(scsi,0t4~**cZ
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "LIFE THOUGHTS," "EYES AND EARS," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
 1866.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., 
 CAMBRIDGE.
 
 PREFATORY. 
 
 DEAR MR. FIELDS, I comply with 
 your request and send you a copy of " Roy- 
 al Truths." Its history is this: When, in the 
 summer of 1863, I lauded in England, my first 
 trip was to Northern Wales. I arrived late on 
 Saturday at Bedgellert, and spent Sunday there. 
 An estimable young Welsh clergyman called to 
 request me to preach, which, yet drenched with 
 the ocean, I declined to do. In the course of 
 conversation he spoke of having read my works, 
 and mentioned " Royal Truths " among the 
 number. Supposing him to have mistaken the 
 title of " Life Thoughts," I corrected him. 
 "Yes, I have read 'Life Thoughts,' too; but 
 ' Royal Truths,' I mean." " But, my dear sir, 
 there is no such work of mine. I never issued 
 such a work, nor heard of it. If it exist, it 
 must be by some other person." No; he was 
 firm, and declared that I should find it at Stra-
 
 iv PREFATORY. 
 
 ban's in London ! Sure enough, on reaching the 
 capital, I found a book by myself, of which I 
 had never heard. It seems that some one had 
 taken from my sermons, published every week, 
 such extracts as were fitted for standing alone, 
 and framed them into a book, baptizing it " Roy- 
 al Truths," of which, as you will see by the 
 copy which I send you, six editions had been 
 published in 1862, and I know not how many 
 since. The book is, therefore, mine, and not 
 mine. I furnished the contents, but neither 
 selected them, nor gave them a name. 
 
 My surprise at this unconscious authorship 
 would have been greater, if I had not already 
 had a not dissimilar experience, which, perhaps, 
 it may be amusing to narrate. 
 
 In 1861 or 1862, a gentleman in New York 
 happened into a friend's store, a publisher, who 
 handed him a little book, called " Aids to Prayer," 
 saying that it was an English work, just sent 
 over to him, and that he liked it so much that 
 he immediately determined to republish it for 
 American reading. The gentleman took home 
 the work, and the next day returned to the store, 
 saying, "I like your little book very much, and 
 always have." " Why ; what do you mean ? "
 
 PREFATORY. v 
 
 " The book is made up wholly, except some texts 
 and hymns, of Mr. Beecher's writings, and may 
 be found in ' Views and Experiences.' ' There- 
 upon, the mortified but innocent publisher post- 
 ed the book to me, with apologies for violating 
 copyrights, etc. The work had, with a single 
 exception, been taken bodily from the English 
 " Summer in the Soul," which was the new name, 
 given without my knowledge, by London pub- 
 lishers, to my book called " Views and Experi- 
 ences in Religion." Nor was there a hint of 
 its Transatlantic origin or authorship, for fear, 
 said the publisher, that others would " print it 
 upon him," (I think that is the phrase,) unless 
 they supposed it to be an original English book ! 
 
 "Royal Truths" has been useful abroad, and 
 may do good at home, in part, because the 
 selections are short, and can be read in mo- 
 ments, when a book demanding hours would 
 be rejected. 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y., November, 1865.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 LL along the way of life we have premoni- 
 tions of a coming future. Our very struggles, 
 our sorrows and yearnings, are so many indi- 
 cations of that coming state. The tears that 
 men shed, if they be of ungodly sorrow, are of no -moral 
 moment ; but jewels every one, if they are symbols of 
 unrest which the inward life experiences by reason of 
 the imperfection of the outward life. In this state we 
 groan being burdened, the apostle said, not that we would 
 be unclothed, but clothed upon. We groan not so much 
 because we are discontented with the allotments of God's 
 providence here, but because He has given us a concep- 
 tion of things hereafter so much better, that our aspira- 
 tions rise above the present, with longing for the future. 
 It is not so much discontent as aspiration. There is high 
 meaning in these yearnings of the soul. The summer is 
 passing ; the autumn is coming ; birds are gathering ; 
 they meditate a far-distant flight. And shall the soul 
 have no sense of migration ? There come to God's chil- 
 dren hours of transfiguration in which the heavens are 
 opened, the ground is suffused with glory, and Christ, 
 our Head and Saviour, shines out royally before us. 
 
 1 A
 
 2 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 And these momentary glances into the invisible world 
 are the most precious part of a man's life. 
 
 THE crucifixion of Christ was that, on the scale and in 
 the spheres of Infinity, which we see every day on the 
 scale of the cradle and the nursery. And the brightest 
 thing which we see in this world is not the most conspic- 
 uous thing ; it is the most hidden and obscure, it is the 
 accepting of Iffe, as the mother does, for the sake of an- 
 other life, it is the accepting that love as the centre of 
 attraction, and the point around which it revolves, and 
 making night and day glad and songful and cheerful, only 
 because it gives permission to yield everything a tribute 
 to another nature, to the service of another and an un- 
 requiting being, for the least helpful and least requiting 
 thing is an overgrown child. And there is a love bright- 
 er than the morning sun, fairer than the evening star, 
 and more constant than either, there is a love sweeter 
 than all the blossoms in the fields to-day, clearer than 
 the whole air that fills the earth to-day, the love most 
 unselfish, and therefore most divine, that makes suffering 
 itself most sweet, and sorrow pleasure, that love which 
 the mother bears to the child, the mother that is in par- 
 entage. It is the only one that glows with any consider- 
 able resemblance to that great central fire from which it 
 flows, for it is a revelation of the love of God, it is a suf- 
 fering love, it is the whole self-hood, the whole being, 
 used simply as a universal instrument for others' welfare ; 
 and it is that which, it seems to me, above all other things, 
 our Lord and Master, Christ, came into the world to ex- 
 press, to express first, by coming, then by the way in 
 which he lived, to express, as we understand life, charac- 
 ter, and conduct, by the way in which He died.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 3 
 
 THE Apostle Paul, with extraordinary courage and 
 fidelity, set forth, against the whole reigning intellectual 
 forces of the world, his faith in Christ.* He insisted on 
 presenting that side of Christ's life and history which was 
 the least acceptable to the world, which was most repul- 
 sive to educated men. To us, now, there can be no full 
 sympathy with that hatred of Christ crucified which then 
 existed. Now it is nothing to preach Christ crucified, or 
 the cross of Christ, in the ordinary methods, for that sym- 
 bol has reigned for fifteen hundred years supreme in art, 
 in literature, in religion. The cross has twined around 
 it every association of dignity and beauty in the world. 
 Not one other thing has received from the fertile minds 
 and the all-fashioning hands of men of genius so many 
 extrinsic beauties as the cross of Christ. Millions never 
 hear of it without a throb, nor see it without a genuflec- 
 tion. It dawns upon the child in the cradle next to its 
 own mother's face, and it is the last thing from which 
 the light disappears when this child, in old age, is dying. 
 The> cross is now as universal and as beautiful to the 
 associations and the memories of men, as then it was rare, 
 peculiar, and odious ; it is that which now to us is not 
 only suggestive of a fact in Christ's history, but it is also 
 a memorial of two thousand years of history. Around that 
 simple cross-wood the heart of the world has gathered for 
 twenty centuries its stores of admiration, of love, of devo- 
 tion. But none of this was then known when the apostle 
 entered upon his solitary way. It was then the very sign 
 and symbol of ignominy. It was as far toward the bot- 
 tom of disgrace as now it is toward the top of honor. It 
 was the convict's mark then ; it was the slave's, the crim- 
 inal's sign ; it was a hundred times more odious then than 
 * See 1 Cor. i. 17, 18.
 
 4 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 to our ears is the word " gallows " now ; but that word is 
 softening, and may yet become agreeable too, when it 
 bears a little more of right fruit. There is no word 
 among us that is significant of the deep and acknowl- 
 edged and universal detestation that belonged to the 
 cross. 
 
 WHEN a musician is called to perform music which he 
 has composed, before a great congregation, he knows that 
 many will call for melodies, for ballads, for simple airs, 
 and he may be disposed to gratify their taste ; but if he 
 knows that in the congregation there is one Mozart, or 
 one Beethoven, who is able to follow him through all the 
 intricacies of harmony, as he rises up to the majesties of 
 sound that expresses thought, and feeling, and imagina- 
 tion, that one single musician will inspire him and re- 
 ward him more than the thousands of those who know 
 only how to take in the lowest forms of his exhibition. 
 
 Now, we not only live among men, but there are airy 
 hosts, blessed spectators, sympathetic lookers-on, that see 
 and know and appreciate our thoughts and feelings and 
 acts. And if we can bring ourselves to realize this, it 
 will lift us above the necessity of vulgar praise, and above 
 any depression that we may feel for the want of appreci- 
 ation and praise from men. It is the great tribunal, airy 
 and invisible, before whom we live more really than be- 
 fore visible and fleshly men. "We perceive, then, that by 
 and by, if men live with patient continuance in well-doing, 
 they shall have honor and glory. You only sow the seed 
 here. You do not reap the remuneration here ; but you 
 live with, and toward, and among, an invisible host that 
 understands the law of excellence ; that understands how 
 much more valuable are the higher traits and magnanim-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 5 
 
 ities than the lower; that understands how much more 
 noble and admirable are the things which the soul does 
 than the things that the mind does, and how much more 
 noble and admirable are the things which the mind does 
 than the things which the body does. All, therefore, 
 which is hidden in obscurity in this world, is reserved 
 for disclosure in the world to come. 
 
 THE gravest events dawn with no more noise than the 
 morning star makes in rising. All great developments 
 complete themselves in the world, and modestly wait in 
 silence, praising themselves never, and announcing them- 
 selves not at all. "We must be sensitive, and sensible, if 
 we would see the beginnings and endings of great things. 
 That is our part. 
 
 WHEN Christ was teaching men what was the highest 
 conception of human character, what did He say ? The 
 serene, large-browed intellect, the deep, calm, untrou- 
 bled oceanic enthusiasm, the exquisite sensitiveness of 
 taste and purity combined, that large, flexible nature 
 which revolves in orbits of beauty, and stands the point 
 of admiration to all round about, beautiful and harmless! 
 Was that the conception of character ? Such is the notion 
 we have of beauty and genius. These are the men that 
 we love to paint to ourselves, men that do no harm, to 
 be sure, but that are self-cultured, and work off every part 
 of themselves with elaborate workings, and make them- 
 selves, according to some preconceived model of human 
 development, symmetrical, and large, and manly, and 
 perfect, and stand simply in that self-poised strength and 
 power ! Does Christ say that is the idea of character ? 
 Not at all. Self-seeking and self-building, as an end,
 
 6 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 were simply hateful to God, as they should be hateful to 
 men, but are not. What, then, was Christ's ideal of 
 manhood ? Weakness, subtleness, insignificance of char- 
 acter ? No, no ! but power in the head, and power in the 
 heart, and art in the hand, the sovereignty of man in 
 every single one of his faculties ; but the whole of it 
 taken with sweetest humiliation of love, and carried down 
 into the lowest place and meanest, to that which is weak. 
 It is strength glorified with purity and beautified with 
 taste, making itself a servant, as Christ is said to have 
 made Himself a servant. The Divine ideal of character 
 is that it is a power, no matter how resplendent, how 
 high, so that it is devoted to the welfare of those who are 
 about us ; first to those who are the lowest and furthest re- 
 moved from our taste and sympathy. The man you hate 
 is the man you ought to love most, that is, with benefi- 
 cence ; the man that shocks every taste and sentiment is 
 the man who should receive the contribution of your 
 being, that is the man into whom and around whom 
 you are to pour yourself, that by all the influences in 
 which you are superior to him, he may find the ocean 
 tide of your life buoying him up and taking him from out 
 the mud and sand in which he swelters, and giving him 
 at last launching and sea room. That is the conception 
 of the highest character. 
 
 IT is narrated of a Moravian. I know not if in any 
 other name of Christians could be found an instance that 
 can parallel this : A Moravian Christian heard of the 
 sufferings of the West India slaves, and desired to be a 
 missionary to them;*t)ut when he reached them, he found 
 they were driven to the field so early, and came home so 
 late, that there was no life or strength in them to listen
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 7 
 
 to his instructions ; neither did they believe that any man 
 whose face was white had a heart that was other than 
 black, and they would not listen to him ; and he found, at 
 last, that there was no way to preach to them unless he 
 preached to them in their sufferings while he suffered 
 with them himself. He sold himself, and was driven 
 afleld with them himself, that while he suffered and 
 toiled as they did, he might have opportunity to preach 
 to them the unsearchable riches of Christ. Now, I ask 
 if there reigns a king upon his throne that was so lordly, 
 so large a man as that poor, sweating Moravian, who, for 
 the sake of serving these poor, miserable, dying slaves in 
 the field, had sold himself into like estate to preach the 
 riches of Christ. The largest conception of manhood is 
 that which knows how to .take itself, as though of no 
 consequence to itself, but of all possible consequence to 
 those to whom it may make itself an offering, a pow- 
 er, and an instruction. 
 
 IT is said that no one can at first take in the scope and 
 magnitude of St. Peter's at Rome, and that the first im- 
 pression is one of disappointment. Our senses are so 
 unused to large measurements, that they do not take the 
 meaning of such a gigantic cathedral until they have been 
 practised to do it. It is only when, by a patient waiting 
 and growing familiarity, our senses have opened and 
 grown to a nobler use, that the full meaning of such a 
 massive structure begins to come to them. Then the 
 immensity of the space, the richness of the parts, the uni- 
 versality resulting from a well ordering of innumerable 
 details, begin to impress the mind ; and every day swells 
 the dome, and carries forth the length and width of the 
 interior, and harmonizes the multitudinous details until
 
 8 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 they lose their separateness, and become only the means 
 and instruments of a wonderful whole. 
 
 As you recede from it, miles and miles across the Cam- 
 pagna, there rises high into the air that sublime circle ; 
 and when, by distance, all the subjacent parts are sunken 
 and lost, that magnificent globe hangs upon the sky, as if, 
 like heavenly spheres, it needed no foundation, but hung 
 suspended in the ether, buoyed up as ships are floated iu 
 the seas. 
 
 It is even so with the Epistle to the Romans. The 
 close of the eighth chapter is the dome of the cathedral. 
 It is only one's own whole life that can interpret it. At 
 the first reading it seems confused. A certain wonder 
 and wealth of meaning is apparent, but neither order nor 
 harmony. But gradually the parts seem to unite ; the 
 exceeding richness of single words or thoughts goes to 
 compose a harmonious whole. And the closing verses, 
 rising like a vast dome, lift themselves above the earth, 
 above the stars, and into that sacred space where heaven 
 is and the glory of God. No human hand hath builded 
 this. These glorious thoughts that hang above the world, 
 glowing with radiant colors, came from no mortal genius. 
 Not he who filled the dome of St. John at Parma with 
 the wonderful uprising of the apostolic and angelic host, 
 accompanying the Virgin to her coronation Correggio, 
 nor that greater priest and king of art that filled the 
 air of the Sistine Chapel with the sublime congress of 
 prophets and sibyls M. Angelo, reared this tower of 
 grandeur, nor filled its heavenly summit with undying 
 colors. A greater Artist the Artist of artists, the 
 Father of beauty, the God of all glory hath given 
 these immortal scenes to the world. And they shall 
 never lose their color. Age shall not dim, and vapors
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS: 9 
 
 and smoke shall not blacken them. They shall be fresh 
 forever. The child shall see them. The ignorant shall 
 behold them. Yea, and most wonderful, the blind shall 
 see them by an inward vision, and rejoice in their celes- 
 tial glory. 
 
 IT is quite in vain for any of us to have a hope in God 
 which is valid only in the fair hour of prosperity and of 
 health. When an anchor is thrown overboard, if it floats 
 in the stream it is useless. No anchor is of any use what- 
 soever to a ship that cannot by its cable go down to take 
 hold of the firm bottom, and that, taking hold of it, is not 
 able to keep the ship. If when the storm beats, if when 
 the whole concentrated fury of the storm beats on the 
 ship, the anchor holds it, that is an anchor worth having. 
 "Woe to the mariner whose anchor breaks in the time of 
 testing ! If you have a hope that is good when you arc 
 young, when you are*prosperous, and when you are hap- 
 py, but does not hold you when you are sick, when you 
 are cast out, when you are bereaved and discouraged, 
 when life is taken away from you if you have no hope 
 that holds you then, you have got nothing at all. An 
 anchor that not only deceives men with the appearance 
 of safety, but that gives way in the hour of danger, is 
 worse than none at all a hope that holds a man when 
 he does not need holding, but breaks when he does. 
 
 WHAT must be the value of anything desired, when 
 the price you are willing to pay for it is one of your chil- 
 dren ? What personal pain in watching, in care, in pa- 
 tience, are not parents willing to undergo for the sake of 
 their childr.cn, rather than that those children shall be 
 given up to any trmable ? What abundant trouble does 
 1*
 
 10 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 the eager parent take upon himself to shield the child ? 
 What ease, what prospects in life, has the parent gladly 
 given up for the sake of the well-being of his child? 
 How easily would one sacrifice his property the whole 
 of it, if need be rather than that his beloved child 
 should suffer ! Nay, how easy it is for love to die 
 that never dies ! And how easy would it be for many 
 and many a one to say, as David said, "Would to 
 God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son ! " 
 The tenderness of the record may be rare, but the ex- 
 perience is common. When, then, an emergency comes 
 in which a parent consents to give up even a child, what 
 an unspeakable testimony is that to the strength of his 
 feeling. There is no other thing in human life that 
 can measure feeling like such an instance as this. 
 
 Now, that is the image which God sends to kindle in 
 our heart and imagination some faint conception of what 
 was the power, the depth, the omnipotence of His feeling 
 of love toward the whole race of men. Consider what 
 that ocean must be in God, where such a feeling exists 
 of desire and love that it puts into a subordinate place 
 His love for His own darling Son ! What must be that 
 emotion which rises higher than our love for our own off- 
 spring ! And transferring that idea to God, considering 
 what is the might and majesty of every feeling in God 
 over the slender experience of the human heart, consider- 
 ing what is the wonder of increase in every emotion and 
 every function in God when compared with the corre- 
 sponding emotions and functions in us, what must have 
 been the length, and breadth, and height, and depth of 
 the love of God to human souls ! This is that which the 
 apostle holds up before us in the passage, " He that 
 spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. H 
 
 all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all 
 things?" 
 
 I THINK that men look upon repentance and humilia-. 
 tion before God very much as they do upon a voyage 
 from the tropics to the North Pole. Every single league, 
 as they advance toward the Arctic region, they leave 
 more and more behind them greenness, and fruit, and 
 warmth, and civilization, and find themselves more and 
 more in the midst of sterility, barrenness, ice, and barba- 
 rism. I think that men repent toward the frigid zones. 
 They think that to go to God is dreary and desolate in 
 the extreme. It is not ! The sinner is an Esquimaux ! 
 He lives in ice, and burrows underground, and is but 
 little better than a beast ! But if by any means he be- 
 comes fired with a conception of a better clime, and leav- 
 ing his hibernating quarters, he takes the ship Repentance, 
 and sails toward the torrid zone, at every league he is sur- 
 prised by the new forms of vegetation by which he is 
 surrounded. He has seen oak-trees only about as high 
 as his knee. Not long after he sets out on his voy- 
 age, he is astonished to see them as high as his head. 
 By and by, as he draws, near the tropics, he is lost in 
 wonder and ecstasy to see them lifting themselves far 
 above him in the air. And with what satisfaction does 
 he compare the delightful home that he has found, with 
 the miserable one that he has left behind ! 
 
 MEN move and march, and we must keep step, and for- 
 ever move and march ! Wo are strangers and pilgrims. 
 "We are not settled. "We never shall be in this world. 
 Nothing is finished here. Every step is a preparation 
 for the next. That is a preparation for the next ; and
 
 12 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 that for the next. The whole of this life is one grand 
 march toward life indeed, and life in earnest ! 
 
 CONSIDER what is the thought of Divine parentage ; 
 consider what are all the ways by which God has sought 
 to impress upon the human race the fulness of* His love. 
 What figure is there that bears the conception of a pow- 
 er, an honor, an ease, a glory, an achievement, a victory, 
 which God has not taken and set in the sanctuary," to 
 light up in man's mind the divinity of that love which He 
 manifested by the gift of His own beloved Son, a love 
 which is more than motherhood, or fatherhood, or broth- 
 erhood, or sisterhood, or friendship, or love of lovers ? 
 Sitting central in the immensity of that love, He says, 
 " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest." It is the invitation of infinite 
 power to infinite- weakness, of infinite purity to infinite 
 sinfulness, of infinite riches to utter and abject poverty. 
 " Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself ; but in me is 
 thine help." 
 
 WHEX trees grow so- that their branches are mostly on 
 one side, we never restore branches to the deficient side 
 by cutting the opposite side. We cut the most barren 
 side, and there nature, in seeking to restore what we cut, 
 drives out new buds and branches. So the gardener 
 knows that where he puts the knife there will follow 
 the fruit of the tree. And blessed are they whom the 
 heavenly Husbandman prunes, that they may bring forth 
 more fruit, if, when He cuts, there is a bud behind the 
 knife. But woe to them who, being cut, have no bud to 
 grow, and are more disbranched and barren from being 
 pruned.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 13 
 
 IT is not that the force of our love to God is so great 
 that nothing can ever root it up, it is that the love of 
 God to us is so great that none of these things will ever 
 move that procuring cause of good in Him. God loves 
 us so that neither law, nor power, nor earthly experience, 
 nor heavenly adjudications, nor any human witnesses, nor 
 any accusing spirits, nor anything, shall quench, or cause 
 to glow with one diminished ray, the intensity of His 
 love. None of these things shall take away that love 
 which led Him to give His Son to die for us, and to 
 raise Him up to be our everlasting intercessor. It shall 
 be to us like the sun, that carries never-ending summer 
 from age to age. 
 
 SOMETIMES men, with slippery logic, say that God 
 employs wicked men for the furtherance of His purposes, 
 and that they must carry on the great ends of life, that 
 they must be hewers of wood and drawers of water, 
 while good men, though more or less dependent upon 
 such things, are not themselves to be concerned in them. 
 Now, no man ever will be a better man by seclusion, or 
 a worse man by engaging actively and enthusiastically in 
 the right things of human life. As strangers and pil- 
 grims would pass through a plague-district, not stopping, 
 if they could avoid it, but hastening on, and taking care 
 to touch no infected thing ; so some would pass through 
 this life. But no man is appointed to pass through this 
 life as if it were plague-stricken and infectious. And 
 any man that undertakes to go through the world acting 
 on the principle that it is a sin, on the whole, to have 
 much to do with the secular avocations and duties of life, 
 not only will have infinite troubles and inconsistencies in 
 his own conduct, but will not understand the first letter 
 of the spirit of enlightened Christianity.
 
 14 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 WHEN young men are beginning life, the most impor- 
 tant period is that, it is said, in which their habits are 
 formed. This is very important ; but I take it that the 
 period in which a young man's ideas are formed and 
 adopted is more important still. For the ideal which 
 you go forth to measure things by determines the nature, 
 so far as you are concerned, of everything that you meet. 
 If a man goes into life saying, " I am determined that I 
 will make everything bend to the one supreme end of 
 getting rich," he has the golden rule by which to measure 
 everything. One man says, "I am determined to be 
 heard from. I will live to make myself glorious." Ap- 
 probativeness, or self-esteem, measures all things in his 
 case. Another man says, " Beauty shall be the chief 
 element of my earthly enjoyment." Taste is the ideal 
 by which he measures everything. 
 
 No man who regards this life as an end can ever be 
 happy in it. Men were made to be happy. Never was 
 a musical-box so exquisitely arranged for the playing of 
 sweet tunes, as the human organism is for the production 
 of the music of happiness. The trouble is, we wind it up 
 the wrong way. The instrument slides out of measure, 
 and we play three or four tunes wrong, and mixed to- 
 gether. A most discordant thing, therefore, is man, 
 although exquisitely organized for happiness. We are 
 established in the wrong way. We have been learning 
 how to use many things. We know how to use the stars 
 better ; we know how to use wood and iron better ; we 
 know how to use wind and ste^am better ; we know how 
 to use ten thousand things better ; but, alas ! our chief 
 ignorance is in that which concerns ourselves.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 15 
 
 AUSPICIOUS is the day in which a child is made to 
 accept the truth that the measures of character and con- 
 duct are supernal ; that justice, love, purity, truth, hope, 
 and all the other elements belonging to the higher sphere 
 of truths, are the tests by which he is to go through life 
 measuring what is right and wrong, high and low, good 
 and bad, desirable and undesirable. For if a child is 
 accustomed to measure these things by his senses, he is 
 all his life long vulgarizing himself. But if he is accus- 
 tomed to measure them on the spiritual scale, he is all his 
 life long tending . to free himself from the body, and to 
 become more and more spiritual. 
 
 A MAN may be outwardly successful all his life long, 
 and die hollow and worthless as a puff-ball ; and a man 
 may be externally defeated all his life long, and die in 
 the royalty of a kingdom established within him. That 
 man is a pauper who has only outward success ; and that 
 man may be a prince who dies in rags, untended, and 
 unknown in his physical relations to this world. And 
 we ought to take the ideal in the beginning that a man's 
 true estate of power and riches is to be in himself: not 
 in his dwelling ; not in his position ; not in his external 
 relations, but in his own essential character. That is the 
 realm in which a man must live, if he is to live as a 
 Christian man. 
 
 THE pit that is deepest, the pit that is most unexplored 
 and most unfathomable, is that which is the wonder and 
 glory of God's thought and and, our own soul. 
 
 I CAN prepare ten sermons easier than I can make one 
 visit to a person in distress. Such a visit of one hour is
 
 16 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 more exhaustive than the uninterrupted study of ten 
 hoursv 
 
 IT requires a great deal of the spirit of the cross for a 
 man to suffer for himself; but the evidence of the extent 
 to which the nature of Christ has penetrated into your 
 heart is to be measured by the affluence of that spirit in 
 you which makes it sweet to you to make any man better 
 by diminishing yourself in doing it. 
 
 I do not know where to look for such a man. I see 
 him in Paul. If there ever was a man who almost for- 
 got his own personality, and thought only of those whom 
 he might serve, it seems to me to have been Paul ; but 
 beside him I ca.n scarcely find another, and the nearer 
 home I get the more rarely I find them. I have a bright 
 ideal of what it is to use the whole of my life and powers 
 for other men, or a shaking of myself out of myself ; but 
 that cursed individuality still brings my thoughts and 
 feelings back to myself, checks my enthusiasm, and I can- 
 not pour out my life like a libation for God. That I 
 feel in myself, and I therefore interpret it in you. 
 
 How different a thing it is to be a Christian as men be- 
 come Christians, and to be one according to the example 
 of Christ and the spirit of the apostle Paul ! If you are 
 to become such a one as Christ, if you are to be emptied 
 of yourself, if you are to live for others, I ask you, will 
 not that change be like a resurrection from the dead? 
 O, look how selfish, how hard, how unfeeling, life is ! 
 See how men hate one another! See what prejudices 
 separate them ! See what ten thousand things are 
 thrown in the way, even by good men, making the wheels 
 turn slowly and hard ! See what attrition there is ! See 
 how every part of the machinery of life draws hard !
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 17 
 
 Now, tell me, if there should come on such natures the 
 royalty of love, if there should be a change that should 
 make men love as easily as violets smell sweet, if there 
 should be a change that should make a man's heart come 
 out as odors do, furnishing that which men delight in, 
 but not diminishing the supply, would it not be a 
 change just as great as to make a man all over again ? 
 And if that is so, what objection have you to saying so 
 that they are born again? ,1 think it would not hurt 
 some men to be born twenty times more ! I think we all 
 need to be born again ; that there is a continual re-cre- 
 ation and re-creation and re-creation, with higher con- 
 ceptions and purer spiritual realizations. No man who 
 looks at men as they are, and holds up before them the 
 bright ideal of Christ's character, no such man can say, 
 if they receive such a symbol as that, that it is not a new 
 creation. 
 
 I HAVE, in my house, a little sheet of paper on which 
 there is a faint, pale, and not particularly skilful repre- 
 sentation of a hyacinth. It is not half as beautiful as 
 many other pictures I have, but I regard it as the most 
 exquisite of them all. My mother painted it ; and I 
 never see it that I do not think that her hand rested on 
 it, and that her thought was concerned in its execution. 
 
 Now, suppose you had such a conception of God that 
 you never saw a flower, a tree, a cloud, or any natural 
 object, that you did not instantly think, " My Father 
 made it," what a natural world would this become to 
 you ! How beautiful would the earth seem to you ! 
 And how would you find that nature was a revelation 
 of God, speaking as plainly as His written Word ! And 
 if you are alone, in solitude, without company, desolate 
 
 B
 
 18 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 in your circumstances, it is because you have not that 
 inner sense of the Divine love and care which it is your 
 privilege to have, and which you ought to have. 
 
 THIS is an age in which we are all run mad for phi- 
 lanthropy. Everybody wants to be a philanthropist ; and 
 men go out to be philanthropists. So when a man goes 
 down, his first inquiry is, " What shall I do ? " 
 
 A man rises and is vexed^ that he was not called ear- 
 lier, that he was not called to a better breakfast ; that his 
 commands are not obeyed by his servant, who is for- 
 ever forgetting, and starts out on philanthropy ! He 
 goes to teach, perhaps, as one of the readiest things we 
 know of in our time, he goes to teach the poor, and 
 supposes there will be a suitable conception of what a 
 condescension it is in him. He goes, as much as to say, 
 " Here, boys, am I ; and I have come clear down from 
 that altitude in which I live ; take great care of me, and 
 respect and revere me, for I have come to teach you." 
 But when these boys cuff each other, and pull each oth- 
 er's hair, and kick him, are there one Sunday and away 
 the next, and swear, and lie, and steal, and pick his pock- 
 ets while he is instructing them, the man says, " This 
 philanthropy has been greatly cried up, but I have had 
 enough of it. The human race is ' totally depraved,' and 
 I will let them go." Here was a man who went down to 
 find worshippers ; here was a man who went down to do 
 good, and save himself. It is as if a miser should go out 
 to distribute charity, thinking all the while how he could 
 do it without losing money ! And here are men who go 
 out to do good, all the time counting how much they get, 
 and what it costs them. There is no bounty of feeling, 
 no outpouring of nature, no regality of thought, saying,
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 19 
 
 "How can I give my being to make other beings richer?" 
 No feeling that it is glorious to bear, and endure, and 
 suffer ; and when you come to bear, and endure, and suf- 
 fer out of church, that is a very different thing from doing 
 it in church. 
 
 I NEVER know how to worship until I know how to 
 love ; and to love I must have something that I can put 
 my arms around, something^that, touching my heart, 
 shall leave not the chill of ice, but the warmth of summer. 
 There must be something that will come near my heart, 
 something that I can love, or I cannot worship ; 
 and this idea of a central, inflexible, serene, passionless 
 God, unmoved and unmoving, that sometimes thunders, 
 and then, under certain conditions, loves in a proper man- 
 ner, this conception of the Divine nature is utterly 
 freezing ; it sets me upon the Poles, and all the revolu- 
 tions of the year leave me but ice and icebergs. 
 
 You never know how much one loves until you know 
 how much he is willing to endure and suffer ; and it is 
 the suffering element that measures love. And all char- 
 acters that are high must, of necessity, be characters that 
 shall be willing, patient, and strong to endure for others. 
 It is not so much the pleasure we have in affection. To 
 be able to have bright affections playing upon you and 
 giving great joy to your nature, is one thing, and to hold 
 your nature in the willing service of others, is another ; 
 and that is the Divine idea of manhood, of the human 
 character. 
 
 A GREAT many men are addicted to much lugubrious 
 soliloquizing and complaining about this unsatisfying
 
 20 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 world ; but whether it is satisfying or not depends upon 
 what men try to satisfy themselves with. If a man were 
 to take a watch, and try to use it as a compass, to steer 
 a ship by, he would say, " How unsatisfying this watch 
 is ! " Yes, to steer a ship by, but not to tell the time by. 
 And when a man uses this world for things that it was 
 not meant to be used for, it is an unsatisfying world ; 
 but when a man uses it for the things that it was meant 
 to be used for, it is a satisfying world, it is a glorious 
 world. It is a very good world for the purposes for 
 which it was built ; and that is all anything is good for. 
 A watch for time ; a compass for direction ; a plough 
 for turning up the soil ; a ship for the sea ; a house for 
 a habitation ; an ox or a horse for labor ; sheep for wool 
 and food ; a loom for one thing ; an anvil for another ; 
 silks for persons ; carpets for floors. 
 
 When you look at the globe, society, men's occupa- 
 tions, and the like, in this large view, the world is admi- 
 rable. Its very rudeness, its hardness, its sufferings, are 
 also a part of the primitive design, and are beneficial 
 instrumentally. Men that love leisure never can under- 
 stand what God means, who loves occupation. Men who 
 put their supreme idea of life in self-indulgence, cannot 
 understand what God means, who makes self-exertion, in 
 Himself, in angelic powers, in all His creatures, the test 
 of real being. If men are seeking to be supine, to have 
 infinite enjoyment without earning it, and God is deter- 
 mined they shall be stirred up by storms of hope and fear, 
 pain and ease, in order that they may grow and develop, 
 of course they cannot understand Hun or His adminis- 
 tration. The prizes in this world are placed where those 
 men shall get them who, by development, by opening and 
 educating their powers, seek them.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 21 
 
 A MAN may go as straight from the shop, or deck, to 
 heaven, as if he kept weary watch in a cloister, or had 
 shivered himself to death in a cave. It is a man dying 
 with his harness on that angels love to take. I hope 
 those old water-logged saints that died soaking in damp 
 stone cells were taken to heaven. They had hell enough 
 on earth, and it would be a pity for them to have a con- 
 tinuation of it in the other world ; but I think they were 
 the poorest of all human commodities ever taken in! 
 
 When God wanted sponges and oysters, He made 
 them, and put one on a rock, and the other in the mud. 
 When He made man, He did not make him to be a 
 sponge or an oyster ; He made him with feet, and hands, 
 and head, and heart, and vital blood, and a place to use 
 them, and said to him, " Go, work ! " And the man that 
 does not go and work is not a man in the end ; while the 
 man that puts the vigor and enthusiasm which God in- 
 spires into the life that now is, becomes a man indeed. 
 
 THE Apostle is setting up a peerage in the eleventh 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. He collects from 
 the past the memorable names of Jewish worthies, and 
 gives them the glory of the great title, Faith. The high- 
 est Order that was ever instituted on the earth, is the Or- 
 der of Faith. This chapter is the portrait-gallery of the 
 Book ; and from it look down upon us the memorable 
 names of remote antiquity. 
 
 IT is not the first part of the voyage, but the last part, 
 that tells whether it is a successful voyage or not. The 
 ship De Witt Clinton lies on the coast just below here, 
 disabled. The prosperity of twenty-six days she lost 
 on the twenty-seventh, when coming into the harbor.
 
 22 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 However prosperous your life may be here, if you stick 
 on the shore, and do not come in on the other life, you 
 are a wreck ! You must take care of the last part of the 
 voyage, or you take care of nothing at all ! 
 
