comfort Power to Give Com- posure The Deathbed of the Christian Their Testimony and Tri- umphs ..396 CHAPTER XLII. THE GOSPEL LOOKING-GLASS. The Gospel The Tabernacle The Laver The Looking-glasses Different Mirrors Ourselves Seen as We Are God's Mercies Thank- lessly Received Pride Why so Few Conversions A Laver Nec- essary Fresh Testimony Required Where the Trouble Lies Pervades Man's Whole Nature Washing Imperative, not Optional Comfort 405 CHAPTER XLIII. RELIGION IN DRESS. The First Wardrobe The Goddess of Fashion The Victims of Fashion Fashion with Men Animated Checker Boards Corsets Destroying and Deathful Influences Fraud Expensive Wardrobes Cause of Defaultings Country Dressed to Death The Tragedy of Clothes The Foe of all Alms GivingGreatest Obstacles to Charity "A Love of a Bonnet" Public Worship Distracted Belittles the Intellect No Seat in Heaven for the Devotee of Fashion 415 CONTENTS. XV11 CHAPTER XLIV. THE COMING SERMON. The Sermon of To-Day What Is the Matter Unsuited to the Age Convert the Sermon Full of a Living Christ A Loving Christ A Short Sermon Where the Trouble Lies Europe Thrilled A Popular Sermon Theological Professors Churches Thronged An Awakening Sermon An Everyday Sermon 425 PART III. COALS FOR THE MORAL REALM. CHAPTER XLV. THE GATES OF HELL The Gates Described The Tuilleries Impure Literature Scien- tific and Medical Novelette Literature The Leprous Booksellers Family Libraries Should be Explored The Dissolute Dance Indis- creet Apparel The Fashion Plates of any Age Alcoholic Beverage The Chief Abetter of Sin Gates Swing In Never Outward The Ways of Escape The Christian Press No Soft Sentimentalists Wanted The Return of the Wanderer 435 CHAPTER XLVI. INFLUENCE OF CLUBS. Men Gregarious Herbs and Flowers Secret Soceities Two Specimens of Clubs Profitable or Baleful Influences The Test The Home Moral Bigamy Domestic Shipwrecks The Clubs Sub- stituted for the Home Obituary Easily Written Scions of Aristoc- racy Influence a Man's Commercial Credit Its Influence on One's Sense of Moral and Spiritual Obligation Two Highways Attacks the Best Men The Large Admission Fee Influence of Fathers Upon Their Sons Sacrifice your Money Rather than your Soul. .446 CHAPTER XLVII. HEALTH RESORTS. Watering Places Piety Left at Home Little Piety at Health Resorts Hard to be Good Elders and Deacons Temptations Baleful Influence of Horse Racing The Habitues of Races Dis- honor and Ruin Statement of a Leading Sportsman A Sacrifice of Physical Strength A Poor Rule Hasty and Life-long Alliances Responsible f r Many Domestic Infelicities The Soft-headed Dude XV111 CONTENTS. The Frothy Young Woman Baneful Literature Intoxicating Beverages Arm Yourself Against Temptation 458 CHAPTER XLVIII. THE ROLLER SKATING CRAZE. The Lever Balance Wheel Other Wheels Looking for a Healthful Amusement The World's Temptations The Theater- Does the Roller Skate Recreation Afford Healthful Amusement? Yes, with Restrictions Proper Precautions One Hour's Exercise Daily Great Possibilities Vulgarity of Immodesty A Chaperone Well Dressed Men Flirts Avoid Senseless Prolongation Let the Law of the Parlor Dominate A Craze Deplorable Remember One's Youth A Good Time Solon's Law Recreation an Aug- mentation 470 CHAPTER XLIX. TOBACCO AND OPIUM. The Herb Yucatan its Birth Place Nearly all Use It A Poison Truths Uttered Against the Evil Terrific Unhealth Depresses the Nervous System Creates an Unnatural Thirst The Drunkard's Grave Strewed with Tobacco Leaves Witnesses Incidents Related Killed by Tobacco The Ministry Use It Unnecessary Expense Both Sexes A Brilliant Man White Poppy Its Age The Opiu . Eater God Does not Hear the Prayer of Such Chloral Extirp. tion 484 CHAPTER L. SOCIAL DISSIPATION. Dancing The Round Dance Dancing Universal Ancient Dancing Present Custom God Bless the Young An Abetter of Pride Physical Ruin From Ball Room to Grave Yard Usefulness Spoiled A Belittling Process An Incident Earnest Work A Vast Multitude Destroyed ' 497 CHAPTER LI. SPIRITUALISM AN IMPOSTURE. Mystery Communications Between This and the Next World Fingers of Superstition Modern Spiritualism, an Old Doctrine- Necromancers of Old God's Condemnation of Such Undue Ad- vantage Taken Remarkable Scholarship of Spirits An Affair of Darkness Ruin Physical Health A Marital and Social Curse The World with Spiritualism at the Head Produces Insanity False- hoods Ruins Disciples and Mediums Ruins the Soul 506 CONTENTS. XIX CHAPTER LII BOOKS. The Mighty Agency of the Printing Press Its Chief Agency Good Journalism An Absorbing Question Keep Aloof from Iniqui- tous A List of Good Books Three-fourths of Novels Published are Pernicious False Pictures of Human Life Indiscriminate Readers How to Stem the Tide Books that Corrupt the Imagination George Sand The Criminals of the Country Apologetic for Crime The Penalty The Midnight Reader of Romances Iniquitous Pictorials A Plague Spot The Power of a Bad Book Examine Your Libraries Charge! Charge!! 516 CHAPTER LIII. ARE THEATERS IMPROVING? Progression of the World Great Actors Secular Newspapers' Criticism Depraved Advertisements Importation of Bad Morals Degenerate Players An Awful Decadence East Lynne No Moral Elevation in the Modern Play The Drama An Echo of the Human Soul Advice to Young Men Freshen up your Work Avoid Being Led into Sin 531 CHAPTER LIV. ROMANCE OF CRIME. Halo Around Iniquity The Fascinations Thrown around Crime Fraud Jim Fiske, the Peddler An Irresistible Impression Get- ing One's Hand In The Dishonesties of Commercial Life Gain Obtained by Iniquity Easily Lost Trust Funds Libertinism Unfair Treatment of Female Sex The Pulpit Must Awake Assas- sination Murder Capital Punishment Stand Independent of Evil Influences 541 CHAPTER LV. ABUSE OF TRUST FUNDS. The Dead Treasurer Accounts Squared The Dishonest Fail- ures An Appalling Fact Responsibility- of Officials The Ineffi- cient Bank Director An Orthodox Swindler Loss of Public Confi- dence Banks National Blessings An Epidemic Borrowing Wall Street Speculation Sound the Alarm Religion not a Church Delectation 552 CHAPTER LVI. WALL STREET DEFALCATION. The Great Wall of 1685 Birthplace of the U. S. Government- Coronation and Burial of Fortunes Extravagance Elegances and XX CONTENTS. Refinements No Iron Rule Honest Failures Rare Pay as You Go Superfluities Expenditures for Tobacco and Liquor Cause of Pauperism My Text at the Grave of a Swindler Swindling the Physician and Undertaker Cause of God Impoverished Keep Your Credit Good 563 SECTION IV. COALS FOR THE NATIONAL ARENA. CHAPTER LVII. NATIONAL RUIN. Tomb of a Dead Empire Destruction of Babylon Mortality among Nations A Call of the Roll Political Bribery Legitimate Expenses Purchase of Suffrage Solidifying of Sections Low State of Public Morals The Millionaires of California Son of Cresus How to Save the Nation Who Shall Possess this Nation? Christ or Satan? Who Shall Decide It? 575 CHAPTER LVIII. EASY DIVORCE. Infelicitous Homes Divorce Free Love Advocates Mormon- ism A Positive Law Now on the Statute Books A Pustulous Lit- erature The Laws of the States The Record by States Easy Divorce and Dissoluteness Twin Brothers What we Want Dissat- isfaction no Cause for Divorce Constitutional Amendment Make Divorce Difficult Rigorous Laws A Divine Rage Against all Enemies of the Marriage State Paradise Regained 587 CHAPTER LIX. THE ARCH FIEND OF THE NATIONS. Noah Introduced the Deluge of Drunkenness Unhealthful Stim- ulants The Arch-Fiend's Cauldron of Temptation Greatest Evil of this Nation Statistics Born with a Thirst for Strong Drink The Last Will of the Drunkard Bitters Circulars of a Brewers' Associ- ation A National Evil Suffering Mothers and Children Death's Hand The Drunkard's Home The Boast of Protagoras Political Parties Afraid The Church Teetotalism 599 CONTENTS. XXI CHAPTER LX. THE DEMAND OF GOD AND CIVILIZATION. Political Parties Mormonism A Great Evil Necessity of Im- mediate Settlement of the Question Bigamy Punished Polygamy Unpunished A Plank Anti-Mormonistic Wanted Immigration of Mormons Intermarriage of Nationalities What Are We Doing What Is Demanded The Platforms of Political Parties God's Country Prayer Answered Four Doxologies 613 CHAPTER LXI. BOSSISM. The Village Boss Slavery of American Politics Official Pat- ronage No Peril No Crisis The Old Lion Party Independence Advocated Good Example Cry Partisanship Malediction of Public Men Public Life A Respecter of the Christian Religion Chris- tianity in Politics The Gospel to Be Dominant The Brightest Day in our History 624 CHAPTER LXII. THE CHRISTIANIZED VOTE. The Sacred Chest Holds the Fate of the Nation Ancient Forms of Voting First Introduction of Ballot-Boxes The American Ark of the Covenant Its Curses Ignorance Spurious Voting Intimi- dation Bribery Defamation of Character Opinions of Political Opponents The Rowdy and Drunken Caucus Low Politics The Remedy Property Qualification Thorough Moralization and Chris- tianization 635 CHAPTER LXIII. CAPITAL AND LABOR. Greatest War of the World Strikes Pacification a Failure Folly of Crying Out against the Rich Or by Cynical and Unsym- pathetic Treatment of the Laboring Classes Violence The Golden Rule Applied to Both The Sermon Olivetic Anecdote of Wash- ington Supply and Demand Henry Clay The Greatest Friend to Capital and Labor 647 CHAPTER LXIV. THE MORAL CHARACTER OF CANDIDATES. Wreck of Arabia Petraea The Decalogue The Christly Rule- Statements of Red-Hot Partisanship No Especial Liberty Conferred Unchastity A Moral Leper One Sin Followed by Others All Are Imperfect- -The Man to Select as a Candidate 660 XX11 CONTENTS. CHAPTER LXV. RULERS. Morals of a Nation Seldom Higher than the Virtue of the Rulers American Rulers Superior to all other Nations Public Wicked- ness Incompetency lor Office Intemperance Defeats Legislation Defeated our Armies Bribery Not Wholly American Ras- cality Among Legislatures Revolution Ahead Bonus Siand Aloof Faithfulness at the Ballot- Box Evangelize the People Per- sonal Responsibility 667 CHAPTER LXVI. DEDICATORY PRAYER. Delivered at the Opening of the New Orleans Exposition, De- cember 1 6, 1884 678 T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D. D. Thomas De Witt Talmage was born on the /th of January, 1832, in the village of Bound Brook, Somerset County, N. J. His father was a farmer, and a man of much vigor and consistency of charac- ter ; his mother a woman of energy, hopefulness and equanimity. Both parents were marked in their characteristics, and their differences blended in a common life ren- dered their home one of harmony, consecration, be- nignance and cheerfulness. The father won the confidence and the honors a rigid, common-sense, truly American community had to yield. The mother was the counseling, quietly provident force which made her a helpmeet indeed, and her home the center and sanctuary of the sweetest influences. The family was a deeply religious one. The now far-famed De Witt said on August 12, 1885, at the "Faith Cure" Rooms, Bethshan, Lon- don : " I tell you that I believe in prayer because there is something in the ancestral line that makes me be- lieve. My grandfather and grandmother went to a great revival meeting in Baskingridge, New Jersey, 25 26 BIOGRAPHY. and they were so impressed with the religious service that they went home and said, If we could only have our children converted, if we could only have this great influence in our family ! That night all the young folks were to go off to a very gay party. Grandmother said, ' Now, when you are all ready for the party come into my room, as I have a word to say to you.' She was somewhat of an invalid, not able to get about much. The children came into the room where she sat, and she said, ' Now you are go- ing to the party, going to have a very gay time. I want you to know that all the time you are there your mother is praying for you, and that we will kneel and pray for you until you come back.' They all went to the gay party, and, as may be well sup- posed, did not have a very good time. They knew their mother was praying for them. Grandmother went to bed, and the next morning very early she heard crying and sobbing in the room below. It was one of her little party crying to God for mercy, seek- ing a new heart, wanting to act on the Christian life. My Aunt Phoebe said to grandfather, ' Go down and find what is the matter ; go and hunt up Samuel he is gone to the barn ; he feels worse than I do.' Grandfather went to the barn and found Samuel there kneeling and crying to God for mercy. He told him the way of salvation, so that he became a minister of Jesus Christ, and there was no man more useful in America during the century than he. Then BIOGRAPHY. 27 Samuel said, ' Go to the wagon-house ; David is there.' Grandfather went to the wagon-house. There was David, afterward my own father. He told David the way to the cross. David became a Christian. David, then a young man, had some one to whom he was affianced at the foot of the lane, not far off Catherine Van Nest, afterward my mother. He told the story of the cross to her, and she became a Chris- tian. A great awakening resulted as this story went round the neighborhood, and people heard what things were going on in Mr. Talmage's family. Why, they were all getting converted, and the whole family were converted to God. And finally, as many as two hundred and eighty from that neighborhood stood up in one church to profess Christ. That story lingered in my mother's mind until she made a cove- nant, after her children were born> with five of her neighbors, to meet and pray one afternoon of each week for the salvation of her household. These five mothers met. I did not hear this story till after my mother's death. Nobody knew why these five persons met, there was a sort of mystery about it. Sometimes the question was put, ' Mother, where are you going?' She used to answer, ' I am just going off a little while.' They met to pray for their chil- dren ; they prayed until they were all converted, my- self the last. Oh ! I believe in prayer. 1 believe you can get just what you ask of God if it is good for you. This story has no end." 28 BIOGRAPHY. From a period ante-dating the Revolution, the an. cestors of our subject were members of the Reformed Dutch Church, in which the father of Dr. Talmage was the leading lay office-bearer through a life ex- tended beyond fourscore years, and of his numerous family, four sons are ministers of the Gospel, of whom our subject is the youngest. The story of his life is a simple one. He became a Christian before he was twenty ; took the course of study preparatory to college, much the same as other young men, and was graduated at the New York University, in 1853. His earliest preference was the law, the study of which he pursued for a year after his graduation, but the unrest within him, the voice of which soon be- came, "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel," turned his steps toward the ministry, and he entered the New Brunswick, (N. J^) Theological Seminary preparatory thereto. This step was extremely gratifying to his parents, and thereby one of their fondest hopes was realized, although they had not urged the course. He was plainly led of the Lord, and not man. The faculties which would have made him one of the greatest jury advocates of the age, thus were pre- served for the saving of the souls of men, and "He leadeth me," was written in living letters of light over the entrance to his lifework. The first years of his ministerial life seem to have been disciplinary initial steps to his great mission, that of the pastorate of the Church of the Brooklyn BIOGRAPHY. 29 Tabernacle. His first settlement was at Belleville. New Jersey. For three years he there underwent an excellent practical education in the conventional ministry. His congregation was one of the most cultivated and exacting in the rural regions of that sterling little State. It was known to be about the oldest society of Protestantism in New Jersey. Jts records, as preserved, run back over two hundred years, but it is known to have had a strong life the larger part of a century or more. Its structure is regarded as one of the finest of any country congre- gation in the United States. The value (and the limits) of sterotyped preaching, and what he did not know, came as an instructive and disillusionizing force to the theological tyro of Belleville. There also came and remained, strong friendships, inspiring re- vivals, and sacred counsels. By natural promotion, three years at Syracuse suc- ceeded three at Belleville. That cultivated, critical city furnished Mr. Talmage the value of an audience, in which professional men predominate in influence. His preaching there grew tonic and free. As Mr. Pitt advised a young friend, he "risked himself." The church grew from few to many from a state of coma to robust life. The preacher learned to go to school to humanity and his own heart. The lessons they taught him agreed with what was boldest and most compelling in the spirit of the revealed Word. But those whose claims were sacred to him, found 30 BIOGRAPHY. the saline climate of Syracuse a cause of unhealth. Otherwise it is likely that one of the most delightful regions in the United States for men of letters who equally love nature and culture Central New York would have been the home of Mr. Talmage for life. From Syracuse he went to Philadelphia, where he spent seven years. Here his powers got "set." He learned what he could best do. He had the courage of his consciousness, and he did it. Previously, he might have felt it incumbent upon him to give to pulpit traditions the homage of compliance, though at Syracuse, "the more excellent way" any man's own way, provided he have the divining gift of genius and the nature attune to all high sympathies and purposes had in glimpses come to him. He realized that it was his duty and mission in the world to make it hear the gospel. The church was not to him a select few, an organization, a monopoly. It was meant to be the conqueror and transformer of the world. For seven years he wrought with much suc- cess on this theory, all the time realizing that his plans could come to fullness only under conditions that enabled him to build from the bottom up, an or- ganization which could get nearer the masses, and which would have no precedents to hamper it, and no traditional ghosts to stand in its pathway. At the end of this time he was called simultaneously to three churches one in San Francisco, one in Chi- BIOGRAPHY. 