 EVERY man is born with aspiration. It does not de- 
 velop in every man. Neither do half the buds in trees 
 blossom. But they are there. And there is aspiration 
 in every man, whether you suspect it or not, and though 
 it may not blossom. Aspiration means tendril, twining, 
 or anything else by which one vines upward, holding on 
 by the way to whatever will support him. Some plants 
 take hold by winding around, some by little roots, some 
 by tendrils, some by hooks, and some by leaves that catch 
 like anchors. But these things take hold not for the sake 
 of staying where they take hold, but only that they may 
 climb higher. And so it is with men. We clasp things 
 above us by every part of our nature, one after another, 
 not for the sake of remaining where we take hold, but 
 that we may go higher. In other words, when in the 
 ordinary experience of life we gain satisfaction, we do it 
 almost only by feeding on each other. When we attain 
 development, we do that in the same way. The soul 
 feeds on soul, whether for satisfaction or development. 
 
 WHEN I ask men to come and talk with me on the 
 subject of religion, and tell them that whether they do or 
 not may decide their destiny, they sometimes wag their 
 head, and say, " Do you suppose God governs the world 
 upon such a mean and narrow plan that a man's destiny 
 depends upon whether he does or does not go and talk 
 with another man ? " I know that when a train is going 
 at the rate of sixty miles an hour, it depends upon whcth-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 23 
 
 er the switch is one tenth-part of an inch one way or an- 
 other, whether the passengers are swept into destruction, 
 or run along smoothly, without knowing that they are in 
 danger. It is at these critical points that small things 
 become omnipotent. "When you have put on one side of 
 a scale one hundred pounds, and on the other ninety- 
 nine pounds and ninety-nine hundredths of a pound, one 
 hundredth of a pound is of as much importance as all the 
 rest of the weight. It is when you come to these points, 
 where but the least things are required to turn the scale, 
 that such things become momentous. 
 
 I THINK that when Christ said, "The last shall be 
 first," He thought of those persons, of whom there are 
 many, that are never known outside of their own neigh- 
 borhood, or their own home ; who bear sickness in soli- 
 tude ; who are weary with care from one year's end to 
 another ; whose life is one continued series of disappoint- 
 ments ; who have not one single external exponent of 
 what is called success ; but who have wrought mightily 
 within their children, and made them witnesses before 
 God with such faith, and hope, and purity, and exhilarat- 
 ing patience, that as He looks on them, He sees that 
 their hearts are more bright than the stars themselves. 
 And at the resurrection they shall be first, inasmuch as 
 they are last here. They shall be kings and priests. 
 When we get to heaven we shall not know those that are 
 first. They will be persons that here were hidden ones, 
 but that carried themselves with supreme fidelity toward 
 God. 
 
 THE moment a man has the vast sweep of the eternal 
 world for his depository, how will his troubles be allevi-
 
 24 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 ated or destroyed, by his looking at every part of his life 
 as relative to that ! 
 
 Suppose I am disappointed ! My first feeling is one of 
 annoyance, perhaps ; but my second feeling is, " Why, He 
 that makes the ground fertile by frosts, is making my life 
 fertile by disappointments. He sends them upon me that 
 I may be broken up, disintegrated, comminuted, rendered 
 pulverulent, and thus be in a state to promote better 
 growths." "When a man finds that he is tasked enor- 
 mously with the cares of life, God sends some angel to 
 whisper to him, " This is the way you are to be made 
 strong and noble." Even the beggar finds comfort in this 
 voice of encouragement, and says, " I thought it was a 
 beggar's pack that I was struggling under, but God tells 
 me it is armor ; and I am strong enough to carry it." 
 Let us apply this interpretation to our burdens, that it 
 may change their nature, and make them easy for us to 
 bear. 
 
 Do you remember what, in His last interview with 
 His disciples, in that prolonged love-feast which preceded 
 His crucifixion, do you remember what, when the cloud 
 was on Him, when that time which had been deferred, 
 and of which He said again and again, " It is not yet," 
 at last cajne, and the great eclipse began to show itself, 
 and the shadow was falling, and He was uttering His last 
 words to them, and preparing them with all zeal to be 
 scattered like sheep without a shepherd, do you remem- 
 ber what in that hour was the state of the mind of Christ ? 
 He says, " My peace I give unto you." In that hour of 
 tempest, and darkness, and coming anguish, while there 
 was agitation everywhere else, in the heart of Christ 
 there was peace, peace enough not only for His own
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 25 
 
 wants, but for the wants of His dear disciples. And 
 when you think of Christ as a man of sorrows and ac- 
 quainted with grief, think also that He gave an exempli- 
 fication of the power of the soul to overcome these things. 
 When you forget to eat or drink because you are so busy ; 
 when your child is sick, and you forget to take your ac- 
 customed food; when public affairs are at a high key, 
 and you are enthusiastically devoted to the interests of 
 the commonwealth, and you forget to give the body its 
 proper nourishment, and wonder what ails you, and think, 
 "Why, for twenty-four hours I have scarcely tasted food," 
 remember that our Saviour was so absorbed in the follow- 
 ing out of the great cause of God in this world, that He 
 forgot to be hungry, that He forgot to be tired, and that 
 He forgot to sleep. 
 
 THE family, the school, the church, regulated 
 and virtuous civil society, wholesome and normal oc- 
 cupation, which increases physical comforts, all these 
 make the number of children reared to high moral char- 
 acter greater, and the training of such children easier. 
 Therefore, the very way to train our children for heaven 
 is to surround them by such conditions of human society 
 as will have a powerful, though indirect, influence upon 
 their moral amelioration and upbuilding. I would rather 
 undertake to bring up my child to virtue and morality 
 and piety in the city, bad as it is, than on the desert of 
 Sahara, or on a flat rock where there was nothing but 
 him, me, and the rock. You could bring up a toadstool 
 there, but not a man. A man must have something to 
 feed on, something to think about, something to wake him 
 up, something to inspire him. What kind of a battle 
 could a man fight alone? A man to fight, and to be 
 2
 
 26 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 a victorious, courageous man, must have something to 
 fieht. 
 
 I WOULD not, for all the world, be made so of stone 
 that I could not weep with those that weep, and that I 
 could not sympathize with those who feel that war is a 
 dreadful calamity, and that war among brethren is an 
 awful thing. I know it is. I have probed it for years 
 in imagination. It has been like a cloud of darkness 
 before my mind. For twenty years God's messengers 
 have been telling us that this thing would come * if evils 
 that were tending toward it were not put down. And 
 when we have been disposed to hold back our hand from 
 duty, and to compromise with wrong, they have said that 
 the mischief must inevitably roll on and over, collecting 
 strength as it rolled, till it should end in gulfs of distress 
 and abysses of misery. We would not heed their warn- 
 ing ; we chose to take the way of present peace, rather 
 than listen to and act upon their prophecies. And now 
 that the results which they predicted have come, let us 
 not make the mistake again of measuring by the way we 
 feel. If we love our children more than the cause of 
 God, we are not worthy to follow Christ. If we love 
 an ignoble living more than a glorious living, we are not 
 worthy to follow Christ. If we look upon the face of 
 war and see nothing but its physical terrors, if we do 
 not look through that and see what is the moral reason, 
 and what are the moral triumph and the moral glory of 
 the whole cause, we are not worthy to follow the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 IT is how much of the invisible we can bring into this 
 * The rebellion in the Southern States.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 27 
 
 life that makes this life rich and valuable. I will tell 
 you a secret of gardening. Turnips, and other crops that 
 have long roots, and depend mostly for their nourishment 
 on the soil, exhaust the soil ; while those crops that have 
 broad leaves, and take the greater portion of their nour- 
 ishment from the air, organizing it, and turning it into 
 the soil, enrich the soil. Now, let me tell you that that 
 which makes this life rich is that broad-leaved experience 
 which derives its support from the air of the future world. 
 And the man that is most impalpable and invisible in this 
 life has most of this life itself. 
 
 THERE is a sense in which a man, looking on the pres- 
 ent in the light of the future, and taking his whole being 
 into the account, may be contented with his lot ; that is 
 Christian contentment. What philosophers want is that 
 a man shall be contented in just the state he is in. But 
 I tell you, if a man has come to that point where he is 
 content, he ought to be put into his coffin ; for a content- 
 ed live man is a sham ! If a man has come to that state 
 in which he says, " I do not want to know any more, or 
 do any more, or be any more," he is in a state in which 
 he ought to be changed into a mummy ! Of all hideous 
 things mummies are the most hideous ; and of mummies, 
 those are the most hideous that are running about the 
 streets and talking ! I would rather see the old Egypt- 
 ian cerements than those men that are content with what 
 they are, and do not want to be any more. 
 
 THE world is a grindstone, and races are axes which 
 are to get their cutting edges by being ground on it ! 
 The very object for which God thinks it worth while to 
 turn and roll this round globe is that, by its very attrition
 
 28 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and working, men may be made men in every sense of 
 the term. 
 
 GOD puts the oak in the forest, and the pine on its 
 sand or rock, and says to men, " There are your houses : 
 go hew,.saw, frame, build, make." God builds trees : men 
 must build the house. God supplies timber : men must 
 construct the ship. God buries iron : men must dig for 
 it, and smelt it, and fashion it. What is useful for the 
 body, and, still more, what is useful for the mind, is to be 
 had only by exertion, exertion that will work man 
 more than iron is wrought, that will shape man more than 
 timber is shaped. Clay and rock are given us : not brick 
 and squared stone. God gives us no raiment : he gives us 
 flax and sheep. If we would have coats on our backs, 
 we must take them off our flocks, and spin them and 
 weave them. If we would have anything of benefit, we 
 must earn it, and, earning it, must become shrewd, inven- 
 tive, ingenious, active, enterprising. 
 
 THE doubts and fears which prevail in Christian minds 
 whether their sins, their infirmities, and their foibles 
 do not exhaust God's patience are utterly unreason- 
 able the moment we look at God. 
 
 A child has his little box that he keeps his money in. 
 He has kept it unbroken marvel of a child that he 
 is for a whole year ! From time to time he drops in . 
 rattling pennies and halfpennies, contribution coin, 
 until by and by he has a conception that he must have a 
 great treasure ; and, unsealing it and counting it, he finds 
 that he has really a whole pound ! And now he begins 
 to have some thought of what he shall do with this treas- 
 ure. He at first thinks he will buy a library with it ;
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 29 
 
 but before he knows it he has run over in his mind 
 enough books to come to ten pounds. Then he thinks 
 he will lay it out for playthings ; but, oh, at every step 
 he finds that the thing he would buy greatly outmeasures 
 his means ; until at last he feels, " I can buy nothing ; I 
 have only a pound, and that will pay for none of the 
 things that I desire." But the child's father is a million- 
 naire, and owns houses, and lands, and ships, and banks ; 
 he is wretchedly rich ! and the child knows it. Instead, 
 then, of saying, " What can I do with my pound ? " he 
 might well say, " What need I that I may not have in 
 my father's wealth ? What need I, of food, or raiment, 
 or books, or proper pleasure, that it is not over and over 
 again in the power of my father to give me ? " 
 
 Now, that poor little child's pound and his want bear 
 about the same relation to his father's wealth, that our 
 power and our want bear to the glory and richness of 
 God's power. What is a man's power ? He has power to 
 resolve. And what is the power of resolution ? It is the 
 power of a bubble which reflects for one instant the glory 
 of heaven, and then is broken and gone. Our resolutions 
 are good for a second, and then they are forgotten. What 
 are men's throes and struggles against inward passions 
 and outward temptations ? They are as nothing. We are 
 swept before the evil influences which come upon us in 
 this world, as chaff before the summer's storm. We are 
 routed and driven as miserable, cowardly militia before 
 courageous soldiers. 
 
 THE prouder a man is, the more he thinks he deserves ; 
 and the more he thinks he deserves, the less he really 
 does deserve. A proud man, the whole world is not 
 big enough to serve him. The little he gets he looks
 
 30 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 upon with contempt because it is little. The much that 
 he does not get he regards as evidence of the marvellous 
 inequality of things in human life. He walks a perpet- 
 ual self-adulator, expecting until 'experience has taught 
 him not to expect ; and then he goes forever murmuring 
 at what he looks upon as partiality in God'3 dealings with 
 men. Such men are like old hulks that make no voyages, 
 and leak at every seam. They are diseased with pride. 
 They have the craving appetite of dyspepsia in their dis- 
 position. 
 
 THERE are emergencies of religious experience in 
 which the soul can do nothing but simply abandon itself, 
 and lay hold on God. I suppose that every person who 
 has a work of grace that is deeply rooted in him, remem- 
 bers days and hours at some periods of life (they are more 
 marked than at others) in which there is nothing that 
 it can rest upon. There is just this one thing, helpless- 
 ness the most utter hanging upon the neck of strength 
 the most august, a sense of the most profound un- 
 worthiness standing before the most profound worth 
 and purity and excellence. As the stars that rise in the 
 morning over against the light, never rise so brightly nor 
 last so long as the stars of the evening that rise from 
 darkness, and that grow bright by darkness, so out of our 
 spiritual experiences, though there rise up bright concep- 
 tions of God, there are none that compare for one single 
 moment with those thoughts of God when the soul feels 
 prostrate in the dust with its own sinfulness. There is 
 majesty in the thought of mercy, and wonder in the gra- 
 ciousness of God, when we feel that we are sinful. In 
 these wonderful hours, when, touched of the Divine finger, 
 we are pervaded with a sense of our unworthiness, there
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 31 
 
 is but one thing for us to do, to hope in Jesus Christ, and 
 hope simply, or else despair. Not that you understand 
 how He atones and pardons ; not that you can see what 
 is the relation of Christ to you. There is no philosophy 
 about it; there is nothing but this simple instinct of hope; 
 we clasp, we hold on to Christ, and say, " Thou art my 
 anchor ; Thou art my safeguard and my surety." It is a 
 feeling, and not a thought. 
 
 MEN conclude that one universal and absolute will 
 must, of course, bar the freedom of all others. That de- 
 pends not so much upon the fact of the supremacy, as 
 upon the mind. "What God's will is, has much to do with 
 what is the freedom or the servitude of man's will. For 
 if our freedom is a part of our nature and heritage ; if it 
 is that for which God thought it worth while to make man ; 
 if it is that that gives value to man, being made; if it is 
 that through which God means to illustrate His own glory 
 in ages yet to come ; if it is that that separates between 
 man and the lower creations of God in this world ; then 
 it is that part of us which is immutable, and the Divine 
 will will insure, and not subvert, the liberty of ours. 
 God made us to be free, that in a lower sphere, we might 
 be like Himself. 
 
 AFTER that hoary old despot, Ahab, had revelled in 
 iniquity knee-deep, yes, from his loins to his neck ; 
 after he had slain the prophets and ramped up and down 
 like the devil, and walked about like a lion, one poor 
 starveling prophet came to him, when he says to him, 
 " Ah ! art thou he that troubleth Israel ? " This man 
 had carried devastation and revolution through the land, 
 and destroyed its faithful prophets, and the moment he
 
 32 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 comes in sight of a surviving one he says, " Ah ! you 
 are troubling Israel ! " It is the same game over and 
 over. For the nature of despotism is the same every- 
 where, in every age, and under all circumstances ; and 
 what you read in the Book you can read on the planta- 
 tion, in the halls of Congress, and in the speeches and 
 conduct of men in your own day. 
 
 THE public sentiment of a community, instead of being 
 adverse to truth and right, is mighty in helping men to 
 do difficult things. There are periods of the world when 
 heroic traits are almost drugs. There are times when 
 the whole public mind is inspired in certain directions. 
 There are periods when men die easy, and hundreds and 
 thousands cast away their lives almost at the beck of one 
 man, who is leading them on to great deeds. There are 
 times when generosity and disinterested benevolence are 
 abundant, and it seems as though there were a mania 
 among men to do noble things. Such periods show the 
 power of public sentiment ; and it also shows how impor- 
 tant it is to bring as many great truths and principles as 
 possible within the approval of public sentiment, in order 
 that they may be easily adopted and acted upon by men. 
 If you create a moral public sentiment, then you have a 
 power by which to enforce moral lessons. There is a 
 despotic element in public sentiment, which consists in 
 the overaction of power. Everywhere power is prima- 
 rily despotic, and therefore it is so in public sentiment. 
 
 HERE is a man that stands very high, and is much 
 praised. He knows, that if he makes his mark in the 
 community men will praise him ; and he takes care to do 
 it, and he is praised accordingly. He builds him a fine
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 33 
 
 dwelling, and he is praised for that; he lays him out mag- 
 nificent grounds, and he is praised 'for that ; he exerts a 
 great power, and though it be an unregulated and immor- 
 al power, he is praised for that ; he surrounds himself 
 with wealth, and all the various other things that are 
 most esteemed in this world, and men point him out, and 
 nudge each other, and say, "There is the most prosper- 
 ous man in the whole town." He is a walking poor- 
 house ; he is a walking hospital ; he is a walking 
 lazar-house ; he is rotten in conscience, and foul in 
 passion ; he lives for brick and mortar, and that which 
 they contain ; he lives for the lowest forms of power, and 
 all of them run centrewise, for his heart is like a tunnel, 
 flaring out toward this world, and growing small toward 
 the other, and ingurgitating, ingurgitating, all his life 
 long. Men say that he is prosperous ; but bones, flesh, 
 and skin are all there is of him. His conscience is dead; 
 his taste has never been developed ; all his sweeter affec- 
 tions are overlaid and cast down. As statues and pictures 
 in overwhelmed cities of the Orient have for a thou- 
 sand years lain covered with the soil, so the aspirations 
 that early manifested themselves in many a man have 
 long been covered by the soil of business and pleasure. 
 Men say he is prosperous, and they pass by his grounds 
 with a certain sense of awe. To them there is a kind of 
 mysterious grandeur about his house ; and they know not 
 but he is wellnigh omnipotent. He is called the first. 
 
 By and by, when he goes to judgment, he will carry 
 up everything that belongs to his spiritual excellence, 
 and leave here everything that belongs to his temporal 
 excellence. He will leave here his grounds ; his house, 
 its furniture, and pictures, and books ; his stable and 
 horses ; his body, its passions, and tastes ; all earthly 
 2* o
 
 34 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 lore, everything tnat belongs to the flesh. He will carry 
 with him nothing but his generosity, and you could 
 take that on the point of a needle ; his faith, and there 
 is but a speck of that ; and all the heroic elements of his 
 nature, and there is not so much as a pinch of them. 
 
 A MAN that puts himself on the ground of moral prin- 
 ciple, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than 
 all of them ; for the orb of time becomes such a man's 
 shield, and every step, every year, brings him nearer to 
 the hand of Omnipotence. If a man takes ground for 
 truth, and justice, and rectitude, and piety, and fights 
 well, there can be no question as to the result. I would 
 that I could inspire any man to do right with courage, 
 therefore, by making him feel that right is itself a host. 
 Never be afraid of being in minorities, so that minorities 
 are based upon principles. 
 
 WE are far down in the years of time, when God 
 works revolutions against appetite, and lust, and avarice, 
 against power without love, against every mere material 
 interest of men, without the employment of physical 
 force. And when euch a revolution as this takes place, 
 and that by mere mind-power, it is time to begin to look, 
 not for the star, but for sunrise. We are near to it. 
 
 IT is defeat that turns bone to flint ; it is defeat that 
 turns gristle to muscle ; it is defeat that makes men in- 
 vincible ; it is defeat that has made those heroic natures 
 that are now in the ascendency, and that has given the 
 sweet law of liberty for the bitter law of oppression. Do 
 not, therefore, be afraid of defeat. You are never so near 
 victory as when you are defeated in a good cause. For
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 35 
 
 then they had Christ when they kissed Him ; but that 
 kiss, so foul on Judas's lips, on the face of Christ shone 
 like a jewel. Yes, then they had Him, when they hauled 
 Him before the Sanhedrim midnight ; but it was like 
 a triumphal march. Then, when they led Him toward 
 Calvary, they had Him. And then, when to the music 
 of hammers they lifted Him up, and He hung suspended 
 and groaning, and with implorations of unutterable agony 
 died, and the heavens were dark, their victory was accom- 
 plished, and so was their everlasting defeat ; for not till 
 He died could He live, or we in Him. It was slaying 
 Him that gave Him power. And so- of everything that 
 has the nature of Christ in it, every truth, every cause, 
 every sanctity, every noble tiling. Slay it if you can, 
 and, like the gashes of Milton's angels, its wounds will 
 close by the healing, heavenly virtues of its own nature, 
 and it will stand forth with even greater power than 
 before. 
 
 THERE are many patriarchs of the pool. Have you 
 never seen these patriarchal croakers, of a summer even- 
 ing, on the borders of some inland lake? Have you 
 never heard their croakings all through the night ? 
 There is many and many a man who sits squat on the 
 edge of his party pool, croaking croaking croaking ; 
 and you would think, if you did not know what the sound 
 was, that all the spirits of the lower regions, weird and 
 mischievous, were in the air. And yet, when you go and 
 explore, what is the noise ? It is a frog ! nothing 
 more! 
 
 WHEN you are in a cause, see if, when you sound it, it 
 touches the bottom, God Almighty ; and if you find a
 
 36 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 truth as everlasting as God, stand by it, talk of it ; and 
 if men would muzzle you, talk on. Talk living, and die 
 talking ; and make other men talk. There is no harm 
 that can come from talking of things that ought not to be 
 harmed. The only risk is in reticence, in guilty si- 
 lence. 
 
 COULD you not point out some in your church that are 
 forever under a cloud because they are not appreciated, 
 because their worth is not understood, because their 
 value- has never been justly estimated, because, being 
 weighed in the great scale of society, they are always too 
 light? You may be sure that nature, and society, and 
 universal experience, do not lie about these men. Where 
 is their labor ? Where is the exponent of their industry ? 
 Where is their bountiful beneficence ? What tears have 
 they wiped away ? What houses have they builded for 
 the poor? What contribution have they made to the 
 public weal ? What noble example have they set before 
 the world ? What explorations have they made upon the 
 sea or upon the land? What useful thing have they 
 invented? Where are the evidences of their desert? 
 They are barren and granited from head to foot, so that 
 even moss will not grow on them. 
 
 A MAN should be lenient with everybody but himself. 
 A man should be rigid with himself, and nobody else. 
 Let a man say in the beginning of his life, " My life de- 
 pends upon me." There is a divine, overruling Provi- 
 dence, but it is a Providence which favors those that 
 favor themselves by taxation, responsibility, care, wise 
 exertion.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 37 
 
 THE relation of health to a man's disposition, and so 
 to his capacity *of conferring and receiving happiness, is 
 worthy of serious study. The happiness of our life does 
 not consist in a few great sources. It springs from in- 
 numerable minute and constantly-recurring causes ; and, 
 more than from all other things together, it springs from 
 the disposition of men among themselves, and toward 
 each other. The morbid states of health, the irritable- 
 ness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the im- 
 patience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full 
 of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw 
 the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon oth- 
 ers, teach us what eminent duty there is in health. 
 
 GOD made the human body, and it is by far the most 
 exquisite and wonderful organization which has come to 
 us from the Divine hand. It is a study for one's whole 
 life. If an undevout astronomer is mad, an undevout 
 physiologist is yet madder. The stomach, that prepares 
 the body's support ; the vessels, that distribute the sup- 
 ply ; the arteries, that take up the food, and send it 
 round ; the lungs, that aerate the all-nourishing blood ; 
 that muscle-engine which, without fireman or engineer, 
 stands night and day pumping and driving a wholesome 
 stream with vital irrigation through all the system ; the 
 nervous system, that unites and harmonizes the whole 
 band of organs ; the brain, that dwells in the dome high 
 above all, like a true royalty ; these, with their various 
 and wonderful functions, are not to be lightly spoken of, 
 or irreverently held. 
 
 LET me say to every one that is beginning life, Do not 
 begin with exaggerated ideas of your own worth. Do
 
 38 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 not feel that you without battle ought to be a victor, and 
 walk from the beginning with those laurels about your 
 head which are to be twined there, if at all, only at the 
 end of the campaign. Do not mistake your own turbu- 
 lent pride. Do not mistake your own false-interpreting, 
 lying vanity. Do not begin your life feeling that such a 
 fine fellow as you are, one so spruce, so handsome, so 
 well-descended, so accomplished in various ways, de- 
 serves a high place. Do not flatter yourself that life owes 
 you any more than it owes anybody else. It owes you, in 
 common with all others, just as much as, climbing, you 
 can bring down. It owes you a chance to be something. 
 It will give you that, and nothing more. It is better for 
 every man to begin with this understanding : I have a 
 chance to carve out my own way. That is all I want. 
 Having that I will take the consequences. 
 
 EXTERNALLY it might be difficult to judge between two 
 men equally prosperous, and living surrounded by refine- 
 ments and wealth, one of whom held this world first and 
 predominant, and the other of whom held it second and 
 subordinate. There is such a thing as a man's using the 
 things of this world consciously, as in the sight of God, for 
 moral instrumentalities : there is such a thing, though 
 nineteen out of twenty may not do it that pretend to. 
 There is such a thing as a man's being a monarch, and 
 yet being a democrat, not in a base sense of that term, 
 but in a high, Christian sense of it. There is such a thing 
 as a man's being an emperor, and sitting sole judge among 
 men, and yet wishing to be the lowest and least among 
 them, so far as selfish aggrandizement is concerned. And 
 though ninety-nine out of every hundred monarchs are 
 self-seeking, where there arc examples like David, like
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 39 
 
 Alfred, and like the reigning sovereign of England, the 
 fact that so many counterfeits have existed is no ground 
 for the presumption that they are not what they seem to 
 be. And where you see professors of religion that gather 
 their wealth from all quarters of the globe, that pile up 
 the pyramid of their joys mountain high, that crown their 
 days with ten thousand luxuries, though you show that 
 ninety-nine out of every hundred of them are miserable 
 self-seekers, and gild these things with the pretence of 
 holding them for good, that is not ground for the presump- 
 tion that the other hundredth, being called to be rich, and 
 learned, and refined, and lovers and accumulators of art, 
 have not taken their possessions and consecrated them to 
 the service of their fellow-men. How many men have 
 consecrated their learning, their power, their outward 
 prosperity, all redolent and perfumed with the spirit of 
 pure love, to the good of their fellow-men. And what if 
 there are multitudes that pretend to do the same thing 
 who are selfish, grasping, worldly men, that does not alter 
 the fact that there are these men who, having a great deal 
 of this world, hold it subject to God's requisitions, and 
 administer it according to the highest intents of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 Do not suppose that your life is to be in external good 
 alone. When God pays you, he pays you not altogether 
 in bills, or silver, or gold; but partly in bills, partly in 
 silver, partly in gold ; that is, He pays you hi external 
 good ; He pays you in joys and comforts ; He pays you 
 in social virtues, and sweet content therein ; He pays you 
 in the solace of noble thoughts ; He pays you in the re- 
 muneration of a manly conscience ; He pays you in hope 
 and good cheer ; He pays you in promises that all your
 
 40 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 orders shall be cashed when they are presented In the ex- 
 chequer above. The life that now is, is but little com- 
 pared with the life that is to come. The things that are 
 in a man are better than all the robes that can be put 
 upon him. The paying of the future world will far tran- 
 scend the paying of this world. Eternity will be the end 
 of the paying, and with it will come a full fruition. 
 
 THERE is many and many a man that, by the help of 
 the Bible and the saddle, has gone to heaven with com- 
 parative ease, who would not have gone there very easily 
 by the help of either alone. 
 
 I DREAD nothing more than to hear young men saying, 
 " I am going to the city." If they ask me, as they often 
 do when I am travelling about the country, what chances 
 there are for a lawyer in the city, I say, " Just the chance 
 that a fly has on a spider's web ; go down and be eaten 
 up ! " If they ask me what chances there are for a me- 
 chanic in the city, I say, " Good ! good ! there Death 
 carries on a wholesale and retail business ! The me- 
 chanic art flourishes finely ! Coffin-making is admira- 
 ble ! Men are dying ten times as fast as anywhere 
 else ! " If a man's bones are made of flint, if his muscles 
 are made of leather ; if he can work sixteen or eighteen 
 hours a day and not wink, and then sleep scarcely wink- 
 ing, if, in other words, he is built for mere toughness, 
 then he can go into the city, and go through the ordeal 
 which business men and professional men are obliged to 
 go through who succeed. The conditions of city life may 
 be made healthy, so far as the physical constitution is 
 concerned ; but there is connected with the business of 
 the city so much competition, so much rivalry, so much
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 41 
 
 necessity for industry, that I think it is a perpetual, 
 chronic, wholesale violation of natural law. There are 
 ten men that can succeed in the country, where there is 
 one that can succeed in the city. 
 
 IN my own experience, the cases that I have most 
 despaired of among those who have come to me for spirit- 
 ual help, have been persons that were nervinely sick. I 
 could do them no good, because I could not reach the 
 conditions of their body. If a person will drink green 
 tea, which is like the quintessence of a thousand needle- 
 points in its effects on a man's nerves, what is the use of 
 his coming to me with complaints about blue devils ? 
 They are not blue devils ; they are green devils ! If a 
 man gorges and oppresses his stomach, and so overlays 
 the keys of life, for the keys of life are located in the 
 stomach, as the keys .of the piano and the organ are lo- 
 cated in their appropriate places in those instruments, 
 and he comes to me for deliverance from temptations, or 
 for the removal of obscurities that stand between his soul 
 and God, unless I can have control of that man's habits 
 of eating, what can I do for him ? 
 
 MERCHANTS, business men, lawyers, ministers, all sorts 
 of toiling and laboring men, have, in the first place, too 
 little relaxation. We are like a violin, going from one 
 concert to another, all day long, without once being un- 
 strung. We are forever at concert pitch. It is a fact 
 growing out of city life, that the intensity of our business 
 takes away our relaxation and enjoyment. It takes the 
 health out of the little relaxation and enjoyment which 
 we have. Our very amusements are grim. Men go to 
 amusements on purpose ; and it is only another way of
 
 42 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 seeking business. They mechanically and consciously 
 amuse themselves, instead of falling into amusement nat- 
 urally and without thought. Laughing, singing, cheer, 
 buoyancy, these, and the various other means by which 
 men rest themselves without volition, are almost unknown 
 to us. We are a world too sober. We are a world too 
 unlaughing. We do not romp enough with our children. 
 We are not children enough ourselves. 
 
 I THINK you might dispense with half your doctors, if 
 you would only consult Doctor Sun more, and be more 
 under the treatment of these great hydropathic doctors, 
 the clouds ! 
 
 THERE are a great many men that do not count that 
 worth anything in this world which has not its representa- 
 tive in some physical good. They go through the rooms 
 of a library, and say, " What value is there in all these 
 books ? You cannot eat them, nor drink them, nor wear 
 them, nor sleep on them, and therefore they are of no 
 use." There' are persons that look upon the forms of civ- 
 ilization, and say to themselves, "Of what conceivable 
 benefit can these fantastic and expensive things be ? " 
 There are men who, if you take them into your flower- 
 garden, will say, " Eh ! auriculas, you call them ? Cin- 
 erarias, are they ? What do you do with them ? Are 
 they good for greens? Do you buy them and eat them?" 
 " No." " Do you sell them for flowers and get money 
 for them ? " " No." " Then what do you do with them ? " 
 " I look at them." " Look at them ! And is that all 
 they are good for, to be looked at ? I think if I was 
 in your place I would spend my time in something besides 
 raising flowers just to look at ! " If they would feed the
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 43 
 
 mouth or fill the pocket, they would tempt such men. 
 If, together with their elements of taste and beauty, they 
 were of some practical benefit, they would value them as 
 worth something. But since they do not minister to the 
 gross senses in any way, they look upon them as value- 
 less. External good is the only rule that they measure 
 by. The fact that these things give comfort to the affec- 
 tions, feed the imagination, inspire the better feelings, 
 and fill the higher ranges of a man's life, is nothing to 
 them, for they are accustomed to measure everything by 
 how it tastes, or how it feels in the pocket. 
 
 THERE are two ways in which religion works ; the 
 vertical way, and the horizontal way. First, we are to 
 carry out religion as tidings of good to all the world. 
 Then, in all the world, we are to intensify it, and carry 
 its control more and more into every living relation of 
 society. And our work is not done until the world is 
 Christ's. It is not enough for us that we take care of 
 our own children : our neighbor's children, also, are ours, 
 in some sense. It is not enough that we take care of our 
 own neighborhood : all that are confederated in church 
 connection with us have a claim upon our interest, and 
 we have reciprocal duties toward them. Nor is it enough 
 that our own church are objects of interest and duty to 
 us : the town or city, the county that holds the town or 
 city, the nation that encloses the county, all these, 
 also, belong to us. There is a brotherhood that carries 
 us out to every human being. Nor are they alone ours 
 that belong to our nation : all that belong to every na- 
 tion on the globe, they are ours. Though they may 
 not know us, and though we may not be able even to 
 pronounce the name by which they are known, to them
 
 44 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 belongs the influence of Christianity, and they are to re- 
 ceive it at our hands. We are bound to take care of the 
 world. We are bound to include in our desires, plans, 
 aims, and Christian ambitions, all that God thinks of 
 when He looks down upon the face of the earth. 
 
 I PUT you on your guard against the scepticism of our 
 time. And do you think that I am about to enlarge upon 
 the scepticism of Rousseau, of Diderot, of Voltaire, of 
 Bolingbroke, of Hobbes, and of Hume, that was swept 
 away with their ashes, and is buried ? The great scepti- 
 cisms of our time are, > market scepticism, political scep- 
 ticism, and religious scepticism. Men who feel that it 
 would be wicked to sacrifice great pecuniary interests for 
 the sake of principle ; men who think it would be a 
 tempting of Providence to refuse profitable business spec- 
 ulations, to leave profitable situations, or to refuse divi- 
 dends of evil ; men whose consciences will not permit 
 them, as the members of a corporation, to expose its wick- 
 edness ; men who stand in the market and feel that they 
 have a right to do anything that wins, these men are 
 infidels. You need not tell me that they believe in the 
 Bible ; they believe in the Bible just as I believe in birds' 
 nests in winter, nests that have no birds in them. They 
 believe in an empty Bible, a Bible of the letter, and 
 not a Bible of the spirit, which says to a man, " Sacrifice 
 your right hand before you do your integrity." 
 
 WHEN even the old colored woman Katy, who earned 
 her own livelihood ; who sold cakes from day to day ; 
 who in her lifetime took forty children out of the poor- 
 house, and taught them trades, and bound them out in 
 places of prosperity ; who took no airs upon herself; who
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 45 
 
 lived on the abundance of her poverty, when she died 
 out of her sphere nobody thought to ask, " What has be- 
 come of her?" She was buried, perhaps, so obscurely, 
 that no person could say, " I am sure here is where her 
 old rattle-bones lie." But there went up heavenward a 
 radiant procession, amidst an outburst of song, heralding 
 the approach o'f some bold conqueror, crownless and scep- 
 treless. It was the resurrected spirit of this servant of 
 God. She lived at the bottom here, but there she lives 
 in eternal fame. At last she broke into her crown of 
 light, and ascended her throne, and took her sceptre. 
 
 Thou that art doing noble things and asking no praise ; 
 thou that art living to do good because it is sweet to do 
 good, and be like Christ, and bear His cross, and walk 
 with Him in sorrow, go up, thy Christ waits for thee. 
 And come down, thou hoary-head of power that on earth 
 art despoiling God's fair creation as food for thy lowest ' 
 appetites, and living in selfishness for thyself alone ; there 
 is no road between thee and God that does not break 
 short on the gulf between earth and heaven. The last 
 shall be first, and the first shall be last. 
 
 Seek for glory, but be careful what kind of glory you 
 seek. Work for fame, but look out that you work for the 
 fame that addresses itself to the top of the brain, instead 
 of that which addresses itself to the bottom. 
 
 SUPPOSE I should urge a man to live an honest life, and 
 he should say, " I am going to set apart from my daily du- 
 ties an hour in which to be honest." Many persons think 
 of piety in the same way that we might suppose such a 
 man would think of honesty. They regard it as some- 
 thing separated from ordinary life, and to be attended to 
 at intervals. They have an idea that it is something
 
 46 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 which is lived particularly in the closet. Now it is prop- 
 er that there should be special hours set apart for devo- 
 tion ; but, after all, a life of piety, like a life of patriotism, 
 or a life of honesty, is connected with, and a part of, com- 
 mon life. 
 
 I NEVER pass a man that is unshapen, I never pass a 
 man that is infirm, I never pass a man to whom the body 
 is literally a burden, that I do not think within myself, 
 " How sweet dying must be to such a one ! How gladly 
 must a man lay aside such a bondage of trouble ! " Mean- 
 while, if it answers the end that God meant it should, if 
 by its pain and circumspection, by its very hindrances, it 
 works in us patience, and relinquishment of vain things, 
 and a seeking of noble ones, the most dwarfed body serves 
 a better purpose than the most comely one. 
 
 I BELIEVE in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
 as three distinct Persons ; but I believe that above our 
 knowledge there is a point of coincidence and unity be- 
 tween them. What it is I do not know. That is the un- 
 revealed part. The revealed part is that the Divine na- 
 ture stands forth to us as separate, individual Father, 
 separate, individual Son, and separate, individual Spir- 
 it ; and that in the vast recess of the being of God, which 
 transcends our knowledge, there is a coming together of 
 the three. 
 
 YE are the light of the world. We are the examples, 
 the leaders, the models, the ideals of the world. In other 
 words, those things that men have been accustomed to say 
 do not belong to the church, are the very things that do 
 belong to it. I hold that the stigma which is thrown up-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 47 
 
 on churches and Christians of advocating ism?, of being 
 ismatical, although it is meant to pierce, is a part of that 
 crown of thorns which it is their glory to wear. And that 
 church which is never stigmatized as having an ism, is by 
 the mind of God stigmatized as coming short of its duty, 
 and failing to be, as it was meant to be, the light of the 
 world. For the business of the church is not to represent 
 the average advancement of the community, but to discern 
 clearer light, and higher ideals, anij nobler things, and to 
 insist upon lifting up human conduct in the individual, 
 and in carrying the community up along the line of ad- 
 mirableness, and toward more glorious achievements. 
 And a church that is alive, a church that has a teaching 
 communicancy, a church whose members are aspiring to 
 nobler conduct, will be a disturbing church ; it will be 
 continually espousing unpopular causes ; it will be all the 
 time going aside from the preaching of the Gospel ; it will 
 be forever agitating the elements of society ; it will be al- 
 ways unsettling men, and will never give them any rest. 
 We are to have no rest till we take it in heaven. God 
 meant that there should be no rest in this world, except 
 so far as contentment, as against envy, and jealousy, and 
 fretting, and dissension, may be called rest. Aspiration 
 is to be the trait of every Christian body ; and the func- 
 tion of every church of Christ is to stimulate those in the 
 community in which they dwell, so that there shall be a 
 holy ambition burning for higher things, nobler develop- 
 ments, and a purer life. Everywhere it is the business 
 of the Christian Church to search the Word of God ; and, 
 by prayer and the interpretations of Divine truth, find out 
 things admirable and glorious ; and then bear witness, by 
 precept and example, in respect to those things, that life 
 may be augmenting, and that the world may be growing
 
 48 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 toward the measure of the stature of the fulness of perfect 
 things in Christ Jesus. 
 
 OBEDIENCE never brings a man nearer to a law. Obe- 
 dience will bring a man nearer to a rule, but obedience 
 will not bring a man nearer to his ideal law. That goes 
 on. It never is so small as when he touches it with per- 
 fect obedience. It opens ; it effulges ; it hangs higher 
 and higher, brighter .and brighter, in the heavens, and 
 the further he travels toward it, the further he is from 
 it. The indispensable condition of our growth and devel- 
 opment, therefore, is that by advancing toward our ideals 
 in attempting to fulfil them, we thrust them further from 
 us. 
 
 THE imagination the divinest of mental faculties 
 is God's self in the soul. All our other faculties seem 
 to- me to have the brown touch of earth on them ; but 
 this one carries the very livery of heaven. It is God's 
 most supernal faculty, interpreting to us the difference 
 between the material and the immaterial, and the differ- 
 ence between the visible and the invisible ; teaching us 
 how to take material and visible things and carry them 
 up into the realm of the invisible and the immaterial, and 
 how to bring down immaterial and invisible things, and 
 embody them in visible and material symbols ; and so, 
 being God's messenger and prophet, standing between 
 our soul and God's. 
 
 "LET us, therefore," on account of these two things; 
 first, God's sympathy ; and second, God's perfect knowl- 
 edge of all our wickedness, " come boldly to the throne 
 of grace," and why ? " that we may obtain mercy,
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 49 
 
 and find grace to help in time of need." "We go not to 
 exonerate ourselves, not to plead our righteousness ; we 
 go boldly, saying, " Thou knowest that I am sinful ; but 
 Thou sentest Thy Son to atone for sins ; I am sick, but 
 Thou hast the medicine for souls that are sick ; I am 
 wicked, but Thou art He that delightest to forgive wick- 
 edness." We are to go boldly to God's throne, because 
 He is so full of mercies for our want ; so full of goodness 
 for our wickedness ; so full of forgiveness for our sins. 
 And God's knowledge of what w"e are, and all we do, 
 instead of being an argument for fear, is an argument for 
 confidence. 
 
 WHEN a child has been away all day long, playing 
 truant, and the afternoon comes, and with it hunger and 
 the necessity of shelter, he must go home ; and he goes 
 towards his father's house, thinking to himself what plau- 
 sible lie to tell, how he can make tattered truth seem 
 like an unrent garment. And so, with an ill-feigned ap- 
 pearance of innocence, and perhaps with a forced smile on 
 his face, he enters the door, trying to look as if he were 
 not a guilty child. He runs with alacrity to perform 
 every errand imposed upon him. His conduct, however, 
 is suspicious ; for he is too good for an innocent child. 
 He thinks nothing is known of his disobedience. But 
 while he sits with the family at tea, the burden on his 
 mind grows heavier and heavier ; and he says to himself, 
 " They are very kind to me, and if I thought that they 
 knew it all, and they were so kind, how happy I should 
 be ! " He expects that they will find it out, and that 
 then there will be a time of it. Now his father and 
 mother are pleasant toward him, but he thinks that by 
 and by it will come out, and that then will follow chastise- 
 3 D
 
 50 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 ment and trouble. And that great undisclosed guilt in 
 the soul, that account yet to be settled, takes away all the 
 joys of his home, and makes the evening a torment. But 
 if, when he came in, his mother had stolen behind him, 
 and said to him, in a gentle tone, " We know it all, my 
 child ; we are sorry ; but we shall say nothing about it ; 
 we shall let it pass," the child, as soon as he found that 
 it was all known and forgiven, and that he was the recip- 
 ient of so much love, not because they did not know it, 
 but because knowing it they saw sufficient reasons why it 
 should be passed by, and not laid to his account, how 
 sweet to him would have been his father's and mother's 
 kindness ! It would have brought tears to his eyes as it 
 had never done before. And when he went to his couch 
 at night, how sweet would their unscolding forgiveness 
 have been to him ! It would have been all the sweeter 
 because all the time they knew his guilt. 
 
 Now, the apostle says, " With your guilt, with your 
 trouble, go before God." He knows all. What nobody 
 else knows, He knows. He knows what even the wife 
 of your bosom does not know. He knows - what has 
 never been divulged to any living soul. Wicked thoughts 
 and intentions in connection with your business, which 
 perhaps no man knows except yourself, He knows. And 
 when you feel an impulse to go before God, do not say, 
 " I would go ; but that crime." He knew of that crime 
 before He invited you to go to Him. Do not say, "I 
 would go; but that unwashed lust." He has known that 
 lust from the beginning. "All things are naked and 
 opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." 
 " Let us, therefore," says the apostle, " come boldly to 
 the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find 
 grace to help." Grace to help, that is it : grace to
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 51 
 
 help you out of your sin. Let no one, then, who has a 
 sense of his sinfulness, who is truly repentant, and who 
 is striving to do better, hesitate to go to God, saying, 
 " Have mercy upon me, and help me." 
 
 THERE is no boldness permitted toward God which is 
 from our lower instincts and failings. The boldness with 
 which a warrior meets his enemy ; the boldness of mere 
 physical courage ; the boldness of unrestrained, irrever- 
 ent zeal, these kinds of boldness are wicked before 
 God. But, on the other hand, there is no one of our 
 religious feelings, in its own estate pure and zealous, and 
 inflamed, that does not permit us to come near to God. 
 Not only has every Christian man a key to the kingdom 
 of heaven, but every one of our moral sentiments or feel- 
 ings has its own special key with which it has a right to 
 open the door of God's privy chamber, and go in unto 
 Him. What is the feeling that animates you? Is it 
 conscience ? Is this feeling carried in accordance with 
 God's truth and spirit ? Then by it you may go bold- 
 ly before God. Is it faith that irradiates the soul, 
 that brings light from the heart clear up to heaven ? 
 Then as angels went up and down the sacred ladder, so 
 by faith may you ascend into the very presence of God. 
 Is it hope that fills the soul ? To hope is given also the 
 watchword, and it may go to God without hesitation. Is 
 it love ? Love is a universal commoner. There is no 
 thicket, or river, or obstacle, that love may not go through. 
 It may go everywhere, carrying bounty, immense and uni- 
 versal, and only bounty. Is it want, that knows not how 
 to speak a word ? In heaven and before God the tears 
 of want are louder than on earth are the loudest thunders. 
 Is it sadness of heart or remorse ? Whatever it is in the
 
 52 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 soul, that would fain draw near to God for relief, it may 
 go to him boldly, and with confidence. There were tele- 
 graphs before Morse invented batteries or lines of wires. 
 The longest telegraph ever made was that between the 
 heart of God and suffering humanity. And every man 
 that has a want is a battery : every want is a wire ; every 
 groan or tear sends a message quick to the central deposit 
 of all petition, God's heart ; and from thence come 
 back mercies quicker than return messages are ever re- 
 ceived by earthly telegraphs. 
 
 Is there anything more beautiful in a lower sphere than 
 the dressing of a bride for her wedding?. The tender 
 hands of kind nurse, of loving sisters, and fond mother, 
 how they all wait upon her ! How the hours are consecrat- 
 ed to her glory ! How her hair is parted and braided with 
 sweet simplicity ! How the veil is thrown over her with 
 exquisite grace ! What bracelets, what rings, what jewels, 
 contribute to decorate her person ! It is a great thing to 
 go to the toilet-table of a bride in a wealthy family, and 
 see what the jewel-box contains. 
 
 Now, God has opened the jewel-box with the contents 
 of which He dresses His bride, the Church : " Blessed 
 are the poor in spirit." " Blessed are they that mourn." 
 " Blessed are the meek." " Blessed are they which do 
 hunger and thirst after righteousness." " Blessed are the 
 merciful." " Blessed are the pure in heart." " Blessed 
 are the peacemakers." " Blessed are they which are per- 
 secuted for righteousness' sake." " Blessed are ye when 
 men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all 
 manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice 
 and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heav- 
 en : for so persecuted they the prophets which were be- 
 fore you."
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 53 
 
 Who wants to wear jewels? There they are. Put 
 them on ! 
 
 THEOLOGY is but a science of mind applied to God. As 
 schools change, theology must necessarily change. Truth 
 is everlasting, but our ideas of truth are not. Theology 
 is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged. 
 
 How tenderly God speaks when He describes the way 
 in which He deals with those who come to Him ! " The 
 bruised reed I will not break." 
 
 What is that ? Did you ever see reeds, or canes, grow- 
 ing, that shoot up twenty or thirty feet, and are not thicker 
 than your finger in the whole growth ? If they are strong 
 and whole, they cannot stand unless they are in some way 
 supported by their fellows. But suppose the field is cut 
 through, and as the man goes along, he strikes with his 
 axe or hatchet one that is left upon the edge, and its stem 
 is shivered. There it stands, so tall and tremulous, but 
 now wounded so that a breath will cause it to fall to the 
 ground. God says, I will deal so gently with you that 
 the bruised reed shall not break, that tremulous weakness 
 shall not fall. ' "* 
 
 " The smoking flax I will not quench." Did you ever 
 watch the flame when it was first applied to the wick, and 
 you could scarcely tell whether you were deceived by 
 your eye or there was really a light there, and the slight- 
 est stirring, the breath that you breathed, would blow it 
 out? It is very hard to make a lamp begin to burn. 
 Now, says God, I will deal with those who come to me 
 for help with such gentleness that the smoking flax shall 
 not be quenched. If your soul to-day has one aspiration, 
 if there is one spark of that glorious flame leaping up
 
 54 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 toward God, there is the promise of that blessed Spirit 
 that shall take that heart of yours, like a lamp just lit, 
 and God will carry it so carefully and gently that it shall 
 not go out until the whole is enkindled with light. 
 
 GOD'S love does not depend upon our character, but 
 upon His own. I do not mean to affirm that it makes 
 no difference whether a man has a good or a bad char- 
 acter. I do not mean to affirm that there do not spring 
 up between the Divine nature and ourselves, by reason 
 of our relations to that nature, certain deeper and more 
 wonderful affections. But I do mean to affirm this : 
 that there is a great overshadowing love of God to us, 
 that stands, not on account of our character, but on- ac- 
 cout of His. God's love for us is not affirmed to exist 
 because God perceived a spark kindled in us gradually 
 flaming forth, and reaching up toward Him. It is not 
 affirmed to exist because our hearts, feebly beating, 
 seemed to knock at the door of His heart, rousing, by 
 their very spent and weak sounds, the compassion of 
 the hospitable Divinity. 
 
 Do the roots and grass and early flowers break forth 
 from winter, and send messengers for the sun to come 
 back ? or does the sun, come from its far voyaging, long 
 to overhang the sleeping places of flowers until they feel 
 his presence, and, drawn by his warm hands, wake and 
 come forth into a warmth and a light that waited above 
 them while they were dead, and that would have bathed 
 them yet, and all summer long, though they had still lain 
 torpid? 
 
 You are perpetual recipients of God's mercies. In the 
 round year there is not one moment in which He does
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 55 
 
 not brood over you with His thoughts. His love and 
 tenderness are to you what the sun and the dew are to 
 the plant. 
 
 IF you take a microscopic instrument, and examine the 
 sting of a bee, magnifying it a million times, you will find 
 that still it is so smooth that the eye can detect no varia- 
 tions upon its surface. But if you take the finest needle 
 that is manufactured, and look at it through a powerful 
 microscope, you will find that it will appear rough in the 
 proportion in which it is magnified. This figure illus- 
 trates the difference between the Divine nature and the 
 nature of man. The more you magnify your true con- 
 ceptions of God's nature, the more beautiful does He 
 appear ; whereas the more you magnify the nature of 
 man the more ugly does he appear. And it is evident 
 that if God loves man, it is because He has something in 
 Himself that compels Him to love, and not because there 
 is anything in man that calls forth His love. 
 
 MEN moynt up into flashes of glorious realization, when 
 it seems as if God then began to love them, because they 
 then first become sensitive to His love. "When a man has 
 passed through religious changes from darkness to light, 
 
 when he has put off his worldly character, and taken 
 on the character of Christ, when, coming out of de- 
 spondency, the compassionate Saviour rises- before him, 
 
 then he stands up and says, " Christ has begun to love 
 me. I have come to a state in which I know that God 
 loves me." His impression is that the Divine love for 
 him began when the burden which had weighed down his 
 soul was rolled off. 
 
 Just as if a blind man, who had never seen the heavens,
 
 56 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 nor the earth, nor the sweet faces of those that loved him, 
 should have a surgical operation performed upon his eyes, 
 so that he could see objects around him, and should think 
 to himself, on going out of doors, " 0, how things are 
 blossoming ! The earth is beginning to be beautiful ! 
 Mountains and hills are springing up in every direction ! 
 The forms of loving friends are being raised up to greet 
 my gaze ! And the sun has just begun to shine forth 
 from the heavens ! " ' But have not these things existed 
 since the flood, and since the creation, although the man's 
 eyes have not before been in a condition to enable him to 
 see them ? 
 
 When we are brought into the consciousness of what 
 God's love is to our poor sinful natures, we oftentimes 
 have the feeling that God is beginning to be reconciled 
 to us. "We take it for granted that as we were at enmity 
 with Him, so He was at enmity with us. "We have an 
 idea that he was just as hard toward us as we were obsti- 
 nate in violating His will ; and that it was when we began 
 to love Him that He began to love us. It was then tliat 
 we began to realize His love, but His love for us had ex- 
 isted from the time we came into being, and had ever con- 
 tinued with us. All the experiences of our inward and 
 outward lives have been baptized, although unconsciously 
 to us, in His tender thoughts. Those thoughts run after 
 us more than a mother's for her child that has gone away 
 from home. 
 
 O MAN, thou who art God's courier through time and 
 eternity, nothing that concerns you in the slightest degree 
 can be considered as little. 
 
 GOD stands and looks down ; and all things are naked
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 57 
 
 and opened unto Him. To Him there are no locked-up 
 covers; no concealed crypts; no dark caves; no secret 
 places. There is nothing that is not disclosed before Him. 
 There is no man that is so encased or enrobed as to be 
 hidden from Him. He sees through the thoughts and 
 feelings of men. He beholds the fountains of their feeling, 
 and the sources of their thoughts. The intents of the 
 heart, those psychological tremblings which indicate 
 that the wires will show some thought or feeling, even 
 these are known to Him. The very beginnings of the 
 life of the soul are plain unto Him. 
 
 WHEN a man looks at his own state and asks whether 
 he shall be able to prevail, and stand in Zion and before 
 God, it is not at all wonderful that his courage fails him. 
 But why should he think of himself? Why should he 
 measure his chances of everlasting life merely by the 
 slender forces that he can address to the work of salva- 
 tion ? Have you no God ? Have you no Saviour ? Was 
 it not for you that Calvary became memorable? Was 
 one thought thought, was one feeling felt, did one drop of 
 blood fall to the ground, on that blessed mount, in which 
 you had no right nor part nor lot ? The treasure of Cal- 
 vary is the birthright of every child that has come into 
 life since the death of Christ ; and all that was then mani- 
 fested by God, in word or thought or act, was but a feeble 
 expression of the unspeakable love that was behind it all. 
 All that He did then was for you. 
 
 A DOCTOR, ignorant of disease, is called in to cure a 
 
 man that is sick. Before he came he expected to find 
 
 the patient weak, and pale, and lying on a couch ; but he 
 
 finds him disfigured, blotched, cramped, distorted, nervous, 
 
 3*
 
 58 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 fitful, pettish, and he will not touch him. He thought he 
 was only sick, but he finds him ugly ! As if ugliness was 
 not a part of sickness ! 
 
 Now, men have a romantic idea of being sinful. They 
 think that to be sinful is something less than to be bad. 
 They regard sinfulness as something akin to weakness, 
 rather than wickedness. And they say, " If I were only 
 good, God would forgive me my sins ; but now I make 
 promises and break them, I say what I do not mean in 
 prayer, I indulge in things which I pray God to enable 
 me to avoid, I continually exhibit passions which I know 
 are evil ; and how can I hope for salvation ? " As if 
 being filled with such things was not what we mean, and 
 what God means, by sin ! As if it was not on account 
 of these very things that we need the Divine recuperative 
 power ! 
 
 It requires no engineering to make a road that has 
 been made already ; but to cut through the mountain, and 
 fill up the morass, and make a road, does require some 
 engineering. And if men were to make themselves com- 
 plete before presenting themselves to God, there would 
 be no marvel in God's supplying love. It is because 
 men are imperfect and wicked perpetually, that there is 
 a marvel in this love. 
 
 A GREAT many persons have almost no confirmation 
 of hope, partly from a fault of teaching. There are a 
 great many persons whose conscience is educated to 
 watch over them, so that it becomes the torment of their 
 life. They are always afraid they will make a mistake. 
 They are forever on the doubtful edge of fear and hope. 
 They are never able to say, " I know that my Redeemer 
 liveth." And even if they have moments of triumph,
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 59 
 
 they are like flowers that are exposed to an uneven tem- 
 perature. If they have plants of righteousness, they are 
 like early vegetables that have no settled summer. They 
 lose all the seed sown in early periods. 
 
 WHEN I stand and look at my congregation, I am like 
 a man in a picture-gallery. Here is a bright, radiant 
 landscape. Right next to it is a landscape that is storm- 
 clad and dark. There is the picture of a calm, tranquil 
 sea. Right next to it is the picture of a sea that is rough 
 and boisterous. Here is a scene of love. Right next to 
 it is a tragic scene. There is a representation of wealth. 
 Right next to it is a representation of poverty- Thus 
 throughout the picture-gallery the most striking contrasts 
 are seen. 
 
 Now, I see just such contrasts when I stand and look 
 from my pulpit. Here is a man whose face betokens 
 consolation. Right next to him is a man whose heart by 
 affliction has been left empty and desolate. There is 
 a man triumphing in prosperity and enjoyment. Right 
 next to him is a man who is stricken down by misfortune 
 and sorrow. I see all these various conditions of life 
 portrayed before me when I look. I see light and dark 
 shades commingled all through the congregation. Some- 
 times I feel inclined to preach to those who are hopeful. 
 At other times I cannot help preaching to those who are 
 in darkness and great trouble. 
 
 Now, you of this latter class, this is a comfort for you. 
 God says that neither tribulation, nor distress, nor perse- 
 cution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, 
 nor anything, shall take you out of His hands. 
 
 Let us imagine a case. An heir is so^dissolute that he 
 is outcast from his home. He determines to become an
 
 60 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 emigrant. He comes to this country, and changes his 
 name, thinking to live here in obscurity. His prospects 
 are anything but flattering, as is apt to be the case with 
 children who are educated to nothing. He finds no em- 
 ployment. He is at last driven to a mine, and he be- 
 comes a collier. Acquiring some degree of love for 
 work, he makes up his mind that he will build up a little 
 property for himself. After toiling day and night for a 
 long period in the mine, he feels that he has a foothold 
 on life once more. Meantime, his father dies, leaving his 
 whole estate to him. The agent, ascertaining his where- 
 abouts, comes to bring him news of his good fortune. 
 He does not at first disclose himself to him, thinking that 
 he will put him to proof, and see what there is in him. 
 Instead of saying, " I have come to tell you that your 
 father's whole estate has fallen to you, and that you are 
 exalted to a position of influence," he lies back, and takes 
 means to thwart the man's schemes. The man only 
 knows that his plans are overturned by somebody. He 
 measures his distress from his own stand-point. The 
 agent gets hold of his little property, takes a note against 
 him to collect, and in various ways harasses and terrifies 
 him, till he is overwhelmed with distress, and it seems to 
 him that the end of all things has come, and he is ready 
 to leave all his hard earnings, and run away, for the sake 
 of escaping from his trouble. Then the agent says to 
 him, " I was only tantalizing you. I came to bring you 
 tidings that you are the sole heir of your father's im- 
 mense estate. I have been doing these things just to see 
 how you would act. I bear the testimonies of your heir- 
 ship. Here is the evidence that you are the possessor of 
 uncounted wealth." How different now do these little 
 tan tali zations seem from what they did but just before !
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 61 
 
 Then they seemed like thunderbolts ; now they have no 
 noise in them. Then they seemed dark as midnight; 
 now they seem as bright as noonday. He laughs now 
 to think that he cried then. He rejoices now, where 
 then he was drowned in sorrow. 
 
 But the eternal kingdom of God is yours, God himself 
 is yours. Sustained by Him, upheld by Him, cared for 
 by Him, we are held out for a little while in blessed tan- 
 talization, soon to be caught up as His children, His heirs, 
 and joint-heirs with Christ. What blessedness is there 
 in this thought ! How should it inspire us with patience 
 as we journey through life ! 
 
 IMAGINE a dove saying, "I dislike this glossy green on 
 my neck," and trying to remove it. It may rub the 
 feathers off, but they will speedily come green again. It 
 cannot eradicate the color from its feathers. The sun- 
 flower will be yellow, however much it may prefer to be 
 violet. Everything will have its own peculiar form, its 
 own peculiar color, its own peculiar juices, its own pecu- 
 liar odors, and its own peculiar constitution. God meant 
 that it should be so ; He watches to see that it is so ; He 
 holds things down in their places, and you among them, 
 and your faculties in you. He gives you liberty to con- 
 trol one faculty by another, but He never gives you lib- 
 erty to* rub out one figure. The problem you are to 
 work out in life requires that you should use everything 
 put into you. You think you are not doing it, but you 
 are. God laughs to see how deceived you are, to see 
 you think you are not doing what you are, and to see 
 you doing what you think you are not. 
 
 THE vague and sad forebodings of Cliristians as to
 
 62 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 their final safety are very unreasonable, in the light of 
 God's revelation. ' There are men that hope sometimes, 
 but doubt much more. This arises from an almost ex- 
 clusive regard to one's own sickness, and an almost utter 
 neglect to look at the fulness, richness, freeness, and in- 
 exhaustible bounty of God's love for men. No man can 
 find any reasonable comfort, I think, so long as he is 
 more conscious of his own state than of the amazing 
 grace and power of God. I do not know the man who, 
 if he should look merely at his own disposition, at his 
 past life, at his Christian experience, could find argument 
 for anything but sadness and dissatisfaction in regard^ to 
 the past, and fear in regard to the future. It is not in 
 that direction that hope springs up. As long as a man 
 looks in upon himself he is like one that opens a trap- 
 door and looks down to see the stars. The stars are not 
 to be seen by looking that way. You do not want to 
 look down into a well to see the light, but into the 
 heavens above. 
 
 To you that are not troubled it may seem an inconse- 
 quential thing, but to you that are troubled it is a source 
 of inexpressible peace and gladness, that there is a God 
 who knows how to take care of men when they do not 
 know how to take care of themselves. 
 
 THERE is but one single view, it seems to me, on which 
 a man can lie down and die without fear, and that is this : 
 " God loves me, because it is His nature to love ; God 
 will save me, because it is by saving me that He will 
 best please His own self." And if I go home to heaven, 
 I shall go, not on the step-stone of my own virtue and 
 goodness, but because I am attracted by the drawings of
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 63 
 
 that Heart that suffered for me on Calvary, and that ever 
 lives to intercede for me in heaven. We are to die in 
 Christ. We are to die so that we shall not die. The 
 egg is destroyed that it may give forth the life of the 
 bird ; and death to us is emergence ; it is going forth to 
 a clime of everlasting joy and singing. 
 
 WHEN two notes are brought to the same tone they 
 accord with each other, and each note knows that the 
 other is right because they accord ; so when two hearts 
 are right, they will fall into such unison and concord that 
 it will not be difficult for one to see that the other is 
 rijrht. 
 
 THERE can be nothing on earth half so important to a 
 man as his own self. It is right to feel a lively interest 
 in nature, in human society, and in the events of that 
 great world-history which is always going on around us, 
 and in our day. But what kingdom on earth is so wide 
 or so important as the kingdom of God in a man's own 
 soul ? The Russian empire constitutes the largest earthly 
 dominion ; and yet the sun need not employ half its hours 
 in going from side to side of it. And the kingdom of the 
 soul shall not have been traversed when the sun itself is 
 burned to the socket, and its light has gone out. It is 
 infinite ; it is endless. 
 
 WE are like men who go by their watches, but never 
 set their watches by any regulator. We are continually 
 regulating our lives by standards so false that they amount 
 to no regulators at all. 
 
 THE reflection of other men's good-will toward us we
 
 64 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 use more than anything else to estimate our characters 
 by. Those who do this are like buoys that are always 
 on the surface of the water, but that move with it as it 
 rises and falls with the ocean-tides. "We lie like floats on 
 the world-tide, which goes in and out, and up and down ; 
 and we have no gauge on the shore to show what is our 
 absolute condition. It is merely relative to the fluctua- 
 tions of the ever-shifting, ever-changing tide of human 
 feelinsr. 
 
 DID you ever think what a volume your talk would 
 make if it were printed ? If everything that some per- 
 sons say in a single day were printed, what a volume it 
 would make ! and if all they say in a year were printed, 
 what a library it would make ! I pity the man that 
 should have to read the one or the other. And yet, all 
 their sayings, from day to day, and from year to year, are 
 flying in every direction, producing their effects upon 
 those on whom they fall. The exaggerations, the over- 
 colorings, the misrepresentations, the lies (for we all lie 
 continually) which escape us when we are speaking about 
 ourselves, about our children, about our families, about 
 our property, about our neighbors, about everything that 
 we have to do with, what must be their influence upon 
 the world ? Still, how few there are that know anything 
 about the use of their tongue, which is forever on the 
 move ! 
 
 As warmth makes even glaciers trickle, and opens 
 streams in the ribs of frozen mountains, so the heart 
 knows the full flow and life of its grief only when it begins 
 to melt and pass away.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 65 
 
 I THINK that one of the master incantations, one of the 
 most signal deceits, which we practise upon ourselves, 
 comes from the use of language. There are the words 
 that we learn in childhood which we abandon when we 
 come to manhood. Generally speaking, our fireside words 
 are old Saxon words, short, knotty, tough, and imbued 
 with moral and affectional meanings ; but as we grow 
 older these words are too rude and plain for our use, and 
 so we get Latin terms and periphrases by which to ex- 
 press many of our thoughts. When we talk about our- 
 selves we almost invariably use Latin words, and when 
 we talk about our neighbors we use Saxon words. And 
 one of the best things- a man can do, I think, is to exam- 
 ine himself in the Saxon tongue. If a man tells that 
 which is contrary to the truth, let him not say, " I equivo- 
 cate " : let him say, " I lie." Lie ! why, it brings the 
 judgment-day right home to a man's thought. Men do 
 not like it, but it is exactly the thing that will most effect- 
 ually touch the moral sense; and the more the moral 
 sense is touched the better. If a man has departed from 
 rectitude in his dealings with another, let him not say, " I 
 took advantage," which is a roundabout, long sentence : 
 let him say, " I cheated" That is a very direct word. 
 It springs straight to the conscience, as the arrow flies 
 whizzing from the bow to the centre of the mark. Does 
 it grate harshly on your ear ? Nevertheless, it is better 
 that you should employ it; and you should come to this 
 determination : " I will call things that I detect in my 
 conduct by these clear-faced, rough-tongued words that 
 my enemies would use if they wanted to sting me to the 
 quick." 
 
 imagine with wonder the passage of a comet
 
 66 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 through space, flaming and sparkling along strange paths, 
 and glowing upon stars innumerable as it goes ; but that 
 is not half as wonderful as the passage of the human heart, 
 flaming and sparkling and glowing with ten thousand ef- 
 fects shot out upon every man we meet, as we move 
 through life. Planets are cold and dead, and all their 
 radiance falls without effect ; but the human soul, as it 
 passes up and down the ways of its experience, is produc- 
 ing ten thousand effects at every single moment, many of 
 which we know nothing about. 
 
 EVEN in our religious feelings, we are prone to follow 
 our sympathies rather than our judgments or consciences, 
 and to measure ourselves by the general condition of the 
 church or sect to which we belong. We are as if we 
 were in a ship, and we called its voyage our voyage, and 
 its passage our passage. And if our church or sect is 
 flourishing, we have a feeling that we are flourishing ; 
 and so we lose our personal identity. 
 
 IN a great affliction there is no light either in the stars 
 or in the sun ; for when the inward light is fed with fra- 
 grant oil, there can be no darkness though the sun should 
 go out. But when, like a sacred lamp in the temple, the 
 inward light is quenched, there is no light outwardly, 
 though a thousand suns should preside in the heavens. 
 
 DID you ever sit down and make an inventory of what 
 you do, in order to come to a distinct understanding with 
 reference to your use of time ? You probably know all 
 about your possessions. You know every bond, if you 
 have bonds ; you know every mortgage, if you have 
 mortgages ; you know every pound that is deposited, if
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 67 
 
 you have deposits of money ; you know every piece of 
 property, if you own real estate ; you know all your 
 debts and credits. These things you look at both in 
 detail and in the sum. But God has given ouV chief 
 treasure to us in the use of time ; and how many of us 
 understand that matter ? How many of us know what 
 we do with our time ? How many of us have ever taken 
 even a cursory view of one single year, saying, " I am 
 anxious to know, on the whole, how I carried myself with 
 reference to a faithful use of the element of time through 
 January, through February, through March, through 
 April, through May, through June, through July, through 
 August, from month to month ? What is the habit of my 
 life in this respect ? Of the time that is given me, how 
 much of it do I use well ; how much do I use indifferent- 
 ly ; and how much do I squander ? " There is not one 
 man in a hundred that ever thought of these things. We 
 hear the general declaration that we ought to employ 
 our time ; men are exhorted to be diligent in business, 
 and fervent in spirit ; but I suspect that there is not a 
 single person that ever sits down to make a deliberate 
 inventory in regard to the element of time, so as to form 
 a correct judgment of his habit of using it. Ought that 
 so to be ? 
 
 AT this time, all over the trees, and throughout the 
 grass, is deposited the condensed moisture of the air; 
 and silent dew-drops are on every flower and every leaf. 
 If you go and look at them in the darkness of to-night, 
 there is no form or comeliness in them ; but by and by 
 God will have wheeled the sun in its circuit so that it 
 shall look over the horizon : and the moment its light 
 strikes these hidden drops, small and scattered, every one
 
 68 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 shall glow as if it were a diamond, and all nature shall 
 be lighted up with myriad fires, each reflecting some- 
 thing of the Divine glory. God has His own plans. 
 He never told us in full what they are. We know this, 
 however ; that we are fragmentary in our lives ; that it 
 takes many to make the one idea of God ; that the work 
 of past generations is hinged upon this, and that the work 
 of this generation is hinged upon that of generations to 
 come ; and that God sits in sublimity of counsel, putting; 
 part with part, so that when we see the connected whole, 
 the things that no\v*seem most insignificant will shine 
 ou't hi wonderful beauty and magnificence. 
 
 WE are continually denying that we have habits which 
 we have been practising all our life. Here is a man that 
 has lived forty or fifty years, and a chance-shot sentence 
 or word lances him, and reveals to him a trait which he 
 has always possessed, but which until now he had not the 
 remotest idea that he possessed. For forty or fifty years 
 he has been fooling himself about a matter as plain as his 
 hand before his face. 
 