31 cago, and one in Brooklyn. That in Brooklyn was poor ; it was on the eve of dissolution ; it possessed but nineteen male members ; its need was greatest, its power was least. To Brooklyn he went, and from being the leading preacher in Philadelphia, he became the leading preacher in the world. His work here is known by all. It began in a cramped brick rectangle, capable of holding 1200. In less than two years that was exchanged for an iron structure, with raised seats, the interior curved like a horseshoe, the pulpit a platform bridging the ends. It held 3,000 persons. It lasted just long enough to revolutionize church architecture in cities into har- mony with common sense. Smaller duplicates of it started in every quarter, three in Brooklyn, two in New York, one in Montreal, one in Louisville, any number in Chicago, two in San Francisco, and like numbers abroad. Then it was burned, and the pres- ent stately and sensible structure rose in its place. Gothic, of brick and stone, cathedral-like above, am- phitheatre-like below, it seats 5,000 persons, and it is said that 7,000 can be .accommodated within its walls. In a large sense the people built these edifices. Their architects were Leonard Vaux and John Welch respectively. It is sufficiently indicative to say in general of Dr. Talmage's work in the Tabernacle, that his audiences are always as many as the place will hold ; that twenty-three papers in Christendom statedly publish his entire sermons and Friday night 32 BIOGRAPHY. discourses, exclusive of the dailies of the United States ; that the papers girdle the globe, being pub- lished in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, Toronto, Montreal, St. Johns, Sidney, Mel- bourne, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Raleigh, Kansas City, New York, and many other places. No other preacher addresses so many constantly. The words of no other preacher were ever before carried by so many types, or carried so far. He has three con- tinents for a church, and the English-speaking world for a congregation. To pulpit labors of this respon- sibility should be added considerable pastoral work, the conduct of the Lay College, and constantly recur- ring lecturing and literary work, to fill out the public life of a very busy man. The judgment of his generation will be divided upon him just as that of the next will not. That he is a topic in every newspaper is much more signifi- cant than the fact of what treatment it gives him. Only men of genius are universally commented on. That the universality of the comment makes friends and foes proves the fact of genius. This is what is impressive. As for the quality of the comment, it will, in nine cases out of ten, be much more a revela- tion of the character behind the pen which writes it than a true view or review of the man. It can be truly said that while secular criticism in the United States favorably regards our subject in proportion to its intelligence and uprightness, the judgment of BIOGRAPHY. 33 foreigners on him has long been an index to the judg- ment that is beginning to prevail here. No other American is read so much or so constantly abroad. Previous fo his visit to Europe, in the summer of 1885, he had declined all invitations to preach or lec- ture, as he needed rest, but some friendly pressure induced him to change his determination. The ser- mon he preached in London was delivered in the celebrated Wesleyan Chapel, behind which is the grave of John Wesley, and in front of which is Bun- hill Burial Ground, where lie the bones of John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, Daniel DeFoe, and Home Tooke. The preacher referred in his sermon to this hallowed ground. The Chapel was crowded to suf- focation. During the indoor services several thou- sand people stood in the front graveyard and in the street, impeding travel, and awaiting Dr. Talmage outside. After the regular service he came into the church porch and addressed the multitude in full voice, and then with a smiling face gave out a stirring hymn, after singing which the populace made the policemen happy by again freeing the thoroughfare. Later in the season he preached in the United Presbyterian Synod Hall, Edinburgh, the service be- ginning at half-past two o'clock. Long before mid- day people desirous of being present began to assem- ble at the main entrance, and on account of the number who had arrived by twelve o'clock it was resolved to open the doors. In less than an hour the 34 BIOGRAPHY. spacious building was filled in every part, all the passages and some of the windows even being occupied. The doors were closed shortly after one o'clock, those outside in Castle Terrace, numbering several thousands, being informed by means of bills which were exhibited, that the hall was full. The crowd continued to increase as time wore on, very much disappointment evidently being felt at being unable to gain admission. About two o'clock, how- ever, an intimation that Dr. Talmage would in the course of the afternoon address the gathering in Cas- tle Terrace seemed to afford relief. Meanwhile, sev- eral of Sankey's hymns were being sung inside by a choir, aud shortly before the appointed time for the commencement of the services, Dr. Talmage made his appearance on the platform, accompanied by Mrs. Talmage, and their son and two daughters. After devotional exercises Professor Calderwood having engaged in prayer Dr. Talmage gave out as his text, " I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth." (Joel 2 : 30.) At the close of the proceedings Dr. Talmage shook hands with as many of the people as could get near him, but the crowd pressed forward in such a way that those in the front ranks were crushed to an un- comfortable degree, and this put a temporary check upon the leave-taking. Dr. Talmage then re-entered the building, and made his way to the rear of the hall, where a cab was in waiting for himself and fam- BIOGRAPHY. 35 ily. Upon his appearance a crowd rapidly assembled, eager to shake hands with him, and crowded around the cab in such a way that it could not move until the police cleared a passage. A few gentlemen jumped upon the cab steps, ladies got their dresses soiled with mud by rubbing against the wheels, and some more adventurous than others, got their toes crushed by the wheels. Dr. Talmage then stood and shook hands over the back of the cab as hard as he was able, and it was not until Lothian Road was reached that the efforts of the police in keeping back the crowd were no longer needed. His extraordinary imagination, earnestness, des- criptive powers and humor, his great art in grouping and arrangement, his wonderful mastery of words to illumine and alleviate human conditions, and to inter- pret and inspire the harmonies of the better nature, are appreciated by all who can put themselves in sympathy with his originality of methods, and his high consecration of purpose. His manner mates with his nature. It is each sermon in action. He presses the eyes, hands, his entire body, into the ser- vice of the illustrative truth. Gestures are the ac- companiment of what he says. As he stands out before the immense throng, without a scrap of notes or manuscript before him, the effect produced cannot be understood by those who have never seen it. The solemnity, the tears, the awful hush, as though the audience could not breathe again, are oftimes painful. 36 BIOGRAPHY. His voice is peculiar, not musical, but productive of startling, strong effects, such as characterize no preacher on either side of the Atlantic. His power to grapple an audience and master it from text to peroration has no equal. No man was ever less self- conscious in his work. He feels a mission of evange- lization on him as by the imposition of the Supreme. That mission he responds to by doing the duty that is nearest to him with all his might as confident that he is under the care and order of a Divine Master as those who hear him are that they are under the spell of the greatest prose-poet that ever made the Gospel his song, and the redemption of the race the passion of his heart. Now in the full meridian of his powers, the arena of his life-work constantly widening before him, long may he be spared to enrich the world with the ema- nations of his genius, and to gather souls into the great Harvest-Home of the blessed Lord and Master. On the return of Dr. Talmage, September 14, 1885, a large number of his congregation chartered a steamer, and went down the Bay to meet him. On the 1 5th a formal welcome was given him in Brooklyn Tabernacle. Never in the history of the Brooklyn Tabernacle had there been such an immense audience. From seven o'clock, the hour at which the doors were opened, a steady stream of humanity poured into the church, filled the galleries and the main floor, crowded around BIOGRAPHY. 37 the organ and choir, filled the many aisles and the wide, semi-circular corridor, and stretched far out into the street. It was not a gathering representative of any particular sect or church, but it was an assem- blage of the Christian people of Brooklyn. That it was from the Christian people of the city rather than from Dr. Talmage's congregation was demonstrated by the presence of the clergymen of different denom- inations who were there to welcome the great divine. The platform in the church was profusely decorated with flowers for the occasion. A large floral arch over six feet high, composed of white and red roses, astreax, smilax, camelias, acacia roses, carnations, and chrysanthemum roses, was stationed in the center of the platform beside the presiding officer's chair. On the arch were inscribed in red roses the words, "Welcome Home." On either side of the platform were immense stands of gladioli palms, ferns, and other plants. Immediately above the organ was a large floral urn surmounted by red and white roses. At eight o'clock the sound of cheering was heard through the open door of the Tabernacle. Every head was turned doorward to catch a glimpse of Rev. Dr. Talmage as he entered the church. The dense crowd gave way on either side, and a storm of applause greeted him. The solemnity usually ob- served in a church was for a moment forgotten. The sound of the organ from which welled forth the strains of the well-known "Hail to the Chief" mingled 38 BIOGRAPHY. with the applause, and the welcome was happy and most spontaneous. Dr. Talmage himself appeared to feel it as he walked down the aisle. The scene on the street during the first part of the welcoming exercises was a remarkable one. The church was crowded in every part before eight o'clock, but long after that hour people kept coming toward the Tabernacle. When they found that en- trance was impossible they stood before the door. Soon the crowd increased to great dimensions, and extended nearly the length of the block. As he shook hands with the chairman, Rev Henry Ward Beccher, the plaudits of the assembled thou- sands reverberated through the vast auditorium. The organ played " Home Again," and when the audience had sung " Praise God from whom all blessings flow," every one thought the welcome most complete. Addresses and music followed, and a welcome was given by the children of the infant class. A bright- eyed, fair-haired little girl, bearing a large basket of exquisite flowers, was conducted to the platform, and stepping to Dr. Talmage she made a pleasant little presentation speech, in which she expressed the pleasure of the Sunday-school that the beloved pas- tor was back again among his people. Dr. Talmage, in his response to the ovation, among other things, said: " We found everywhere that the best password in BIOGRAPHY. 39 Europe is the word America. [Applause.] That opens all the doors, and that wins all the suavities. The fact is, they have their kindred on this side the sea. Brothers and sisters on that side, brothers and sisters on this side. They have forgotten all the un- pleasantness we had in 1776, and 1 have no doubt they will forgive us the fact that yesterday in the boat race the Puritan came in sixteen minutes before the Genesta. " Fellow-citizens of all callings and professions and trades, men of the law, men of the healing art, men of the editorial chair, men of merchandise, men of mechanism, and all the wives and mothers and sisters and daughters of the dear homes of Brooklyn, you cannot understand how deep an impression you have made upon me by the flowers and the music and the speeches and the genial appearance of your own countenances. You have put me under everlasting obligation, and have mortgaged me for industrious Christian service all my life long. Shoulder to shoulder let us stand in the great work of trying to make the world better, and then may we rest not very far apart in the adjoining gardens of the dead, and may God grant us all to rise in the resurrection of the just, when the heavens are no more." Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh, who had been One of Dr. Talmage's hosts across the water, said in his address on this occasion : " Up to this particular moment I thought I was the 4O BIOGRAPHY. most fortunate man in creation, because such a sight as this I don't know as it has ever been seen in America before ; it has not been seen, I believe, on my side of the Atlantic. We have no place in Edin- burgh where it was possible for the people who wanted to hear Dr. Talmagc to get near him. I ven- tured myself that Sabbath afternoon, having with me some of my own family and a daughter of the Lord Mayor of London, all very eager to hear your great pastor ; but I could not get within a street's length of the place where the crowds were gathered around the doors. We counted ourselves extremely fortu- nate that he was good enough to come and take dinner with us in our county house in Midlothian. At that dinner-table there was a little maid from the far-off highlands of Sutherlandshire who asked : ' Is the Dr. Talmage who is to be at dinner to-day the great Dr. Talmage whose sermons we all read ? ' When she was told ' Yes,' she clapped her hands and said, ' I will write to my mother that I had the honor of wait- ing on Dr. Talmage.' From the highest to the low- est we hold his name in reverence and in love." PART I. fop the Individual, CHAPTER I. BUSINESS LIFE. We are under the impression that the moil and tug of business life are a prison into which a man is thrust, or that it is an unequal strife where unarmed, a man goes forth to contend. Business life was intended of God for grand and glorious education and discipline, and if I shall be helped to say what I want to say, I shall rub some of the wrinkles of care out of your brow, and unstrap some of the burdens from your back. Business life was intended as a school of energy. God gives us a certain amount of raw material out of which we are to hew our character. Our faculties are to be reset, rounded, and sharpened up. Our young folks having graduated from school or college need a higher education, that which the rasping and collision of everyday life alone can effect. Energy is wrought out only in a fire. After a man has been in business activity ten, twenty, thirty years, his energy is not to be measured by weights, or plummets, or ladders. There is no height it cannot scale, and there is no depth it cannot fathom, and there is no obstacle it cannot thrash., Now, my brother, why did God put you in that school of energy ? Was it merely that you might be a yardstick to measure cloth, or a steelyard to weigh flour ? Was it merely that you might be better quali- 43 44 BUSINESS LIKE. fied to chaffer and higgle? No. God placed you in that school of energy that you might be developed for Christian work. If the undeveloped talents in the Christian churches of to-day were brought out and thoroughly harnessed, I believe the whole earth would be converted to God in a twelvemonth. There are so many deep streams that are turning no mill-wheels, and that are harnessed to no factory- bands. Now, God demands the best lamb out of every Hock. He demands the richest sheaf of every har- vest. He demands the best men of every generation. A cause in which Newton, and Locke, and Mansfield toiled, you and I can afford to toil in. Oh, fora fewer idlers in the cause of Christ, and for more Christian workers, men who shall take the same energy that from Monday morning to Saturday night they put forth for the achievement of a livelihood, or the gathering of a fortune, and on Sabbath days put it forth to the advantage of Christ's kingdom, and the bringing of men to the Lord. Dr. Duff visited, he said, in South Wales, and he saw a man who had inherited a great fortune. The man said to him : " I had to be very busy for many years of my life getting my livelihood. After a while this fortune came to me, and there has been no neces- sity that I toil since. There came a time when I said to myself, ' Shall I now retire from business, or shall 1 go on and serve the Lord in my worldly occupa- tion?" He said : " I resolved on the latter, and I have been more industrious in commercial circles than 1 ever was before, and since that hour I have never kept a farthing for myself. I have thought it to be a victory or to death. Martin Luther turned his great eye on an assassin who came to tnke his life, and the villain fled. Under the glance of the human eye the tiger, with five times a man's strength, snarls back into the African jungle. The Earl of Bridgewater, in his last will and testa- ment bequeathed $40,000 for essavs to be written on the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in creation, and Sir Charles Bell, the British surgeon, fresh from Corunna and Waterloo, where he had been tending the wounded and study- ing the formation of the human body amid the ampu- tating horrors of the battlefield, accepted the invitation to write one of those Bridgewater treatises, and he wrote his book on the human hand a book that will live as long as the world lives. 1 have only hinted at the splendors, the glories, the wonders, the divine revelations, the apocalypses of the human eye, and 1 stagger back from the awful portals of the physiological miracle which must have taxed the ingenuity of a God, to cry out: "He that formed the eye, shall He not see ?" Shall Herschel not know as much as his telescope? Shall Fraunhofer not know as much as his spectroscope? Shall Swam- THE EYE. 95 merdain not know as much as his microscope ? Shall Dr. Hookc not know as much as his micrometer? Shall the thing formed know more than its maker? "He that formed the eye, shall He not see?" The recoil of this question is tremendous. We stand at the center of a vast circumference of obser- vation. No privacy. On us, eyes of cherubim, eyes of seraphim, eyes of archangel, eyes of God. We may not be able to see the inhabitants of other worlds, but perhaps they may be able to see us. We have not optical instruments strong enough to descry them ; perhaps they have optical instruments strong enough to descry us. The mole can not see the eagle mid-air, but the eagle mid-sky can see the mole mid- grass. We are able to see mountains and caverns oi another world ; but perhaps the inhabitants of other worlds can see the towers of our cities, the flash of our seas, the marching of our processions, the white robes of our weddings, the black scarfs of our obsequies. It passes out from the guess into the posi- tive, when we are told in the Bible that the inhab- itants of other worlds do come or convey to this. Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to min- ister to those who shall be heirs of salvation? Oh, the eye of God, so full of pity, so full of power, so full of love, so full of indignation, so full of compas- sion, so full of mercy. How it peers through the darkness. How it outshines the day. How it glares upon the offender. How it beams on the penitent soul. Talk about the human eye as being indescrib- ably wonderful how much more wonderful the great, searching, overwhelming eye of God. All eternity past and all eternity to come on that retina. The eyes with which we look into each other's face 96 THE EYE. to-day suggest it. It stands written twice on your face and twice on mine, unless through casualty one or both have been obliterated. "He that formed the eye, shall He not see ?" Oh, the eye of God. It sees our sorrows to assuage them, sees our perplex- ities to disentangle them, sees our wants to sympa- thize with them. If we fight Him back, the eye of an antagonist. If we ask His grace, the eye of an everlasting friend. CHAPTER VIII. THE EAR. Architecture is one of the most fascinating arts, and the study of Egyptian, Grecian, Etruscan, Ro- man, Byzantine, Moorish, Renaissance styles of building, has been to many a man a sublime life- work. Lincoln and York Cathedrals, St. Paul's and St. Peter's; and Arch of Titus, and Theban Temple, and Alhambra, and Parthenon, are the monuments to the genius of those who built them. But more won- derful than any arch they ever lifted, or any transept window they ever illumined, or any Corinthian col- umn they ever crowned, or any Gothic cloister the} ever elaborated, is the human ear. Among the most skillful and assiduous physi ologists of our time have been those who have giver their time to the examination of the ear, and the studying of its arches, its walls, its floor, its canals, it! aqueducts, its galleries, its intricacies, its convulsions, its divine machinery, and yet, it will take another thousand years before the world comes to any ade- quate appreciation of what God did when Heplanned and executed the infinite and overmastering archi tecture of the human ear. The most of it is invisible and the microscope breaks down in the attempt at exploration. The cartilage which we call the ear is only the storm door of the great temple clear down out of sight, next door to the immortal soul. 97 7 98 THE EAR. Such scientists as Hclmholtz, and Conte, and De Blainville, and Rank, and Buck, have attempted to walk the Appian Way of the human ear, but the mys- terious pathway has never been fully trodden but by two feet the foot of sound and the foot of God. Three ears on each side the head the external ear, the middle ear, the internal ear, but all connected by most wonderful telegraphy. The external ear in all ages adorned by precious stones or precious metals. The Temple of Jerusalem, partly built by the contribution of earrings, and Homer, in the Iliad, speaks of Hera, the three bright drops, her glittering gems suspended from the ear; and many of the adornments of our day are only copies of ear-jewels found to-day in Pompeiian mu- seum and Etruscan vase. But while the outer ear may be adorned by human art, the middle and the internal ear are adorned and garnished only by the hand of the Lord God Almighty. The stroke of a key of this organ sets the air vibrating, and the ear catches the undulating sound, and passes it on through the bonelets of the middle ear to the in- ternal ear, which is filled with liquid, and that liquid again vibrates until the three thousand fibers of the human brain take up the vibration, and roll the sound on into the soul. The hidden machinery of the ear, by physiologists called by the names of things familiar to us, like the hammer, something to strike like the anvil, some- thing to be smitten like the stirrup of the saddle with which we mount the steed like the drum, beaten in the march like the harp strings, to be swept by music. Coiled like a snail shell, by which one of the innermost passages of the ear is actually THE EAR. 99 called like a stairway, the sound to ascend like a bent tube of a heating apparatus, taking that \vhich enters round and round like a labyrinth with won- derful passages into which the thought enters only to be lost in bewilderment. The middle ear filled with air, the medium of the sound as it passes to the in- ternal ear filled with liquid a muscle contracting when the noise is too loud, just as the pupil of the eye contracts when the light is too glaring. The ex- ternal ear is defended by wax, which with its bitter- ness, discourages insectile invasion. The internal car embedded in what is by far the hardest bone of the human system, a very rock of strength and defiance. The ear, so strange a contrivance, that by the esti- mates of one scientist, it can catch the sound of seventy-three thousand seven hundred vibrations in a second. The outer ear taking in all kinds of sound, whether the crash of an avalanche, or the hum of a bee. The sound passing to the inner door of the outside ear, halts until another mechanism, divine mechanism, passes it on by the bonelets of the middle ear, and coming to the inner door of the second ear, the sound has no power to come further until another divine mechanism passes it on through into the inner ear, and then the sound swims the liquid until it comes to the rail-track of the brain branchlet, and rolls on and on until it comes to sensation, and there the curtain drops, and a hundred gates shut, and the voice of God seems to say to all human inspection : " Thus far and no farther." In this vestibule of the palace of the soul, how many kings of thought, of medicine, of physiology, have done penance of lifelong study, and got no ICO THE EAR. further than the vestibule. Mysterious home of re- verberation and echo. Grand Central Depot of sound. Headquarters to which there come quick dispatches, part the way by cartilage, part the way by air, part the way by bone, part the way by water, part the way by nerve the slowest dispatch plung- ing into the ear at the speed of one thousand and ninety feet a second. Small instrument of music on which is played all the music you ever hear, from the grandeurs of an August thunderstorm to the softest breathings of a flute. Small instrument of music, only a quarter of an inch of surface and the thinness of one two hun- dred and fiftieth part of an inch, and that thinness divided into three layers. In that ear musical staff, lines, spaces, bar and rest. A bridge leading from the outside natural world to the inside spiritual world ; we seeing the abutment at this end of the bridge, but the fog of an uplifted mystery hiding the abutment at the other end of the bridge. Whisper- ing gallery of the soul. The human voice is God's eulogy to the ear. That voice capable of producing seventeen trillion, five hundred and ninety-two bil- lion, one hundred and eighty-six million, forty-four thousand, four hundred and fifteen sounds, and all that variety made, not for the regalement of beast or bird, but for the human ear. Struggling on up from six years of age when he was left fatherless, Wagner rose from the obloquy of the world, and oft-times all nations seemingly against him, until he gained the favor of a king, and won the enthusiasm of the opera houses of Europe and America. Struggling all the way on to seventy years of age, to conquer the world's ear. THE EAR. IO3 In that same attempt to master the human ear and gain supremacy over this gate of the immortal soul, great battles were fought by Mozart, Gluck and Weber, and by Beethoven and Meyerbeer, by Ros- sini, and by all the roll of German and Italian and French composers, some of them in the battle leaving their blood on the keynotes and the musical scores. Great battle fought for the ear fought with baton, with organ pipe, with trumpet, with cornet-a-piston, with all ivory and brazen and silver and golden weapons of the orchestra ; royal theatre and cathe- dral and academy of music the fortresses of the con- test for the ear. England and Egypt fought for the supremacy of the Suez Canal, and the Spartans and the Persians fought for the defile at Thermopylae, but the musicians of all ages have fought for the mastery of the auditory canal and the defile of the immortal soul and the Thermopylae of struggling cadences. For the conquest of the ear, Haydn struggled. on up from the garret where he had neither fire nor food, on and on until under the too great nervous strain of hearing his own oratorio of the " Creation " performed, he was carried out to die, but leaving as his legacy to the world 118 symphonies, 163 pieces for the baritone, 1 5 masses, 5 oratorios, 42 German and Italian songs, 39 canons, 365 English and Scotch songs with accompaniment, and 1536 pages of libretti. All that to capture the gate of the body that swings in from the tympanum to the snail shell lying on the beach of the ocean of the immortal soul. To conquer the ear, Handel struggled on from the time when his father would not let him go to school lest he learn the gamut and become a musician, and from the time when he was allowed in the organ loft IO4 THE EAR. just to play after the audience had left, one volun- tary, to the time when he left to all nations his unparalleled oratorios of " Esther," " Deborah," "Samson," "Jephthah," "Judas Maccabeus," " Israel in Egypt," and the " Messiah," the soul of the great German composer still weeping in the dead march of our great obsequies, and triumphing in the raptures of every Easter morn. To conquer the ear and take this gate of the im- mortal soul, Schubert composed his immortal "Sere- nade," writing the staves of the music on the bill of fare in a restaurant, and went on until he could leave as a legacy to the world over a thousand magnificent compositions in music. To conquer the ear and take this gate of the soul's castle, Mozart struggled on through poverty until he came to a pauper's grave, and one chilly, wet afternoon the body of him who gave to the world the " Requiem " and the " G-minor Symphony " was crunched in on the top of two other paupers into a grave which to this day is epitaphless. For the ear everything mellifluous, from the birth hour when our earth was wrapped in swaddling clothes of light and serenaded by other worlds, from the time when Jubal thrummed the first harp and pressed a key of the first organ, down to the music of this Sabbath morn. Yea, for the ear the coming overtures of heaven, for whatever other part of the body may be left in the dust, the ear, we know, is to come to celestial life ; otherwise, why the " harpers harping with their harps"? For the ear, carol of lark and whistle of quail, and chirp of cricket, and dash of cascade, and roar of tides oceanic, and doxology of worshipful assembly and minstrelsy, cherubic, seraphic, and archangelic. For the ear all THE EAR. 105 Pandean pipes, all flutes, all clarionets, all hautboys, all bassoons, all bells, and all organs Luzerne and Westminster Abbey, and Freyburg, and Berlin, and all the organ pipes set across Christendom, and great Giant's Causeway for the monarchs of music to pass over. For the ear, all chimes, all ticking of chro- nometers, all anthems, all dirges, all glees, all choruses, all lullabies, all orchestration. Oh, the ear, the God-honored ear, grooved with divine sculpture, and poised with divine gracefulness, and upholstered with curtains of divine embroidery, and corridored by divine carpentry, and pillared with divine architecture, and chiseled in bone of divine masonry, and conquered by processions of divine marshaling. The ear! A perpetual point of inter- rogation, asking how, a perpetual point of apostrophe appealing to God. None but God could plan it. None but God could build it. None but God could work it. None but God could keep it. None but God could understand it. None but God could explain it. Oh, the wonders of the human ear. How surpass- ingly sacred the human ear. You had better be careful how you let the sound of blasphemy or un- cleanness step into that holy of holies. The Bible says that in the ancient temple the priest was set apart by the putting of the blood of a ram on the tip of the ear, the right ear of the priest. But, my friends, we need all of us to have the sacred touch of ordination on the hanging lobe of both ears, and on the arches of the ears, on the Eustachian tube of the ear, on the mastoid cells of the ear, on the tympanic cavity of the ear, and on everything from the outside rim of the outside ear clear in to the point where sound steps off the auditory nerve and rolls on down Id6 THE EAR. into the unfathomable depths of the immortal soul. The Bible speaks of "dull ears," and of "uncircum- ciscd ears," and of " itching ears," and of " rebellious ears," and of "open ears," and of those who have all the organs of hearing and yet who seem to be deaf, for it cries to them : " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." Oh, yes, my friends, we have been looking for God too far away instead of looking for Him close by and in our own organism. We go up into the conserva- tory and look through the telescope and see God in Jupiter, and God in Saturn, and God in Mars; but we could see more of Him through the microscope of an aurist. No king is satisfied with only one resi- dence, and in France it has been St. Cloud and Ver- sailles and the Tuilleries, and in Great Britain it has been Windsor and Balmoral, and Osborne. A ruler does not always prefer the larger. The King of earth and heaven may have larger castles and greater palaces, but I do not think there is any one more curiously wrought than the human ear. The heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, and yet He says He finds room to dwell in a contrite heart, and I think, in a Christian ear. We have been looking for God in the infinite let us look for Him in the infinitesimal. God walking the corridor of the ear, God sitting in the gallery of the human ear, God speaking along the auditory nerve of the ear, God dwelling in the ear to hear that which comes from the outside, and so near the brain and the soul He can hear all that transpires there. The Lord of hosts encamping under the curtains of membrane. Palace of the Almighty in the human ear. The rider on the white horse of the Apocalypse THE EAR. ID/ thrusting his hand into the loop of bone which the physiologist has been pleased to call the stirrup of the ear. When a soul prays, God does not sit bolt upright until the prayer travels immensity and climbs to His ear. The Bible says He bends clear over. In more than one place Isaiah said He bowed down His ear. In more than one place the Psalmist said He inclined His ear, by which I come to believe that God puts His ear so closely down to your lips that He can hear your faintest whisper. It is not God away off up yonder ; it is God away down here, close up, so close that when you pray to Him, it is not more a whisper than a kiss. Ah ! yes, He hears the captive's sigh and the plash of the orphan's tear, and the dying syllables of the shipwrecked sailor driven on the Skerries, and the infant's " Now I lay me down to sleep," as distinctly as He hears the fortissimo of brazen bands in the Dusseldorf festival, as easily as He hears the salvo of artillery when the thirteen squares of English troops open all their batteries at once at Waterloo. The phonograph is a newly-invented instrument which holds not only the words you utter, but the very tones of your voice, so that a hundred years from now, that instrument turned, the very words you now utter and the very tone of your voice will be reproduced. Wonderful phonograph. As of our beloved dead we keep a lock of hair, or picture of the features, so the time will come when we will be able to keep the tones of their voices and the words they uttered. So that, if now dear friends should speak into the phonograph some words of affection, and then they should be taken away from us, years 108 THE EAR. from now, from that instrument we could unroll the words they uttered, and the very tones of their voice. But m'ore wonderful is God's power to hold, to re- tain. Ah! what delightful encouragement for our prayers. What an awful fright for our hard speeches. What assurance of warm-hearted sympathy for all our griefs. CHAPTER IX. YOUR PEDIGREE. This question of heredity is a mighty question. The longer I live the more I believe in blood good blood, bad blood, proud blood, humble blood, honest blood, thieving blood, heroic blood, cowardly blood. The tendency may skip a generation or two, but it is sure to come out, as in a little child you sometimes see a similarity to a great-grandfather whose picture hangs on the wall. That the physical, and mental, and moral qualities are inheritable is patent to any one who keeps his eyes open. The similarity is so striking sometimes as to be amusing. Great families, regal or literary, are apt to have the characteristics all down through the generations, and what is more perceptible in such families, may be seen on a smaller scale in all families. A thousand years have no power to obliterate the difference. The large lip of the House of Austria is seen in all the generations, and is called the Hapsburg lip. The House of Stuart always means, in all generations, cruelty, and bigotry, and sensuality. Witness Mary, Queen of Scots. Witness Charles I. and Charles II. Witness James I. and James II., and all the other scoundrels of that imperial line. Scottish blood means persistence, English blood means reverence for the ancient, Welsh blood means religiosity, Dan- ish blood means fondness for the sea, Indian blood 109 110 YOUR I'EDICKEE. means roaming disposition, Celtic blood means fer- vidly, Roman blood means conquest. The Jewish facility for accumulation you may trace clear back to Abraham, of whom the Bible says, " He was rich in silver, and gold, and cattle," and to Isaac and Jacob, who had the same charac- teristics. Some families are characterized by long- evity, and they have a tenacity of life positively Methuselish. Others art characterized by Goliathan stature, and you can see it for one generation, two generations, five generations, in all the generations. Vigorous theology runs on in the line of the Alexan- ders. Tragedy runs on in the family of the Kembles. Literature runs on in the line of the Trollopes. Phi- lanthropy runs on in the line of the Wilberforces. Statesmanship runs on in the line of the Adamses. Henry and Catherine, of Navarre, religious, all their family religious. The celebrated family of the Casini, all mathematicians. The celebrated family of the Medici grandfather, son, and Catherine all remark- able for keen intellect. The celebrated family of Gustavus Adolphus all warriors. This law of heredity asserts itself without refer- ence to social or political condition, for you some- times find the ignoble in high place, and the honorable in obscure place. A descendant of Edward I. a toll- gatherer. A descendant of Edward III. a door- keeper. A descendant of the Duke of Northumber- land a trunk-maker. Some of the mightiest families of England arc extinct, while some of those most honored in the peerage go back to an ancestry of hard knuckles and rough exterior. This law of heredity en- tirely independent of social or political condition. Then you find avarice, and jealousy, and sensuality, YOUR PEDIGREE. Ill and fraud having full swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William is the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not a theory to be set forth by worldly philosophy only, but by divine authority. Do you not remember how the Bible speaks of " a chosen generation," of " the generation of the righteous," of " the generation of vipers," of an " untoward generation," of " a stubborn genera- tion," of " the iniquity of the past visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation " ? " Well, says some one, " that theory discharges me from all responsibility. Born of sanctified parents, we are bound to be good, and we cannot help our- selves. Born of unrighteous parentage, we are bound to be evil, and we cannot help ourselves." As much as if you should say, "The centripeta' force in nature has a tendency to bring everything to the center, and therefore all things come to the center. The centrifugal force in nature has a tend- ency to throw out everything to the periphery, and therefore everything will go out to the periphery." You know as well as I know that you can make the centripetal overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father, President Burr, the consecrated ; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the scourge of New York soci- ety seventy years ago, who had a Christian ancestry ; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of this day are those who have -come of an ancestry of which it would not be courteous to speak in their presence. 