 THERE is many and many a man who thinks that he is 
 fighting the Bible and exalting morality when he says, " I 
 believe in such an old man ; I believe hi such a matron ; 
 I believe in such a person." No, you do not believe in 
 them ; it is the grace of God in them that you believe in. 
 It is, after all, those spiritual truths that God more glori- 
 ously writes in fleshly tables of the heart, .than with ink or 
 on tables of stone, that you are bowing down before. 
 
 How many there are that use their ears as a bolting- 
 cloth, only to catch the bran, and let the flour go. How
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 69 
 
 many there are that hear everything that is keen and 
 pungent and salient in scandal, and nothing that is favor- 
 able, commendable, praiseworthy of men. How many 
 persons are, in regard to hearing, like sentinels who, 
 when set to take care of things that are good, are 
 always asleep, but who, when set to take care of things 
 that are bad, never go to sleep ? How many persons 
 are there that form any conception of what the char- 
 acter of their life is in this matter? One man goes home 
 and sits down, and his companion says to him, "My dear, 
 what have you heard to-day ? " and he commences to 
 descant on the things that he has heard ; and it would 
 seem as if he had been carried by God's providence into 
 so many pleasant ways, as if he had heard so many pleas- 
 ant things, that he had been signally blessed. Another 
 man goes home and sits down, and when he is asked, 
 " What have you heard to-day ? " he says, " Heard ! I 
 have heard some queer things"; and he goes on and tells 
 something that he has heard about this man to his dis- 
 credit ; something that he has heard about that woman 
 that is derogatory : something that he has heard against 
 the judge ; something that he has heard that implicates 
 his next-door neighbor ; some story that a man should 
 never hear, or that having heard he should never repeat ; 
 things that one would suppose he must have gone through 
 a pandemonium to hear. How many men take account 
 of their habits of hearing? I think it is important that 
 a man should examine himself for the purpose of coming 
 to some knowledge of his conduct in this regard. 
 
 I HAVE known many persons that, when they began to 
 feel a certain sweet joy in singing a hymn, would check 
 themselves and say, " Have I a right to this feeling ?
 
 70 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 does it proceed from the proper source ? " It is exactly 
 as though a bird should commence to sing on a tree close 
 by your dwelling, and you should say to yourself, "I 
 wonder if that is the bird that I heard yesterday " ; and 
 you should run to the window to see, and frighten it so 
 that it would stop singing and fly away. If any feeling 
 begins to sing on the bough of hope, the moment you say, 
 " Stop, let me see the construction of its vocal organs," 
 that moment it stops singing. If an emotion of sympathy 
 with justice and conscience springs up in your bosom, the 
 moment you say, " Stop, let me see how it is coming," 
 that moment it ceases to be. If you begin to experience 
 love toward God, the moment you say, " Stop, let me 
 look at this," that moment it comes to an end. The 
 moment you look at a feeling, the feeling stops, and in- 
 tellection begins, thus revolutionizing the whole process 
 of the mind. 
 
 " MAN that is born of a woman is of few days, and full 
 of trouble." It comes to us all : not to make us sad, but 
 to make us sober ; not to make us sorry, but to make 
 us wise ; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness 
 to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day ; not to im- 
 poverish us, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the 
 field, to multiply our joy, as the seed is multiplied a 
 hundredfold by planting. Our conception of life is not Di- 
 vine, and our thought of garden-making is not inspired. 
 Our earthly flowers are quickly planted, and they quickly 
 bloom, and then they are gone ; while God would plant 
 those flowers which, by transplantation, shall live for- 
 ever. 
 
 SOME of the most disagreeable persons that you meet
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 71 
 
 in the world, are these Christian people that are consid- 
 ering everything in the universe from the stand-point of 
 their own culture. One of the most blessed things in this 
 world is to be unconscious of self, and conscious only of 
 God, the eternal sphere, and the great truths of the Di- 
 vine government and human life. Happy is he before 
 whom these things are so eminent that his own conscious 
 self is gone. And yet how many well-meaning persons 
 there are who are forever treating you to the various dish 
 of their sensibilities, their struggles, their temptations, 
 and their wants ; with whom it is continually I, I, I, 
 me, me, me, my, my, my ; whose life is one everlasting 
 habit of egotism, only basted and served up in religion ! 
 
 WE part from this world strangers ; we come together 
 in everlasting acquaintanceship. We lose our friends 
 that we may really find them. The husbandman loses 
 his seed in the furrow, that he may gain a harvest. We 
 lose our friends that we may really find them a hundred- 
 fold ; for, that which we encircle here, that which our 
 love cradles, that which flesh and raiment clothe, is not 
 our friend. That which the body itself encloses is the 
 friend. And who sees that through the composite flesh ; 
 through a life which is itself but disconnected and frag- 
 mentary ; through toils and struggles, and intermitted 
 purposes and mistakes ; through griefs and heart-sorrow- 
 ings ; through dim ignorance ; through yearnings and 
 vague aspirations? Who more than suspects the cause 
 that gives forth these intermitted effects ? The soul, 
 who sees, who knows that ? 
 
 A PLOUGH is coming from the far end of a long field, 
 and a daisy stands nodding, and full of dew-dimples.
 
 72 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 That furrow is sure to strike the daisy. It casts- its shad- 
 ow as gayly, and exhales its gentle breath as freely, and 
 stands as simple, and radiant, and expectant, as ever; 
 and yet, that crushing furrow, which is turning and turn- 
 ing others in its course, is drawing near, and in a moment 
 it whirls the heedless flower with sudden reversal under 
 the sod! 
 
 And as is the daisy, with no power of thought, so are 
 ten thousand thinking, sentient flowers of life, blossoming 
 in places of peril, and yet thinking that no furrow of dis- 
 aster is running in toward them, that no iron plough 
 of trouble is about to overturn them. Sometimes it dim- 
 ly dawns upon us, when we see other men's mischiefs 
 and wrongs, that we are in the same category with them, 
 and that perhaps the storms which have overtaken them 
 will overtake us also. But it is only for a moment, for 
 we are artful to cover the ear, and not listen to the voice 
 that warns us of our danger. 
 
 MEN never can find themselves of themselves, but 
 always in the touch of some other and higher one. 
 
 HE that knows how to die in his passions every day ; 
 he that knows how to die in his pride from hour to hour ; 
 he that has Christ in each particular thwarting and event 
 of life ; he that knows how, from the varied experiences 
 of life, to bring forth from day to day a Christian charac- 
 ter, need not fear the grand and final earthly experience 
 to which he is coming. There is no death to those that 
 know how to die beforehand. Those who know how to 
 lay themselves upon Christ, and take the experiences of 
 every-day life in the faith of Christ ; those who see the 
 will of God in everything that abounds, whether wound-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 73 
 
 ing or healing, they have nothing left at the end of 
 life except peace, translation, and the beginning of im- 
 mortality. 
 
 IT is the nature of Christ to awaken in us, and to bring 
 forth, that which we should have no power to excite in 
 ourselves. In all the fields there is not one flower whose 
 root is not organized for the promotion of its growth ; 
 whose nature is not stored with all elements of develop- 
 ment and of perfection. And yet, not one of them can 
 lift up the clod, or struggle forth ; not one of them can 
 give birth to its leaves, or break forth in blossoming 
 beauty, until the secret of their life, which the sun car- 
 ries, is given to them. Then, when the light calls them, 
 and the warmth ; then, when the sun has wrought might- 
 ily within them do they come to themselves. Their life 
 is in Him. 
 
 THE loving women who followed Christ must have 
 found a daily heaven. His serene nature ; His benefi- 
 cence ; His all-encompassing sympathy ; His disinterest- 
 edness, that gave everything but asked nothing; His 
 supernal wisdom ; His power over life ; His regency 
 over nature ; His lordship over the winds that flew to 
 His hand as a dove to its nest ; His mastery over dark- 
 ness and death itself, calling back the departed spirit 
 from its far-off wandering to life again; His effluent 
 glory, as He hung in mid-air, sustained by white clouds, 
 or as He walked the night sea, carpeted with darkness ; 
 but, above all, that inspiration, that heavenly purity, that 
 spiritual life which touched their life, and that aroused 
 them as they were never before aroused, in short, the 
 presence of their God ! all these things, abiding with 
 4
 
 74 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 them, travelling from day to day with them, measuring 
 out their golden year, gave them their first full knowl- 
 edge of life as the soul recognizes it ! And these were, 
 to their fond hope, doubtless, a perpetual gift. 
 
 WHAT is just, is more to us as we grow older. In 
 every new relation of life into which we come, we find 
 out finer shades, higher colors, nicer distinctions, and 
 wider circuits of justice. Justice is never so slender to 
 us as when we first practise it. It grows in the imagi- 
 nation. It is enlarged by experience. It includes more 
 elements, it touches things with a finer stroke, and it de- 
 mands more exquisite duties, every single day and year 
 that a man lives, who lives at all right. 
 
 How many of my congregation have I seen in their 
 troubles ! How many of them have I walked with in 
 their hour of anguish for sin! Every Sunday I look upon 
 a congregation, one in every six of whom, it seems to me, 
 I have gone down to the baptismal water with, or sprink- 
 led, and walked with, through all the stages of their heart- 
 distress. For how many of them have I spoken words 
 of consolation at funerals? Where are the children, 
 where are the brothers and sisters, where are the parents, 
 where are the kindreds of my church ? Where are our 
 old friends and co-workers ? Where are those that were 
 in the height of personal expectation ten years ago ? 
 We have lived ten years together, most of us, some of 
 us longer than that ; and have we not tracked God at 
 every step, verifying His declaration, " Ye shall have 
 tribulation " ? And are we to look forward to the time 
 to come with less expectation of tribulation ? Let each 
 look upon his household. Who shall be unclothed next ?
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 75 
 
 I desire to* take it to myself. I desire to look at my 
 plans and expectations in the light of this inquiry. For 
 I too have made a garden, and have forgotten to put a 
 sepulchre in it. I desire to commence a new survey. 
 Let me go up to that central mound covered with flow- 
 ers, and let me see if underneath those flowers there is 
 not an opening mouth, the darkness of the grave. 
 And if there is, then let me rejoice ; for I am sure that 
 that is an unwatered garden which has no sepulchre. In 
 so great a congregation as mine, where there are so many 
 thousands that by invisible threads are connected with 
 this vital teaching-point, sorrow becomes almost a litera- 
 ture, and grief almost a lore ; and we are in danger of 
 walking over the road of consolation so frequently, that 
 at last it becomes to us a road hard and dusty. "We are 
 accustomed to take certain phrases as men take medici- 
 nal herbs, and apply them to bruised and wounded and 
 suffering hearts, until we come to have a kind of ritual- 
 istic formality. It is good, therefore, that every one of 
 us, now and then, should be brought back to the reality 
 of the living truth of the Gospel, by some heart-quake, 
 by some sorrow, by some suffering. Flowers mislead 
 us, beguile us, enervate us, make us earthly, even if they 
 assume the most beautiful forms of loveliness ; while 
 troubles translate us, develop us, win us from things that 
 are too low to be worthy of us, and bring us into the 
 presence and under the conscious power of God. 
 
 THERE can be no barrenness in full summer. The 
 very sand will yield something. Rocks will have moss- 
 es, and every rift will have its wind-flower, and every 
 crevice a leaf ; while from the fertile soil will be reared 
 a gorgeous troop of growths, that will carry their life in
 
 76 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 ten thousand forms, but all with praise to God. And so 
 it is when the soul knows its summer. Love redeems its 
 weakness, clothes its barrenness, enriches its poverty, and 
 makes its very desert to bud and blossom as the rose. 
 
 A HOUSE built on sand is, in fair weather, just as good 
 as if builded on a rock. A cobweb is as good as the 
 mightiest chain cable when there is no strain on it. It is 
 trial that proves one thing weak and another strong. 
 
 I THIXK that faith and much thinking do not dwell 
 well together; not in religion alone. I do not think it 
 does to think too much in friendship. Let a child think 
 about all the things he sees his father and mother do, and 
 see if he loves them any better after that. Let a friend 
 go about insisting upon reducing all feelings and instincts 
 to thoughts, and strive to understand the nature of emotion 
 by thinking, let him, instead of giving liberty in his 
 heart, go to applying his philosophy to his friends, and 
 see if he will stand nobler in friendship or not. Let him 
 go out into the realm of thinking about eternal things, 
 and it would be just as foolish. Let a man begin to study 
 the relation of the race to God's government, and all the 
 mutations of government, all natural and civil law, and all 
 the ten thousand questions that rise up before the mind 
 that thinks and is inquisitive of such thoughts as these, 
 and the fact t is that idea, stars, land, sea, everything, 
 the more a man thinks upon them, the less is he strong, 
 and the more is he enervated. The great depths give up 
 their mists, and these banks of white silver hue are hid in 
 the fog. There are hours when it seems as though every- 
 thing is swept away from us ; that there is no heaven, 
 that it is all fancy and a dream ; that there is no respon-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 77 
 
 sibility ; that there is no such thing as sin and virtue ; 
 that we are all so many animals, we are all following the 
 instincts and circumstances that press without us ; there 
 is no God, or He would speak, or certainly He would give 
 us some token in our extremest anguish that He is near ; 
 there would be some dawn of light. There are a great 
 many men who strive to explain these doubts by refer- 
 ence to the natural laws, but no man has followed this 
 line of thought to any satisfaction. There are a great 
 many happy, genial, and hopeful theologians that think 
 at last they have got up early enough to find out God, 
 and so every generation you will find a man that ex- 
 plains everything. He does until the next man kicks it, 
 and it all goes back to dust again. When you shall chain 
 the waves of the sea that they shall not rise any more ; 
 when you shall fasten in the tops of the forest the winds 
 that rock them, that make them sigh their dirges in win- 
 ter and sing their anthems in summer ; when you shall 
 stay the courses of the stars and bind the earth that it 
 shall not roll in its orbit, then you may take these great 
 questions, and, by the bands of your thought and by the 
 cords of your philosophy, you may fasten them ; but so 
 long as you cannot do that, so long will they have free 
 course. And so with the thoughts of men. There must 
 needs come hours when a man finds himself quite drifted 
 away from old thoughts. - Contagious hours they are, 
 hours of great trouble, awakening hours of philosophy 
 and of doubt. In such hours as this there is nothing for 
 it but to run, and there is but one way to run, and that is 
 Godward. A man in these hours that does not run for 
 God, should run for the lunatic asylum. There is but 
 one way in which a man can find any rest, and that is to 
 say blindly but desperately, " There is a Thinker, there
 
 78 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 is a Controller, and if men have not drawn His lineaments 
 right, and if the portraiture of the books is not right, one 
 thing I know, my soul proclaims there is goodness and 
 wisdom, there is control. Whatever it is I seize it, I hold 
 by an anchor to that blessed hope." The very moment 
 a man begins to hold by that, sometimes, as by an elec- 
 tric touch, the clouds fade away, the sweet beaming face 
 of Christ shines again, and all the mists have gone as 
 sometimes you have seen them in the morning disappear, 
 you know not how ; we are bright again, and have joy 
 in Christ, and in all the blessed promises of His word ; 
 and the miracles recorded there are not half as marvel- 
 lous as the miracles wrought in the sweet experience of 
 Christians every day. 
 
 IN cities, and in business, the proportion of men that 
 have mistaken their calling is larger than anywhere else. 
 I see men every day that are in situations for which they 
 are not at all calculated. There are multitudes of young 
 men that want to be rich in merchandise. They will not 
 put their lily hands where the sun can brown them. 
 They were born, they say, for better things. Many of 
 them were born for the poor-house, and they will be there 
 in the end ! They may meet with a measure of success 
 for a time, till the sap of youth is gone out of them, and 
 then they will be fit only to be cast out, and to be trod- 
 den under foot of men. 
 
 If you transplant a tree in the spring, the sap in it will 
 carry it half through the summer, though its roots may 
 be dead. It will throw out leaves, and appear like a 
 sound tree for a good part of the first year. But the 
 next year it will die. And every man, when he starts 
 in life, has enough of the sap of youth to carry him a
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 79 
 
 certain way, though he may have mistaken his calling ; 
 but in the course of ten years, when that sap is expended, 
 and he is rootless and branchless, where will he be? 
 There is a whole deluge of white-faced, white-livered, 
 imbecile, lily-handed men in the city, seeking wealth 
 without toiling for it, seeking honor without achieving 
 it, seeking place without deserving it. They are ut- 
 terly useless to society, and yet of all men they are the 
 most extravagant in their demands upon society. Do 
 you suppose they will go unwhipped? God laughs at 
 them ; and so do angels, and everybody but themselves. 
 They think that they are martyrs. They think that there 
 ia a mysteriousness in the providences of life, because 
 such fair-haired, beautiful young men, who desired so 
 much, and meant to have so much, got so little. And 
 even what they did get was bitter. 
 
 Did not they get what they deserved? Was their 
 experience anything but the inevitable result of the vio- 
 lation of a law of their being ? Nowhere were cause and 
 effect ever better vindicated than they are in the perish- 
 ing of ten thousand, whose ill-starred ambition leads them 
 into things for which they are unfit, and induces them to 
 seek results which they can never attain. Do you ask 
 what you shall do ? Go to sea ! we need sailors. Go 
 out to work ! we need farm hands. Go into the shop ! 
 we need mechanics. Do not congregate and house in 
 the city, where, when having made a few abortive at- 
 tempts to be honest and succeed, and having failed, you 
 will take the gimlet of craft and cunning, and bore your 
 way through life, until, your consciences being gone, you 
 will resort to more positively dishonest ways, which will 
 bring you at last to utter disgrace and ruin.
 
 80 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 THERE is a place where the glory of God shall be an 
 uninterrupted stream which shall be so clear, so apparent, 
 that we shall live in the presence of it. That is to say, 
 when we stand so as to see God as He is, there will not 
 be a single thought nor a single emotion that shall not fill 
 the soul with rapture ; there will not be a single emotion 
 nor a single thought that shall not touch the soul as the 
 hand of the musician touches the chord of the instrument ; 
 there will not be a single thought nor a single emotion 
 that shall not vibrate with admiring joy. For God is the 
 centre of glory, and He acts on a pattern of grandeur in 
 moral attributes, such, that to stand in His presence and 
 see Him, is to be ceaselessly agitated and affected by the 
 wonder of such a Being. We shall see Him as He is, 
 the God of glory ; and our eye will be so strengthened, 
 that we can behold Him and not die. 
 
 IF a man has oil in his can, every drop he pours out 
 makes his supply one drop less. There is no springing 
 up from the bottom to prevent diminution in the supply. 
 It is not so with the soul. The nature of that is to renew 
 its supply, so that the more you draw from it, the more 
 there is to draw ; the more it gives, the more it has to 
 give. Giving will make any man's soul richer. 
 
 WHEN a person becomes a Christian, it is not possible 
 for him to have anything taken from him but that which 
 he cannot afford to keep ; and that which he does keep 
 will be more fruitful of joy than anything which an un- 
 christian man possesses. I know it is living to become a 
 Christian, and death not to be one. It is liberty to be 
 a Christian, and bondage not to be one. To become 
 a Christian is to come to that for which God made
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 81 
 
 you ; it is to use your powers as God originally de- 
 signed that they should be used. The object of Chris- 
 tianity is to restore man to the nature which he originally 
 possessed. It was for this that Christ came into the 
 world. And they that enter upon a Christian life ear- 
 liest are the most blessed. I do not say these things to 
 the young because I am a pensioned minister, and be- 
 cause it is my business to say them. I do not say them 
 because I am a minister, but because I am a man. I 
 would say them to my own son ; to the dearest friend I 
 have in this world. I say them because my inmost con- 
 viction is that they are true. 
 
 Do you suppose a parent dislikes to see real vigor, 
 and joy, and elasticity, and genius, and attainment, and 
 capacity, in his children ? Is there anything that makes 
 a parent happier than to see, so long as it is good, the 
 utmost growth and development in his children ? If their 
 powers are not perverted, the more they expand, the 
 more satisfaction does the parent derive from them. 
 And does God, who is more than any earthly father, 
 love dry and withered natures, or full and joyful ones, 
 that are pouring out the freshness of their life ? If ever 
 you are going to be a Christian, do not set out to be a 
 gloomy-eyed, twilight-faced, bat-like Christian, hovering 
 between night and day. Do not be a Christian parsimo- 
 > nious of joy, and full of tears and sadness. Do not at- 
 tempt to be a Christian after the pattern of the ascetic. 
 " The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but right- 
 eousness, and peace, and joy," righteousness of rectitude 
 and integrity, peace which God gives by the regulation 
 of man's nature, and joy which is the reflection of heaven 
 from the burnished experiences of an enlightened soul. 
 4* F
 
 82 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 I ask no young man or maiden to look upon a religious 
 life as a life of toil and gloom ; I do not ask you to enter 
 upon a religious life feeling that you are assuming a bur- 
 den which you must bear till your nature is worn out. I 
 come to where you are, and I strike on the rock, and say, 
 " O ye dead, come forth into life ! " 'I touch your blinded 
 eyes, and say, " Look ! behold ! " I put my finger to the 
 portal of your ears, and say, " Hear the Word of the 
 Lord, ye that are deaf ! " I invite you to manliness. 
 Receive moral power. Use all the faculties which God 
 has given you in such a way that they will give you the 
 fullest liberty and the fullest power possible. 
 
 Is there anything in this world that grows so low as 
 love ? Is there anything anywhere that is so stunted ? 
 It grows as an evergreen grows in Nova Zembla, where 
 the winter is long, and the summer is short, and where it 
 can get but six inches from the ground. But when you 
 carry it further south, it springs up and carries its stately 
 growth full three hundred feet toward heaven, and stands 
 emplumed and embowered there, showing what it should 
 be, and what love should be prefigured. 
 
 THERE "are a great many Christian men that walk up 
 and down our streets, shaking their heads, and talking to 
 young men in a supercilious, worldly-wise way, saying, 
 " Are we not deacons and elders ? and do we not know 
 what belongs to vital godliness ? And do you suppose it 
 is worth our while to be too scrupulous ? My young 
 friend, when you have lived as long as I have, you will 
 have learned a good deal more wisdom than you know 
 now." And so they wink at indiscretions and dishon- 
 esties essentially as mean as the Devil, and the mean-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 83 
 
 est thing in the world is the Devil. Do you not suppose 
 that such men are infidels? Do you not suppose they 
 are crucifying the things that are right, the things that 
 are true, the things that are pure ? They sacrifice every 
 quality that belonged to the nature of Christ Jesus. 
 They deride and sacrifice every moral attribute which 
 He possessed. And in sacrificing these, they sacrifice 
 the Lord that bought them. I think they are the worst 
 infidels in the world. No, no; they are not, either, as 
 long as they keep in the shop ; but when they walk 
 about, when they go into the homes of the poor, and be- 
 gin also to apply the same wretched infidelity to public 
 questions, to the rights of men, to great principles, for 
 principles are the lines of latitude and longitude by which 
 God divides the events of time, when they begin to 
 apply that same withering selfishness to human proced- 
 ures, and attempt to bring questions of right and wrong 
 down to the measure of the counter, rather than to that 
 of the golden reed of God's sanctuary, they are even 
 worse infidels than they were before. 
 
 I bid you, therefore, to beware of the infidelity of the 
 counter. And I also bid you to beware of the infidelity 
 of the Church ; or of the enlarging of a man's right to do 
 wrong, under the cover of doctrines and ecclesiastical ex- 
 pedients ; for never, since the world began, has there 
 been more iniquity committed than under the priest's 
 cloak, synodical or conventional. Christ has been cruci- 
 fied by religious men for religious purposes. The great- 
 est wickednesses that have taken place in my life has the 
 Church winked at, and winked at for expedient reasons. 
 Religion has ridden the earth as a red dragon. It has 
 been the torment of men the world over. Not the relig- 
 ion of Jesus Christ, but the religion of organized bodies
 
 84 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 of men who take counsel of their own selfishness and 
 folly. I bid you to beware of all such religion as this. 
 
 SOME men seem to think that the glory of the Church 
 consists in being let alone. "What they esteem above all 
 other things is peace. A green mantling pool of what 
 they call orthodoxy, with a minister croaking like a frog 
 solitary, that is their conception of a Christian church 
 in a state of prosperity. But, according to the Bible, we 
 are warriors. The battles we fight, however, are not 
 battles of blood, but battles of love and mercy. We are 
 sent to carry, not the sword and the spear, not rude vio- 
 lence, but conceptions of higher justice, nobler purity, 
 wiser laws, and more beneficent customs. The weapons 
 of our warfare are not carnal. With these we contest, 
 and we will contest, against rage and wrath and bitter- 
 ness, knowing that He that called us and sent us is the 
 God of battles, and will guide us and give us that victory 
 which, if worth anything, is worth achieving in the se- 
 verest conflict. For victories that are cheap, are cheap. 
 Those only are worth having which come as the result 
 of hard fighting. 
 
 How strange a combination of circumstances, that the 
 Cross should have been lifted up so near to a garden ; 
 that the garden, of all places, should have held, amidst 
 its treasures, such a thing as a sepulchre hewn in a rock ; 
 that thus a cold grave should have been unbosomed 
 among flowers, and waited, for weeks and months and 
 years, for the coming of its sacred guest ! And now, how 
 striking the picture ! A few words, and the whole stands 
 open to the imagination, as to the very sight ! The two 
 women, side by side, silent and yet knowing each other's
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 85 
 
 thoughts, with one grief, with one yearning, with 
 one suffering! Home was forgotten, and nature itself 
 was unheeded. The odorous vines, the generous blos- 
 soms, the world of sights around them, were as if they 
 were not. There was the rock, and only that to them. 
 There was neither daylight, nor summer, nor balm, nor 
 perfume. There were no lilies by their feet, nor roses 
 around them ; for though there were ten thousand of 
 them, there was to them only that cold, gray, sepulchral 
 rock. See what a life theirs had been. 
 
 THE experience of every fresh mourner is, " I knew 
 that Death was in the world, but I never thought that 
 my beloved could die." Every one that comes to the 
 grave says, coming, " I never thought that I should bury 
 my heart here." Though from the beginning of the 
 world it hath been so ; though the ocean itself would be 
 overflowed if the drops of sorrow, unexpected, that have 
 flown should be gathered together, and rolled into its 
 deep places ; though the life of man, without an excep- 
 tion, has been taken away in the midst of his expecta- 
 tions, and dashed in sorrows ; yet no man learns the 
 lesson taught by these facts, and every man lays out his 
 paradise afresh, and runs the furrow of execution round 
 about it, and marks out its alleys and beds, and plants 
 flowers and fruits, and cultures them with a love that 
 sees no change and expects no sorrow ! 
 
 No man acquainted with men need have any philo- 
 sophical scruple in believing in the existence of evil 
 spirits. If there are any spirits worse than some men, I 
 am sorry for them ! No man who watches what men do 
 to each other need have any scruple as to the belief
 
 86 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 that evil spirits are occupied in tempting men. We can 
 conceive of nothing done by a spirit, in the way of malig- 
 nant temptation, that is worse than that which we see 
 every day among living men. And those who doubt 
 whether a benevolent God would allow a malign spirit 
 to tempt His creatures, surely must have lived with their 
 eyes shut. The question is settled in every street, the 
 question is settled in every one hundred men, that God 
 does allow men to live, whose business seems to be very 
 largely that of pleasing themselves by injuring others. 
 Those who have doubts on this subject cannot have 
 weighed or considered the unmistakable and indisputable 
 fact, that God does allow bad spirits in the flesh to tempt 
 men to evil. Nor do I know why there should be any 
 reason to suppose that He does not allow bad spirits out 
 of the flesh to do the same thing. 
 
 NOBODY is without his equivalents. If a man is very 
 impulsive, he says, " O, if I could be as cool as that 
 man is ! " The equator is always talking about icebergs, 
 and icebergs are always talking about the equator. If a 
 man is very phlegmatic, he says, " It takes me longer to 
 get agoing than it does my neighbor to get through. I 
 wish that I was quick." The other says, " I am like 
 powder and I go off like powder. I wish I was cold like 
 this man." Nobody, I say, is without his equivalents. If 
 you are phlegmatic, you have disadvantages which an 
 impulsive man has not; but you also have advantages 
 which he has not. You have your platform, and he has 
 his ; and you are not to stand looking and coveting each 
 other's peculiarities. You are to accept your nature 
 such as it is, and study how you can carry it in such a 
 way as to glorify God and serve your fellow-men.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 87 
 
 COULD that be a wise judgment that was founded 
 upon the chaff, the husk, the stubble of the field, igno- 
 rant of the grain, of the fruit ? Can that be a satisfying 
 judgment of men which includes only the instruments by 
 which they grow, and leaves out the very fruits which 
 these appendages and instruments were set to nourish? 
 As the inward state does not represent itself in the out- 
 ward life, so neither is the outward life an index of the 
 inward state. The richest often are the poorest ; the 
 happiest often the least happy. The most sorrowful 
 are fullest of joy. Misfortune is felicity ; prosperity, 
 bankruptcy. If you would know the meaning of these 
 solemn words of infinite wisdom, " He that findeth his 
 life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake 
 shall find it." 
 
 WHEN the sun disappears below the horizon he is not 
 down. The heavens glow for a full hour after his depart- 
 ure. And when a great and good man sets, the west is 
 luminous long after he is out of sight. A room in which 
 flowers have been is sweet long after the flowers have 
 been taken away. They leave a fragrance behind. And 
 a godly man who lives unselfishly and disinterestedly, and 
 seeks the good of other men, cannot die out of* this world. 
 When he goes hence, he leaves behind much of himself. 
 There have been many men who left behind them that 
 which hundreds of years have not worn out. The earth 
 has Socrates and Plato to this day. The world is richer 
 yet by Moses and the old prophets than by the wisest 
 statesmen. We are indebted to the past. We stand in 
 the greatness of ages that are gone rsfther than in that of 
 our own. But of how many of us shall it be said that, 
 being dead, we yet speak ?
 
 88 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 must not compare their own peculiarities with 
 their neighbors', and say, " Their constitutional tendencies 
 are such that they can easily restrain their faculties from 
 working in wrong directions, and they ought to do it ; but 
 I am so organized that I cannot do it, and it is of no use for 
 me to try." I assure you that by faith and patience you 
 can do it. There is release for you from your evil incli- 
 nations, if you will but employ the powers which God has 
 given you with which to overcome them. The crooked 
 can be made straight. As a crooked piece of timber can 
 be made straight though its nature cannot be changed, so 
 a man's faults can be corrected though his natural dispo- 
 sition cannot be rooted out. 
 
 WE all know what is meant by a professional air. 
 The actor, the physician, the merchant, the sailor, the 
 schoolmistress, the minister of the Gospel, any of them 
 can be told almost as far as they can be seen. You cer- 
 tainly can tell them if you talk with them. As men that 
 work in the midst of odors carry about in their raiment, 
 if not in their very persons, the savor of the things in 
 which they work, so there seems to be a perfume of the 
 business a man follows that strikes into him. When you 
 see a professional man, you feel that he is a professional 
 man, from his looks and his manners. We can easily dis- 
 tinguish the great sects which prevail in this country by 
 the peculiarities that mark them. 
 
 Now just such a stamp is apt to be put upon our piety. 
 It is a certain smooth-speaking ; a pious way of talking ; 
 a restricted, narrowed, measured thing. Men that are 
 Christians, or are trying to be Christians, seem to think 
 that Christian character requires suppression : not so 
 much opening out as shutting in ; not so much the carry-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 89 
 
 ing of a lion-like front that drives evil away, as the carry- 
 ing of one's self in such a way that no lion can see him, 
 and nothing can get at him. There is a cowardly, white- 
 faced spirit of professional piety in the world. Thank 
 God, it is not as common as it was. It becomes less and 
 less common, I think, every year. We are in a transition 
 state out of it. Yet there are many things- that tend to pro- 
 duce a want of robust, open-faced, upright, manly piety. 
 
 You have seen hedges, and you have seen forest-trees. 
 Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the 
 most formal ; and of all the informal things in the world, 
 a forest-tree is the most informal. Now there are many 
 persons that think Christians should be hedges, and that 
 every spring and autumn they should undergo a Gospel 
 shearing, so that they shall have regular angular sides. 
 But the true idea of Christians is that they are to be like 
 cedars of Lebanon, great rugged growths of centuries, 
 that never think whether this branch goes ten yards be- 
 yond that one or not, but which attain greatness of stat- 
 ure, and amazing strength and endurance. An old cedar 
 of Lebanon will suck more sap from among rocks, than 
 any of our hedges will out of the deepest ground ever dug 
 by the gardener's spade. 
 
 I UNDERSTAND by law nothing except an index of the 
 way in which God's own power acts all the time. When 
 we see a law, we see that which signifies the way in which 
 God invariably acts under certain circumstances ; and 
 God's laws are nothing but words applied to habits of ad- 
 ministration in the Divine Mind. And when you search 
 a law of nature, you search the way in which He reveals 
 Himself in certain administrative departments, and the 
 way in which -He always acts in such departments.
 
 90 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 GOD'S sovereignty is not in His right hand ; God's sov- 
 ereignty is not in His intellect ; God's sovereignty is in 
 His love. " I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, 
 and 'whom I will I will harden." He stands in the pleni- 
 tude of all-comforting grace, grace not to 'be given to 
 those that have, but grace to be given as raiment is given 
 to those that are naked ; grace to be given as medicine is 
 given to those that are sick ; grace to be given as food is 
 given to those that are hungry ; grace to be given as 
 charity is bestowed on those that are needy. God sup- 
 plies, not the supplied, but the unsupplied ; he strengthens 
 not the strong, but the weak ; he comforts not the rejoic- 
 ing, but the sorrowing. 
 