112 YOUR PEDIGREE. If you have come of a Christian ancestry, then you are solemnly bound to preserve and develop the glorious inheritance ; or if you have come of a de- praved ancestry, then it is your duty to brace your- self against the evil tendency by all prayer and Chris- tian determination, and you are to find out what are the family frailties, and in arming the castle put the strongest guard at the weakest gate. With these smooth stones from the brook I hope to strike you, not where David struck Goliath, in the head, but where Nathan struck David, in the heart. First, I accost all those who are descended of a Christian ancestry. I do not ask if your parents were perfect. There are no perfect people now, and I do not suppose there were any perfect people then. Perhaps there was sometimes too much blood in their eye when they chastised you. But from what I know of you, you got no more than you deserved, and perhaps a little more chastisement would have been salutary. But you are willing to acknowledge, I think, that they wanted to do right. From what you overheard in conversations, and from what you saw at the family altar and at neighborhood obse- quies, you know that they had invited God into their heart and life. There was something that sustained those old people supernaturally. You have no doubt about their destiny. You expect if you ever get to heaven to meet them as certainly as you expect to meet the Lord Jesus Christ. That early association has been a charm for you. There was a time when you got right up from a house of iniquity and walked out into the fresh air because you thought your mother was looking at you. You have never been very happy in sin, be- YOUR PEDIGREE. 113 cause of a sweet old face that would present itself. Tremulous voices from the past accosted you until they were seemingly audible, and you looked around to see who spoke. There was an estate not men- tioned in the last will and testament, a vast estate ot prayer and holy example, and Christian entreaty, and glorious memory. The survivors of the family gathered to hear the will read, and this was to be kept, and that was to be sold, and it was share and share alike. But there was an unwritten will that read something like this: "In the name of God, Amen. I, being of sound mind, bequeath to my chil- dren all my prayers for their salvation ; I bequeath to them all the results of a lifetime's toil ; I bequeath to them the Christian religion which has been so much comfort to me, and I hope may be solace for them ; I bequeath to them a hope of reunion when the partings of life are over; share, and share alike, may they have in eternal riches. I bequeath to them the wish that they may avoid my errors, and copy anything that may have been worthy. In the name of the God who made me, and the Christ who re- deemed me, and the Holy Ghost who sanctifies me, I make this my last will and testament. Witness, all ye hosts of heaven. Witness, time, witness, eternity. Signed, sealed, and delivered in this our dying hour. Father and Mother." You did not get that will proved at the Surrogate's office ; but I take it out to-day and I read it to you ; I take it out of the alcoves of your heart ; I shake the dust off of it, I ask you will you accept that inheri- tance, or will you break the will ? O ye of Christian ancestry, you have a responsibility vast beyond all measurement! God will not let you off with just 8 114 YOUR PEDIGREE. being as good as ordinary people when you had such extraordinary advantage. Ought not a flower planted in a hot-house be more thrifty than a flower planted outside in the storm ? Ought not a factory turned by the Housatonic do more work than a factory turned by a thin and shallow mountain stream? Ought not you of great early opportunity be better than those who had a cradle unblessed? A father sets his son up in business. He keeps an account of all of the expenditures. So much for store fixtures, so much for rent, so much for this, so much for that, and all the items aggregated, and the father expects the son to give an account. Your Heavenly Father charges against you all the advant- ages of a pious ancestry so many prayers, so much Christian example, so many kind entreaties all these gracious influences one tremendous aggregate, and He asks you for an account of it. Ought not you to be better than those who had no such advantages? Better have been a foundling picked up off the city commons than with such magnificent inheritance of consecration to turn out indifferently. Ought not you, my brother, to be better, having had Christian nurture than that man who can truly say this morning: " The first word I remember my father speaking to me was an oath ; the first time I remember my father taking hold of me was in wrath ; I never saw a Bible till I was ten years of age, and then I was told it was a pack of lies. The first twenty years of my life I was associated with the vicious. I seemed to be walled in by sin and death." Now, my brother, ought you not I leave it as a mat- ter of fairness with you ought you not to be far bet- ter than those who had no early Christian influence? YOUR PEDIGREE. 115 Standing as you do between the generation that is past and the generation that is to come, are you going to pass the blessing on, or are you going to have your life the gulf in which that tide of blessing shall drop out of sight forever ? You are the trustee of piety in that ancestral line, and are you going to augment or squander that solemn trust fund? are you going to disinherit your sons and daughters of the heirloom which your parents left you? Ah ! that cannot be possible, that cannot be possible that you are going to take such a position as that. You are very careful about the life insurances, and careful about the deeds, and careful about the mortgages, and careful about the title of your property, because when you step off the stage you want your children to get it all. Are you making no provision that they shall get grandfather and grandmother's religion? Oh, what a last will and testament you are making, my brother ! " In the name of God, Amen. I, being of sound mind, make this my last will and testament. I bequeath to my children all the money I ever made, and all the houses I own ; but I disinherit them, I rob them of the ancestral grace and the Christian influ- ence that I inherited. I have squandered that on my own worldliness. Share and share alike must they in the misfortune and the everlasting outrage. Signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of God and men and angels and devils, and all the generations of earth and heaven and hell." O ye highly favored ancestry, wake up this morn- ing to a sense of your opportunity and your respon- sibility. I think there must be an old cradle, or a fragment of a cradle somewhere that could tell a story of midnight supplication in your behalf. Il6 YOUR PEDIGREE. Where is the old rocking chair in which you were sung to sleep with the holy nursery rhyme? Where is the old clock that ticked away the moments of that sickness on that awful night when there were but three of you awake you and God and mother ? Is there not an old staff in some closet? is there not an old family Bible on some shelf that seems to address you, saying : " My son, my daughter, how can you reject that God who so kindly dealt with us all our lives, and to whom we commend you in our prayers, living and dying ! By the memory of the old home- stead, by the family altar, by our dying pillow, by the graves in which our bodies sleep while our spirits hover, we beg you to turn over a new leaf." But 1 turn for a moment to those who had evil parentage, and I want to tell you that the highest thrones in heaven, and the mightiest triumphs, and the brightest crowns, will be for those who had evil parentage, but who by the grace of God conquered. As useful, as splendid a gentleman as I know of to- day, had for father a man who died blaspheming God, until the neighbors had to put their fingers in their ears to shut out the horror. One of the most consecrated and useful Christian ministers of to-day, was born of a drunken horse-jockey. Tide of evil tremendous in some families. It is like Niagara Rapids, and yet men have clung to a rock, and been rescued. There is a family in New York whose wealth has rolled up into many millions, that was founded by a man who, after he had vast estate, sent back a paper of tacks because they were two cents more than he expected. Grip, and grind, and gouge in the fourth generation I suppose it will be grip, and grind, and YOUR PEDIGREE. 117 gouge in the twentieth generation. The thirst for in- toxicants has burned down through the arteries of a hundred and fifty years. Pugnacity or combative- ness characterize other families. Sometimes one form of evil, sometimes another form of evil. But it may be resisted, it has been resisted. If the family frailty be avarice, cultivate unselfishness and charity, and teach your children never to eat an apple with- out offering somebody else half of it. Is the family frailty combativeness, keep out of the company of quick-tempered people, and never answer an imper- tinent question until you have -counted a hundred both ways, and after you have written an angry let- ter keep it a week before you send it, and then burn it up ! Is the family frailty timidity and cowardice, cultivate backbone, read the biography of brave men like Joshua or Paul, and see if you cannot get a little iron in your blood. Find out what the family frailty is, and set body, mind, and soul in battle array. I think the genealogical table was put in the first chapter of the New Testament, not only to show our Lord's pedigree, but to show that a man may rise up in an ancestral line, and beat back successfully all the influences of bad heredity. See in that genealogical table that good King Asa came of vile King Abia. See in that genealogical table that Joseph and Mary, and the most illustrious Being that ever touched our world, or ever will touch it, had in their ancestral line scandalous Rheoboam, and Thamar, and Bath- sheba. If this world is ever to be Edenized and it will be all the infected families of the earth are to be regenerated, and there will some one arise in each family line, and open a new genealogical table. There will be some Joseph in the line to reverse the Il8 YOUR PEDIGREE. evil influence of Rheoboam, and there will be some Mary in the line to reverse the evil influence of Bathsheba. Perhaps the star of hope may point down to your manger. Perhaps you are to be the hero or the heroine that is to put down the brakes, and stop that long train of genealogical tendencies, and switch it off on another track from that on which it has been running for a century. You do that, and I will promise you as fine a palace as the architects of heaven can build, the archway inscribed with the words, " More than conqueror.' ' But whatever your heredity, let me say, you may be sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty. Estranged children from the homestead come back through the open gate of adoption. There is royal blood in our veins. There are crowns on our escutcheon. Our Father is King. Our Brother is King. We may be kings and queens unto God for- ever. Come and sit down on the ivory bench of the palace. Come and wash in the fountains that fall into the basins of crystal and alabaster. Come and loak out of the upholstered window upon gardens of azalea and amaranth. Hear the full burst of the orchestra while you banquet with potentates and victors. Oh, when the text sweeps backward, let it not stop at the cradle that rocked your infancy, but at the cradle that rocked the first world, and when the text sweeps forward, let it not stop at your grave, but at the throne on whfch you may reign forever and ever. " Whose son art thou, thou young man? " Son of God! Heir of mortality? Take your in- heritance ? HOME. [After R. Beyschlae.] CHAPTER X. HOME. There are a great many people longing for some grand sphere in which to serve God. They admire Luther at the Diet of Worms, and only wish that they had some such great opportunity in which to display their Christian prowess. They admire Paul making Felix tremble, and they only wish that they had some such grand occasion in which to preach righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. All they want is only an opportunity to exhibit their Christian heroism. Now, the Apostle comes to us and he practically says : " I will show you a place where you can exhibit all that is grand and beautiful and glorious in Christian character, and that is, the do- mestic circle." Let them learn first to show piety at home. If one is not faithful in an insignificant sphere, he will not be faithful in a resounding sphere. If Peter will not help the cripple at the gate of the temple he will never be able to preach three thousand into the kingdom at the Pentecost. If Paul will not take pains to instruct in the way of salvation the jailor of the Philippian dungeon, he will never make Felix trem- ble. He who is not faithful in a skirmish would not be faithful in an Armageddon. The fact is, we are all placed in just the position in which we can most grandly serve God ; and we 122 HOME. ought not to be chiefly thoughtful about some sphere of usefulness which we may after awhile gain, but the all-absorbing question with you and with me ought to be : " Lord, what wilt Thou have me now and here to do?" Home. Ask ten different men the meaning of that word and they will give you ten different definitions. To one it means love at the hearth, it means plenty at the table, industry at the workstand, intelligence at the books, devotion at the altar. In that household Discord never sounds its warwhoop and Deception never tricks with its false face. To him it means a greeting at the door and a smile at the chair, Peace hovering like wings, Joy clapping its hands with laughter. Life a tranquil lake. Pillowed on the rip- ples sleep the shadows.. Ask another man what home is, and he will tell you it is Want looking out of a cheerless fire-grate, needy hunger in an empty bread-tray. The damp air shiv- ering with curses. No Bible on the shelf. Children robbers and murderers in embryo. Obscene songs their lullaby. Every face a picture of ruin. Want in the background and sin staring from the front. No Sabbath wave rolling over that doorsill. Vestibule of the pit. Shadow of infernal walls. Furnace for forg- ing everlasting chains. Faggots for an unending fu- neral pile. Awful word. It is spelled with curses, it weeps with ruin, it chokes with woe, it sweats with the death agony of despair. The word " home " in the one case means everything bright. The word " home " in the other case means everything terrific. Home is a powerful test of character. The dispo- sition in public may be to gay costume, while in pri- vate it is to dishabille. As play actors may appear in HOME. 123 one way on the stage and may appear in another way behind the scenes, so private character may be very different from public character. Private character is often public character turned inside out. A man may receive you into his parlor as though he were a distillation of smiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are business men who all day long are mild and courteous and genial and good- natured in commercial life, damming back their irri- tability and their petulance and their discontent, but at nightfall the dam breaks, and scolding pours forth in floods and freshets. Reputation is only the shadow of character, and a very small house sometimes will cast a very long shadow. The lips may seem to drop with myrrh and cassia, and the disposition to be as bright and warm as a sheaf of sunbeams, and yet they may only be a magnificent show window, but a wretched stock of goods. There is many a man who is affable in public life and amid commercial spheres, who, in a cowardly way, takes his anger and his petulance home and drops them on the domestic circle. The reason men do not display their bad temper in public is because they do not want to be knocked down. There are men who hide their petulance and their irritability just for the same reason that they do not let their notes go to protest; it does not pay. Or, for the same reason that they do not want a man in their stock company to sell his stock at less than the right price lest it depreciate the value. As at sunset sometimes the wind rises, so after a sunshiny day there may be a tempestuous night. There are peo- ple who in public act the philanthropist, who at home act the Nero, with respect to their slippers and their gown. 124 HOME. Audubon, the great ornithologist, with gun and pencil, went through the forests of America to bring down and to sketch the beautiful birds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia, and went off for a few days of recreation and rest, and came back and found that the rats had utterly destroyed the manu- script ; but without any discomposure and without any fret or bad temper, he again picked up his gun and his pencil, and visited again all the great forests of America and reproduced his immortal work. And yet there are people with the ten-thousandth part of that loss who are utterly irreconcilable, who, at the loss of a pencil or an article of raiment, will blow as long and loud and sharp as a northeast storm. Now, that man who is affable in public and who is irritable in private is making a fraudulent and over- issue of stock, and he is as bad as a bank that might have four or five hundred thousand dollars of bills in circulation and no specie in the vault. Let us learn to show piety at home. If we have it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have not genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public plaus- ibility merely springs from a fear of the world, or from the slimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home is a mighty test of character. ^tVhat you arc at home you are everywhere, whether y:>u demonstrate it or not. Again, home is a refuge. Life is the United States army on the national road to Mexico, a long march with ever and anon a skirmish and a battle. At eventide we pitch our tent and stack the arms, we hang up the war cap, and, our head on the knapsack, we sleep until the morning bugle calls us to march HOME. 125 to the action. How pleasant it is to rehearse the vic- tories and the surprises and the attacks of the day, seated by the still camp-fire of the home circle. Yet life is a stormy sea. With shivered masts and torn sails, and hulk aleak, we put in at the harbor of home. Blessed harbor ! There we go for repairs in the dry dock. The candle in the window is to the toiling man the lighthouse guiding him into port. Children go forth to meet their fathers as pilots at the "Narrows" take the hand of ships. The door-sill of the home is the wharf where heavy life is unladen. There is the place where we may talk of what we have done without being charged with self-adulation. There is the place where we may lounge without being thought ungraceful. There is the place where we may express gratification without being thought silly. There is the place where we may forget our annoyances, and exasperations, and troubles. For- lorn earth, pilgrim, no home? Then die. That is better. The grave is brighter, and grander, and more glorious than this world with no tent from marching, with no harbor from the storm, with no place of rest from the scene of greed and gouge, and loss and gain. God pity the man or the woman who has no home. Further, I remark, that home is a political safe- guard. The safety of the State must be built on the safety of the home. Why can not France come to a placid republic? McMahon appoints his ministry, and all France is aquake lest the republic be smothered. Gambetta dies, and there are hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who are fearing the return of a monarchy. France as a nation has not the right kind of a Christian home. 126 HOME. The Christian hearth-stone is the only hearth-stone for a republic. The virtues cultured in the family circle are an absolute necessity for the State. If there be not enough moral principle to make the family adhere, there will not be enough political principle to make the State adhere. No home means the Goths and Vandals, means the Nomads of Asia, means the Numidians of Africa changing from place, according as the pasture happens to change. Con- founded be all those Babels of iniquity which would overpower and destroy the home. The same storm that upsets the ship in which the family sails will sink the frigate of the constitution. Jails, and peni- tentiaries, and armies, and navies, are not our best defence. The door of the home is the best fortress. Household utensils are the best artillery, and the chimneys of our dwelling houses are the grandest monuments of safety and triumph. No home, no republic. Home is a school. Old ground must be turned up with subsoil plow, and it must be harrowed and re- harrowed, and then the crop will not be as large as that of the new ground with less culture. Now, youth and childhood are new ground and all the influences thrown over their heart and life will come up in after life luxuriantly. Every time you have given a smile of approba- tion all the good cheer of your life will come up again in the geniality of your children. And every ebullition of anger, and every uncontrollable display of indignation will be fuel to their disposition twenty or thirty, or forty years from now fuel for a bad fire quarter of a century from this. You praise the intelligence of your child too much sometimes, when DEATH ON THE PALE HORSE. HOME. 1 29 you think he is not aware of it, and you will see the results of it before ten years of age, in his annoying affectations. You praise his beauty, supposing he is not large enough to understand what you say, and you will find him standing on a high chair before a flattering mirror. Words, and deeds, and example are the seed of character, and children are very apt to be the second edition of their parents. Abraham begat Isaac, so virtue is apt to go down in the ancestral line ; but Herod begat Archelaus, so iniquity is transmitted. What vast responsibility comes upon parents in view of this subject. Oh, make your home the brightest place on earth if you would charm your children to the high path of virtue, and rectitude, and religion. Do not always turn the blinds the wrong way. Let the light, which puts gold on the gentian and spots the pansy, pour into your dwellings. Do not expect the little feet to keep step to a dead march. Do not cover up your walls with such pictures as West's "Death on a Pale Horse," or Tintoretto's "Massacre of the Innocents." Rather cover them, if you have pictures, with "The Hawking Party," and "The Mill by the Mountain Stream," and "The Fox Hunt," and "The Children Amid Flowers," and "The Harvest Scene," and "The Saturday Night Marketing." Get you no hint of cheerfulness from grasshopper's leap, and lamb's frisk, and quail's whistle, and gar- rulous streamlet, which, from the rock at the moun- tain top clear down to the meadow ferns under the shadow of the steep, comes looking to see where it can find the steepest place to leap off at, and talking just to hear itself talk. If all the skies hustled with 130 HOME. tempest, and everlasting storm wandered over the sea, and every mountain stream were raving mad, frothing at the mouth with mud foam, and there were nothing but simooms blowing among the hills, and there were neither lark's carol nor humming-bird's trill, nor waterfall's dash, but only bear's bark and panther's scream and wolf's howl, then you might well gather into your homes only the shadows. But when God has strewn the earth and the heavens with beauty and with gladness, let us take into our home circles all innocent hilarity, all brightness, and all good cheer. A dark home makes bad boys and bad girls, in preparation for bad men and bad women. CHAPTER XI. IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? If we leave to the evolutionists to guess where we came from and to the theologians to prophecy where we are going to, we will have left for consideration the important fact that we are here. There may be some doubt about where the river rises and some doubt about where the river empties, but there can be no doubt about the fact that we are sailing on it. So I am not surprised that everybody asks the ques- tion, " Is life worth living?" Here is a young man of light hair and blue eyes, and sound digestion, and gen- erous salary, and happily affianced, and on the way to become a partner in a commercial firm of which he is an important clerk. Ask him whether life is worth living. He will laugh in your face and say, " Yes, yes, yes ! " Here is a man who has come to the for- ties. He is at the tip-top of the hill of life. Every step has been a stumble and a bruise. The people he trusted have turned out deserters, and the money he has honestly made he has been cheated out of. His nerves are out of tune. He has poor appetite, and all the food he does eat does not assimilate. Forty miles climbing up the hill of life have been to him like climbing the Matterhorn, and there are forty miles yet to go down, and descent is always more danger- ous than ascent. Ask him whether life is worth 132 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? living, and he will drawl out in shivering and lugu- brious, an appalling negative, " No, no, no!-" How are we to decide this matter righteously and intelligently? You will find the same man vacillat- ing, oscillating in his opinion from dejection to exub- erance, and if he be very mercurial in his temperament it will depend very much upon which way the wind blows. If the wind blow from the northwest, and you ask him, he will say, "Yes;" and if it blow from the northeast, and you ask him, he will say, "No." How are we then to get the question righteously answered ? Suppose we call all nations together in a great con- vention on Eastern or Western hemisphere, and let all those who are in the affirmative, say, "Aye," and all those who are in the negative, say, ".No." While there would be hundreds of thousands who would answer in the affirmative, there would be more mil- lions who would answer in the negative, and because of the greater number who have sorrow and misfor- tune and trouble, the " Noes" would have it. If you ask me, " Is life worth living?" I answer, it all depends upon the kind of life yon live. In the first place, I remark that a life of mere money- getting is always a failure, because you will never get as much as you want. The poorest people in this country are the millionaires, and next to them those who have half a million. There is not a scissors- grinder on the streets of New York or Brooklyn that is so anxious to make money as these men who have piled up fortunes year after year in storehouses, in government securities, in tenement houses, in whole city blocks. You ought to sec them jump when they hear the fire-bell ring. You ought to see them in their excitement when Marine Bank explodes. You IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 133 ought to see their agitation when there is proposed a reformation in the tariff. Their nerves tremble like harp-strings, but no music in the vibration. They read the reports from Wall Street in the morning with a concernment that threatens paralysis or ap- oplexy, or, more probably, they have a telegraph or a telephone in their own house, so they catch every breath of change in the money market. The disease of accumulation has eaten into them eaten into their heart, into their lungs, into their spleen, into their liver, into their bones. That is not a life worth living. There are too many earthquakes in it, too many agonies in it, too many perditions in it. They build their castles, and they open their picture galleries, and they summon prima donnas, and they offer every inducement for happiness to come and live there, but happiness will not come. They* send footmaned and postillioned equipage to bring her ; she will not ride to their door. They send princely escort ; she will not take their arm. They make their gateways triumphal arches ; she will not ride under them. They set a golden throne before a golden plate ; she turns away from the banquet. They call to her from upholstered balcony ; she will not listen. Mark you, this is the failure of those who have had large accumulation. And then you must take into consideration that the vast majority of those who make the dominant idea of life money-getting, fall far short of affluence. It is estimated that only about two out of a hundred busi- ness men have anything worthy the name of success. A man who spends his life with the one dominant idea of financial accumulation spends a lite not worth living. 134 is I.IFK WORTH LIVING? So the idea of worldly approval. If that be dom- inant in a man's life he is miserable. Now, that is not a life worth living. You can get slandered and abused cheaper than that ! Take it on a smaller scale. Do not be so ambitious to have a whole reservoir rolled over on you. But what you see in the matter of high political prefer- ment you see in every community in the struggle for what is called social position. Tens of thousands of people trying to get into that realm, and they are under terrific tension. What is social position ? It is a difficult thing to define, but we all know what it is. Good morals and intelli- gence are not necessary, but wealth, or the show of wealth, is absolutely indispensable. There are men to-day as notorious for their libertinism as the night is famous for its darkness, who move in what is called high social position. There are hundreds of out-and- out rakes in American society whose names are men- tioned among the distinguished guests at the great levees. They have annexed all the known vices, and are longing for other worlds of diabolism to conquer. Good morals are not necessary in many of the exalted circles of society. Neither is intelligence necessary. You find in that realm men who would not know an adverb from an adjective if they met it a hundred times a day, and who could not write a letter of acceptance or regret without the aid of a secretary. They buy their lib- raries by the square yard, only anxious to have the binding Russia. Their ignorance is positively sub- lime, making English grammar almost disreputable. And yet the finest parlors open before them. Good morals and intelligence arc not necessary, but wealth, IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 135 or a show of wealth, is positively indispensable. It does not make any difference how you got your wealth if you only got it. Perhaps you got it by fail- ing four or five times. It is the most rapid way of ac- cumulation in this country that is, the quickest way to get in social position. Those who fail only once are not very well off, but by the time a man has failed the second time he is comfortable, and by the time he has failed the third time he is affluent. The best way for you to get into social position is for you to buy a large amount on credit, then put your property in your wife's name, have a few preferred creditors, and then make an assignment. Then disappear from the community until the breeze is over, and then come back and start in the same business. Do you not see how beautifully that will put out all the peo- ple who are in competition with you and trying to make an honest living? How quick.it will get you into high social position ? What is the use of toiling with forty or fifty years of hard work when you can by two or three bright strokes make a great fortune. Ah ! my friends, when you really lose your money how quick they will let you drop, and the higher you get the harder you will drop. There are thousands to-day in that realm who are anxious to keep in it. There are thousands in that realm who are nervous for fear they will fall out of it, and there are changes going on every year, and every month, and every hour, which involve heartbreaks that are never reported. High social life is constant- ly in a flutter about the delicate question as to whom they shall let in, and whom they shall push out, and the battle is going on pier mirror against pier mirror, chandelier against chandelier, wine cellar against 136 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? wine cellar, wardrobe against wardrobe, equipage against equipage. Uncertainty and insecurity dom- inant in that realm, wretchedness enthroned, torture at a premium, and a life not worth living. A life of sin, a life of pride, a life of indulgence, a life of worldliness, a life devoted to the world, the flesh, and the devil is a failure, a dead failure, an in- finite failure. I care not how many presents you send to that cradle, or how many garlands you send to that grave, you need to put right under the name on the tombstone this inscription : " Better for that man if he had never been born." But I shall show you a life that is worth living. A young man says : " I am here. I am not responsible for my ancestry; others decided that. I am not respon- sible for my temperament ; God gave me that. But here I am, in the afternoon of the nineteenth century, at twenty years ^f age. I am here, and I must take an account of stock. Here I have a body which is a divinely constructed engine. I must put it to the very best uses, and I must allow nothing to damage this rarest of machinery. Two feet, and they mean locomotion. Two eyes, and they mean capacity to pick out my own way. Two ears, and they are tele- phones of communication with all the outside world, and they mean capacity to catch sweetest music and the voices of friendship the very best music. A tongue, with almost infinity of articulation. Yes, hands with which to welcome, or resist, or lift, or smite, or wave, or bless hands to help myself and help others. " Here is a word which, after Six thousand years of battling with tempest and accident, is still grander than any architect, human or angelic, could have drafted. I have two lamps to light me a golden IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 137 lamp and a silver lamp a golden lamp set on the sap- phire mantel of the day, a silver lamp set on the jet mantle of the night. Yea, I have that at twenty years of age \\hich defies all inventory of valuables a soul, with capacity to choose or reject, to rejoice or to suffer, to love or to hate. Plato says it is im- mortal. Seneca says it is immortal. Confucius says it is immortal. An old book among the family relics a book with leathern cover almost worn out, and pages almost obliterated by oft perusal, joins to the other books in saying I am immortal. I have eighty years for a lifetime, sixty years yet to live. I may not live an hour, but then I must lay out my plans intelligently and for a long life. Sixty years added to the twenty I have already lived, that will bring me to eighty. I must remember that these eighty years are only a brief preface to the five hundred thousand millions of quintillicns of years which will be my chief residence and existence. Now, I under- stand my opportunities and my responsibilities. " If there is any being in the universe all wise and all beneficent who can help a man in such a juncture, I want him. The old book found among the family relics tells me there is a God, and that for the sake of His Son, one Jesus, He will give help to a man, To Him I appeal. God help me ! Here, I have sixty years yet to do for myself and to do for others. I must develop this body by all industries, by all gym- nastics, by all sunshine, by all fresh air, by all good habits. And this soul I must have swept, and gar- nished, and illumined, and 'glorified by all that I can do for it and all that I can get God to do for it. It shall be a Luxembourg of fine pictures. It shall be an orchestra of grand harmonies. It shall be a palace 138 IS LLFK WORTH LIVING? for God and righteousness to reign in. I wonder how many kind words I can utter in the next sixty years ? I will try. I wonder how many good deeds I can do in the next sixty years? I will try. God help me ! " That young man enters life. He is buffeted, he is tried, he is perplexed. A grave opens on this side and a grave opens on that side. He falls, but he rises again. He gets into a hard battle, but he gets the victory. The main course of his life is in the right direction. He blesses everybody he comes in contact with. God forgives his mistakes, and makes everlasting record of his holy endeavors, and at the close of it God says to him : " Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the jovs of thy Lord." My brother, my sister, I do not care whether that man dies at thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, or eighty years of age ; you can chisel right under his name on the tombstone these words, " His life was worth living." I would not find it hard to persuade you that the poor lad. Peter Cooper, making glue for a living, and then amassing a great fortune until he could build a philanthropy which has had its echo in ten thousand philanthropies all over the country I would not find it hard to persuade you that his life was worth living. Neither would I find it hard to persuade you that the life of Susannah Wesley was worth living. She sent out one son to organize Methodism and the other son to ring his anthems all through the ages. I would not find it hard work to persuade you that the life of Frances Leere was\vorth living, as she estab- lished in England a school for the scientific nursing of the sick, and then when the war broke out be- IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 139 tween France and Germany, went to the front, and with her own hands scraped the mud off the bodies of the soldiers dying in the trenches, and with her weak arm standing one night in the hospital push- ing back a German soldier to his couch, as, all frenzied with his wounds, he rushed toward the door, and said : " Let me go, let me go to my liebe mutter." Major-gen- erals standing back to let pass this angel of mercy. Neither would I have hard work to persuade you that Grace Darling lived a life worth living the heroine of the lifeboat. You say : " While I know all these lived lives worth living, I don't think my life amounts to much." Ah! my Jfriends, whether you live a life conspicuous or inconspicuous, it is worth living, if you live aright. And I want my next sentence to go down into the depths of all your souls. You are to be rewarded, not according to the greatness of your work, but according to the holy industries with which you employed the talents you really possessed. The majority of the crowns of heaven will not be given to people with ten talents, for most of them were tempted only to serve them- selves. The vast majority of the crowns of heaven will be given to people who had one talent, but gave it all to God. And remember that our life here is introductory to another. It is the vestibule to a pal- ace ; but who despises the door of a Madeleine be- cause there are grander glories within ? Your life if rightly lived is the first bar of an eternal oratorio, and who despises the first note of Haydn's sym- phonies ? And the life you* live now is all the more worth living because it t>pens into a life that shall never end, and the last letter of the word, "time" is the first letter of the word "eternity ! " CHAPTER XII. SOLICITUDE. The first cause of parental solicitude, I think, arises from the imperfection of parents on their own part. We all somehow want our children to avoid our faults. We hope that if we have any excellencies they will copy them ; but the probability is they will copy our faults, and omit our excellencies. Children are very apt to be echoes of the parental life. Some one meets a lad in the back street, finds him smok- ing, and says : " Why, I am astonished at you ; what would your father say if he knew this? where did you get that cigar?" "Oh, I picked it up on the street." " What would your father say, and your mother say, if they knew this?" "Oh," he replies, "that's nothing, my father smokes!" There is not one of us to-day, who would like to have our children copy all our example. And that is the cause of solici- tude on the part of all of us. We have so many faults we do not want them copied and stereotyped in the lives and characters of those who come after us. Then solicitude arises from our conscious insuffi- ciency and unwisdom of discipline. Out of twenty parents there may be one parent who understands how thoroughly and skillfully to discipline; perhaps not more than one out of twenty. We, nearly all of us, are on one side or are on the other. 