 THERE are a great many persons that are superstitious 
 of the Sabbath-day, of the Bible, of prayer, and of re- 
 ligious reading and conversation and institutions. Now 
 these things are admirable. The Sabbath-day, the Bible, 
 prayer, religious reading, religious conversation, and re- 
 ligious institutions, are indispensable to the present condi- 
 tion of the race and the world, and they are neither to be 
 lightly spoken of, nor at all ridiculed or condemned. But 
 then they are not religion. They are the means for edu- 
 cating men in religion. They are instruments merely for 
 the production of a certain result, and not the result itself. 
 A man may have flails endless, and not have wheat, al- 
 though flails are the things for getting out wheat when 
 you have it. A man may have pigments, and brushes, 
 and canvas, and yet not have pictures, although these are 
 the things for making pictures. Raphael, and Titian, and 
 Correggio, would have had no pictures if they had not 
 had fingers, though I doubt not they would have come 
 nearer to it than many do that have fingers and brushes.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 91 
 
 Ploughs and. harrows, and hoes and spades, are indispen- 
 sable to the farm and the garden ; but a man should not 
 worship a plough, or a harrow, or a hoe, or a spade, as if 
 it was the thing which it was made to produce. Many 
 persons confound the means with the end in moral things, 
 although they never do in ordinary things. Many per- 
 sons have great scrupulosity of conscience about the use 
 of means ; but the absence of higher qualities of manli- 
 ness, the violation of them, the total sacrifice of them, 
 these things give them little pain. Many men are ex- 
 ceedingly careful of the Sabbath-day. They are exceed- 
 ingly careful of the Bible. The Bible, why, it would 
 shock them beyond measure if a child should handle it 
 irreverently. It gives them great pain to see any disre- 
 spect shown to the Bible. They carry it as the old 
 priests carried the ark of the covenant. About all the 
 things that relate to religion as educating means they are 
 very scrupulous. But when it comes to those qualities 
 for which these were given, for which these are the ma- 
 chinery, for which these are merely the schoolmasters, 
 when it comes to unmistakable truth ; when it comes to 
 the most transparent sincerity ; when it comes to faith in 
 God ; when it comes to courage, and simplicity, and un- 
 selfishness, and meekness, when it comes to these, they 
 have no scruples. The idea of striking the Bible gives 
 them great horror ; but the idea of striking a man, that 
 is God's temple, has little or no effect upon them. And 
 yet, when the round earth shall burn, the Bibles will 
 burn too. But when the round earth shall burn, not one 
 living soul will burn. All the wide world is but the tool 
 of God for the development of the one fruit, man. For 
 man was that fruit which hung upon the tree in the gar- 
 den, and man is to be the fruit issuing therefrom. This
 
 92 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 fruit, if plucked too soon, will ripen yet. It is the fruit 
 which God means by the husbandry of time, by all 
 the institutions of the world. And^ what kind of piety is 
 this that stickles for a Sunday, and does not care for a 
 generation or a race ? What kind of piety is this that 
 stands tremulous with superstitious fear for church regu- 
 lations, for religious ceremonies, and for days, but with- 
 out concern lets world-currents flow deep as the currents 
 of the Dead Sea over generations and races? It is 
 that kind of piety which existed when Christ condemned 
 the Scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites, and which con- 
 sisted in putting the instruments above the end to be ac- 
 complished. 
 
 No man is prosperous whose immortality is forfeited. 
 No man is rich to whom the grave brings eternal bank- 
 ruptcy. No man is happy upon whose path there rests 
 but a momentary glimmer of light shining out between 
 clouds that are closing over him in darkness forever- 
 more. 
 
 WHILE you are talking about distributing Bibles, 
 really, in men's esteem, you are Bibles yourselves walk- 
 ing through the streets and in places of business. Do 
 not you know that hundreds of men judge the truth or 
 falsity of religion by what you are and what you do ? 
 Do not you know that men are wont to say, "O, the 
 preacher drones and drones about virtue, but just see 
 how his church lives. As I understand it, virtues are 
 things that are to be looked for in the life. The doctrine 
 that a man preaches is to be judged of by what his peo- 
 ple are."
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 93 
 
 HUNDEEDS of men fail by the nervous scrupulosity by 
 which they mean to prevent failure. For we do best the 
 things which we do without special thinking. Were a 
 man to attempt to walk upon a beam six inches wide, 
 lifted eighty feet above the ground, he would begin to 
 think, " What would become of me and of my family if I 
 should fall ? He would endeavor to put forth skill in 
 walking ; and the moment he did that his steps would be 
 loose, tremulous, and uncertain. But lay that beam 
 upon the ground, and he would walk it from end to end 
 as if it had the width of the whole floor in its six-inch face. 
 In the one case he would fall because he took so much 
 care, and in the other case he would succeed because he 
 took so little care. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY does not disdain fear, nor conscience, 
 nor circumspection, nor watchfulness against evil. It 
 enforces these things heartily and often. But they are 
 incidental. It relies mainly upon the direct energy of 
 a man's faculties in things that are good. It seeks not 
 to repress life, and keep down growth, because abun- 
 dance of being is more difficult to restrain. Rather, it 
 urges men to seek right things with such force, and with 
 such persistence, that no strength shall be left for wrong 
 ones. We are to overcome evil by doing good, and by 
 being good. 
 
 WE blame no one that for his own sake he keenly 
 feels the pangs of separation ; but we do wonder that 
 there is no more generosity in the love which we bear to 
 our dear ones, and that the full and glorious certainties 
 which illumine their condition when they have passed 
 beyond us, do not cast back some light of joy upon our
 
 94 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 grief! We mourn as those that have no hope ; whereas 
 our mightiest griefs should be embosomed in hope and 
 calm certainties of joy. 
 
 You sometimes see people who never impress you as 
 having any depth of moral life, any richness of inward 
 nature, any power of being, either in heart or soul ; but 
 who oppress you with such an intolerable conscientious- 
 ness about trifles, that you almost wish that they would 
 break forth into violence, into anything that had life and 
 grace of liberty in it ! They step so many inches at a 
 pace ; they lift their hand in regulated gestures ; they 
 drop their sentences as if each word were a stiff metallic 
 type, faced, and nicked, and registered. The tediousness 
 of such men is almost beyond endurance. They are no 
 more representative of true Christian conduct, than a 
 dead and dry stake is representative of a living tree. 
 
 A MAN that is afraid is never a man. A man may 
 have fear as a speciality, and yet be manly ; but where 
 that is characteristic, where a man is always in fear, 
 he cannot be an example of true manliness. There is 
 a kind of fear that is sweet. It is the fear which love 
 begets ; this is that " fear of God which is the beginning 
 of wisdom." That tender, tremulous fear that we shall 
 not do all that we ought to do, or all that we wish to do, 
 for the honor and the pleasure of those whom we love, 
 ,and whose life is more to us than our own, is exquisite, 
 elevating, noble ; but that fear which drops far below the 
 sentiments, and moral feelings, and affections, and that 
 produces a state of antagonism between a man's lower 
 interests and his higher feelings, is paralyzing, demoral- 
 izing, unmanly.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 95 
 
 LET all your things be done in love. As this great 
 rugged globe, with all its jagged hills, hirsute with forests, 
 shagged all over with bush and thicket, and rolling in an 
 atmosphere of light, seems to those who look upon it in 
 far-distant planets as round, and smooth, and radiant as 
 their bright orbs seem to us, so the robust and rugged as- 
 pects of a true manhood, revolving in an atmosphere of 
 Christian love, are smoothed and softened to the most at- 
 tractive beauty. Strength in every part, and love round 
 about all, is the receipt for manhood. 
 
 WE are moving away, and faster as every cord is 
 loosed that binds us to earth ; faster, as every heart that 
 we loved draws us upward. Let us rejoice. And as in 
 autumn the very earth prepares for death, as if it were 
 its bridal, and all the sober colors of the summer take 
 higher hues, and trees and shrubs and vines go forth to 
 thei^rest, wearing their most gorgeous apparel, as ending 
 their career more brightly than they began it ; so let our 
 spirits cast off sombre thoughts, and sable melancholy, 
 and clothe themselves with all the radiancy of faith; 
 with every hue of heavenly joy. 
 
 "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." 
 
 THE problem of human life has in the natural world 
 many illustrations ; but it has no real analogies. We are 
 set, at the first, to develop an animal nature, as a socket 
 in which is to stand the spiritual, burning with a steady, 
 guiding light. The progressive subjugation of the lower 
 part of our nature by the higher, the harmonization of 
 the whole round about a central spiritual power, this 
 has no parallel in the natural world. There are many 
 tendencies which lead toward it, which point at it ; but
 
 96 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 only that. The death of seeds, that they may give forth 
 germs ; the absorption of seminal leaves, that the new 
 plant between them may thrive from their stores; then 
 the subordination of the leaves to the uses of the blossom 
 and the fruit, so that from the beginning to the end all 
 the lower organizations and functions serve and lead 
 toward yet higher, and the very plant dies in ripening, 
 leaving its fruit or its seed to go over to another season, 
 these things, I say, may illustrate the spiritual devel- 
 opment of character out of a physical condition, but can 
 do no more. They do not afford an analogue. Man is 
 the highest divine creative development upon earth. 
 That which is the characteristic and glorious element of 
 manhood is our spiritual nature. The body is but the 
 temple ; the altar fire and holy service are within. That 
 which is our real life can be seen only by its effects ; 
 never in itself. The reality of our life, the fulness of our 
 being, the richness of God's gift to us, divine, imn*>rtal, 
 glorious, is invisible. No one has ever seen the man 
 that is in man. 
 
 MANY persons mistake the province of forethought and 
 calculation, and attempt to carry themselves in the details 
 and minute particulars of life by them. They rigidly in- 
 spect every act and experience, as though every act and 
 experience must be taken up and looked at conscien- 
 tiously, and narrowly, and watchfully. They go about 
 with looks precomposed. They are sure to measure 
 their steps. They will not laugh without a properly 
 considered reason. If some wag surprises them into a 
 laugh, they run back and look to see if they ought to 
 have laughed. Everything in them seems to be drawn 
 out as tape measures are, and seems, like them, to have
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 97 
 
 a spring, which causes it to fly back instantly, and to be 
 measured off into inches and fractions of inches. There 
 is nothing, about them which reminds one of natural clus- 
 ters, or tendrils, or moss, or wild-flowers. Everything 
 about them is after the pattern of yardsticks, and sur- 
 veyors' chains. They are a sort of conscientious arith- 
 metic. Their mouth acts, not as flowers do, obedient to 
 the sap beneath ; but as do the locks of safes full of gold, 
 into which a formal iron key must needs be thrust when- 
 ever you open them. Can there be anything in this 
 world so intolerable as the doing everything on purpose ? 
 He is a nuisance that is ever self-poised, self-conscious, 
 self-measuring! that is forever studying and measuring 
 God and the universe with reference to Self. Such 
 complete addiction in thought and deed to one's self, and 
 to what concerns him alone, is the quintessential idea 
 of selfishness, instead of manliness. 
 
 THERE is an infidel " don't care," which is the Devil's 
 net to catch the heedless ; and there is a Christian " don't 
 care," which is a cord of God to draw men toward heaven. 
 A man who forms a purpose which he knows to be right, 
 and then moves forward in its execution, without stopping 
 to inquire whether the individual steps which he takes 
 are just what they should be, and without caring what 
 their immediate consequences may be, is a manly man. 
 There are a hundred that will repair a mistake made by 
 such a man where there is one that will repair a mistake 
 made by one always fearing. There is something in 
 human nature that responds to manly courage wherever 
 it is found. 
 
 AH, what mean Christians coward Christians are !
 
 98 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 They are not fit to be in my Father's house. A man 
 that professes to be an heir of God, forever evading or 
 backing out of difficulties, forever studying to know how 
 he may avoid trouble, I am ashamed of such a relation ! 
 He is no relation of mine. He does not belong to my 
 Father. He has none of my blood in him ; for my blood 
 is of Christ. A man that is afraid of right and its con- 
 sequences, of justice and its consequences, and of man- 
 hood and its consequences, is so much a Christian, that, 
 of all sinners, surely, he is the chief! 
 
 CHRISTIAN character can never be Scriptural or accord- 
 ing to the Scripture ideal, which is only an inventory of 
 negatives. There is, in Christian character, much that 
 is negative. Unquestionably, " Thou shalt not " consti- 
 tutes a very large part of the Christian teaching, but 
 " Thou shalt," a much larger part. It is very important 
 that a man should not swear ; that he should not lie ; 
 that he should not gamble; that he should not steal; 
 that he should not drink to intoxication ; and that he 
 should not eat to gluttony. We are to build these neg- 
 atives along evil ways, like fences along precipices. 
 And I do not ridicule nor dissuade from negatives. But 
 some seem to abide in them, and to think that they have 
 met the requirements of religion when they have with- 
 held themselves from positive wrongs ; whereas we are 
 to develop the actual graces. There is to be a forthput- 
 ting in things that are right. 
 
 It is not good husbandry that keeps the plough going 
 so that no weeds can grow, nor anything else. Good 
 husbandry keeps down the weeds, to be sure, but does it 
 for the sake of letting corn grow. And there must be 
 a positive crop developed of virtue before all the con-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 99 
 
 ditions of religion are fulfilled. No man can have a 
 manly Christian character who is merely reserved, re- 
 strictive, conservative ; who avoids evil, but does not 
 produce much positive good. 
 
 THESE qualities of truth and honor, which the world 
 appreciates and admires, and which the Bible recognizes 
 and commends, constitute one of the developments of a 
 Christian character. If you have these qualities, men, 
 after they have associated with you for years, will bear 
 this testimony respecting you : " He is like a glass bee- 
 hive. You can always see what his motives are. He is 
 full of honey. The more you know him, the better you 
 will like him. He is true and honorable." But there 
 are men who are like another kind of beehive, one in 
 which the bees are all dead, and there is nothing left ex- 
 cept empty comb, and miserable moth-millers. 
 
 THE soul is formless, is shadowless. No eye beholds 
 it ; no hand handles it ; no pencil may draw its linea- 
 ments. The mother that gave birth to her child ; that 
 overhung the cradle ; that carried her babe imbosomed ; 
 that studied the girl's girlhood, youth, and womanhood, 
 till the cloud of love opened and hid her in the wedded 
 life, even the mother does not know the girl nor the 
 woman. Nor does he that takes her know her, when she 
 is taken ; nor even she herself. Our life is hinted, but it 
 is hidden. It gleams out at times ; it flashes in -sparks 
 upon us. None has seen the full orb, or known the full 
 measure of it. We stand before each other as volumes 
 of books. The binding and lettering are plain enough ; 
 the contents are unknown, or but dimly suspected. We 
 are like books in which some things are to be hidden
 
 100 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 from the common reader as unsafe, and at every few par- 
 agraphs the critical things are expressed in a dead lan- 
 guage. So in human life, the simplest things are read ; 
 the interior things are not legible. 
 
 THE very slender hold which Christ has taken of our 
 life is nowhere else shown so much as in the wantonness 
 of our grief and surprise at the death of our beloved ones. 
 Why should they not die ? Were they given to us that 
 we might sequester them ? Does no one else love our 
 children but ourselves ? Are we to employ our love as 
 chains and bonds, that we may bind them forever to 
 the earth ? Shall we girdle them with our selfishness ? 
 Were they sent into life as into a campaign ? and shall 
 we mourn that the battle is quickly fought, so that it be 
 victorious ? Were they sent into life scholars and ap- 
 prentices ? and shall we mourn that their apprenticeship 
 is so soon ended, and their indentures broken ; that they 
 are so soon graduated and their diplomas awarded ? I 
 have never seen any man hanging crape upon trees be- 
 cause the blossoms had fallen, that the fruit might swell ; 
 but I se.e people putting crape upon their doors, and 
 upon their own persons, because summer has come soon- 
 er to their children and their companions than they 
 thought. 
 
 WHEN men have lived long, and outlived strength and 
 activity, we do not marvel that they die ; but we think 
 that early dying is mysterious. That God might en- 
 wreath the year, and leave not one moment without a 
 blossom, He hath appointed flowers for every period. 
 Some things are made to blossom in earliest spring, some 
 in latest; some in early summer, some in midsummer.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 101 
 
 Multitudes are appointed for the autumn, and some God 
 sets to put wreaths on the very brow of winter. In like 
 manner, there are different periods of blossoming out of 
 life. 
 
 You have probably noticed that when men walk across 
 a stream on stilts, if they look at their feet to see where 
 they step, their head begins to swim, and very soon they 
 have to swim or drown ; whereas, if they fix their eye 
 upon a single object on the opposite bank, and never look 
 at their feet at all, they reach the other side in safety. 
 Now, if a man stands looking at this world, he gets dizzy 
 and intoxicated, and falls ; whereas, if he fixes his eye 
 upon the bank of the eternal world, he walks straighter 
 in this world, and is more sure of reaching* the other side 
 in safety. 
 
 I SEND to you, my congregation, the tidings of the de- 
 parture of one who a few years ago was gathered, with 
 a great multitude besides, into the membership of our 
 church, but whom God hath lifted up and glorified in the 
 church of the first-born in heayen. She is separated 
 from you ; but even more from me. From her very 
 youth she was reared under my eye, and in such endear- 
 ing intimacy, that it is like the taking of one of my own. 
 She went forth into a far land, but -hath gone still far- 
 ther. Most fair was she in going, but now still fairer. 
 A pilgrim, she sought for knowledge and for beauty in a 
 distant land. Better knowledge and higher beauty she 
 hath found in a better land. For her the gate of heaven 
 opened forth from Italy. The old city of Milan has 
 always been reverend to me, with venerable associations 
 of history ; but hereafter, when its name is mentioned, not
 
 102 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 first will come to my mind its galleries rich in art ; its 
 architectural structures ; that wondrous cathedral, that 
 lifts up its white and glittering spires and pinnacles 
 against the background of the Alps : hereafter, to me, it 
 is the city from whence God called Annie Howard to 
 that more glorious city whose builder and whose maker is 
 God. Her earthly work is done. The education of tears, 
 of strifes, of sorrows and griefs, is suddenly ended. She 
 was nearer perfect than we knew, since God saw that it 
 required but to change the climate, and the fruit was ripe. 
 A character that seemed destined to long life for its 
 necessary development is now rounded up and completed 
 in the bliss and blessedness of the eternal state. Mourn- 
 ers there are, but we are not of them. We stand and 
 look upon that shore unwet with tears, and see that noth- 
 ing hath suffered harm. That which has fallen is that 
 
 O 
 
 which was made to fall. That inward life hath blos- 
 somed and ripened far beyond the reach of our earthly 
 knowing. 
 
 THE promise of God is not this : " Do you declare 
 what you want, and be pious, and I will see that the 
 plan which you mark out is filled up." He does not 
 promise that if we will draw a check, filling up the blank 
 with the sum which we want, He will sign His name to 
 it. And for this simple reason ; men are fools, and God is 
 wise ; and He will not permit men to destroy themselves. 
 History has shown that if men could have their own way, 
 if they could have their wants fulfilled, it would be the 
 undoing, I will not say of ninety-nine in a hundred, but, 
 probably, of every one of us ; and therefore, God, who 
 loves us so well, will no more permit us to mark out the 
 things which we are to have, than a parent will say to a
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 103 
 
 child, " What do you want ? " and then promise to give it 
 what it asks for. It would want the razors, the tempting 
 bottles of medicine, the wine and brandy, (till it had 
 tasted them !) and such like things. Therefore, the par- 
 ent knows that it is not best that it should be allowed to 
 have what it wants. Till it ceases to be a child, the par- 
 ent must decide what it shall have. 
 
 I HAVE no doubt that the Devil overreaches himself 
 and cheats himself; but in any transaction between you 
 and him, he is longer-headed than you are. And if a 
 man sells his principles for secular prosperity, he shall 
 find in the end that the writings drawn and the promises 
 made were all spurious. Honesty is the best policy ; 
 and of honesty, that which has the most of God in it is 
 the best. 
 
 IF you are to spend your life as a poor man, you can 
 better afford to be poor if you are a true Christian, than 
 if you are not. If you are to spend your life in moderate 
 circumstances, those circumstances will be a thousand 
 times better to you if you are a true Christian than if 
 you are not. If you are to attain to wealth, or to emi- 
 nence in literature or statesmanship, or to power, or to 
 influence, it will be better for you to be a true Christian 
 than for you not to be one. Wherever you are to be, 
 and whatever you are to be, in the ordination of God's , 
 providence, a spirit of Christian manliness will be a help, 
 and not a hindrance, to you. No man need feel that he 
 cannot take upon himself a Christian life because it will 
 stand in his way ; no man need feel that it is necessary 
 for him to attend so exclusively to his external affairs 
 that he has not time to look after religion; for Christ
 
 104 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 stands, saying, " A spirit of righteousness such as God's 
 kingdom propounds and demands is every way favorable 
 as a condition of success and of happiness in human 
 life." 
 
 MEN that reject religion in favor of indulgence, do not 
 stand any chance of permanent prosperity. Such men 
 are like gypsies that, by some freak of fortune, are turned 
 into a magnificent mansion, well built, well furnished, 
 and well stored with works of art. These gypsies go 
 to work and break to pieces the exquisitely carved fur- 
 niture, pull down the rare pictures, and strip the house 
 of all the valuable things in it, and burn them, in order 
 to make their pot boil, and thus to serve their lower 
 nature, until, by and by, the whole dwelling is desolate, 
 and bleak, and barren. And men who reject religion 
 and serve their passions, are doing the same thing. They 
 are kindling those lower fires at the expense of every- 
 thing broad, and fine, and beautiful in their higher na- 
 ture. And though the process may go on with some 
 sort of success for a little time, it will not be long be- 
 fore they will be as bankrupt in secular things as they 
 are in spiritual. The cases that are exceptions to this 
 are rare. 
 
 IT was a remarkable saying of One of the Revolution- 
 ary heroes, when Congress, instead of passing a bill for 
 more soldiers, recommended a day for fasting and prayer, 
 that there might be a good deal in fasting and prayer, but 
 he had noticed that God's providence was on the side of 
 strong regiments. I have noticed that God's providence 
 is on the side of clear heads. I believe that there is a good 
 deal in God's providence in this regard : that wherever a
 
 'ROYAL TRUTHS. 105 
 
 man walks faithfully in the ways which God has marked 
 out for him, providence, as the Christian says, luck, as 
 the heathen says, will be on that man's side ; and I do 
 not believe that fire and water, and wind and earth, and 
 all the seasons, will work into the hands of a man who 
 refuses to walk in the ways which God has marked out for 
 him. In a long run you will find that God's providence 
 is in favor of those that keep His laws, and against those 
 that break them. 
 
 As we know the odorous vines of rare and exquisite 
 flowers which are grown behind high, opaque garden 
 walls only by the fragrance which they waft to us through 
 the air, while they themselves are invisible ; so are we 
 conscious of the heavenly and spiritual elements of noble 
 natures about us, rather by their effects upon us, than by 
 any open spectacle of them. 
 
 . I HAVE taken notice that upon the tops of our churches 
 which have steeples they put weathercocks ; and I have 
 taken notice that those weathercocks run their nose 
 around hither and thither with the wind the whole year. 
 You can tell by our churches which way the wind blows. 
 But I have taken notice that while these weathercocks 
 revolve around, there is an iron rod on which they are 
 fastened that stands pointing, in storm and sunshine, by 
 night and by day, straight up toward where God lives. 
 Men are the weathercocks in human affairs, and we are 
 apt to look at them, and not to see the heaven-pointing 
 iron finger. Men that look only at these weathercocks 
 are always shifting in their moods and expectations. If 
 we would but look higher than these, to Him that lets 
 the winds blow, and holds them in His hands, we should 
 
 5*
 
 f 
 106 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 not be subject to such mutations, such fears, such expec- 
 tations of disasters, such troubles. 
 
 No truths that are distinct from matter, and are in 
 their nature spiritual, ever seem so full and perfect when 
 you have embodied them in words, as when they exist 
 merely in the form of ideas ; and we are forever restat- 
 ing them, hoping to clothe them in stronger words and to 
 present them to the mind and heart with yet clearer 
 impress. But you never can do it. You never can in- 
 carnate a thought perfectly. It is too much for words. 
 And much less can you incarnate one principle that un- 
 derlies another. 
 
 THERE is no such thing as immediatism. Immediatism 
 is the fool's philosophy. Cause and effect are universal ; 
 and between all growths there must be room for the lev- 
 erage of causation. There is nothing to which this truth 
 is more applicable and important than this : that all de- 
 velopment of the soul toward character takes place little 
 by little. To-day in one direction, to-morrow in another ; 
 to-day by one instrumentality, to-morrow by another ; 
 and what the whole of these accumulating parts and 
 results is to be doth not yet appear. It is an invisible 
 process. It is a growth by parts toward a whole ; but 
 a growth which to the end of this life will still remain 
 fragmentary. 
 
 Look upon some building in process of construction. 
 All round about it are stones disconnected. The archi- 
 tect knows for what they were cut, but you do not. Wheth- 
 er it is cornice or window-cap, whether it is top of this 
 column or of that, you do not know. Vast timbers, in 
 the framer's mind fitted for their places, and brought
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 107 
 
 together here, give to your eye no, indication of their 
 function or their position. They lie around in their 
 several heaps. As the workmen hoist them to their 
 places, some order seems to begin. Yet it doth not ap- 
 pear what the whole is to be ; nor will the beauty and 
 fairness of the whole appear until it is completed. And 
 what a building is whose materials are gathered and gath- 
 ering ready for construction, that is man in this world, 
 a creature whose parts are yet under the hammer. 
 This virtue, that grace ; this self-denial, that restriction ; 
 this courage, that patience ; this faith, that love ; this 
 sentiment, that affection, all these varied elements, 
 touched now by one instrument, and now by another, 
 form, little by little, but never shaped into a whole in 
 this world, that structure which is to rise into perfectness 
 in the other life. 
 
 .No man is a Christian in any typical sense of the term ; 
 no man presents a type of Christianity, who lives simply 
 by force of duty. If there is no love in you ; if there 
 are no bubbles that reflect heaven before they break ; if 
 there is no singing joy ; if there is no cheerfulness ; if 
 there is no spontaneousness ; if there is no automatic life, 
 then,, although you may be a Christian, you are a Chris- 
 tian in the same sense in which a chicken is a bird when 
 it is just breaking the shell, when it cannot run, nor fly, 
 nor do anything except peep. You are like an unfledged 
 robin in the nest. And how different is the robin that is 
 grown, and that can mount up and make circles through 
 the air in its flight. The peculiarity of Christian life in 
 its characteristic elements, is, that it has so taken God to 
 be its Father, arid Christ to be its elder brother and Sav- 
 iour, and the service of God in all purity and nobleness to
 
 108 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 be its delight, that it becomes spontaneous. It is joyful 
 living ! not drudgery, nor even duty. 
 
 BEFORE you can tell whether a man is prosperous or 
 not, you must go into the man himself; you must go and 
 see how he lives in his soul ; you must go and see what 
 his secret thoughts are. I tell you there is more joy to 
 many a pauper who looks at the sun and the grass and 
 the flowers, and listens to the birds from the almshouse 
 window, than there is to many a millionnaire. I have 
 known a good many of these rich men. I always make 
 friends with them, that I may find out what sort of men 
 they are, what kind of a life they live, and how they en- 
 joy themselves. I was very much struck by a fact that 
 was related to me of a very rich man he is well known 
 in New York, but I will not mention his name by his 
 agent. Said he, " I have often heard him turn in his bed 
 in the night, saying, ' O God ! O God ! O God ! When 
 will it be morning ? " It did me good ! "When a man 
 has built his bed out of hard gold, he does not sleep any 
 easier than he would if he had built it of iron or stone. 
 When a man builds his life out of metals, he must have 
 a metallic life. 
 
 HE is rich who is inwardly rich. He is poor who is 
 inwardly poor. He is prosperous for whose spiritual cul- 
 ture all things work together. In the vineyard, we meas- 
 ure the cluster; not the leaves and the rank-growing 
 vine. And it is the fruit that we must measure in men. 
 They that care for the body only, are like gardeners who 
 fill their conservatory with flower-pots, and these with 
 compost, but forget to put seeds therein, or. flowers. 
 Dirt and pottery are all the flowers they have.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 109 
 
 FOR the most part, natures rich in moral elements 
 have risen only so far above the world as to be able to 
 brootl over it ; to cloud it with sadness ; to rain down 
 upon it some drops of cheerless sorrow. It is doubtful 
 whether it be a blessing to receive such an endowment 
 as makes the world too poor to live in, and yet reveals 
 no other world, and no better sphere. 
 
 " STAND fast in the faith." There are some men who, 
 because they want to grow, are continually being trans- 
 planted ; and they think that, because they keep moving 
 from place to place, they are gaining ; but they gain 
 nothing at all. Trees that grow fastest stand stillest. 
 Running after every new thing that presents itself does 
 not increase the growth of Christian graces, or anything 
 else that is good. If a man would grow spiritually, he 
 must have a stand-point, a fixed root-place, for his relig- 
 ious convictions. 
 
 WHAT do you want ? Torpor ? listless indifference ? 
 the quietness of men that preludes spiritual death? or 
 times when there is such a sensibility of conscience, such 
 a rousing of universal attention, when the hearts of men 
 are waked up by the presence and power of God, until 
 men feel that life is earnest, and realize that there is 
 tremendous sweep and importance in moral principles ? 
 Are not these times in which men ought to wish to live ? 
 What if, here and there, trade and property go down? 
 Nothing goes down till manhood goes down ; and noth- 
 ing goes up that does not take manhood up. It is a 
 painful thing to lose property, and it is a painful thing to 
 be in disagreement with our fellows : but these are not the 
 worst things that can befall a community, if they lead to
 
 110 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 nobler citizenship, a higher public spirit, a purer admin- 
 istration of affairs, and a more universal justice. Are 
 not these the things for which we have been living? 
 Have you not, many of you, been praying, " Thy king- 
 dom come " ? And when God's kingdom comes, crowns 
 go down. The king said, " Thy will be done," and down 
 went his throne. The aristocrat said it, and down went 
 his aristocracy. The old inquisitor said it, and down 
 went the Inquisition. They prayed, " Thy kingdom 
 come," and God took them at their word; forth camo 
 the people, back shrunk their oppressors ! They ran to 
 hold the kingdom down, while yet they prayed, " Let it 
 come." Tyrants would be infidels if they knew what the 
 New Testament really means. When priests read it, 
 they find much in it that God never put there. The 
 Bible is like a noble mansion built for God's people. It 
 has been wrested from them. It has been held by cun- 
 ning priests and plotting despots. It is full of the slime 
 of their wicked interpretations. Priests that believe 
 God's Word to be a bulwark of oppression, are jealous of 
 its authority. They pray for its spread. They pray for 
 that kingdom in which they are to be terrific kings and 
 priests. But God sends them insurrections, revolutions, 
 democracies, and free states. 
 
 No man has known himself until he has known Christ. 
 Our own will has no potency, and our own affections 
 have but little power to develop our spiritual life. This 
 is a Divine work. No man has ever known himself 
 except through the experiences of faith, of ecstatic love, 
 of holy aspiration, of that self-renunciation which comes 
 with the hijrher forms of love.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. HI 
 
 IF God should refuse to interrupt the course of men, 
 they would scarcely know the strength of their resistance 
 to Him. It is not when the cable lies coiled up on the 
 deck that you know how strong or how weak it is ; it is 
 when it is put to the test, and is made to sing like the 
 chord of a harp, in times when the ship is imperilled, and 
 the waves are beating fiercely against it. And it is only 
 when men are brought to the test that they can tell what 
 their real nature is, or how strong their instincts and 
 passions are. 
 
 THERE are a great many persons that want to be Chris- 
 tians, who have no idea of Christianity, except that it is 
 something sombre, which is to be endured, rather than to 
 be enjoyed. They think they would prefer being Chris- 
 tians to being damned. They are so afraid of the future, 
 they have such a sense of immortality, that the thought 
 of venturing upon the other life without some hope of 
 salvation, is terrible. to them. So they say, "I am will- 
 ing to undergo whatever there may be that is unpleasant 
 in religion, for the sake of securing my eternal welfare " ; 
 and they go to priests, and humble themselves before 
 altars, and avail themselves of every conceivable means 
 of grace that is presented to them, that they may escape 
 into the purity and liberty of life hereafter. 
 
 O, poor, misguided man ! You are called, not unto 
 bondage : you are called unto liberty, only use not lib- 
 erty for an occasion to the flesh. God summons you, 
 and he summons you, not as a master summons his slave, 
 but as a father summons his child. That voice which 
 sounded on Calvary, having gone up to heaven, comes in- 
 flected back in tones of cheer and love, and hope and glad- 
 ness, and calls you: and Christ ever-living, not now on
 
 112 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 earth a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, but in 
 heaven a Prince and a Saviour says, " My son, give 
 toe thine heart " ; and this being given, He says, " Now 
 enter into all the royalty .of my possession and domain. 
 Thou, as my child, art also heir with me to an eternal 
 inheritance. Thou art to be a king and a priest before 
 God." 
 
 Yes, when you are called to be a Christian, you are 
 called unto liberty. You are not called as convicts to do 
 penal service in a spiritual penitentiary. You are called, 
 rather, to the freedom, the largeness, the sweetness, and 
 the manliness, of a nobler character than ever dawned on 
 the imagination of heathen poet. To be a true man ac- 
 cording to the ideal of the New Testament, is to have a 
 heart full of faith and confidence in God, and to have all 
 that liberty which love begets in a child that dares to 
 look his father in the face, and call him by the most 
 familiar names. 
 
 A MAN cannot do his duty because he must save the 
 Church ! Now the Church is of no more account than a 
 straw, except for the justice and the truth that are in it. 
 When you have sacrificed real piety for the sake of saving 
 the Church, you have killed a man and got a corpse. 
 
 A GREAT many have a superstitious feeling about read- 
 ing the Bible. It is the effect that reading the Bible has 
 on a man's life and conduct that makes it beneficial to 
 Trim ; but there is an impression that a man has but to 
 read it to be benefited by it So men carry texts as 
 Indians carry amulets, with the superstitious idea that 
 God will bless them to their good. The mere reading 
 of the Bible, or carrying of texts, will not do you any
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 113 
 
 good. A man may own a farm, and yet go to the poor- 
 house. A man may be so rich in land that a tenth part 
 of what it is capable of producing would be sufficient to 
 support him, and yet want the necessaries of life. His 
 land must be cultivated, or it will do him no good. 
 
 A MAN is not prosperous because he makes money, 
 because he is skilful, or because he has knowledge. That 
 man who is happy ; that man whose mind is like a well- 
 chorded harp, and is responsive to enjoyment ; that man 
 who knows how to enjoy with his intellect, with his moral 
 sentiments, with his taste ; that man who knows how to 
 reap joy from all his social affections ; that man who 
 knows how to stand strong without being debauched by 
 his animal passions ; that man who knows how to regu- 
 late his physical life ; that man who has supreme use of 
 himself all through ; that man who is happy in the broad- 
 est way, and with the greatest number of fountains of en- 
 joyment, that man is prosperous. On the other hand, 
 a man may be a ripe scholar and a rich man, and not be 
 prosperous. A man may be a millionnaire, and yet be so 
 miserable as to groan all day and curse all night. A man 
 may have all the outside things which the world affords, 
 and yet not be a happy man. One man may have a chest 
 full of excellent tools, and be a bungling workman ; while 
 another man may have nothing but a jack-knife, and be 
 a skilful workman. One man may have ever so many 
 external means of enjoyment, and be miserable ; while 
 another man may have scarcely any external means of 
 enjoyment, and be happy. You must not, therefore, 
 argue that a man is prosperous because he has influence, 
 or power, or money, or any of these things. If you want 
 to know who are prosperous, find out who are happy.
 
 114 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 You would think to look at that bell up in the belfry, 
 " O, such a bell, lifted up so high, it only needs that 
 some one should pull the rope to make it sound gloriously 
 through the air ! " Well, pull the rope ; it sounds for all 
 the world like a tin pan ! It is cracked. I see men in 
 the old belfry of prosperity ; and other men are looking 
 up at them and saying, " how happy they must be ! " 
 You will find them to be good for nothing the moment 
 you subject them to that test. 
 
 WE know that the gifts which men have do not come 
 from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual 
 man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own 
 line by education than without education, just as you can 
 make a great deal more of a potato if" you cultivate it 
 than if you do not cultivate it ; but no cultivation in this 
 world will ever make an apple out of a potato. It can 
 be developed, but it must be developed according to the 
 laws of its own nature. Education will make it more, 
 but will not change its nature. If a man was not born 
 eloquent, he cannot be bred to eloquence ; if a man was 
 not born to a sense of color, he cannot be educated to a 
 sense of color ; if a man was not born to a sense of form, 
 he cannot be educated to a sense of form ; if a man was 
 not born to a quick creative genius, he cannot be trained 
 to it. Where these things exist, they are gifts in the 
 beginning. Education makes them better and more usa- 
 ble ; but it can'not create in men what God did not create 
 in them when He started them in life. 
 