140 SOLICITUDE. 141 Here is a father who says : " I am going to bring up my children right ; my sons shall know nothing but religion, shall see nothing but religion, and hear nothing but religion." They are routed at 6 o'clock in the morning to recite the Ten Commandments. They are wakened up from the sofa on Sunday night to recite the Westminster catechism. Their bedroom walls are covered with religious pictures and quota- tions of Scripture, and when the boy looks for the day of the month he looks for it in a religious alma- nac. If a minister comes to the house he is requested to take the boy aside, and tell him what a great sinner he is. It is religion morning, noon and night. Time passes on, and the parents are waiting for the return of the son at night. It is 9 o'clock, it is 10 o'clock, it is ii o'clock, it is 12 o'clock, it is half-past 12 o'clock. Then they hear a rattling of the night- key, and George comes in and hastens upstairs lest he be accosted. His father says: "George, where have you been ? " He says : " I have been out." Yes, he has been out, and he has been down, and he has started on the broad road to ruin for this life and ruin for the life to come, and the father says to his wife : " Mother, the Ten Commandments are a fail- ure ; no use of Westminster Catechism ; I have done my very best for that boy ; just see how he has turned out." Ah ! my friend, you stuffed that boy with religion, you had no sympathy with innocent hilarities, you had no common sense. A man at mid-life said to me : " I haven't much de- sire for religion ; my father was as good a man as ever lived, but he jammed religion down my throat when I was a boy until I got disgusted with it, and I haven't wanted any of it since." That father erred on one side. 142 SOLICITUDE. Then the discipline is an entire failure in many households because the father pulls one way and the mother pulls the other way. The father says : " My son, I told you if I ever found you guilty of falsehood again I would chastise you, and I am going to keep my promise." The mother says: ''Don't; let him off this time." A father says : " I have seen so many that make mistakes by too great severity in the rearing of their children ; now, I will let my boy do as he pleases ; he shall have full swing ; here, my son, are tickets to the theatre and opera ; if you want to play cards, do so; if you don't want to play cards you need not play them ; go when you want to and come back when you want to ; have a good time ; go it ! " Plenty of money for the most part, and give a boy plenty of money, and ask him not what he does with it, and you pay his way straight to perdition. But after a while the lad thinks he ought to have a still larger supply. He has been treated, and he must treat. He must have wine suppers. There are larger and larger expenses. After a while, one day a messenger from the bank over .the way calls in and says to the father of the household of which I am speaking: " The officers of the bank would like to have you step over a minute." The father steps over and the bank officer says: " Is that your check?" "No," he says, " that is not my check ; I never make an ' H ' in that way, and I never put. a curl to the ' Y ' in that way ; that is not my writing; that is not my signature; that is a counter- feit ; send for the police." " Stop," says the bank officer, " your son wrote that." the father and mother are waiting for the son SOLICITUDE. 143 to come home at night. It is 12 o'clock, it is half-* past 12 o'clock, it is i o'clock. The son comes through the hallway. The father says ; " My son, what does all this mean? I gave you every oppor- tunity, I gave you all the money you wanted, and here in my old days I find that you have become a spendthrift, a libertine, and a sot." The son says: *' Now, father, what is the use of your talking that way ? You told me to go it, and I just took your suggestion." And so to strike the medium between severity and too great leniency, to strike the happy medium between the two and to train our children for God and for heaven, is the anxiety of every intel- ligent parent. Another great anxiety, great solicitude, is in the fact that so early is developed childish sinfulness. Morning glories put out their bloom in the early part of the day, but as the hot sun comes on they close up. While there are other flowers that blaze their beauty along the Amazon for a week at a time without clos- ing, yet the morning glory does its work as certainly as Victoria regia ; so there are some children that just put forth their bloom, and they close, and they are gone. There is something supernatural about them while they tarry, and there is an ethereal ap- pearance about them. There is a wonderful depth to their eye, and they are gone. They are too delicate a plant for this world. The Heavenly Gardener sees them, and He takes them in. But for the most part, the children that live some- times get cross, and pick up bad words in the street, or are disposed to quarrel with brother or sister, and show that they are wicked. You see them in the Sabbath-school class. They are so sunshiny and 144 SOLICITUDE. bright you would think they \vereal\vays so; but the mother, looking over at them, remembers what an awful time she had to get them ready. Time passes on. They get considerably older, and the son comes in from the street, from a pugilistic encounter, bear- ing on his appearance the marks of defeat, or the daughter practices some little deception in the house- hold. The mother says : " I can't always be scolc ing, and fretting, and finding fault, but this must be stopped." So in many a household there is the sign of sin, the sign of the heart's being wrong, {he sign of the truthfulness of what the Bible says when it de- clares, " They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." Some go to work, and try to correct all this, and the boy is picked at, and picked at, and picked at. That always is ruinous. There is more help in one good thunderstorm, than in five days of cold drizzle. Better the old-fashioned style of chastisement, if that be necessary, than the fretting, and the scolding, which have destroyed so many. There is also the cause of great solicitude some- times because our young people are surrounded by so many temptations. A castle may not be taken by, a straightforward siege, but suppose there be inside the castle an enemy, and in the night he shoves back the bolt, and swings open the door? Our young folks have foes without, and they have foes within. Who does not understand it? Who is the man here who is not aware of the fact that the young people of this day have tremendous temptations ? Some man will come to the young people, and try to persuade them that purity, and honesty, and up- rightness are a sign of weakness. Some man will SOLICITUDE. 145 take a dramatic attitude, and he will talk to the young man, and he will say : " You must break away from your mother's apron-string- ; you must get out of that Puritanical straight-jacket ; it is time you were your own master ; you are verdant ; you are green ; you are unsophisticated ; come with me, I'll show you the world ; I'll show you life ; come with me ; you need to see the world ; it won't hurt you." After a while the young man says, " Well, I can't afford to be odd, I can't afford to be peculiar, I can't afford to sacrifice all my friends ; I'll just go and see for myself." Farewell to innocence, which once gone, never fully comes back. Do not be under the delusion that because you repent of sin you get rid forever of its consequences. I say farewell to innocence, which once gone never fully comes back. Oh, how many traps set for the young ! Styles of temptation just suited to them. Do you suppose that a man who went clear to the depths of dissipa- tion, went down in one great plunge ? Oh, no! At first it was a fashionable hotel. Marble floor. No unclean pictures behind the counter. No drunken hiccough while they drink, but the click of cut glass to the elegant sentiment. You ask that young man now to go into some low restaurant, and get a drink, and he would say, " Do you mean to insult me?" But the fashionable and the elegant hotel is not always close by, and now the young man* is on the down grade. Further and further down until he has about struck the bottom of the depths of ruin. Now, he is in the low restaurant. The cards so greasy you can hardly tell who has the best hand. Gambling for drinks. Shuffle away, shuffle away. The land- 146 SOLICITUDE. lord stands in his shirt-sleeves, with his hands on his hips, waiting for an order to fill up the glasses. The clock strikes twelve the tolling of the funeral bell of a soul. The breath of eternal woe .flushes in that young man's cheek. In the jets of the gaslight the fiery tongue of the worm that never dies. Two o'clock in the morning, and now they are sound asleep in their chair. Landlord comes around and says, " Wake up, wake up ! time to shut up !" " What ! " says the young man. " Time to shut up." Push them all out into the night air. Now they are going home. Going home ! Let the wife crouch in the corner and the children hide under the bed. What was the history of that young man? He began his dissipations in the bar-room of a Fifth Ave- nue Hotel, and completed his damnation in the low- est grog-shop on Atlantic Street. Sometimes sin does not halt in that way. Some- times sin even comes to the drawing-room. There are leprous hearts sometimes admitted in the highest circles of society. He is so elegant, he is so bewitch- ing in his manner, he is so refined, he is so educated, no one supects the sinful design ; but after a while the talons of death come forth. What is the matter with that house? The front windows have not been open for six months or a year. A shadow has come down on that domestic hearth, a shadow thicker than one woven of midnight and hurricane. The agony of that parent makes him say : " Oh, I wish I had buried my children when they were small!" Loss of property ? No. Death in the family ? No. Mad- ness? No. Some villain, kid-gloved and diamonded, lifted that cup of domestic bliss until the sunlight struck it, and all the rainbows played around the rim, SOLICITUDE. 147 and then dashed it into desolation and woe, until the harpies of darkness clapped their hands, and all the voices of the pit uttered a loud " Ha ! ha ! " The statistic has never been made up in these great cities of how many have been destroyed, and how many beautiful homes have been overthrown. If the statistic could be presented, it would freeze your blood in a solid cake at your heart. Our great cities are full of temptations, and to vast multitudes of par- ents these temptations 'become a matter of great solicitude. But now for the alleviations. First of all, you save yourself a great deal of trouble, Oh, parent, if you can early watch the children and educate them for God and heaven ! " The first five years of my life made me an infidel," said Tom Paine. A vessel puts out to sea, and after it has been five days out there comes a cyclone. The vessel springs a leak. The helm will not work. What is the mat- ter? It is not seaworthy. It never was seaworthy. Can you mend it now? It is too late. Down she goes with 250 passengers into a watery grave. What was the time to fix that vessel ? What was the time to prepare it for the storm ? In the dry dock. Ah, my friends, do not wait until your children get out into the world, beyond the Narrows and out on the great voyage of life! It is too late then to mend their morals and their manners. The dry dock of the Christian home is the place. Correct the sin now, correct the evil now. Just look at the character of your children now and .get an intimation of what they are going to be. You can tell by the way that boy divides the apple what his proclivity is and what his sin will be, and 148 SOLICITUDE. what style of discipline you ought to bring upon him. You let that disposition go. You see how he divides that apple? He takes nine-tenths of it for himself, and he gives one-tenth to his sister. Well, let that go, and all his life he will want the best part of everything, and he will be grinding and grasping to the day of his death. Begin early with your chil- dren. You stand on the banks of a river and you try to change its course. It has been rolling now for a hundred miles. You cannot change it. But just go to the source of that river, go to where the water just drips down on the rock. Then with your knife make a channel this way and a channel that way, and it will take it. Come out and stand on the banks of your child's life when it is thirty or forty years of age, or even twenty, and try to change the course of that life. It is top late ! It is too late ! Go further up at the source of life and nearest to the mother's heart where the character starts, and try to take it in the right direction. But oh, my friend, be careful to make a line, a dis- tinct line between innocent hilarity on the one hand and vicious proclivity on the other. Do not think your children are going to ruin because they make a racket. All healthy children make a racket. But do not laugh at your child's sin because it is smart. If you do, you will cry after awhile because it is mali- cious. Rebuke the very first appearance of sin. Now is your time. Do not begin too late. Remember it is what you do more than what you say that is going to affect your children. Do you suppose Noah would have got his family to go into the ark if he staid out ? No. His sons would have said: "lam not going into the boat; there's some- SOLICITUDE. 149 thing wrong ; father won't go in ; if father stays out, I'll stay out." An officer may stand in a castle and look off upon an army fighting ; but he cannot be much of an officer, he cannot excite much enthusiasm on the part of his troops, standing in a castle or on a hill-top looking off upon the fight. It is a Garibaldi or a Napoleon I. who leaps into the stirrups and dashes ahead. And you stand outside the Christian life and tell your children to go in. They will not go. But you dash on ahead, you enter the kingdom of God, and they themselves will become good sol- diers of Jesus Christ. Lead, if you would have them follow. CHAPTER XIII. ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. There are thousands of ways of telling a lie. A man's whole life may be a falsehood, and yet never with his lips may he falsify once. There is a way of uttering falsehood by look, by manner, as well as by lip. There are persons who are guilty of dishonesty of speech and then afterward say "may be ;" call it a white lie, when no lie is that color. The whitest lie ever told was as black as perdition. There are those so given to dishonesty of speech that they do not know when they are lying. With some it is an acquired sin, and with others it is a natural infirmity. There are those whom you will recognize as born liars. Their whole life, from cradle to grave, is filled up with vice of speech. Misrepresentation and prevarication are as natural to them as the infantile diseases, and are a sort of moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. Then there are those who in after life have opportunities of develop- ing this evil, and they go from deception to decep- tion, and from class to class, until they are regularly graduated liars. There is something in the presence of natural ob- jects that has a tendency to make one pure. The trees never issue false stock. The wheat fields are always honest. Rye and oats never move out in the night, not paying for the place they occupy. Corn 150 ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. 151 shocks never make false assignment. Mountain brooks are always current. The gold of the wheat fields is never counterfeit. But while the tendency of agricultural life is to make one honest, honesty is not the characteristic of all who come to the city markets from the country districts. You hear the creaking of the dishonest farm- wagon in almost every street of our great cities, a farm-wagon in which there is not one honest spoke or one truthful rivet from tongue to tail-board. Again and again has do- mestic economy in our great cities foundered on the farmer's firkin. When New York, and Brooklyn, and Cincinnati, and Boston sit down and weep over their sins, Westchester and Long Island counties and all the country districts ought to sit down and weep over theirs. The tendency in all rural districts is to suppose that sins and transgressions cluster in our great cities ; but citizens and merchants long ago learned that it is not safe to calculate from the character of the apples on the top of the farmer's barrel what is the charac- ter of the apples all the way down toward the bot- tom. Many of our citizens and merchants have learned that it is always safest to see the farmer meas- ure the barrel of beets. Milk cans are not always honest. There are those who in country life seem to think they have a right to overreach grain-dealers, merchants of all styles. They think it is more hon- orable to raise corn than to deal in corn. The producer sometimes practically says to the merchant: "You get your money easily, anyhow." Does he get it easy ? While the farmer sleeps, and he may go to sleep conscious of the fact that his corn and rye are all the time progressing and adding to 152 ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. his fortune or his livelihood, the merchant tries to sleep while conscious of the fact that at that moment the ship may be driving on the rock, or a wave sweeping over the hurricane deck spoiling his goods, or the speculators may be plotting a momentary revolution, or the burglars may be at that moment at his money safe, or the fire may have kindled on the very block where his store stands. Easy is it? Let those who get their living in the quiet farm and barn take the place of one of our city merchants and see whether it is so easy. It is hard enough to have the hands blistered with out-door work, but it is harder with mental anxieties to have the brain consumed. God help the merchants. And do not let those who live in country life come to the conclusion that all the dishonesties belong to city- life. There are those who apologize for deviations from the right and for practical deception by saying it is commercial custom. In other words, a lie by multiplication becomes a virtue. There are large fortunes gathered in which there is not one drop of the sweat of unrequited toil, and not one spark of bad temper flashes from the bronze bracket, and there is not one drop of needlewoman's heart's blood on the crimson plush ; while there are other fortunes about which it may be said that on every door-knob and on every figure of the carpet, and on every wall there is the mark of dishonor. What if the hand wrung by toil, and blistered until the skin comes off should be placed on the exquisite wall paper, leaving its mark of blood four fingers and a thumb? or, if in the night the man should be aroused from his slumber again and again by his own conscience, getting himself up on his elbow, and crying out into the darkness : "Who is there?" ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. 153 There are large fortunes upon which God's favor comes down, and it is just as honest and just as Christian to be affluent as it is to be poor. In many a house there is a blessing on every pictured wall, and on every scroll, and on every traceried window, and the joy that flashes in the lights, and that showers in the music, and that dances in the quick feet of the children pattering through the hall, has in it the favor of God and the approval of man. And there are thousands and tens of thousands of mer- chants who, from the first day they sold a yard of cloth, or a firkin of butter, have maintained their in- tegrity. They were born honest, they will live hon- est, and they will die honest. But you and I know that there are in commercial life those who are guilty of great dishonesties of speech. A merchant says : "I am selling these goods at less than cost." Is he getting for those goods a price inferior to that which he paid for them ? Then he has spoken the truth. Is he getting more ? Then he lies. A merchant says: "I paid $25 for this article." Is that the price he paid for it? All right. But suppose he paid for it $23 instead of $25? Then he lies. But there are just as many falsehoods before the counter as there are behind the counter. A customer comes in and asks: "How much is this article?" "It is five dollars." "I can get that for four some- where else." Can he get it for four somewhere else, or did he say that just for the purpose of getting it cheap by depreciating the value of the goods ? If so, he .lied. There are just as. many falsehoods behind the counter as there are before the counter. A man unrolls upon the counter a bale of handker- 154 ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA, chiefs. The customer says: "Are these all silk?" "Yes." "No cotton in them ?" "No cotton in them?" Are those handkerchiefs all silk? Then the mer- chant told the truth. Is there any cotton in them? Then he lied. Moreover, he defrauds himself, lor this customer, coming in from Hemp^tead, or Yon- kers, or Newark, will, after a while, find out that he has been defrauded, and the next time he comes to town and goes shopping, he will look up at that sign andsav: "No, I won't go there; that's the place where I got those handkerchiefs." First, the mer- chant insulted God, and secondly, he picked his own pocket. Who would take the responsibility of saying how many falsehoods were yesterday told by hardware men, and clothiers, and lumbermen, and tobacconists, and jewelers, and importers, and shippers, and dealers in furniture, and dealers in coal, and dealers in gro- ceries? Lies about buckles, about saddles, about har- ness, about shoes, about hats, about coats, about shovels, about tongs, about forks, about chairs, about sofas, about horses, about lands, about everything. I arraign commercial falsehood as one of the crying sins of our time. Among the artisans are those upon whom we are dependent for the houses in which we live, the gar- ments we wear, the cars in which we ride. The vast majority of them are, so far as I know them, men who speak the truth, and they are upright, and many of them are. foremost in great philanthropies and in churches; but that they all do not belong to that class every one knows. In times when there is a great demand for labor, it is not so easy for such men to keep their obligations, ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. 155 because they may miscalculate in regard to the weather, or they may not be able to get the help they anticipated in their enterprise. I am speaking now of those who promise to do that which they know they will not be able to do. They say they will come on Monday ; they do not come until Wednesday. They say they will come Wednesday ; they do not come until Saturday. They say they will have the job done in ten days ; they do not get it done before thirty. And then when a man becomes irritated and will not stand it any longer, then they go and work for him a day or two and keep the job along ; and then some one else gets irritated and out- raged, and they go and work for that man and get him pacified, and then they go somewhere else. I believe they call that " nursing the job." Ah, my friends, how much dishonor such men would save their souls if they would promise to do only that which they know they can do. " Oh," they say, " it's of no importance ; everybody expects to be deceived and disappointed." There is a voice of thunder sounding among the saws and the ham- mers and the shears, saying : " All liars shall have their place in the lake that burns with fire and brim- stone." So in all styles of work there are those who are not worthy of their work. How much of society is insincere. You hardly know what to believe. They send their regards ; you do not exactly know whether it is an expression of the heart, or an external civility. They ask you to come to their house ; you hardly know whether they really want you to come. We are all accustomed to take a discount off of what we hear. Social l?.fe is struck through with insincerity. They 156 ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. apologize for the fact that the furnace is out ; they have not had any fire in it all winter. They apolo- gize for the fare on their table ; they never live any better. They decry their most luxuriant entertain- ment to win a shower of approval from you. They point at a picture on the wall as a work of one of the old masters. They say it is an heirloom in the fam- ily. It hung on the wall of a castle. A duke gave it to their grandfather ! People that will lie about nothing else will lie about a picture. On small income we want the world to believe we are affluent, and society to-day is struck through with cheat and counterfeit and sham. How few people are natural. Frigidity sails around, iceberg grinding against iceberg. You must not laugh outright ; that is vul- gar. You must smile. You must not dash quickly across the room ; that is vulgar. You must glide. Society is a round of bows and grins and grimaces and oh's and ah's and he, he, he's, and simperings and namby pambyisms, a whole world of which is not worth one good honest round of laughter. From such a hollow scene the tortured guest retires at the close of the evening, assuring the host that he has enjoyed himself. Society is become so contorted and deformed in this respect that a mountain cabin where the rustics gather at a quilting or an apple- paring has in it more good cheer than all the frescoed refrigerators of the metropolis. It is hardly worth your while to ask an extreme Calvinist what an Arminian believes. He will tell you an Arminian believes that man can save himself. An Arminian believes no such thing. It is hardly worth your while to ask an extreme Arminian what a Calvinist believes. He will tell you that a Calvin- ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. 157 1st believes that God made some men just to damn them. A Calvinist believes no such thing. It is hardly worth your while to ask a Pedo-Baptist what a Baptist believes. He will tell you a Baptist believes that immersion is necessary for salvation. A Baptist does not believe any such thing. It is hardly worth your while to ask a man, who very much hates Presbyterians, what a Presbyterian believes. He will tell you that a Presbyterian believes that there are infants in hell a span long, and that very phra- seology has come down from generation to genera- tion in the Christian Church. There never was a Presbyterian who believed that. " Oh," you say, " I heard some Presbyterian minister twenty years ago say so." You did not. There never was a man who believed that, there never will be a man who will believe that. And yet from boyhood I have heard that particular slander against a Christian Church going down through the community. Then how often it is that there are misrepresenta- tions on the part of individual churches in regard to other churches especially if a church comes to great prosperity. As long as a church is in poverty, and the singing is poor and all the surroundings are de- crepit, and the congregation are so hardly bestead in life that their pastor goes with elbows out, then there will always be Christian people in churches who say, " What a pity, what a pity ! " But let the day of prosperity come to a Christian Church, and let the music be triumphant, and let there be vast assem- blages, and then there will be even ministers of the Gospel critical and denunciatory and full of misrep- resentation and falsification, giving the impression to the outside world that they do not like the corn 158 ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. because it is not ground in their mill. Oh, my friends, let us in all departments of life stand back from deception. " Oh," says some one, " the deception that I prac- tice is so small it don't amount to anything." Ah, my friends, it does amount to a great deal. You say: " When I deceive it is only about a case of needles, or a box of buttons, or a row of pins." But the arti- cle may be so small you can put it in your vest pocket, but the sin is as big as the pyramids, and the echo of your dishonor will reverberate through the mountains of eternity. There is no such thing as a small sin. They are all vast and stupendous, because they will all have to come under inspection in the Day of Judgment. CHAPTER XIV. THE BALANCE-SHEET. The impression is abroad that religion puts a man on short allowance ; that when the ship sailing heavenward comes to the shining wharf it will be found out that all the passengers had the hardest kind of sea-fare; that the soldiers in Christ's army march most of the time with an empty haversack ; in a word, that only those people have a good time in this world who take upon themselves no religious obligation. I want to find out whether this is f so, and I am go- ing to take stock ; I am going to show what are the Christian's liabilities, and what is his income, and what are his warranty deeds, and what are his bonds and mortgages. Now, it would be an absurd thing to suppose that God would give to strangers privileges and advant- ages which He would deny His own children. If you have a large park, a grand mansion, beautiful fountains, stalking deer, and statuary, to whom will you give the first right to all these possessions ? To outsiders ? No, to your own children. You will say : " It will be very well for outsiders to come in, and walk these paths, and enjoy this landscape ; but the first right to my house, and the first right to my statuary, the first right to my gardens, shall be in the possession of my own children." 159 l6o THE BALANCE-SHEET. Now, this world is God's park, and while He allows those who are not His children, and who re- fuse His authority, the privilege of walking through the gardens, the possession of all this grandeur of park and mansion is in the right of the Christian the flowers, the diamonds, the silver, the gold, the morning brightness, and the evening shadow. The Christian may not have the title-deed to one acre of land, as recorded in the clerk's office, he may never have paid one dollar of taxes ; but he can go up on a mountain, and look off upon fifty miles of grain-field, and say, "All this is mine ; my Father gave it to me." So the refinements of life are the Christian's right. He has a right to as good apparel, to as beautiful adornments, to as commodious a residence as the worldling. Show me any passage in the Bible that tells the people of the world they have privileges, they have glittering spheres, they have befitting ap- parel, that are denied the Christian. There is no one who has so much a right to laugh, none so much a right to everything that is beautiful, and grand, and sublime in life, as the Christian. "All are yours." Can it be possible that one who is reckless and sinful, and has no treasures laid up in heaven, is to be allowed pleasures which the sons and daughters of God, the owners of the whole universe, are denied? So all the sweet sounds of the world are in the Christian's right. There are people who have an idea that instruments of music are inappropriate for the Christian's parlor, or for the Christian Church. When did the house of sin, or the bacchanal, get the right to music ? They have no right to it. God makes over to Christian people all the pianos, all the harps, all the THE BALANCE-SHEET. l6l drums, all the cornets, all the flutes, all the organs. People of the world may borrow them, but they only borrow them ; they have no right or title to them. God gave them to Christian people when He said : "All are yours." David no more certainly owned the harp with which he thrummed the praises of God, than the Church of Christ owns now all chants, all anthems, all ivory key-boards, all organ diapasons, and God will gather up these sweet sounds after a while, and He will mingle these in one great harmony, and the Mendelssohns, and the Beethovens, and the Mozarts of the earth will join their voices, and their musical instruments, and soft south wind and loud-lunged euroclydon will sweep the great organ pipes, and you shall see God's hand striking the keys, and God's foot tramping the pedals in the great oratorio of the ages ! So all the vicissitudes of this life, so far as they have any religious profit, are in the right of the Christian. You stand among the Alleghany Moun- tains, especially near what is called the " Horseshoe," and you will find a train of cars almost doubling on itself, and sitting in the back car you see a locomotive coming as you look out of the window, and you think it is another train, when it is only the front of the train in which you are riding ; and sometimes you can hardly tell whether the train is going toward Pittsburgh or toward Philadelphia, but it is on the track, and it will reach the depot for which it started, and all the passengers will be discharged at the right place. Now, there are a great many sharp curves in life. Sometimes we seem to be going this way, and sometimes we seem to be going that way ; but, if we 1 62 THE BALANCE-SHEET. arc Christians, we are on the right track, and we are going to come out at the right place. Do not get worried, then, about the sharp curve. A sailing vessel starts from New York to Glasgow. Does it go in a straight line? Oh, no. It changes its tack every little while. Now, you say, " This vessel, instead of going to Glasgow, must be going to Havre, or it is going to Hamburg, or it is going to Mar- seilles." No, no. It is going to Glasgow. And in this voyage of life we often have to change our tacks. One storm blows us this way, and another storm blows us that way ; but He who holds the winds in His fist will bring us into a haven of ever- lasting rest just at the right time. Do not worry, then, if you have to change tacks. One of the best things that ever happened to Paul was being thrown off his horse. One of the best things that ever happened to Joseph was being thrown into the pit. The losing of his physical eye- sight helped John Milton to see the battle of the angels. One of the best things that ever happened to Ignatius was being thrown to the wild beasts in the the Coliseum, and while eighty thousand people were jeering at his religion, he walked up to the fiercest of all the lions, and looked him in the eye, as much as to say, " Here I am, ready to be devoured for Christ's sake." All things work together for your good. If you walk the desert, the manna will fall, and the sea will part. II the feverish torch of sickness is kindled over your pillow, by its light you can read the promise. If the waves of trouble dash clear high, above your girdle, across the blast and across the surge you can hear the promise, " When thou passest through the THE BALANCE-SHEET. 163 waters, I will be with thee." You never owned a glove, or a shoe, or a hat, or a coat, more certainly than you own all the frets, and annoyances, and exas- perations of this life, and they are bound to work out your present and your eternal good. They are the saws, the hammers, the files, by which you are to be hewn, and cut, and smoothed for your eternal well- being. I go further, and tell you that the Christian owns, not only this world, but he owns the next world. No chasm to be leaped, no desert to be crossed. There is the wall ; there is the gate of heaven. He owns all on this side. Now, I am going to show you that he owns all on the other side. Death is not a ruffian that comes to burn us out of house and home, destroying the house of the tabernacle so that we should be homeless forever. Oh, no ! He is only a black messenger who comes to tell us it is time to move ; to tell us to get out of this hut, and go up into the palace. The Christian owns all heaven. "All are yours." Its palaces of beauty, its towers of strength, castles of love. He will not walk in the eternal city as a foreigner in a strange city, but as a farmer walks over his own premises, "All are yours." All the mansions yours. Angels your companions. Trees of life your shade. Hills of glory your lookout. Thrones of heaven the place where you will shout the triumph. Jesus is yours. God is yours. You look up into the face of God, and say, " My Father." You look up into the face of Jesus, and say, " My Brother." Walk out on the battlements of heaven, and look off upon the city of the sun. No tears* No sorrow. No death. No smoke of toiling warehouse curling on the air. No voice of 164 THE BALANCE-SHEET. blasphemy thrilling through the bright, clear Sab- bath morning. No din of strife jarring the air. Then take out your deed, and remember that from throne to throne, and from wall to wall, and from horizon to horizon, " all are yours." Then go up into the temple of the sun, worshipers in white, each with a palm branch, and from high gallery of that temple look down upon the thousands of thousands, and the ten thousand times ten thou- sand, and the one hundred and forty and four thou- sand, and the great " multitude that no man can number," and louder than the rush of the wheels, louder than the tramp of the redeemed, hear a voice saying, "All are yours." See the great procession marching around the throne of God. Martyrs who went up on wings of flame. Invalids who went up from couches of distress. Toilers who went up from the workhouse, and the factory, and the mine. All the suffering and the bruised children of God. See the chariots of salvation ; in them those who were more than conquerors. See them marching around about the throne of God forever and forever, and know that "all are yours." O ye who have pains of body, that exhaust your strength and wear out your patience, I hold before you this morning the land of eternal health, and of imperishable beauty. O ye, who have hard work to get your daily bread, hard work to shelter your chil- dren from the storm, I lift before you the vision of that land where they never hunger, and they never thirst, and God feeds them, and robes cover them, and the warmth of eternal love fills them, and all that is yours. O ye whose hearts are buried in the grave of your dead O ye whose happiness went by long THE BALANCE-SHEET. 