 THERE is not a man that cannot be made to sin in one 
 way or another. Some men can by lust ; some cannot 
 by that, but can by avarice ; some cannot by that, but
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 115 
 
 can by ambition ; some cannot by that, but can by vani- 
 ty ; some cannot by that, but can by pride ; some cannot 
 by that, but can by superstition ; some cannot by that, 
 but can by the weakness of sentiment ; some cannot by 
 that, but can by the scruples of conscience. Even men 
 that are in the most propitious circumstances, even men 
 that are hedged in by Christian organizations, and moral 
 sentiments, and Gospel sentiments, and every instrumen- 
 tality calculated to shield them from the evil influences of 
 the world, are perpetually breaking through and over 
 these safeguards, and yielding to temptation. 
 
 THE vital difference between heathenism and the wor- 
 ship of Jehovah, as established and recorded in the Old 
 Testament history, was in reality the difference between 
 lust and virtue ; between gross, sensuous indulgence and 
 a moral, pure, economic life. The vital force of idolatry 
 was its orgies, not its theology or mythology. 
 
 WE live in the midst of vulgarities ; little petty troub- 
 les ; a thousand mechanical things that have not much 
 juice in them. The greatest part of our life is spent in 
 contact with things that have very little in themselves to 
 reward our sensibility. We must, therefore, have some- 
 thing in the soul to make them glorious. 
 
 Walk in the midst of sunlight, and find me, if you can, 
 one thing that is homely. The vine that has lost its 
 leaves, and is without beauty; the leafless tree, that 
 stands homely ; the bare post ; the dry stick ; the moss- 
 covered stone ; the old tumble-down rookery, these 
 are luminous and beautiful in the sunlight. 
 
 Now, the sun can pour beauty on things that have no 
 beauty of their own ; and there is nothing that has not
 
 116 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 the power to take beauty when poured upon it. And 
 God makes the human soul that loves Christ to be filled 
 with such a power of hope and faith and love and joy and 
 enthusiasm, that when they pour it out on daily life it 
 makes things luminous and beautiful. 
 
 WHERE a man turns from evil, and takes hold on good, 
 there is to be more than meditation or wishing or willing; 
 there is to be expression. Even thinking cannot be clear 
 until it has had expression. We must write, or speak, or 
 act our thoughts, or they will remain in a kind of half 
 torpid form. Our kinder feelings must have some ex- 
 pression, or they will roll out of the mind as clouds roll 
 out of a hemisphere. Our kinder feelings must rain, or 
 else they will never bring up fruit or flower. So it is 
 with all the inward feelings ; expression gives them full 
 development. Thought is the blossom ; action is the 
 fruit right behind it. 
 
 O, HOW easy it is for a man's lips to say, " Thy will 
 be done on earth as it is in heaven ! " A red-hot plough- 
 share running among the roots in your garden, would not 
 be more blasting to them, than the will of God if it 
 were done in your nature would be to your pride, your 
 avarice, your idolatrous affections, your lusts, your appe- 
 tites, your passions. And would you dare to open the 
 doors and chambers of your soul, and say, understanding 
 what you did, " Walk in, thou Prince of glory, thou holi- 
 est One, and let Thy will be done in me ! " Would you 
 dare to go home to your household, and ask that God's 
 will might be done there ? Would you be willing to have 
 God come into your business, and to have His will rectify 
 your journals, and ledgers, and bargains ? Are you pre-
 
 ROYAL 'TRUTHS. 117 
 
 pared to submit your papers, and plans, and ambitions to 
 God, and say, " Thy will be done in all these things " ? 
 Could you take the infinite crookedness of your daily 
 life, and say to God, " Straighten this " ? Have you come 
 to that state in which you can say to God, " I am blind, 
 and Thou art all-seeing; Thy will be done concerning 
 me " ? It would be like hell and damnation to men, to 
 let God's will come with power and rectification into 
 their practical lives ! 
 
 EXPEDIENTS are for an hour ; but Principles are for 
 the ages. Just because the rains descend, and winds 
 blow, we cannot afford to bond on shifting sands. 
 
 THE child that is at school, in the beginning of the 
 term, jealously prepares his little bow and arrows, and 
 traps, and springs, and riddles, and puzzles, and what not. 
 Then, they are choice treasures to him, and he mourns if 
 anything befalls them. But when the last days of the 
 term come, how generous he is in distributing them. He 
 tosses them to one and another of his companions, saying, 
 "Here you may have them if you want them: I do -not 
 want them any more." He is glad to get rid of them. 
 The things that a month or two ago he guarded sedulous- 
 ly in his treasure-chamber, now have no value to him ; 
 for the hunger of father and mother is on him. He says 
 to himself, " Day after to-morrow I am off" ; and he 
 cannot eat, nor sleep, nor play, such is the excitement 
 which he feels at the prospect of going home so soon. 
 
 Now what home-sickness is to the child away at school, 
 that to the soul is heaven-sickness, which sets usTree from 
 the ten thousand joys and sorrows of this world, if we real- 
 ly are heaven-sick. *
 
 118 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 How little you know what will be the effect of what 
 you do when you cast that little black seed of a poison- 
 ous plant into the ground. It looks as fine as a seed of 
 the most harmless flower; but how little do you know 
 what it will come to. How little do you know what the 
 plant will be from the seed. And so shall it be with the 
 human soul that grows and grows in pride, in selfishness, 
 and in hostility to the Divine will. Such a soul drops 
 into death as the seed drops into the open furrow. Its 
 root shall come forth again, it shall lift up its trunk again, 
 it shall grow again ; but, oh ! who can tell what that 
 growth may come to? To what will the unregenerate 
 man come when he grows in the soil of another life ? If 
 in all our developments here we are but seeds, to what 
 states of wickedness shall we come in that land where all 
 restraints are removed from men, and they are left to be 
 swept on by the whole force and impetus of their de- 
 praved natures ? 
 
 I THINK that many people take their troubles by the 
 imagination. I think that more than half that we suffer 
 through fear of troubles, is that which we are made to 
 suffer by magnifying them. You suffer ten times as 
 much in thinking about having your tooth drawn as you 
 do in having it drawn. I do not think the surgeon's 
 knife, in whipping through the flesh and around the bone, 
 gives half as much pain as the patient suffers in thinking 
 about having the operation performed. "We take our 
 troubles, and turn them over, and look at them ; we im- 
 agine what form they will assume under such and such 
 circumstances ; we make an inventory of them ; we mus- 
 ter them, and call the roll, and put them in order, and 
 march them first this way and then that ; we annoy our-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 119 
 
 selves with them as much as possible. Men are infer- 
 nally ingenious in tormenting themselves with troubles 
 which, ninety-nine times in a hundred, have no existence 
 except in their imagination. For although there are 
 such things as troubles, generally speaking those things 
 that hurt are things that we do not imagine are going to 
 hurt. When grief puts its harness on a man, the place 
 where it rubs and binds is not where there are pads, but 
 where there are no pads ; the place where it bears heav- 
 ily is where he has make no provision for it. 
 
 THERE is a point of application to persons who suppose 
 that mere reformation is all that is required of a man that 
 is sinful, and that the more radical doctrine of being born 
 again is characteristic of olden times, and is not needed 
 now. If the very direction of your life is wrong, if the 
 very cast of your character is wrong, if you are wrong to 
 the very foundation of your being, then no mere varnish- 
 ing no mere whitewashing, no mere changing of external 
 decorations is sufficient for you. You need to be built 
 over again from bottom to top. It is the testimony of 
 Christ, the mild speaker, the sweet and loving One, 
 " Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom 
 of God." The change fhat must be made in you is one 
 that starts a man over again in life. And how blessed to 
 me is this fact. My heart leaps up, sometimes, at the 
 thought of it. When I see men reeling and staggering 
 with wickedness, striving with vices and crimes, struck 
 through with the leprosy of sin, how blessed it is to me 
 to be able to say to them, ^ You can have another chance 
 in life ; you may throw away all the past, and begin anew ; 
 you may be born again, like a little child, and start afresh, 
 in spiritual life, as if you had never lived ! " How
 
 120 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 blessed and encouraging to those who are weary of the 
 burden of their sins, and discouraged at every attempt to 
 make themselves better by successive upbuilding, is this 
 doctrine of a new birth, so deep, so efficient, that it 
 changes a man's will, from one of insubordination, to one 
 of submission, to the Divine will ! We are diseased with 
 sin, and we need a remedy as comprehensive and thorough 
 as our sickness ; and that we have in the grace of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, that we have in the gift of the Holy 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 IT would be a very small thing for the captain of a 
 piratical vessel to show that he kept it perfectly clean, 
 that his men were orderly, and that he and they were 
 guilty of no special violations of the etiquette of life. If 
 a vessel is a piratical vessel, and at war with every civil- 
 ized nation on the globe, that is enough to condemn it. 
 Its organization, the purpose of it, is radically and atro- 
 ciously wrong. And these single virtues of a man's 
 character are of little account, so long as the very foun- 
 dation of his being is corrupt. It is a small thing for a 
 man to show that he has never committed any memorable, 
 flagrant sins. It is far better, of course, for a man to 
 cultivate virtues, and abstain from vices. I would say 
 nothing to discourage from any virtue, or to encourage in 
 any vice. But I say that mere right-doing, and absti- 
 nence from wrong-doing, is not all that is required of men. 
 A man's whole life is more than any indmdual act. The 
 opposition of the heart to God is of itself a thing merit- 
 ing judgment-day condemnation. Nothing more than 
 this is required to exclude a man from the glory of the 
 eternal heavens.
 
 ROYAL- TR UTHS. 121 
 
 WHENEVER you see flowers, understand that there is 
 a meaning in them ; and remember that Christ has said, 
 with reference to them, " Consider." You have no right 
 to pass by the smallest, the tiniest, the most inconspicuous 
 flower, and say, " O, it is a little common flower." A 
 common flower ? It is God-opened, and God-built ; and 
 Christ has said respecting it, " Consider." Yes, there is a 
 meaning in flowers. It is a precious meaning, one 
 that you need, and one that will kindle up your life, and 
 make your soul glow with radiance. Take it, and profit 
 by it. 
 
 MEN say, " It is impossible that I should have an emo- 
 tion of hatred toward God, and never know it. Do you 
 suppose I should not know fire if it touched me ? Do 
 you suppose that if a man were to put caustic on me I 
 should not know it? And do you suppose I could have 
 a feeling of hatred toward God and never be conscious of 
 it ? " There is such a thing as latent hatred, that must 
 be inflamed before it will manifest itself. Men say, " Do 
 you suppose I could carry fire in my bosom and not know 
 it ? I have felt myself a hundred times, and I am not 
 hot." But there may be fire raked up, as well as 
 fire in full glow. There may be a susceptibility of heart 
 that stands prepared, like powder in magazines, to be 
 ignited. A man may be like a military fortification, with 
 implements of war of every kind ready to be brought 
 into requisition the moment the signal gun is fired. But 
 it is a military fortification, though the signal gun may 
 never have been fired, and though not one of these im- 
 plements has ever been brought into requisition. It is 
 a military fortification, though a particle of powder may 
 never have been exploded in it. It was built for war 
 6
 
 122 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 from foundation to turret, and all the implements it con- 
 tains were made for war, and they are in readiness to be 
 applied to the purposes of war when the proper time 
 shall come. 
 
 Now look at the soul, castellated, fortified, provis- 
 ioned, armed. Though the day may not have come when 
 its mighty implements have been used, yet they are ready 
 to be used at any moment when the proper circumstances 
 arise. A man may have qualities of mind which do not 
 manifest themselves in his life, because the circumstances 
 necessary to bring them into action do not exist. 
 
 It is charged, not that every man has come to a fla- 
 grant outbreak in opposition to the Divine Being, but 
 that every man has elements that are opposed to the 
 Divine Being, which, the moment he is brought to a real- 
 ization of God's authority, will develop their real charac- 
 ter. You are not obliged, in order to be at enmity with 
 God, to say to Him, in so many words, " I will not have 
 Thee to reign over me." Whether spoken or not, that is 
 the natural language of the unconverted human heart. 
 
 To a resilient nature nothing can be more trying than 
 to lie aside from usefulness and be worthless. If it please 
 God to say to us, " I lead you through dark and critical 
 ways where ordinary and unsustained manhood cannot 
 walk, because I want an example there " ; it fires the 
 soul with such a' conception of the mission of suffering, 
 that we are able to endure it, and to endure it cheerfully. 
 
 THE tree of life, whose leaves were for the healing of 
 the nations, has been evilly dealt with. Its boughs have 
 been lopped, and its roots starved till its fruit is knurly. 
 Upon its top had been set scions of bitter fruits, that
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 123 
 
 grew and sucked out all the sap from the better branches. 
 Upon its trunk the wild boar of the forest had whetted 
 his tusks. 
 
 But now again it blooms. Its roots have found the 
 river, and shall not want again for moisture ; the grafts 
 of poisonous fruits have not taken and are blown out ; 
 mighty spearsmen have hunted the swine back to his 
 thickets, and the hedge shall be brok.en down no more 
 round about it. The air is fragrant in its opening buds, 
 the young fruit is setting. God has returned and looked 
 upon it, and behold, summer is in all its branches ! 
 
 IN our social intercourse we perceive how differently 
 children behave under restraint. If you attempt to gov- 
 ern one child, you meet him face to face, and he flames 
 at you like a little volcano. The next child you attempt 
 to govern is not one whit more willing to be subdued, 
 but he draws a veil of tranquillity over his rebellious 
 spirit, and glides away as if to obey you, simply to get 
 out of your reach. One colors in the face, and waxes 
 hot, and openly violates your commands ; the other says, 
 " Yes," and goes and does as he has a mind to. Both of 
 them are fractious, and both of them disobey you. It is 
 not always the most obstreperous natures that are hardest 
 to be subdued ; it is oftentimes these soft, gentle natures. 
 There are persons that are amiable, and that go purling 
 through life as little brooks do through meadows ; but no 
 brook runs up stream. There are persons that are world- 
 ly and notoriously without God in the soul, whose dis- 
 positions are soft and tranquil, simply because their 
 nature works by softness and tranquillity : but they 
 are just as much opposed to the Divine will as if their 
 opposition were more open and declarative.
 
 124 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 IT is not in vain that I have preached that this life is 
 but God's school-house, in which we are being prepared 
 for an eternity of blessedness in His presence. The 
 things that are flying backward and forward in this world 
 are God's shuttles, that carry the thread out of which are 
 to be woven the garments that we are to wear hereafter ; 
 and blessed are they whose shuttle carries a thread which 
 shall glow in garments of white evermore. 
 
 PAUL had brought near to him nearer than the 
 things which the senses ministered to him the eternal 
 realm of blessedness beyond this sphere, the habitation of 
 God's sons, where Christ is ever present with them, in- 
 spiring them, and rewarding them, and leading them to 
 higher joys and nobler enterprises of usefulness forever 
 and forever. This was so near to Paul that he lived in 
 sight of it, and said, " O, these little distemperatures, 
 this being beaten with rods ; this receiving stripes ; this 
 being shipwrecked ; this being in perils of sea and of 
 land ; this being cold, and hungry, and thirsty, these 
 things only tap and hit the body ; they do not go inside ; 
 they do not strike through. I live in such a nearness to 
 my coming glory, in such a nearness to the invisible and 
 the eternal world, that I regard these things as of no 
 account when compared with that. I do not care for 
 them." 
 
 And why should we ? We see the same principle at 
 work every day in little things. If in Kansas the care- 
 ful husbandman, whose starving cattle have but a faint 
 chance of living the winter through, sees a wisp of straw, 
 a handful of stalks, or a particle of hay being wasted, it 
 sorely grieves him. He is so near to the edge of starva- 
 tion that he cannot afford to have anything wasted.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 125 
 
 But go into Illinois and Indiana, where all these things 
 are abundant, and where the herds are their own harvest- 
 men, and tramp down a thousand times more than they 
 eat ; and the farmer, when he sees the stack gnawed, and 
 scattered around, knee deep, and being wasted, says, 
 " There is no need of my saving such little things, they 
 are mere trifles ; I have so much that I do not know 
 what to do with it" 
 
 The apostle, arguing according to the same principle, 
 says, " What is a little waste here ? The rinds and 
 crumbs of life, a little sorrow ; a little loss ; a little 
 contempt ; a few persecutions, and afflictions, and troub- 
 les, what are these in the great circle of God's eternal 
 world ? There I am rich and honorable ; and what dif- 
 ference does it make if here I am the offscouring of the 
 world?" 
 
 " I HAVE learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith 
 to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I 
 know how to abound : everywhere and in all things I am 
 instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to 
 abound and to suffer need ; I can do all things through 
 Christ which strengthened me." It is as if Paul had 
 said, "I have absolutely subordinated the physical and 
 the temporal, and I regard them as but instrumental to 
 that which is greater, to my own inward state. I have 
 achieved a complete victory over them. I have over- 
 come all things, so that with my mind fixed upon Christ 
 and upon the image of Christ that is formed in me, I 
 count nothing to be unendurable which tends to build up 
 the manly character of which I have an ideal, And I 
 know when I am hungry to be hungry, and not to care ; 
 and, on the other hand, when I come into circumstances
 
 126 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 of abounding luxury, I know how to accept that and not 
 be harmed by it. I can sit with the barbarian and eat a 
 crust, and be contented and happy; and, on the other 
 hand, when swept by a current of prosperity I am taken 
 into a rich man's house, I do not sit and pout, and criti- 
 cise, and censure, with lordly stoicism. I understand that 
 there is good in fruit, and bread, and things like these. 
 I love luxury ; and I do not fear the want of it. I can 
 go up and I can go down. I can be swept like an ever- 
 swinging pendulum, with riches in one tick and poverty 
 in the other, with joy resounding in one and sorrow in the 
 other ; and I know how to take them both in quick suc- 
 cession, and .yet to feel that after all such things are mere 
 outward accidents to a man's life, and that in the soul is 
 where the life itself resides." Was there ever a more 
 perfect human nature than Paul's ? 
 
 " SEEK ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteous- 
 ness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Christ 
 was speaking to those who were sawing, and hammering, 
 and ploughing, and sowing, and toiling in every way, and 
 trying to get bread, and clothes, and fuel, and the various' 
 things that are indispensable to physical comfort. He 
 was speaking to just that sort of men who were accus- 
 tomed to say, " Self-preservation is the first law of na- 
 ture." Christ said, " The highest carries the lowest ; the 
 greater includes the lesser. Seek first the moral element, 
 the element of truth and righteousness, and in seek- 
 ing that, by the very law of your creation, you cannot 
 help taking the other things with you. They will follow 
 of necessity." If you take the top first you leave the 
 bottom ; but if you take the bottom first, that carries the 
 top with it. You can lift the roof and not the founda-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 127 
 
 tion, but you cannot lift the foundation and not the roof. 
 And the foundation of human life is rectitude, righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 WHATEVER men may say, American slavery is not 
 Hebrew slavery : it is Roman slavery. We borrowed 
 every single one of the elemental principles of our sys- 
 tem of slavery from the Roman law, and not from the 
 old Hebrew. The fundamental feature of the Hebrew 
 system was that the slave was a man, and not a chattel ; 
 while the fundamental feature of the Roman system was 
 that he was a chattel, and not a man. The essential 
 principle of the old Mosaic servitude made it the duty of 
 the master to treat his servants as men, and to instruct 
 them in his own religion, and in the matters of his own 
 household; while the essential principle of Roman ser- 
 vitude allowed the master to treat his servants, to all in- 
 tents and purposes, as chattels, goods. 
 
 IT seems very strange, this economy of God, in 
 which He thrusts into the door of life a million of His 
 children, saying, " Go, live, and find out how to live." 
 That is the very point of the Divine economy. The find- 
 ing out how to live, you know, is what whets a man 
 sharp. That is the ordained law of existence. 
 
 Whole ages may live and die and not know how much 
 God has stored up for men through natural laws. We 
 do not understand their full power and office. We have 
 an idea of what light is, but we have only a blush of a 
 knowledge of its entire nature and all its functions. We 
 hardly suspect the capacity of solar light. Who would 
 have dreamed twenty-five years ago that the sun was a 
 portrait painter ? Who would have dreamed twenty-five
 
 128 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 years ago that every man could possess the portrait of his 
 friends ? Who would have dreamed twenty-five years 
 ago that the poor soldier, when going to battle, could 
 carry with him likenesses of his mother, his sweetheart, 
 and his brothers and sisters, at the cost of a few shillings ? 
 And yet all these powers of the sun to paint pictures 
 which have but lately been disclosed, it has carried in its 
 bosom from the beginning of the world. Telescopes 
 existed in possibility long before they existed in reality. 
 And all that the sun has yet concealed you do rftt know. 
 No man knows what things are still to come to the world 
 from the sun. The sun is crammed full of blessings to 
 be unfolded when we have found out the things that are 
 in it. And all the great natural laws of the globe have 
 existed from eternity. The fact that they have not de- 
 veloped themselves does not militate against the fact that 
 they have existed, that God made them, that He has cdn- 
 trolled the earth by them, and that they were designed to 
 work out a great history. 
 
 I STAND to declare that justice is worth more than the 
 cornfields of the continent. I stand to declare that right 
 between man and man is worth more than all the freights 
 of all the ships that whiten the sea. I stand to declare 
 that there is not in the king's crown, nor in the sceptre 
 -of any monarch, such a power as there is in simple 
 mercy between human beings. I stand to declare that 
 the secret of national compactness is in national con- 
 science, national affection, and national faith in moral 
 ideas. And I stand to declare that the period in which 
 men scoff at moral laws and moral truths is a period of 
 rank infidelity and utter apostasy. The form of religion 
 may stand in such a period, but it will be worm-eaten ;
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 129 
 
 it will be dead ; it will be rotten. And if you want to 
 know wbich way nations are to go to find prosperity, let 
 me tell you that every nation that means to be prospered 
 must steer straight to the light-house of the universe. 
 And what is that? God's heart. Any nation that steers 
 for any other thing will run upon shoals and rocks* 
 
 Do not be afraid because the community teems with 
 excitement. Silence and death are dreadful. The rush 
 of life, the vigor of earnest men, the conflict of realities, 
 invigorate, cleanse, and establish the truth. 
 
 THE Bible says that everything was made for the sake 
 of righteousness. Men generally feel that perhaps it is 
 so. They hope it is. They do not exactly see how it 
 can be. They do not understand it. They sometimes 
 hope and sometimes despond concerning it Let us look 
 a little at it, then. 
 
 We ought to understand beforehand, that a law may 
 not seem to be enforced which is absolutely enforced. 
 
 When the ground breaks, and the grape comes up, I 
 say, " The law of that plant is to develop grape sugar. 
 That which this vine is going to reach after is grape 
 sugar. Grape sugar is what it will tend toward all through 
 its life." I may interfere with it and stop its growth, or 
 maim it, or kill it, or hold it back, or graft upon it some 
 other grape that will not develop sweetness. Or, I may 
 watch it through the first, the second, and the third pe- 
 riods of its growth, and laugh to scorn any man that says 
 it is tending to grape sugar. I may be looking for sugar 
 in a bowl, sugar in lumps, and, looking at the vine, may 
 say, " That 's what you call sugar, is it ? Great sugar ! " 
 And yet, after it has grown for four or five years, and 
 G* i
 
 130 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 come to maturity, and developed clusters of fruit, then in 
 October, when the berries are ripe, pick one and taste it, 
 and see if there is not sugar in it. See if it has not at 
 last come to sugar. When the vine is growing you can 
 stop, pervert, or check the law, but that does not alter 
 the fact that the law is to seek grape sugar ; that if un- 
 impeded it will come to grape sugar ; that it was organ- 
 ized to develop grape sugar ; and that you cannot change 
 its nature so but that it shall tend in that direction. 
 
 So it is in respect to all the great laws of nature. 
 'They are so established that they will fulfil their func- 
 tions in part. They may be held back, they may be 
 masked, they may be perverted, but this does not alter 
 the fact that they are laws. 
 
 THE peculiarity of many of the afflictions of life is that 
 they take out a man's marrow, they take the strength out 
 of him ; he is left collapsed and feeble, and there is noth- 
 ing in him to rise up against these troubles. It is quite 
 in vain to stimulate such persons by telling them what 
 others have suffered, giving the old accustomed comfort, 
 telling a man that he is not suffering more than anybody 
 else has suffered, or that the longest night has a dawning. 
 All these truisms of consolation do not help anybody, but 
 hurt a great many. There is but one thing under such 
 circumstances that ever has consolation. When, by rea- 
 son of afflictions of any kind, life is paralyzed, and there 
 is no sensibility left, if the soul can lift itself up to feel 
 that there is life in God, that there is a vital connection 
 between itself and the life of Christ, that though it die, it 
 shall live, the simple thought that Christ lives and so 
 shall I, that is an anchor, and that holds a man in this 
 extremity and emergency of grief.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 131 
 
 THERE is tonic in the things that men do not love to 
 hear ; and there is damnation in the things that wicked 
 men love to hear. Free speech is to a great people 
 what winds are to oceans and malarial regions, which 
 waft away the elements of disease, and bring new ele- 
 ments of health. And where free speech is stopped mi- 
 asma is bred, and death comes fast. 
 
 I WOULD die myself, cheerfully and easily, before a 
 man should be taken out of my hands when I had the 
 power to give him liberty, and the hound was. after him 
 for his blood. I would stand as an altar of expiation 
 between slavery and liberty, knowing that, through my 
 example, a million men would live. A heroic deed, 
 in which one yields up his life for others, is his Calvary. 
 It was the hanging of Christ on that hill-top that made it 
 the highest mountain on the globe. Let a man do a 
 right thing with such earnestness that he counts his life 
 of little value, and his example becomes omnipotent. 
 Therefore it is said that the blood of the saints is the seed 
 of the Church. There is no such seed planted in this 
 world as good blood. 
 
 AMONG the most exquisitely delicate of human experi- 
 ences are those which the young child goes through when 
 it begins to quarrel with itself because it cannot help 
 thinking that the parent is imperfect. 
 
 WHEN night is on the deep, when the headlands are 
 obscured by the darkness, and when storm is in the air, 
 that man who undertakes to steer by looking over the 
 side of the ship, over the bow, or over the stern, or by 
 looking at the clouds or his own fears, is a fool. There
 
 132 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 is a silent needle in the binnacle, which points like the 
 finger of God, telling the mariner which way to steer, and 
 enabling him to outride the storm, and reach the harbor 
 in safety. And what the compass is to navigation, that is 
 moral principle in our affairs. Whatever the issue may 
 be, we have but one thing to do, and that is to look where 
 the compass of God points, and steer that way. You 
 need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot. 
 
 OUR children come to us in all the seeming of angels. 
 How sweet is the dawn of life ! How is the cradle like 
 the opening of the gate of paradise! And yet, who can 
 overhang the unformed, yet shadowy, dreamy beginnings 
 of life in the child, and remember that it comes by sinful 
 parents into a sinful world, bearing a^sinful disposition, 
 without feeling that there is a counterbalance to the 
 pleasure which it brings ? 
 
 THE value of things is measured in the great world by 
 their price in market, by their relation to pleasure, by 
 their power to win praise, or to gratify and confirm am- 
 bition. Worldly men are perfectly sure of that which 
 they can see, and which their hands can handle. Money 
 is a certainty, and pleasure is a certainty. There can 
 be no question about the reality of power, place, and 
 influence. Houses and lands, ships and stores, goods 
 and stocks, silver and gold, certainly make men rich 
 among men. And these, to worldly natures, are tho 
 great truths of life. For these they yield up affection, 
 refinement, honor, virtue itself. Beyond these, and above 
 them, all is shadowy and uncertain. For worldly har- 
 vests their sun comes up, their seasons rule. The only 
 providence which they recognize is that which remuner-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 133 
 
 ates industry, economy, frugality, and shrewdness. They 
 laugh to scorn the intimation that all these things are but 
 the covers that, like hull and husk, drop away so soon 
 as the grain is ripe, and are of worth only while they 
 serve it. But the whole realm of nature is administered 
 for the purpose of evolving and establishing this secret 
 and inward life of man. The true history of the world 
 is to be found in the relation of the outward world to the 
 inward. 
 
 IN estimating the dignity of men, the volume and the 
 vastness of their being, we are not to measure them by 
 the use to which they have put themselves, but by the 
 nature of those faculties which God gave them. Insphere 
 man in the infinite realm, project him by the mighty pow- 
 er of his infinite Father, and then, moving along the ways 
 of eternity, then, when ages have nourished him, and 
 the full measure of Divine beneficence hath showered its 
 seasons numberless upon him, then, when stars have 
 worn out and weary worlds have ceased their circuits, 
 then, when God hath wrought out in full literature of 
 wondrous wisdom the whole of that of which earthly life 
 was but alphabetic, then measure him if you can! It 
 is from this foreseen and imagined destiny that we bring 
 back a light to glorify the cheerless way of rude and un- 
 replenished men. 
 
 THE spirit and the letter of Christianity require us 
 habitually to regard man in his essentials, and not in his 
 accidental relations. " Be ye of the same mind one to- 
 ward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to 
 men of low estate." To be of the same mind one toward 
 another, is to have a feeling of community, a feeling of
 
 134 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 common universal sympathy ; and we are expressly for- 
 bidden" to do what every one in the proportion in which 
 he is educated tends to do, to aspire to the exclusive 
 association of those who have risen in the world by rea- 
 son of the same privileges. They, too, are our brethren, 
 who are undeveloped, unpolished ; who perform the me- 
 nial offices of life; who live narrowly upon slender means. 
 At one blow this command demolishes the customs of the 
 world. It is for the Christian to separate men from their 
 external, transient relations, and to behold them in those 
 greater relations in which all men are alike. Our breth- 
 ren are not above us nor below us, but on the same level 
 with us. All men are upon one platform and level who 
 stand upon the redemption of Christ, who subsist upon 
 the mercy and sympathy of God, who reach forward to 
 immortality and glory equally and alike. The example of 
 Christ ought to be deeply pondered. It stands in marked 
 contrast with the habits of all classes of men in His time. 
 He does not seem to have thought of men as they stand 
 in societies grouped in classes, separated or united by 
 various customs, nor even as they were separated and 
 classed by the result of their moral conduct. He seems 
 simply and quietly, but always, to have beheld them in 
 their original and spiritual relations, to each other, to 
 God, and to eternity. He approached men from a differ- 
 ent point of view from that from which others started. 
 He looked at them from a law of sympathy not ordinarily 
 employed. His example teaches us that our thought is 
 not to be, " Is this man educated ? Does he stand high 
 in social life ? Is he strong ? Is he acute ? Is he skil- 
 ful ? Is he rich ? " There is no evidence that these 
 questions ever arose hi the mind of Christ with reference 
 to any human being. He looked at men in their higher
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 135 
 
 and holier relations. They were the children of His 
 Father. He was elder Brother, and was not ashamed 
 to call them brethren. They were destined to the same 
 eternity which waited for Him. They were all weak, 
 vincible by temptation, in need of help, of instruction, of 
 moral stimulus. Their poverty, their rudeness, was the 
 accident. Their Divine nature was the characteristic 
 element. 
 
 SOME of God's noblest sons, I think, will be selected 
 from those that know how to take wealth, with all its 
 temptations, and maintain godliness therewith. It is 
 hard to be a saint standing in a golden niche. 
 
 WHEN the Bible prescribes Christian graces, it always 
 implies love as the motive power ; as when we speak of 
 rearing harvests it is always implied that there is a soil. 
 Without love there is no soil for any Christian grace. If 
 there be little of it, the fruit of Christian feeling will be 
 poor and scant. If there be much, there will be great 
 fruit, and easily grown. All things are easy to love. It 
 tames all passions, inspires all affections, feeds every gen- 
 erous sentiment, gives both softness and potency, as its 
 needs require, to the will, makes the understanding lu- 
 minous, and by making the whole man like God, makes 
 it easy for him to be godlike to his fellow-men. 
 
 IF earthly analogies may at all guide us, there can be 
 no more direct and offensive assault upon God than 
 through His children. A man may draw near to my 
 dwelling to rail at me ; may assault my reputation ; may 
 lie in wait and plot against my secular prosperity ; may 
 overreach me in the market, and hinder me upon the
 
 136 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 roads of life ; may steal from my substance, and mar my 
 enterprise ; but he has not yet reached me. But let him 
 sully the name of my child, and clothe her with ignominy 
 before the community, and all the globe, were it a ball 
 of fire, would not be hot or vast enough to express the 
 indignation I should feel. Through my child he has 
 reached me. 
 
 The feeling of justice is terrible when stirred up in us 
 in our own behalf; but we never know the full power of 
 the feeling until it is stirred in us in behalf of others. I 
 have never felt such indignation in my own behalf as I 
 have for the weak, for the poor, for the enslaved. When 
 great wrongs fall upon them that are ready to perish in 
 their helplessness, the soul is like Mount Sinai, and its 
 thunderings and lightnings are full terrible ! What, 
 then, may we suppose to be the indignation of Almighty 
 God, who carries in his heart the well-being of every liv- 
 ing creature, when He beholds the numberless torments 
 and wrongs inflicted upon them ? What must be the 
 grandeur of that experience of Love-wrath, (such as 
 mothers feel, such as stirs fathers, such as raises lovers 
 for their imperilled ones to the fiery zeal of heroes,) when 
 it exists, not in the small circle of a human soul, with fit- 
 ful impulses, but in the great rounds and deeps of the 
 Divine nature, with calm intensity, with unchangeable 
 fervor, and with infinite outreachings of power ! 
 
 " THOU shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
 AND thy neighbor as thyself" . That conjunctive particle 
 is a rivet that holds these two sentences together insepa- 
 rably. Each element is necessary to the completion of the 
 other. But men turn the feint of Solomon to a reality, 
 and cut in two these vital members of the one life. Thus
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 137 
 
 we have devout men full of religiousness, but caring little 
 for their fellow-men ; while over against them are super- 
 ficial philanthropists, full of fussy zeal for humanity, with- 
 out love for God, or solemn depth of reverential senti- 
 ments. 
 
 As a body of jaien, the Scribes and Pharisees were not 
 men of bad morals, more than are many church-members 
 of the present day. Neither were they men who lacked 
 fidelity to the religious principles in which they were 
 educated. The Pharisees were in some respects the 
 Puritans of their time. They were that portion of the 
 Jews who stood up for reformed Jewish worship. They 
 brought back the faith of Moses from its heathen wander- 
 ings, and strictly adhered to it. They were the Puritans 
 of the Jews. But they preferred the church to the peo- 
 ple, the state to the people, the temple to the people, 
 their denomination to the people : and their guilt was 
 simply this : a contempt for human nature ; utter heart- 
 lessness about the common people. And because they 
 put burdens upon other men which they would not bear 
 themselves; because they were without humanity, and 
 mercy, and sympathy, notwithstanding they had personal 
 power, and were faithful to their theologic faith, and were 
 the most enlightened of the times in which they lived, 
 Christ crushed them with mountains of denunciation. 
 There is no such invective as came from the lips of 
 Christ Jesus against men who were utterly devoid of 
 sympathy toward their fellow-men. 
 
 Do not criticise men's callings ; do not measure be- 
 tween one and another ; especially disarm yourselves of 
 that infernal tendency to make men discontented in their
 
 138 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 various avocations, by comparing them unfavorably with 
 your own. Arrogate nothing to yourselves or to your 
 sphere. Avoid carrying yourselves in such a way that 
 men shall feel hurt by the shadow which you throw 
 across them, by the snuff of pride, or the chill of indif- 
 ference. 
 
 " IN honor preferring one another." This is contained 
 in the twelfth chapter of Romans, and the tenth verse. 
 It enjoins an honest desire, springing from unfeigned 
 sympathy with others' welfare, to see them put forward 
 in life instead of yourself. There be some to whom 
 other men's advancement is always a fret and a burden. 
 There is a spirit of selfishness which leads envious and 
 covetous natures to esteem another's good so much de- 
 traction from their own; This is an admirable illustration 
 of the nature of benevolence by its converse. A truly 
 benevolent mind is made happy at the prospect of anoth- 
 er's good. A mind which is made miserable by another's 
 benefit, is truly malevolent. The father covets nothing 
 from the son. She must be a miserable mother that 
 is jealous of a daughter. Nay, in the mother's heart 
 there is a glow of triumph, suppress it as she may, as the 
 child's beauty rises on the one side to take the place of 
 the beauty that is sinking on the other. As one star 
 goes below the horizon, its last rays of light are cast in 
 cheer toward the star that comes from the other. Fa- 
 thers' and mothers' hearts do these glorious things spon- 
 taneously, and teach us how easy to those that love are 
 the most recondite and apparently impossible Christian 
 graces. 
 
 WE hear people say, " What makes you preach doc-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 139 
 
 trinal sermons? Why do you puzzle our heads with 
 things that we cannot understand? Why do you not 
 preach to us the balmy gospel of love? Why do you 
 not preach about the mild and lovely Saviour ? " There 
 are a great many men that like to hear the sentimentali- 
 ty of love, who have not the faintest conception of what 
 the effect and the power of it is to be in them. 
 
 I look at the life and disposition of these men who cry 
 for the lullaby of love, in the family, in the shop, in all 
 departments of their life, and I find that they abhor love 
 except on Sunday when I preach on that doctrine of 
 God's moral government. But if I were to go to them 
 at their places of business, and say, " I understand that 
 you take advantage of the circumstances of your work- 
 men, and employ them at one quarter of what they ought 
 to have, so that they can scarcely subsist on what you 
 pay them ; and as you wanted me to preach about love, 
 I thought I would come and tell you what the doctrine of 
 love is as applied to matters of this kind," they would 
 say, " Religion is religion, and business is business. Go 
 home, and when I want you to come to my shop and 
 preach to me I will let you know." In other words, they 
 want sermon love, poetic love, theoretic' love, love that 
 makes them feel good during the insurance day, for 
 Sunday is the insurance day of the week ! And they 
 want me to talk of love because it subdues their fears, 
 soothes their hearts, and makes them feel pleasant. But 
 there is a way in which they do not want love preached 
 even on Sunday, and in the pulpit They do not want 
 it preached as a rod of iron, that says, " I am sovereign 
 and supreme ; I stand in you for all ; and, in the name of 
 God, I command that every part of your being, your 
 thoughts, your feelings, and your actions, shall be sub-
 
 140 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 ordinate to me." When men have love presented in 
 this way, they do not like it. They like to have it pre- 
 sented so as to allow them to have their own way, and so 
 as to quiet their conscience in their selfish courses. 
 
 THERE can be nothing more a violation of the spirit of 
 the Bible, of the law of God, of the feelings of Christ ; 
 nothing more an affront and offence before Heaven, than 
 feelings of contempt, bitterness, or hatred toward men. 
 Even indifference and coldness are culpable. Sympathy 
 with mankind is a universal duty. Christ taught us that 
 every man is our neighbor. We are commanded as we 
 have opportunity to do good unto all men. There should 
 be an abiding disposition of benevolence out of which 
 should spring incessant acts of kindness. When the wa- 
 ters of an inexhaustible spring have been conveyed 
 through pipes to your dwelling, it needs only that you 
 should open the vent, and it will gush forth with power 
 aud copiousness by its own native force. Even when it 
 is not flowing, it is pressing and urging itself, and longing 
 to flow. Left to itself, night and day it would gush. . It 
 must be hindered, it must be stopped, but it needs never 
 to be solicited. There is a well-spring of love which 
 God sinks in the human soul, which throbs without ceas- 
 ing, and strives to give itself forth. From such a reser- 
 voir we need no slow-descending and heavy-rising bucket, 
 we need no forcing-pump, nor instrument of power of 
 any sort. It is its nature to rise up, to go out. The 
 kindness is always there, always ready and waiting. 
 Only opportunity is needed. 
 
 A MAN is, as it were, a cask of wine. The figure 
 would have been allowable in the days of Christ, more
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 141 
 
 allowable, perhaps, than it is in our temperance days ! 
 A worm gnaws through a stave. It is a small worm, not 
 half so large as a knitting-needle. The moment he comes 
 to the wine he draws out his head, for worms are not 
 so fond of wine as men are ! and a drop follows him, 
 only a drop. Another worm, on the other side of the 
 cask, gnaws through another stave. He gets a drop, and 
 draws back. On each end there are a dozen or twenty 
 other worms eating their way to the wine. Not one of 
 them is as big as a mite ; but fifty or sixty of them to- 
 gether, if each makes a hole large enough to allow a drop 
 to pass through it, are sufficient to cause the waste of all 
 the precious contents of the cask. After the lapse of a 
 day, a week, a month, or six months, the vintner goes to 
 see his treasure ; and behold, the cask sounds empty as 
 a hypocrite's heart ! There is not a drop in it. And yet 
 it looks 'like a cask of wine. Where have the contents 
 gone ? Not one pint has been surreptitiously drawn by 
 the servant that gets blamed, or by the thief that the 
 vintner accuses without knowing who he is. The wine 
 has all leaked out at holes not large enough to admit of 
 the discharge of more than one drop at a time. 
 
 Now, ten million little meannesses, ten million selfish- 
 nesses, ten million pettishnesses, ten million waspish dis- 
 positions, pierce and puncture the heart, and all its 
 graces are drawn out. You are empty because you leak 
 all over ! 
 
 ONE of the most difficult faculties to subdue is that of 
 reason. The pride of reason, the vanity of reason, and the 
 selfishness of reason, are among the last things in a man 
 that are subdued, as well as being among the last things 
 that men understand that they ought to subdue. And
 
 142 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 yet, the pride of reason, in the days of Christ, was an 
 object of the most terrible denunciations. And in the 
 days of the apostles it was the chief obstacle to the 
 spread of the Gospel. But men have got, first or last, 
 to bring it into subjection to love as a dispositional ele- 
 ment in the soul, before they can be said to have true 
 piety. 
 
 A BOUNTIFUL mother sits in her house, and says, 
 "Mary, go down to that dwelling, and carry this food. 
 Julia, go down to the dwelling on the other side of the 
 street, and carry this tea and this sugar. Charles, take 
 this money to that man : I promised to pay his rent. 
 James, take this clothing down to that woman : she is 
 sadly in need of it. Elizabeth, take this book to that 
 child." Elizabeth, and Mary, and Julia, and Charles, 
 and James, are so many names of the messengers sent on 
 these various errands of mercy ; but the mother was back 
 of them all, and sent them all. 
 
 Now the soul has its mother, Love, and she says to 
 Conscience, " Here, do such and such things " ; to Ven- 
 eration, " Here, do such and such things " ; and to Rea- 
 son, " Here, do such and such things " ; and Conscience 
 and Veneration and Reason, and all the other faculties, 
 run to do as they are bid : but it is the mother, Love, 
 that sends them. They all represent her, and perform 
 her errands. Though each one walks with a separate 
 name, Love sits behind them, and they obey her man- 
 dates. 
 
 You can imagine thistle-down so light that when you 
 ran after it your running motion would drive it away 
 from you, and that the more you tried to catch it the
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 143 
 
 faster it would fly from your grasp. And it should be 
 with every man that when he is chased by troubles, they, 
 chasing, shall raise him higher and higher. 
 
 IT is scarcely needful to exhort men to sympathize 
 with those of their own kind, or with those whom they 
 recognize as superior to themselves. Our selfishness 
 would inspire it in the one case, and our ambition in tho 
 other. Men are quite willing from a subordinate rank 
 to reach up to and sympathize with men of superior 
 stamp. The student will sympathize with the ripe 
 scholar; the cadet with the veteran soldier; the clerk 
 with the millionnaire. If Humboldt should take us into 
 his library, show us the maps which he has consulted, the 
 works which he has written, spread before us specimens 
 of his cabinet, rock, earth, plant, he would not need 
 to crave our interest and sympathy. Among men of our 
 own rank, who dress as we dress, who spread their board 
 as we spread ours, who occupy themselves with the very 
 things which engage our time and attention, we find no 
 difficulty of sympathy. Are we merchants ? We honor 
 a man that can drive a smart bargain, because we do 
 such things ourselves, or try to do them. If one un- 
 derstands how to build a splendid house ; how to invest 
 money to a good advantage ; how to get rich by dealing 
 in stocks, or by wide yet circumspect enterprise ; how to 
 enter into the hurly-burly of life, and make his way 
 through all difficulties by the force of will and wisdom, 
 if one is what we are ambitious to become, if we are not 
 like him already, we find it easy to sympathize with him. 
 But when at sundown the sweated laborer comes trudg- 
 ing wenry from the field ; when the blacksmith, smouched 
 and grimed, stands cooling himself in the door while we
 
 144 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 drive past ; when the subterranean collier emerges into our 
 sphere ; when men forever stooping to the spade, back- 
 bent, in laying stone, delving, groping, toiling men, whose 
 extreme necessities have consumed all their hours with 
 hard work, leaving little leisure, and no disposition for 
 reading and improvement, when this great army, I say, 
 that immensely populates the world, and represents nine- 
 tenths of the whole race, are brought before us, how sel- 
 dom do we find working in us the quick response of 
 relationship ! We thank God and bless ourselves that our 
 lot was not like theirs. Where there is one man engaged 
 in the things in which you take interest, there are a 
 million of blood-bought men, eternal spirits, that are 
 groping, yearning, longing, in the midst of scenes far 
 below you. And what is the command of God to you 
 with reference to these uncounted and innumerable ones ? 
 "Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low 
 estate. Honor all men." 
 
 "THE SABBATH WAS MADE FOR MAN, AND NOT 
 MAN FOR THE SABBATH!" That sentence is passed 
 upon every usage, custom, law, government, church, or 
 institution. Man is higher than them all. Not one of 
 them but may be changed, broken, or put away, if the 
 good of any man require it. Only, it must be his higher 
 good, his virtue, his manhood, his purity and truth, his 
 life and progress, and not his mere capricious material 
 interests. 
 
 Do you suppose that religion is like a bird in a cage, 
 and that you can lock it up in the church, and that the 
 keeper will take care of it, and feed it, and have it ready 
 to sing for you whenever you choose to come here and
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 14,3 
 
 listen to it ? Is that your idea of religion ? Very well, 
 then : your Bible and mine are different. We read dif- 
 ferent translations ! 
 
 IT is not selfishness in themselves, but selfishness in 
 others, that men hate. Every man wants his wife, his 
 children and his neighbors to love him supremely. Ev- 
 erybody thinks that everybody else ought to keep their 
 temper. He is the only one that has a right to indulge 
 in ill-temper. Every man draws the reins tight in regard 
 to other people, but allows himself the widest latitude. 
 
 I WOULD much rather fight pride than vanity, because 
 pride has a stand-up way of fighting. You know where 
 it is. It throws its black shadow on you, and you are 
 not at a loss where to strike. But vanity is that delu- 
 sive, that insectiferous, that multiplied feeling, and men 
 that fight vanities are like men that fight midges and 
 butterflies. It is easier to chase them than to hit them. 
 
 WHO ever passed the tomb of Abelard and Heloise in 
 the ground of Pere la Chaise without a heart-swell ? 
 There is no deep love which has not in it an element of 
 solemnity. It moves through the soul as if it were an 
 inspiration of God, and carries with it something of the 
 awe and shadow of eternity. 
 
 NEVER was the conflict of a soul, lifted by yearnings 
 and aspirations on one side, and pulled down by sinful 
 impulses and habits on the other, better described than 
 in the seventh chapter of Romans. There is a solemn 
 tenderness in it that leads men to love it, as one loves to 
 hear the minor chords of music. It is not the voice of 
 7 j
 
 146 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 one that declaims, or of one raging. It is sad, deep, sol- 
 emn. It is the Miserere of the New Testament. I have 
 seen, in the hill country, a little stream gathering from 
 the springs, and holding its way with deepening water, 
 until it enters a gorge. Dark evergreen trees make the 
 place gloomy. Rocks and fallen timber hinder the 
 stream. It falls headlong upon some stone, and is 
 dashed to spray ; it trickles back to a channel, only to be 
 caught and whirled in a dark pool ; and boiling out of 
 that, it shoots now to the right, still embroiled, and now 
 to the left, but whether forward or sideways, always hin- 
 dered, broken, and made to cry out and roar by its plun- 
 ges and innumerable interruptions. No flowers edge it. 
 Its way is too sunless for beauty. But when, at length, 
 far down, it sees beyond a glimpse of field and meadow, 
 it takes cheer, and speeds on, until at length the broad 
 sunshine strikes it, its cascades are fewer, its course even- 
 er, and at length beneath bending grasses, and simple 
 flowers, and ruffling shrubs, and over smooth shining 
 sand, it steals tranquilly on, undisturbed, beautiful, and 
 the cause of beauty on either bank. 
 
 Such is the seventh chapter of Romans, the soul in 
 the cleft rocks of the mountain gorge ; and such the eighth 
 chapter of Romans, the soul flowing deep in the fair 
 fields of heavenly joy. The experience of this seventh 
 chapter may often have been as deep and as wonderful in 
 the souls of men as in that of the Apostle ; but the expres- 
 sion of it has never been equal to his. 
 
 I DO not know of anything that vanity does not dese- 
 crate. I think the probe would scarcely reveal more 
 hideous results in the lusts themselves than in vanity. 
 Who would dare to pay that among those whom they
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 147 
 
 know there are not those whose sickness is a kind of ob- 
 lation to vanity ; a part of whose capital is how much 
 they suffer; and who, if you were to deny that they 
 suffer more than anybody else ever did suffer, would feel 
 that you were despoiling them of their legitimate tro- 
 phies ? Who would dare to say that in the circle of 
 their acquaintance there are not those whose bereave- 
 ments are oblations to vanity ; who take a vain pleasure 
 in being the objects of the attention of the neighborhood 
 for the hour, in seeing the preparations for the funeral, 
 in numbering the carriages, and in witnessing the sym- 
 pathy that is excited for them throughout the commu- 
 nity ? Who would dare to say that there might not be 
 cases in which, if it were their own child, there would be 
 a mingling of this heathenish feeling with their grief? 
 I tell you, if you sit down and look at your life in its real- 
 ity, you will find that there is not much poetry in it. The 
 poetry is given to clothe life so that it will not look as 
 hideous as it really is. 
 
 IF a man is living a true Christian life, and says of 
 himself, " I was convinced of my sinfulness in this sud- 
 den and most miraculous way," there is no reason why 
 you should not believe him. But if he should say to 
 another man who has not had such an experience, but 
 who is living a godly life, " You can scarcely have been 
 truly converted, because you had no such experience," 
 I would say to him, " You have no right to tyrannize by 
 your experience over another man. Your experience 
 may have been genuine ; but that is no reason why this 
 other man's experience was not genuine, though it was 
 different from yours." 
 
 We have no right (Q forget God's sovereignty, and
 
 148 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 limit Him, or our expectations, to this one way. Christ 
 entered Jerusalem by many gate?, not by one only. 
 The human heart has more gates than Jerusalem had ; 
 and God enters it by that gate which, in view of the age 
 and circumstances and condition of the person, it seems 
 to Him wisest to enter by. 
 
 IT is better that a man should be convicted of sin ter- 
 ribly than that he should be lost ; but a man ought to be 
 ashamed to be obliged to be swirled and sweltered in 
 heart and conscience before he will abandon that which 
 is evil, and take hold of that which is good. When a 
 man is in the wrong, how little it takes to make him 
 repent and go to the right, indicates how manly he is. 
 When a man is in the wrong, how much it takes to make 
 him repent and go toward the right, indicates how manly 
 he is. It is characteristic of a noble nature, that, the mo- 
 ment he has done an injustice to a neighbor, and he sees 
 it, he says, " I must put that man right." Why ? For 
 his own sake ? For the sake of his own reputation ? No. 
 He says, " There is something in my own manliness 
 which tells me that, having wronged that man, I must 
 right him " ; and he makes haste, he leaps with eagerness 
 to do it. A noble nature is always anxious, if he has 
 done wrong anywhere, to have it made known to him ; 
 and when it is made known to him, he is restless day and 
 night till the wrong is made right. 
 
 MANY persons are waiting for conviction. They are 
 desirous of becoming Christians, but they think they have 
 no right to discharge Christian duties until they have 
 gone through certain appointed steps of conviction. They 
 wish to be Christians, and to feel like a Christian, before
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 149 
 
 they live like a Christian. Is there a man who says, " If 
 I had been convicted and converted, and was a Christian, 
 I would live like a Christian ? " Begin to live like a 
 Christian ! that is more important than any preliminary 
 steps you could take. Do you think you would pray if 
 you were a Christian ? Pray now ! Do you think you 
 would instruct your children if you were a Christian ? 
 Instruct them now ! The very way to become a Christian 
 is to do Christian duty. "Would you praise God if you 
 were a Christian ? Praise Him now, then ! Do you 
 think you would talk to men of salvation if you were a 
 Christian ? Talk to men of salvation now ! The doing 
 of these things will make you a Christian. Being a 
 Christian is no mysterious thing. If you would feel like 
 a Christian, act like one, live like one. The way to 
 be a Christian is to do as the scholar does, go to study- 
 ing ; as the traveller does, start on the journey ; as the 
 workman does, take hold and work ; as the farmer 
 does, put in the spade and the plough. The way to 
 be a Christian is to let alone the thing that is wrong, and 
 take hold of the thing that is right. Go and pray for 
 faith. If you gain but little, do not be discouraged ; you 
 will gain more next time. Watch for it. Strive for it. 
 Make up your mind in the beginning that you are but a 
 child in these things. Say, "I am a beginner, and am 
 ignorant ; but I desire to learn, and I never will leave off 
 my efforts to become more and more enlightened. By 
 prayer and reading I will seek to know my duty ; and so 
 far as I know it, I will endeavor to perform it." If you 
 can say this truthfully, you need not be troubled about 
 the evidences of your Christianity ; they will take care 
 of themselves. Only let there be spring in the air, and 
 there will be crocuses under the fence, and violets in the
 
 150 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 garden ; and let the Sun of righteousness shine on the 
 willing soul, and ere long it will blossom with Christian 
 graces. And these will be the best evidence that. you 
 have been convicted, and are a Christian. And in all 
 your Christian career, never think of getting beyond that 
 state in which you will be under conviction of sin. 
 
 THERE are many who think they are Christians be- 
 cause they have had a wonderful conviction : not because 
 their lives are so good, not because they have such a 
 sensitive conscience, not because they perform their duty 
 as Christians with such fidelity ; but because they had a 
 wonderful conviction. If you sit down to talk with them, 
 they always go back to the time when they passed 
 through the Red Sea in coming out of Egypt. That on 
 which they base their hopes is the circumstance that 
 once they were slaves to the Egyptians, that God sent 
 Moses to bring them forth, that when pursued by the 
 thundering Egyptians God opened a clean path in the sea 
 through which they crossed to the other side, and that, 
 like the Israelites, they wandered forty years in the des- 
 ert afterwards ! Now, where a man's only faith is based 
 upon the fact that he felt bad once, you may be sure that 
 he will act bad all the rest of his life. A man is good 
 because, under the influence of God, he is living a right- 
 eous life. What your conviction was is of no account at 
 all ; it is the fruit of to-day that is of importance. 
 
 I SUPPOSE there never was an exactly pure and natu- 
 ral experience of mind in the world. Every experience, 
 every inspiration of genius, every conception of the artist, 
 every rapture of the poet, every impulse of the orator, is 
 imperfect, springs from an imperfect source, arises from an
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 151 
 
 unbalanced state. Therefore, I do not undertake to say 
 of any conviction of sin, that the circumstances attending 
 it were normal and necessary. But I do undertake to 
 say that men are suddenly overtaken by a sense of their 
 personal sinfulness, which almost absorbs their life from 
 its ordinary channels, which pervades them, which fills 
 them, which controls them, so that they sit as a man un- 
 der black clouds beneath Sinai, and pass out of that state 
 with triumph, up into a life of certainty and joy, their 
 after-life, consistent in divine holiness to the end, giving 
 witness that the first experience had in it benefit and 
 propriety. 
 
 WHEN a man organizes purely for this world, his 
 every step away from the life and spring of youth will be 
 apt to be a step away from enjoyment, and his old age 
 can scarcely be other than barren and miserable. 
 
 Ordinarily rivers run small at the beginning, grow 
 broader and broader as they proceed, and become widest 
 and deepest at the point where they enter the sea. It is 
 such rivers that the Christian's life is like. But the life 
 of the mere worldly man is like those rivers in Southern 
 Africa which, proceeding from mountain freshets, are 
 broad and deep at the beginning, and grow narrower and 
 more shallow as they advance. They waste themselves 
 by soaking into the sands, and at last they die out entire- 
 ly. The farther they run, the less there is of them. 
 
 MEN are afraid of extremes. They think the " golden 
 mean," as it is called, and oftentimes it is mean enough, 
 is the safest. It may be where the question is one of 
 mere expediency, where no moral principle is involved. 
 But where it is a mean that stands between right and
 
 152 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 wrong, where it is a mean that stands between honor 
 and dishonor, where it is a mean that stands between 
 courage and cowardice, where it is a mean that stands 
 between selfishness and benevolence, where it is a mean 
 that wants the benefits of both sides without the responsi- 
 bility of either, then it is a point of unmanliness. Zero 
 begins half way between right and wrong ; and when a 
 man is enthroned on zero in moral things, you may un- 
 derstand about where he is. He is in that point in which 
 changing the figure God is pleased to say to him, 
 " Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I 
 will spew thee out of my mouth." So much for a man's 
 popularity in heaven who takes the " golden mean " be- 
 tween moral extremes ! 
 
 IT is a small thing for that fool to walk across a cable 
 with the roar of Niagara under him; carrying some booby 
 like himself on his back, though ten thousand other fools 
 go to gape and stare at him. But for a man to walk 
 across the thread of daily life, carrying; not another fool, 
 but a soul with immortality in every faculty, potent, won- 
 derful in scope and power and susceptibility, so as to 
 keep it in balance, is not a small thing. 
 
 SINCE the earliest periods of which we have record, 
 the staple scepticism has arisen from the apparent unreg- 
 ulation of human affairs. Men have doubted whether 
 there were an observant God; whether He cared to 
 make distinction between virtue and vice in this life ; 
 whether by law and its inherent penalty, or by an active 
 interposition of His hand, He rewarded virtue and pun- 
 ished vice. 
 
 This arises from a total misconception of the relations
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 153 
 
 of this world to its work. This is not God's show-room, 
 but His workshop. It is not at all surprising that 
 rudeness and dust and confusion should prevail here. 
 If one should go to a watchmaker's, and look upon an 
 exquisite watch, should know the regularity of its pulsa- 
 tions, the exquisite framework and adjustment of every 
 part, the completeness and finish of the whole instrument, 
 would he be wise in saying, " The shop where this was 
 made must be rarely clean and exquisitely adjusted?" 
 Let him go back and search for its beginnings ; let him 
 see its beginnings; let him see the gold smelting; let 
 him listen to the clatter of hammers and files ; let him 
 see the confusion of much-used tools, the furnace, the 
 bellows, the vice, the anvil, and learn that infinite 
 apparent confusions may conspire together to the produc- 
 tion of perfect symmetries. While it was being made, 
 the wheels of the chronometer were separated ; were in 
 different degrees of finish ; were formed even in different 
 shops ; were brought together one by one, and fitted by 
 manifold plyings. And when each part had found its 
 place, the most difficult labor was yet to be done. Its 
 regulation and its adjustment for perfect time-keeping 
 are more difficult than the mere construction of its parts. 
 Thrust into an oven, it was left to throb in high degrees 
 of heat. Then, with sudden change, plunged into ice, it 
 was demanded of it with equal beats to measure time in 
 this opposite condition. Nor will the adjustment be com- 
 plete and the regulation perfect, until the instrument 
 bears itself substantially even and alike under all tem- 
 peratures, in all positions, and in all conceivable circum- 
 stances. How little would one, inexpert and ignorant, 
 looking upon the place where this watch-construction 
 proceeded, conceive of the admirable fitness of the instru- 
 7*
 
 154 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 mentalities to the work to be done ! How simple and 
 foolish is he who, seeing the watch without having seen 
 the shop, imagines that so much perfectness must needs 
 imply regulated harmony, cleanliness, beauty, in the in- 
 strumentation ! 
 
 The very idea of this life is that it is a place in which 
 to prepare men for perfectness in a life to come. Per- 
 fectness in the individual, still less perfectness in society, 
 is no part, apparently, of the Divine economy of this 
 world. The Great Artificer, we may hope, discerns, in 
 the conflict of passions, in the rudeness of violence, in the 
 attritions and raspings of men ; in hope, in despair, in 
 love, in hate ; in joy, in sorrow ; in yearnings, in disap- 
 pointments ; in bafflings, in victories ; but so many 
 influences which, working slowly, with seeming discon- 
 nection, and without obvious results here, are, neverthe- 
 less, shaping innumerable souls, to revolve in eternal 
 harmony and regularity in that sphere above all misrule, 
 above all rudeness and imperfection, where God's heart 
 beats time for the universe, and every living creature 
 throbs sympathetic. 
 
 IT is with men as it is with machinery. Everybody 
 that knows anything about machinery, knows that it 
 wastes faster when it is allowed to stand still, than when 
 it is worked, if it is worked right. If a watch stands 
 still a year, it wears out as much as it would in run- 
 ning properly two years. But where machinery runs 
 without oil, and squeaks and grinds, it gets hot, and wears 
 out speedily. Now anxiety is in human life just what 
 squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not 
 oiled. In life trust is the oil. Confidence in God is that 
 which lubricates life, so that industry and enterprise de-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 155 
 
 velop the things we ought to have, and do it in such a 
 way that they bring pleasure with them. 
 
 IT is no small thing for a man to have a rule in his 
 mind by which to judge every part of his life, even 
 though every part of his life may not always conform 
 to that rule. 
 
 If you have stood by the pilot of a ship, and watched 
 him as he steered it, you know that such is the build of 
 the ship, such is its equipoise, and such is the unequal 
 motion given to it by the waves and winds, that no man 
 can hold it exactly to its course. No sooner is it brought 
 into steering line than it is carried to the right or to the 
 left. One minute it is too far inland. The next minute 
 it is too far in the opposite direction. The pilot is 
 obliged to be constantly turning the wheel to meet the 
 various forces that oppose him. The steering of a ship 
 is marked by a succession of imperceptible zigzags ; a 
 man's life certainly is, whether a ship's steering is or 
 not ; but where the voyage is as wide as the breast of 
 the Atlantic, where it is the whole of our earthly exist- 
 ence, and where a man has a definite purpose which 
 constitutes his steering line, and he comes to that in the 
 end, it amounts to a straight voyage. 
 
 We see the same thing demonstrated in daily life. 
 We see supreme purposes which men have formed run- 
 ning through their whole career in this world. A young 
 man means to be a civil engineer. That is the thing to 
 which his mind is made up : not his father's mind, per- 
 haps, but his. He feels his adaptation to that calling, 
 and his drawings toward it. He is young, forgetful, in- 
 experienced, accessible to youthful sympathies, and is 
 frequently drawn aside from his life purpose. To-day he
 
 156 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 attends a picnic. Next week he devotes a day to some 
 other excursion. Occasionally he loses a day in conse- 
 quence of fatigue caused by overaction. Thus there is a 
 link knocked out of the chain of this week, and a link 
 knocked out of the chain of that week. And in the 
 course of the summer he takes a whole week, or a fort- 
 night, out of that purpose. Yet, there is the thing in his 
 mind, whether he sleeps or wakes. If you had asked 
 him a month ago what he meant to be in life, he would 
 have replied, "I mean to be a civil engineer." And if 
 you ask him to-day what has been the tendency of his 
 life, he will say, " I have been preparing myself to be a 
 civil engineer." If he waits and does nothing, the reason 
 is that he wants an opportunity to carry out his purpose. 
 That purpose governs his course, and he will not engage 
 in anything that would conflict with it. 
 
 Now, this sovereign purpose of a man to live for cer- 
 tain great moral principles and moral ends ; this sover- 
 eign purpose of a man to live for the eternal world ; this 
 realization by a man of God's existence and God's gov- 
 ernment ; this determination of a man to be governed by 
 God's law, this is itself a settling of the soul in a way 
 that lays the foundation for satisfaction and for peace. 
 It gives singleness, simplicity, sincerity, for these three 
 words cluster around the same central idea. It brings 
 the whole life to aim at one thing ; it brings the whole 
 mind under one government ; and however much the 
 separate parts may rebel, it yet holds a man to one direc- 
 tion, and reduces all tilings to simple tests of right or 
 wrong by a given and acknowledged standard; but as 
 age advances, victories are gained, education ripens into 
 fixed habits, the very conflict ceases, and the whole body 
 is full of light !
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 157 
 
 WHEN we come in contact with men we do not know 
 what they leave upon us. I have noticed that when spi- 
 ders spin their webs in bushes they leave none that you 
 can see at midday. But the next day the dew that has 
 lodged upon them reveals them, and then you can see 
 that the bushes were covered with them. And the influ- 
 ences which men exert upon you, you cannot see when 
 you receive them. It is only when they are subse- 
 quently revealed in your life that you become aware 
 of them. 
 
 I THINK that a man who is attempting to live a Chris- 
 tian life on one side, and a worldly life on the other, is 
 like a sick man who has made up his miud that what the 
 doctor says is all folly, and that, since he does not like 
 the medicine and regimen, he will do that which is most 
 agreeable to him. When the nurse and physician are 
 out, he steals into the pantry, and loads his stomach with 
 things aggravating to his disease. He deceives every- 
 body but Nature ; Nature is never deceived. You may 
 call food what you please, but if it is contrary to the law 
 of digestion, when the stomach takes it, Nature knows it. 
 You may call your course in life what you please, but 
 when your conscience takes it, and its effects are evolved, 
 its real character is disclosed. 
 
 SOME feel religious teaching because it falls upon a 
 certain sort of susceptibility ; but they are only suscepti- 
 ble, not soft. There are people who have ripples, but 
 never waves ; who have surface feelings, but never 
 depths of feeling. They never have deep convictions 
 or deep emotions ; yet they are alwaj^s shimmering and 
 moving. There are persons that are like farms that have
 
 158 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 only Lad surface-ploughing three or four inches deep, un- 
 der which is a hard pan through which neither root nor 
 moisture can break, so that what is planted thereon has 
 a sprinkling growth, and a meagre existence. 
 
 A MAN goes into a community that has been under 
 Puritan teaching for many years, and teaches what he 
 conceives to be a better doctrine. The people there are 
 living good lives, and after he has been among them a 
 short time, he says, " See the effect of my doctrine." It 
 is not the effect of his doctrine. These people were in- 
 doctrinated in right views before he came among them. 
 And righteousness is as hereditary as vice, and godly 
 men transmit moral qualities to their children and their 
 children's children. Therefore the character and ten- 
 dency of a new doctrine cannot be determined from what 
 can be seen of its effects within a single man's lifetime. 
 
 THOUGH you have a straight line of apostolic succes- 
 sors, if your work is poor, you are not in the line of suc- 
 cession ; and if your church does not make full-grown 
 men, it is not. I do not care anything about the line of 
 succession of my grapes, if my vineyard brings forth 
 better wine than your vineyard does. You may say that 
 yours came from those that Noah planted ; but they are 
 not so good as mine after all. For by their fruit ye 
 shall know them. And the test of all churches, as of all 
 orthodoxies, and all doctrines, and all usages, and all 
 governments, is this : What is their effect upon the gen- 
 erations of men ? 
 
 No princely fortune could be such a boon to a man 
 as a disposition or grace which should lead him to say,
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 159 
 
 " God is my Father ; I am heir with Christ of an eter- 
 nal inheritance ; and I cannot be poor, I cannot be for- 
 saken." How valiant a man is who can say that ! 
 
 WHAT is the essential idea of Puritanism ? It is this : 
 God, everlasting, sovereign, immutable, eternal ; God, 
 glorious in holiness, and fearful in praises ; God, the 
 whole heaven full of Him ; God, the whole earth full of 
 Him ; God in the past and God in the abounding ages of 
 the future; God the universal Father, and man, God's 
 child! O, the dignity, the power, the glory, the sacred- 
 ness that there is in every individual man's life, the mo- 
 ment you fill the heavens, the earth, and all time, full 
 of God, and take every single living creature, and 
 say, " Each creature born is God's child ! " How it 
 makes every man more massive than kingdoms ! How it 
 makes every man's conscience more authoritative ! What 
 breadth it gives to the conception of the individual ! That 
 is the reason why Puritanism always goes toward liberty. 
 In Switzerland it did ; in the land of the Huguenots it 
 did ; in old Scotland it did ; in New England it did. 
 
 THERE has been a great deal of dispute as to whether 
 men should say their prayers extemporaneously, or pre- 
 compose them, and read them. That question is alto- 
 gether secondary. It makes no difference whether the 
 service is of one shape or another shape. The question 
 is, What is the spirit in which it is administered ? Is it 
 for the sake of supplying men, or for the sake of teaching 
 men to supply themselves ? Is it for the sake of bringing 
 men's hearts into bondage to forms and ceremonies, or for 
 the sake of organizing independency in the hearts of 
 men ? Many churches are like conservatories, in which
 
 160 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 the members are like a flower in a flower-pot. There it 
 is in the flower-pot, and it cannot get out. And little 
 sticks are put down beside it to keep it in a particular 
 position. And every branch that attempts to go beyond 
 a given point is instantly snipped off, in order that the 
 flower may assume an ideal shape. And the members 
 of many churches are like geraniums trained for show, 
 tied up, and constrained in root and branch and stem. 
 There are thousands of people in churches that sit around 
 in their respective rows, and take whatever nourishment 
 is dealt out to them, and grow in just the shape that is 
 prescribed for them by those that have them in charge, 
 and have no voice in determining what kind of a struct- 
 ure shall be made of them. 
 