165 ago O ye who mourn for countenances that never will light up, and for eyes closed forever sit no longer among the tombs, but look here. A home that shall never be broken up. Green fields never cleft of the grave. Ransomed ones, from you parted long ago, now radiant with a joy that shall never cease, and a love that shall never grow cold, and wearing garments that shall never wither, and know all that is yours. Yours the love. Yours the ac- claim. Yours the transport. Yours the cry of the four and twenty elders. Yours the choiring of cher- ubim. Yours the lamb that was slain. In the vision of that orlorious consummation I C5 almost lose my foothold, and have to hold fast lest I be overborne by the glory. The vision rose before St. John on Patmos, and he saw Christ in a blood-red garment, riding on a white horse, and all heaven fol- lowing Him on white horses. What a procession ! Let Jesus ride. He walked the way footsore, weary, and faint. Now let Him ride. White horse of vic- tory, bear on our Chief. Hosanna to the son of David ! Ride on, Jesus ! Let all heaven follow Him. These cavalry of God fought well, and they fought triumphantly. Now let them be mounted. The pavements of gold ring under the flying hoofs. Swords sheathed and victories won, like conquerors they sit on their chargers. Ye mounted troops of God, ride on ! ride on ! ten thousand abreast, caval- cade after cavalcade. No blood dashed to the lips. No blood dripping from the fetlocks. No smoke of battle breathed from the nostril. The battle is ended the victory won ! CHAPTER XV. NOONTIDE OF LIFE. It seems to me that in some respects the hill-top in the journey of life is the best part of the journey. While in early life we are climbing up the steep hillside, we have worries and frets, and we slip, and we fall, and we slide back, and we run upon sharp antagonisms, and all the professions and occupations have drudgeries and sharp rivalries at the start. We are afraid we will not be properly appreciated. We toil on, and we pant, and we struggle, and we are out of breath, and sometimes we are tempted to lie down in the bower of lazy indulgence. In addition to these difficulties of climbing the hill of life, there are those who rejoice in setting a man back and try- ing to make a young man cowed down. Every young man has had somebody to meet him as he was climbing up, and say to him : " Don't, don't you can't, you can't quit, quit ! " Every young man has had twenty disheartenments where he has one round word of good cheer. But after we have climbed to the top of the hill of life, then we have comparative tranquility and repose. We begin to look about us. We find that it is just three miles from cradle to grave : Youth the first mile, man- hood the second mile, old age the third mile. Stand- ing on the hill-top of the journey of life and in the second mile, having come up one side the hill, and 166 NOONTIDE OF LIFE. 1 67 before I go down the other side, I want to tell you that life is to me a happiness, and much of the time it has been to me a rapture, and sometimes an ecstasy. There has been a great deal of wholesale slander of this world. People abuse it, and the traveler on the mountain curses the chill, and the voyager on the deep curses the restlessness, and there are those who say it is a mean, old, despicable world, and from pole to pole it has been calumniated ; and if the world should present a libel suit for all those who have slandered it, there would not be gold enough in the mountains to pay the damages, or places enough in the penitentiaries to hold the offenders. The people not only slander the world, but they slander its neighbors, and they belabor the sun, now because it is too ardent, and now because it is too distant ; but by experience coming up the hill of life I have found out when there is anything wrong the trouble is not with the sun, or the moon, or the stars, or the meteorological conditions ; the trouble is with my- self. Oh, I am so glad that while this world as a finality is a dead failure, as a hotel where we stop for awhile in our traveling on toward a better place, it is a very good world, a very kind world, and I am glad that the shepherd in so pleasant a place makes his flocks rest at noon ! But having told you how life seems to me on the hill-top of the journey, you naturally want to know how it seems to me when I look backward, and when I look forward. The first thing a traveler does after climbing up to the top of a mountain is to take a long breath, and then look about and see what is all around him. He sees out in^this direction the winding road l68 NOONTIDE OK LIFE. up which he came, and out in that direction the wind- ing road down which he shall go. And so, standing on the hill-top of life's journey, I put my outspread hand to my forehead, so as to keep off the glare of the noonday's sun, and to concentre my vision, and 1 look back on the winding road on which I have traveled, and I see far on down at the foot of that road, in the dim distance, something small, something insignificant, and it vibrates, and it trembles, and it rocks. I wonder what it is. I guess what it is. A cradle ! Then I turn, and still keeping my outspread hand to my forehead so as to shade my eyes from the glare of the noonday's sun, and to concentrate my vision, I look on the winding road down which I shall travel, and I see at the foot of the road something that does not tremble, does not vibrate, does not rock some- thing white and then near it a bank of the earth, and 1 wonder what it is. Ah ! I see what it is. I guess what it is. I know what it is. A grave. So, standing on the hill-top, having come up one side the hill, and before I go down the other side, you ask me two or three questions, and I tell you that I have learned in coming up this side of life, the steep side, the first side I have learned that nothing is ac- complished without hard work. And I say to the multitude of young people starting in occupations and professions, nothing is accomplished without work, hard work, continuous work, all-absorbing work, everlasting work. A parishioner asked a clergyman why the congre- gation had filled up, and why the church was now so prosperous above what it had ever been before. "Well," said the clergyman, "I will tell you the NOONTIDE OF LIFE. 169 secret. I met a tragedian some time ago, and I said to him, ' How is it you get along so well in your pro- fession ? ' The tragedian replied, ' The secret is, I always do my best ; when stormy days come, and the theatre is not more than half or a fourth occupied, I always do my best, and that has been the secret of my getting on.' ' And the clergyman reciting it, said : " I have remembered that, and ever since then I have always done my best." And I say to you, in whatever occupation or profession God has put you, Do your best ; whether the world appreciates it or not, do your best always do your best. Domitian, the Roman emperor, for one hour every day caught flies anid killed them with his penknife ; and there are people with imperial opportunity who set themselves to some insignificant business. Oh, for something grand to do, and then concentrate all your energies of body, mind, and soul upon that one thing, and noth- ing in earth or hell can stand before you. There is no such thing as good luck. I have learned also in coming up this steep hill of life, that all events are connected. I look back and now see events which I thought were isolated and alone, but I find now they were adjoined to every- thing that went before, and everything that came after. The chain of life is made up of a great many links large links, small links, silver links, iron links, beautiful links, ugly links, mirthful links, solemn links but they are all parts of one great chain of destiny. Each minute is made up of sixty links, and each day is made up of twenty-four links, and each year is made of three hundred and sixty-five links ; but they are all parts of one endless chain which plays and works through the hand of an all-governing God. I/O NOONTIDE OK LIFE. No event stands alone. Sometimes you say, " This is my day off." You will never have a day off. Nothing is off. But if you continue to ask me how the past seems, I answer it seems like three or four picture galleries Dusseldorl, Louvre, and Luxembourg their corri- dors interjoining. 1 close my eyes and see them coasting the hillside, and flving the kite, and trund- ling the hoop, and gathering nuts in the autumnal forests, and then a little while after, bending in anxious study over the lexicons and the trigonom- etries. Where are those comrades? Most of them gone. Some are in useful spheres on earth. Some died in rapture, and a good many of them perished in dissipation before thirty years of age. The wine- cup, with its sharp edge, cut the jugular vein of their soul. Poor fellows ! They tried the world without God, and the world was too much for them. Splen- did fellows! Oh, what forehead they had for brain, and what muscle they had for strength, and what gleam of eye they had for genius, and what loving letters they got from home, and how they carried off the bouquets on Commencement Day ! But they made the terrific mistake of thinking religion a super- fluity, and now they are in my memory, not so much canvas as sculpture some Laocoon struggling with snapped muscles, and eyes starting from the socket for torture ; struggling amid the crushing folds of a serpentine monstrosity, a reptile horror, a Laocoon worse than that of the ancients. Satan has a fastidious appetite, and the vulgar souls he throws into a trough to fatten his swine; but he says : "Bring to my golden plate all the fine natures, bring to niv golden plate all the clear intel- NOONTIDE OF LIFE. I/I lects, bring them to me ; my knife will cut down through the lusciousness ; fill my chalice with the richest of their blood ; pour it in until it comes three- fourths full ; pour it in until it comes to the rim of the chalice ; pour it until the blood bubbles over the rim. There, that will do now. Oh, this infernal banquet of great souls ! Aha ! aha ! let the common demons have the vulgar souls, but give to me, who am the king of all diabolism, the jolliest, the gladdest, and the grandest of all this immortal sacrifice. Aha!" Then in my mind there is the home gallery. Oh, those dear faces, old faces and young faces, faces that have lost nothing of their loveliness by the recession of years, faces into which we looked when we sat on their laps, faces that looked up to us when they sat on our laps, faces that wept, faces that laughed, faces wrinkled with old age, faces all aflush with juvenile jocundity, faces that have disappeared, faces gone. But you ask how the rest of the journey appears to me. As I look down now, having come up one side, and standing on the hill-top, and before I take the other journey, let me say to you, the road yet to be traveled, seems to me brighter than the one on which I have journeyed. I would not want to live life over again, as some wish to. If we lived life over again we would do no better than we have done. Our lives have been lived over five hundred times before. We saw five hundred people make mistakes in life, and we went right on and made the same mistakes. Our life was not the first. There were five hundred or a thousand people living before us. We did not profit by their example. We went right on and broke down in the same place, and if 1 72 NOONTIDE OF LIFE. we did not do any better with those experiences be- fore us, do you think we would do any better if we tried life over again ? No. I should rather go right on. If we tried life over again we would repeat the same journey. "But," says some one, "don't you know there may be trials, hardships, sicknesses, and severe duties ahead ?" Oh, yes ! But if I am on a railroad jour- ney of a thousand miles, and I have gone five hun- dred of the miles, and during those five hundred miles I have found the bridges safe, and the track solid, and the conductors competent, and the engineer wide awake, does not that give me confidence for the other five hundred miles ? God has seen me through up to this time, and I am going to trust Him for the rest of the journey. I believe I have a through ticket, and although sometimes the track may turn this way or the other way, and sometimes we may be plunged through tunnels, and sometimes we may have a hot box that detains the train, and sometimes we may switch off upon a side track to let somebody else pass, and sometimes we may see a red flag warning us to slow up, I believe we are going through to the right place. I have not a fear, an anxiety, that 1 can mention. I do not know one. I put all my case in God's hands, and I have not any anxiety about the future. I do not feel foolhardy. I only trust. I trust, I trust, I trust ! And for there are those here of my own age let me say, when we come to duties, and trials, and hardships, God is going to see us through. From this hill-top of life I catch a glimpse of those hill-tops where all sorrow and sighing shall be done away. Oh, that God would make that world to us a NOONTIDE OF LIFE. 173 reality ! Faith in that world helped old Dr. Tyng, when he stood by the casket of his dead son, whose arm had been torn off in the threshing-machine, death ensuing; and Dr. Tyng, with infinite composure, preached the funeral sermon of his own beloved son. Faith in that world helped Martin Luther, without one tear, to put away in death his favorite child. Faith in that world helped the dying woman to see on the sky the letter "W," and they asked her what she supposed the letter " W " on the sky meant. "Oh," she said, "don't you know ? W stands for welcome." O Heaven, swing open thy gates! O Heaven, roll upon us some of thine anthems ! O Heaven, flash upon us the vision of thy luster ! CHAPTER XVI. A SCROLL OF HEROES. Historians are not slow to acknowledge the merits of great military chieftains. We have the full-length portraits of the Baldwins, the Cromwells, and the Marshal Neys of the world. History is not written in black ink, but with red ink of human blood. The gods of human ambition did not drink from bowls made out of silver,'or gold, or precious stones, but out of the bleached skulls of the fallen. But I am to unroll before you a scroll of heroes that the world has never acknowledged ; they who faced no guns, blew no bugle blast, conquered no cities, chained no captives to their chariot wheels, and yet, in the great day of eternity will stand higher than those whose names startled the nations; and seraph and rapt spirit and archangel will tell their deeds to a listening universe. I mean the heroes of common, everyday life. In this roll, in the first place, I find all the heroes of the sick room. When Satan had failed to overcome Job he said to God : " Put forth thy hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face." Satan had found out what we have all found out, that sick- ness is the greatest test of character. A man who can stand that can stand anything; to be shut in a room as fast as though it were a Bastile ; to be so 174 A SCROLL OF HEROES. 1/5 nervous you cannot endure the tap of a child's foot ; to have luxuriant fruit, which tempts the appetite of the robust and healthy, excite our loathing and dis- gust when it first appears on the platter ; to have the rapier of pain strike through the side or across the temples like a razor, or to put the foot into a vise, or to throw the whole body into the blaze of a fever. Yet there have been men and women, but more women than men, who have cheerfully endured this hardness. Through years of exhausting rheumatisms and excruciating neuralgias they have gone, and through bodily distresses, that rasped the nerves, and tore the muscles, and paled the cheeks, and stooped the shoulders. By the dim light of the sick room taper they saw on their wall the picture of that land where the people are never sick. Through the dead silence of the night they have heard the chorus of the angels. Those who suffered on the battlefield, amid shot and shell, were not so much heroes and heroines as those who in the field hospital and in the asylum had fevers which no ice could cool and no surgeon could cure. No shout of comrade to cheer them, but numbness and aching and homesickness yet willing to suffer, confident in God, hopeful of heaven. Heroes of rheumatism, heroes of neuralgia, heroes of spinal complaint, heroes of sick headache, heroes of life-long invalidism, heroes and* heroines, they shall reign forever and forever. Hark ! I catch just one note of the eternal anthem : " There shall be no more pain." Bless God for that. In this roll I also find the heroes of toil, who do their work uncomplainingly. It is comparatively easy to lead a regiment into battle when you know 176 A SCROLL OK HEROES. that the whole nation will applaud the victory ; it is comparatively easy to doctor the sick when you know that your skill will be appreciated by a large company of friends and relatives; it is comparatively easy to address an audience when in the gleaming eyes and the flushed cheeks you know that your sen- timents are adopted ; but to do sewing where you expect that the employer will come and thrust his thumb through the work to show how imperfect it is, or to have the whole garment thrown back on you, to be done over again ; to build a wall and know there will be no one to say you did it well, but only a swearing employer howling across the scaffold ; to work until your eyes are dim, and your back aches, and your heart faints, and to know that if you stop before night your children will starve that is heroism. Ah, the sword has not slain so many as the needle ! The great battlefields of our last war were not Gettysburg and Shiloh and South Mountain. The great battlefields of the last war were in the arsenals^ and the shops and the attics, where women made army jackets for a sixpence. They toiled on until they died. They had no funeral eulogium, but in the name of my God this morning I enroll their names among those of whom the world was not worthy ; heroes of the needle, heroes of the sewing- machine, heroes of