 WE speak of the crucifixion of our passions. In one 
 sense, so far as a sinful indulgence of them is concerned, 
 they are to be crucified and slain ; but in no other sense 
 are they to be slain. We are to use them so that there 
 will be no need of crucifying them. For there is not one 
 primary desire or appetite in the human system that was 
 put there to be taken out again. Everything that is in 
 a man was put in him for no other reason than because 
 it was necessary to the symmetry of the whole ; and the 
 attempt to crucify any of our normal, lawful desires, is an 
 attempt to mutilate God's perfect work. We hare a 
 right to every one of our appetites and passions ; and 
 that, not for suppression, but for use, so that we use them 
 in subordination to the higher moral sentiments and af- 
 fections. 
 
 THE world is full of imbecile men whose parents' pride 
 or vanity was such that they would not allow them to do
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 161 
 
 the things which they were fitted to do, and who try to 
 do what they never had a function for. Their life is one 
 long failure, and they are forever complaining because 
 life is so misadjusted. 
 
 THERE are many children that are brought up with 
 care and assiduity, who, when they are deprived of the 
 sustaining influences of their parent*, seem bankrupted; 
 and, on the other hand, there are many children that are 
 brought up without any care or foresight, who make 
 splendid men. And people say, " There is no use of 
 family government." The first example does not prove 
 that family government tends to the destruction of chil- 
 dren. The parents took care of their children, and would 
 not let them take care of themselves. They did not give 
 them the idea that they could take care of themselves. 
 They did not teach them not to need to be taken care of. 
 They would not let them stand alone. They were afraid 
 that if they put them on their feet they would run away, 
 and so they did not put them on their feet. They were 
 afraid that if they allowed them to use their hands they 
 would do mischief, and so they kept them tied. The 
 consequence was that when they were eighteen, or nine- 
 teen, or twenty years of age, just at that critical period 
 when reaction is most apt to come ; just at that critical 
 period when the child passes from boyhood to manhood ; 
 just at that critical period when the parent throws the 
 child on his own responsibility, the consequence was 
 that then these children did not know how to stand, or 
 walk, or take care of themselves, and they went to the 
 devil! And people said, " That is what comes of Chris- 
 tian teaching. That is the way the children of religious 
 parents turn out." 
 
 K
 
 162 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 On the other hand, how was it in the other case, in 
 which people seemed to neglect their children entirely, 
 and in which, notwithstanding this, the children turned 
 out well ? The parents neglected the children in some 
 things, but in some things they conformed to God's funda- 
 mental law of letting every man take care of himself to 
 the extent of his ability. The influence of the neglect 
 was therefore superficial. The parents were practising 
 self-reliance, and the children, gaining confidence from 
 their example, practised it also. The consequence was 
 that the children, when the parents died, or when they 
 went out from under the parental roof, knew how to 
 stand on their own root, and were saved. 
 
 Do not go back to monkish days, and take on ascetic 
 ideas of religion. If you will go back, go back to the 
 Jewish times, where men worshipped largely in festivities ; 
 where, when they came to the temple, they came with 
 such outbursts of pleasure, such uproarious rejoicings, 
 that the writers who described the tumult which pre- 
 vailed on such occasions, spoke of it as the sound of 
 mighty thunderings, and the voice of many waters. The 
 Jews were cheerful. They had not much mirth, but they 
 had great hilarity. The Old Testament is full of cheer- 
 fulness, of buoyancy, and commands to it. 
 
 MANY persons suppose that when a man becomes con- 
 verted, he of necessity becomes solemn. They suppose 
 that a Christian is like a man who is looking in a dark 
 pit all the time. They think that there must have been 
 a mistake made in the creation of the mind. But God, 
 when He, in infinite creative wisdom, looked round about 
 and selected the traits for the human soul, salient, mag-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 163 
 
 nificcnt among them He put imagination, which is in the 
 mind what a diamond is upon the bosom, sparkling and 
 throwing its light upon every side. And when He put 
 imagination there, He meant that it should sparkle. 
 And wit, with its concomitants of humor, mirth, and 
 conviviality in intellectual things, was likewise placed in 
 the mind by Divine intention ; as was also hope. And 
 these three traits hope, wit, and imagination go to 
 constitute what we call the buoyant temperament. But it 
 is supposed by many that while a man is a worldling, 
 while he makes no profession of religion, he may laugh, 
 and carry himself gayly, and sparkle in this direction and 
 in that, and indulge in his quips and witty sayings, and be 
 a radiant, entertaining man ; but that when he becomes 
 convicted of sin, and converted, he must put a snuffer 
 over the imagination, shut the door on mirthfulness, and 
 repress all those elements which give hilarity or gayety to 
 life. They think that when a man becomes a Christian, 
 he must be constantly under the influence of veneration 
 and of awe, and that he must think of nothing but the 
 solemnity of the cause that he has espoused, and of his 
 awful responsibility before God. 
 
 Now, God wants the whole soul. If He had not 
 wanted your wit, He would not have put it into you. 
 If He had not wanted your imagination, He would not 
 have put that into you. If He had wanted no stars in 
 the firmament, no stars would have been there. If there 
 is a flower in the world, God wants that flower. If there 
 is a tree on the earth, He wants that tree. And if there 
 is a trait in the human mind, He wants that trait. You 
 may abuse it ; you may employ it in infelicitous ways ; 
 but that has to do with the question of regulation and ed- 
 ucation. I aver that the perfect man is the man that has
 
 164 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 developed all the radiant, joy-breeding, and joy-dispers- 
 ing traits of his nature. It is a shame to let these traits 
 go to the hands of the adversaries, and exclude them 
 from Christianity. 
 
 " EVEN Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
 one of these." I know he never was ; nor has anybody 
 else ever been ; nor will anybody ever be. I can show 
 one apple-tree that puts to shame all the men and women 
 that have attempted to dress since the world began. 
 
 A MAN has lived in a cellar, where he has been a poor, 
 dungeoned creature, striving to live a life which was pro- 
 longed death itself. At last, he goes up one story ; and 
 then one story higher ; and then one story higher ; and 
 he continues to go up little by little, till by and by it 
 seems to him that there must be some place where it is 
 lighter. He keeps on exploring and going up for a time 
 longer, and finally reaches the roof. There he beholds 
 the heavens over his head, and the sun in the east, and 
 he is entranced with amazement by the glory of the 
 things which surround him. And yet, every single day 
 during his existence, and for countless ages, the heavens 
 have hung above the earth, the sun has shone forth in 
 splendor, and the other creations which astonish his vision 
 have been beheld by men. For forty years he has been in 
 the cellar, and now that he has come up where he can see 
 them, it seems to him that they have now appeared for 
 the first time, because he sees them for the first time. 
 
 So it is with the disclosures of the love of God in 
 Chirst Jesus to Christians. They think that the time 
 when they first realize that love, is the time when it is 
 first shed upon them. But as God pours abroad infinite
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 165 
 
 breadths of His Being without an eye except His own to 
 behold them, so He spreads over our heads an unknown, 
 an unmeasured, and an immeasurable love, waiting for 
 our recognition, but in nowise depending upon it. I 
 know of nothing that is calculated to give more hope to 
 the Christian in the midst of his discouragements, than 
 this feeling, namely, " I am not to be saved because I 
 am so good, but because God is so good." 
 
 IT is argued by some that men will take advantage of 
 the love of God. No, not men. You must get some oth- 
 er name for those lazar-house creatures that are capable 
 of doing that. 
 
 If I were greatly in want of money, and I went for 
 aid to an old, usurious, miserly man, who hated to give, 
 and only gave for a consideration, and scolded when he 
 gave, I do not know but I should take a little comfort in 
 pestering him. I suppose there is a little relish of tor- 
 ment which every one feels in dealing with such a man. 
 I presume I should enjoy going to him and getting out of 
 him all I could. But if I went for aid to a man of a kind 
 and generous nature, the case would be different. I get 
 into trouble, and go to such a man, when he meets me 
 with a face bathed in smiles, and says, "You have come 
 again to give me the pleasure of assisting you." I say, 
 " I have liabilities to the amount of ten pounds, which I 
 am unable to meet." " What ! is that all ? " he exclaims, 
 and gives me twenty. I attempt to express my obliga- 
 tions to him, when he says, " Not at all, not at all " ; 
 and shoves me out of his house. As I start to go away, 
 he says, " I shall see you again ; I shall get another 
 chance at you ; I shall have more pleasure out of you ! " 
 By and by I go to him again, hanging my head, when his
 
 166 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 first words to me are, " Ah ! your pocket is empty and 
 your head is down. Come iii ! come in ! You cannot 
 get away so easily." And again he gives me the money 
 I need. At length I get into deeper trouble. Sickness 
 enters my family, and my means run out. In my distress 
 I go to him once more. The moment he sees me, he 
 says, " What ! spent your money so soon ? I declare, I 
 do not know but I shall have to make you my son. I 
 must look after your affairs. I see you cannot attend to 
 them yourself." He sweeps away my debts, and supplies 
 my present wants, and urges me to call on him whenever 
 I find myself pressed for means. Now suppose I say, 
 when I get by myself, " This old fellow is so kind and 
 good that I can practise on him, and I will take advan- 
 tage of his kindness and goodness," what ought I to 
 be baptized ? Toad ? snake ? No, I will not so slander 
 savage animals ! I ought to be baptized devil! 
 
 THERE is something unspeakably affecting to me in the 
 thought of what may I call it ? the solitude of Di- 
 vine love for men, and its patient continuance in God 
 without consciousness on our part. There is something 
 sweet in interpreting the nature of God from the family. 
 Now, who can tell the sum of the thoughts which the 
 mother bestows on the child.? All through his infancy 
 he is scarcely out of her mind. She watches him as he 
 sleeps in the cradle. She wakes at night to go and see 
 if all is safe in the room where he is. All day long, as 
 he plays, her eyes are upon him, to see that no harm 
 comes to him. And all through his boyhood her love 
 and care surround him. And yet he is unconscious of 
 most of her solicitude concerning him. He knows that 
 she loves him, but he only feels the pulsations of her
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 167 
 
 love once in a while. I think we never know the love 
 of the parent for the child till we become parents. I 
 think that when we first bend over our own cradle God 
 throws back the temple door, and reveals to us the sa- 
 credness and mystery of a father's and a mother's love to 
 us. And I think that in later years, when they have 
 gone from us, there is always a certain sorrow that we 
 cannot tell them that we have found it out. I think that 
 one of the deepest experiences of a noble nature in refer- 
 ence to loved ones that have passed beyond this world, is 
 the thought of what he might have been to them, and 
 what he might have done for them, if he had known, 
 while they were living, what he has learned since they 
 died. 
 
 Now, when I think of the love of Christ, and the love 
 of God in Christ, overhanging my life ; when I think of 
 the long period during which I had no conception of that 
 love ; when I think of the long period during which I 
 resisted and struggled against it ; when I think that 
 during these long periods God, unchanged and unchange- 
 able, brooded over me and yearned for me without my 
 knowing it, when I think of these things, they are in- 
 expressibly affecting to me. And, moreover, they bring 
 the nature of God into such reality and form that I feel 
 that I can comprehend Him and worship Him. 
 
 Not only does God think of us constantly, and love us 
 steadfastly, but there is a healing, curative nature forever 
 outworking from the Divine mind upon ours, although 
 we may not cooperate voluntarily with His will. My 
 impression is that all those moral tendencies we feel, all 
 those yearnings we have, are the crying out of the soul 
 for God, under the influence and ministration of His love 
 to us. I think that every throb of our spirits that an-
 
 168 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 swers to spiritual things is caused by the influence of 
 God. We are attracted by Him, though we may not be 
 conscious of it. As the child that is sent away from 
 home to school, under circumstances such that it does not 
 know its friends, gets home-sick, and sobs, and cries for 
 brothers and sisters, and father and mother ; so there are 
 many home-sick men who feel in themselves strange 
 yearnings for they know not what. It is their soul cry- 
 ing out for God because He is working upon them by the 
 power of His thought and love, only they do not know 
 its language. 
 
 And that is not all. It seems to me we have testi- 
 mony in the workings of the providence of God in the 
 experiences of our daily life, that God's love is still shed 
 upon us, although we may be unconscious of it. I recol 
 lect to have read the case of a man in a city of southern 
 Europe who spent his life in getting property, and 
 became unpopular among his fellow-citizens on account 
 of what seemed to them his miserly spirit. When his 
 will was read after his death, it stated that he had been 
 poor, and had suffered from a lack of water, that he had 
 seen the poor of the city also suffering from a lack of 
 water, and that he had devoted his life to the accumu- 
 lation of means sufficient to build an aqueduct to bring 
 water to the city, so that forever afterwards the poor 
 should be supplied with it. It turned out that the man 
 whom the poor had cursed till his death, had been labor- 
 ing to provide water for the refreshment of themselves 
 and their children. Oh ! how God has been building an 
 aqueduct to bring the water of life to us, He not inter- 
 preting His acts, and we not understanding them ! 
 
 IP you had gone to Wesley's room, when John and
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 1G9 
 
 Charles met in the University, and Whitfield and others 
 met with them, and looked upon this handful of men who 
 were derided as the offscouring of the earth in their day, 
 would you have suspected what a fair fabric was to arise 
 through their humble instrumentality? You never would 
 have dreamed of it. For God seemed to be everywhere 
 but with them. No flaming chariot came down to them, 
 no silver trumpet sounded before them ; no messengers 
 from heaven led them ; no angel choirs sang to them as 
 they sang to shepherd ears when Christ came. They 
 were poor, hated, bemobbed men. It was on that very 
 account that they became the men they did. The same 
 elements were with them which accompanied the advent 
 of the Babe of Bethlehem. For whenever Christ is born 
 into the world, He comes in as when He was first born. 
 He came in at the bottom ; He came in through a manger, 
 with the poor standing round about Him ; and whoever, 
 professing the name of Christ, comes in in any other way 
 is a thief and a robber. 
 
 WHEN a simple child is by his father first taken out to 
 sea, and the storm arises, and terrible waves run in upon 
 the ship, and winds smite it, and it reels and careens, and 
 the groaning timbers strain, and the sails and cordage fill 
 the air with clack and clamor, the child is sure that safety 
 is at an end, and that destruction is upon them ; and he 
 is amazed to see the captain, his father, going about 
 sternly resolute, but without quailing; the man at the 
 helm calm, watchful, but not afraid ; and the sailors alert 
 and hearty in obedience. After a while, the child begins 
 to gather confidence, too ; not so much because he sees 
 how they are to be kept safely, for every time he looks 
 over the side of the vessel his fear takes possession of 
 
 8
 
 170 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 him again, as by the conviction that his father knows 
 how to save them, if he does not see how. He puts con- 
 fidence in him. Instead of trusting in his own sense, in 
 this matter of danger, he trusts in this being who seems 
 now to him almost superhuman. And we praise the child 
 for doing so. We admire in the child those qualities 
 which lead him to have such confidence in his father 
 as to rebuke his own senses. And we think that such 
 distrust of one's own inexperience, and confidence in 
 another's experience, is not only heroic, but almost di- 
 vine. It is in a child ; and it is in everybody, if it be 
 exercised toward One that holds the same relation to 
 him that the child's father does to the child. 
 
 IP you look in detail into the history of the Puritans it 
 seems hard that they should have been treated with such 
 contempt as was heaped upon them. "Well, it depends 
 upon what was to be made of them. If it was desired to 
 make puff-balls of them ; if it was desired to make imbe- 
 ciles of them ; if it was desired to swell out their skin 
 with fatness, and put them into the high places of the 
 earth as idols, and worship them, and make them the re- 
 cipients of passing enjoyment, then the worst things that 
 could have befallen them, were the things which befell 
 the old Puritans. But when a man wants to make a 
 sword, he does not deal with it as you would deal with a 
 baby that you wanted to soothe. He takes the ore, and 
 plumps it into a red-hot furnace, and melts it, and takes 
 it out, and puts it back again, and stews it over, and 
 subjects it to a series of other purifying processes, and at 
 last it comes out steel. Then he puts it under a trip- 
 hammer, which smites it as if the thunder were kissing it, 
 until every particle that flies off from it is like a spark
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 171 
 
 of fire. Then it is good to make swords that will stand 
 in the day of battle. It must go through fire and water 
 if you would have it make a sword that will not betray 
 you in the hour of trial. And when God made the 
 Puritans, he made them as we make swords. And I 
 tell you, they were swords of God. And men that pulled 
 them out of their scabbards wished they could push them 
 back again ! 
 
 IT does me good, sometimes, to see all things going 
 just right, and everybody crying about them ! It does 
 me good to see things moving forward with God at the 
 helm, and everybody offering prayers, and burning wax 
 candles, and making vows, and telling what they will do 
 if they can be saved ! It does me good to see men racing 
 about as if all creation was after them, and they were on 
 the point of being devoured by dragons ! It does me 
 good to see men who profess to be Christians ; who ac- 
 cept every one of the thirty-nine articles of faith, and 
 would accept forty-nine if it were necessary ; who are all 
 the time talking about God and heaven ; who are all the 
 time singing such hymns as " When I can read my title 
 clear " ; who are active in prayer-meetings, delightful in 
 revivals, charming in conference-meetings ; who are very 
 devout and trusting on Sunday, it does me good^o see 
 such men, the moment they get into Monday or Tuesday, 
 and hear the least rustle in the heavens, forget Bible, and 
 prayers, and hymns, and God, and eternity, and ask, 
 " Where is my chest ? where are my customers ? where 
 are my prospects ? where are my notes ? where is my 
 prosperity ? " When men look after God, they generally 
 look in the way in which their real god is ; and when I 
 see men in times of trouble running after worldly things
 
 172 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 instead of looking to God, I say to myself, " These are 
 your idols ; these are what you believe in." Let them 
 take counsel of such things, if they will. 
 
 But, are we to be among that puling crew ? Are we 
 to be children of fear, we that are descendants of men 
 who lived without sight, purely by faith ; who steered 
 through stormy seas and ages, with faces turned upward ; 
 who were wise toward earth, because they were wise to- 
 ward heaven ? Are we to be degenerate children of such 
 ancestors, and to quake with fear lest God shall now 
 abandon or forget His own purposes, or let go the inter- 
 ests that are as dear to Him as the apple of His eye ? 
 I am ashamed of anybody that is afraid. Let us sing 
 when other people cry ; and laugh when other people 
 scowl ; and walk elastic when other people trudge with 
 lead in their shoes. For men that have lead in their 
 shoes generally have'it in their head, too! It is not for 
 us to be without hope and comfort. It is for us to ask, 
 " Which way is righteousness going, which way is justice 
 going, which way is humanity going, which way is truth 
 going, which way is social purity going, which way is 
 love going, among a great people ? " I do not care which 
 way the earth is going. I want to take my direction 
 from God's brightest constellations, and steer by them. 
 
 No man would suspect what the kitchen was from the 
 banquet ; and certainly no man would suspect what the 
 banquet was from the kitchen. No man seeing the dye- 
 vat, would suspect what the finished silk was; and no 
 man seeing the finished silk, would suspect where it came 
 from. And the peace and prosperity of the world come 
 from causes in which, when you look at them, you see no 
 prophecy of their results ; because God, working in the
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 173 
 
 great sphere of the universe, and in the vast sweep of 
 time, by so many instrumentalities, and instrumentalities 
 of such largeness working in one century for the next, 
 and in that for the next outruns the proportions of our 
 working and our following. But if you go back and look 
 at past ages, you shall find that those things which have 
 seemed the most prosperous, have been the least so ; and 
 that those things which have seemed the most disastrous, 
 have been the most prolific of good. 
 
 IP men begin to preach the gospel in its relations to a 
 better state of society, if men begin to apply the Gospel to 
 questions of war, questions of slavery, questions of usury, 
 questions of national intercommunication, people start 
 back, and say, " The Gospel was ordained for the salva- 
 tion of men's souls ; and you are going out of your way 
 when you preach of these extrinsic things." The pub- 
 lishers of religious books publish those which are for the 
 conviction and the conversion of men, for their souls' sal- 
 vation, and let all other questions alone. It is right that 
 they should publish such books ; but the implication that 
 the only end of the Gospel in this world is to be a 
 wrecker's boat, to be sent out to a ship rolling dismasted 
 on the tempestuous sea, and take off those that are in 
 danger, the crew, and save them, is not right. While it 
 is a boat sent to a ship rolling dismasted on the sea, it is 
 to save both the ship and the crew. It is the design of 
 the .Gospel to bring the .old ship into port, to rig her 
 again, and to send her out with crew after crew, and 
 maintain her on the water, and not let her founder nor 
 go down. Or, to drop the figure, the Gospel of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, while it has a special reference to the con- 
 dition of each generation, has also a comprehensive refer-
 
 174 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 ence to the condition of successive generations of the 
 world, from the earliest periods down to the dawn of that 
 millennial day in which the race, regenerated, shall yet 
 stand. The Gospel contemplates something more glori- 
 ous than the mere individual salvation of men from 
 period to period ; it contemplates the salvation of the 
 world, as well as of individual generations of the world. 
 And while it does possess an individual application to 
 each class and period, while it does seek to convict and 
 convert men, and build them up as far as it can in their 
 day, it has a larger purpose, the augmentation of future 
 world-character. The Gospel, then, is to save, not indi- 
 viduals alone, but the race ; and to save them, not by 
 plucking them out of the world from generation to gener- 
 ation, but by making each successive generation higher, 
 and stronger, and nobler, until the world shall be like a 
 bride dressed for her wedding, that God, the Husband, 
 may embrace it and lead it to the bridal altar. The par- 
 tial idea, glorious as it is, becomes narrow when you 
 compare it with the fulness of the whole. I think the 
 salvation of each individual generation is a work worthy 
 of the blood of the Saviour, and of His death ; but for 
 the race to be disenthralled, and enabled to stand amid 
 the waves and storms of time, that is more glorious 
 yet And that is the Scriptural ideal. 
 
 GOD is united to us, and we are united to Him, not by 
 any form of matter, not by physical conjunction or con- 
 tiguity, but by the intersphering of soul-life. It is that 
 which knits us to Him. Our thoughts reach out and 
 thread themselves to His thoughts, and thus bring us 
 toward Him. 
 
 Hence, God's union with men is not a shadow, is not a
 
 110 YAL TRUTHS. 175 
 
 figure, is not a dream : it is the statement of a fact as 
 literal as any law in nature. The union of sunlight with 
 vegetables is not more real. The flow of nourishing sap 
 in fruits is not more literal than the interfusion and soul- 
 union of God's soul with men's. 
 
 What a wonderful and glorious doctrine is this, that 
 the soul of God touches the soul of man ! As there is 
 no babe cradled and rocked that has not its mother, in 
 the ordinary course of life, to overhang it by night and 
 by day, to kiss it as it sleeps, and to cover it with smiles 
 and caresses when it wakes ; so every creature that is 
 born into life has a God whose ever-watchful soul broods 
 tenderly over it by day and by night, and who inter- 
 spheres it in His own radiant thought and feeling. 
 
 CHRIST was not so much with His disciples when 
 wearing a human body, and walking with them, as after 
 His ascension. He did not go so much away from them 
 when taken into heaven, as He had done while on earth. 
 He had been separated from them, as it were, in the body. 
 The spirit has its poorest chance in this world, where it 
 has to work through an untransparent body. And it was 
 needful that He should be taken up, that He might con- 
 summate that spiritual union which was possible to a less 
 degree in the body than out of the body. 
 
 The eye, the ear, the hand, cannot connect us with 
 each other ; for although we gaze, although we listen, al- 
 though we clasp electric hands, it is something within the 
 flesh to which the eye makes its report, to which the ear 
 makes its report, to which every sense makes its report. 
 Every man is conscious of something inside that is not of 
 the body. It is the soul that finds the soul. It is spirit 
 that recognizes spirit. Inward spiritual uuity is first;
 
 176 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and the unity of sense is but its representative or symbol. 
 The only substantial union of affection is that which 
 comes from the touching of soul with soul. It is invisi- 
 ble and spiritual. 
 
 Christ ascended is nearer to the world, more apprehen- 
 sible, and more at one with the soul of every believer, 
 than if He stood clothed in a body, visibly, before men. 
 It was needful, perhaps, for the disciple, that Christ 
 should disappear from the sense, in order to reappear to 
 his inward life and spirit. 
 
 WHAT is the doctrine of 'the Holy Ghost ? It is the 
 doctrine of the interworking of the Spirit of God upon 
 the souls of men. I have no philosophy about it. All I 
 say is this : that God knows what is the secret way in 
 which mind reaches mind. I do not, you do not. I 
 do not know why words on my tongue wake up thoughts 
 corresponding to those words in you. I do not know 
 why the soul of man, like a complex instrument of won- 
 drous scope, is played upon by my words, so that there 
 are waked up in it notes along the whole scale of being. 
 I do not understand why these things are so, but un- 
 questionably they are so. I do not know how the mother 
 pours her affection on the child's heart; but she does. 
 Two stars never shone into each other as two loving 
 souls shine into each other. I know it is so, but I do not 
 know why it is so. I do not know how soul touches soul, 
 how thought touches thought, or how feeling touches feel- 
 ing ; but I know it does. 
 
 Now that which we see in the lower departments of 
 life, that which exists between you and your friends, 
 and me and my friends, that I take, and by my imagi- 
 nation I lift it up into the Divine nature, and give it
 
 ROYAJ. TRUTHS. 177 
 
 depth and scope and universality ; and then I have some 
 conception of the doctrine of God's Spirit poured upon 
 the human soul. 
 
 THE moment a man's heart touches the heart of Christ 
 in living faith, he becomes, whether he knows it or not, 
 the brother of every other, in heaven or on earth, who 
 has come into the same relationship with Christ. Who- 
 ever is united to Christ, is brother or sister to everybody 
 else that is united to Him. 
 
 THE whole brotherhood of Christian men, in all the 
 earth, that now live, are mine. And in this great house- 
 hold there is to the soul no division such as, from the 
 weaknesses and imperfections of life, exists in external 
 matters. Every good man is, so far, of my faith. Every 
 Christian man is therefore mine, simply because lie is 
 Christ's. I am Christ's, though most unworthy, 
 and He is mine. Wonderful, that my lips should be per- 
 mitted to say that I own God! Nor would I say it if it 
 had not been said, " All things are yours." I would not 
 say it if it had not been said that I was heir with Christ, 
 because He became my brother. I would not dare to say 
 it if these things had not been said. But now I dare go to 
 God, unabashed and undaunted, and say to Him, " Since 
 I am thine, whatever thou ownest in man throughout the 
 universe, I own. All men are indeed mine. I am 
 united to them. I am related to everything that has got 
 my nature and thine." 
 
 I wish I knew more of them. It comforts me to be- 
 lieve that the silent ones are sometimes as rich as the 
 noisiest ones, that the unfruitful in outward things are 
 contributing to the nations more than external labor. 
 8* L
 
 178 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 There are men in dungeons that the world could not do 
 without. You know the dungeon is the oracle of God, 
 and speaks most precious things to men. The best things 
 that ever came into this world came when Christ was 
 riven, and immortal life flowed out ; and men are riven, 
 and immortal truths and examples flow out. 
 
 THERE is a most unutterable gladness and sweetness 
 in singing together. We are so much under the domin- 
 ion of the body yet, that in prayers, where there is the 
 silent accompanying by thousands of the utterances of 
 one voice, there seems less indication of this union than 
 in singing. I never see my congregation singing, that I 
 do not feel, " There at last goes the breath of their soul 
 and mine ; and that hymn is the chariot that is taking us 
 together up before the throne of God." 
 
 THE process of being born again is like that which 
 a portrait goes through under the hand of the artist. 
 When a man is converted, he is but the outline sketch of 
 a character which he is to fill up. He first lays in the 
 dead coloring. Then comes the work of laying in the 
 colors ; and he goes on, day after day, week after week, 
 month after month, and year after year, blending them, 
 and heightening the effect. It is a life's work; and 
 when he dies he is still laying in and blending the colors, 
 and heightening the effect. And if men suppose the 
 work is done when they are converted, why should we 
 expect anything but lopsided Christian characters ? 
 
 ALL men that have had a noble ancestry feel a joyful 
 sympathy with them. We like to trace our name, even 
 if it ends in some honest farmer. We like to know our
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 179 
 
 origin. We like to go to the mountain and find the very 
 hole in the rock from which the spring spirts, whether 
 we are the river or the morass ! We are fond of tracing 
 
 O 
 
 our ancestry, if it have glory, and if it have none. It 
 gives us pleasure to trace our forefathers to colonial days, 
 and to the Mayflower, that ark of the covenant for 
 America. Moses earned the ark through the sands; 
 our fathers carried it through the waves. 
 
 We love to trace our ancestry to early houses and 
 families in England. We love to trace it to Huguenot or 
 Hebrew blood. Neither is this vain or foolish. It may 
 become so through abuse, but it is not so of necessity. 
 It is right. A man may take something from the -loom 
 of the past to cover the nakedness of the present with. 
 
 But mere bodily ancestry is the lowest form of a great 
 truth. The soul gives relationship. All who have lived, 
 i\nd, by God's help, poured their life as a soul-wine forth 
 for the refreshment of the world, are my ancestors, my 
 relations. All the patriarchs are mine. Not to the Jew 
 alone are Abraham and Isaac aud Jacob ; but to every 
 man that knows how to feel like them, and revere them. 
 All judges of Israel ; all prophets and holy priests ; all 
 religious kings and patriotic men ; all apostles, ministers, 
 and confessors ; all holy men of the cloister, in ages 
 when the cloister benefited society ; the heroes of dun- 
 geons and scaffolds ; the witnesses for liberty in every 
 age, and everywhere, these men seem to us dim and 
 shadowy ; but we love to go back and make them more 
 substantial. We love to search those long forgotten, and 
 give them resurrection, and claim them as our own. I 
 go back to them with fervent joy. Their blood is mine. 
 It beats in me ; for the blood of Christ it is that makes 
 of one blood all good men on earth. I am blood-kindred 
 to all that have been blood-sprinkled from on high.
 
 180 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 I do not know how much this seems to you. That de- 
 pends upon circumstances. If you are aS hard as a ten- 
 penny nail, and have no more heart than that, probably 
 it is not much. You may be a nail, and that in a sure 
 place ; but to any one that has any considerable imagina- 
 tion, and any considerable enthusiasm of affection, I think 
 it will be a source of great comfort and joy. I, for one, 
 would not for anything give up my heritage in the past. 
 I ask no roses, I ask no titles, I ask no estates, except 
 the revenues which my own heart can bring forth of 
 sympathy and inspiration and joy from the past. To 
 every man that ever did a noble deed, to every man that 
 ever thought a noble thought, to every man that ever 
 achieved a noble purpose, to every man that ever dared 
 to suffer for the right, to every man that ever laid down 
 his life for truth, I am related. I am related to all that 
 is good in the past. 
 
 I DO not distinguish men one from another merely by 
 the difference of their thought-power. Still less do I 
 distinguish them by the difference of their executive 
 power. There must be a deeper gauge than these. Still 
 less do I distinguish them by their external differences, 
 as where one is high and another is low ; where one is 
 rich and another is poor ; where one is wise and another 
 is unwise. The point where true manhood resides is in 
 the neighborhood of love. In the copiousness, the vari- 
 ety, the endlessness, the sweetness and the purity of the 
 element of love, you shall find the measure that God 
 applies, discriminating between one and another. 
 
 As I sat and looked to-day at the meadows and at the 
 trees, I thought within myself, " What message have they
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 181 
 
 for me of ray -God, and from my God ? " And all day long 
 1 have felt that'never was there such an interpretation of 
 munificence ; that never was there anything that so indi- 
 cated what it was to give without money and without 
 price, to give out of a nature whose spontaneity is 
 generous, profuse, magnificent. 
 
 As, in wandering from one thing to another, I looked 
 at the freshness of nature, and the multitude of her chil- 
 dren, those hidden in coverts, those under dark, cool 
 rocks, those laid in where mosses are, those growing in 
 the broad fields, those springing up under the shadow of 
 forest trees, and those suspended upon their boughs iii 
 the air, as I looked at all these things, I found I could 
 scarcely estimate in one square yard where I sat, how 
 many notes God had rung, how many thoughts He had 
 bestowed, how much care He had lavished, how much 
 power He had exerted, and how much wisdom He had 
 displayed. And there came to my mind such a sense of 
 God's overruling providence and presence, as has made 
 the whole day one of unexampled sweetness to me. 
 There was not a single bird that I had time to hear, or 
 rather that I was awake to hear, for you must wake 
 early or you cannot hear the birds sing in chorus. From 
 four to five o'clock is the time for family prayer, and 
 they always have congregational singing then ! If you 
 miss that, you will not hear anything like it during the 
 whole day, although during the whole day there is not 
 an hour in which they are silent, there was not a single 
 bird that I heard that did not direct my thoughts to God. 
 And all through the day, in the singing of the birds, in 
 the blossoming of the trees, on the broad green sward, 
 along the* sides of the walls, skirting the edges of the wood- 
 lands, through the glades, in the air, on the earth, every-
 
 182 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 where, it seemed as though God were almost so near 
 that I should hear Him, and see Him, as* certainly I felt 
 Him. 
 
 And what a joy there is in knowing that the earth is 
 not merely something that God thought of when He 
 made it, and, as it were, spun out of His hand, saying, 
 " Go, take care of thyself" ; but that it is God's daily 
 care, that it is His estate, that He works it as I work my 
 garden, and that He watches all things in it with that 
 same anxiety and interest with which I watch one plant 
 after another that I mean to see blossom, and mean to 
 help to blossom! To us, nothing makes the world so 
 precious, nothing makes it so profitable, nothing makes 
 it so little barren and so much rich, nothing so takes away 
 its sordidness, as the knowledge of God's solicitude con- 
 cerning it, and His care over it. 
 
 WE are branched on every side with faculties exqui- 
 sitely susceptible of influence. The whole world is striv- 
 ing, and moving about us, and upon us. And no man 
 can prevent dents and scratches, unless he looks before 
 and provides beforehand. If a man allows his body to 
 come into collision with rock, or tree, or hedge, or wall, 
 it is too late for him to avoid injury. He should have 
 kept off. We protect the eye, the nerve-woven skin; we 
 learn to be vigilant without volition for the body, and 
 even when absorbed in thought there is yet a subtle 
 piloting of the body by the mind, I know not how ; we 
 see the stone without seeming to see it ; we avoid the 
 ditch without knowing that we noticed it; we lift the 
 foot with a regulated gradation to meet the varying sur- 
 face of the road, quite unconsciously; we instinctively 
 discern the qualities of things, and accommodate our- 
 selves to them.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 183 
 
 But the soul is more sensitive than the body. It has 
 a greater surface, it has more branches, it has more arms 
 and (bet, it has more nerves, it has more injurable attri- 
 butes, than the body. It carries them, too, amidst flying 
 missiles countless, endless in succession. When the fire 
 touches gauze, it is too late then to interfere ; you must 
 not let it touch it. When the rap is given to the crystal 
 vase, it is too late then to save it ; you must keep it free 
 from the blow. When the frost has struck the flower, 
 watching is then remediless ; you must keep it where 
 the frost cannot reach it. We must keep sensitive things 
 free from rude contacts. That is true wisdom in prac- 
 tical life. And so of hundreds of moral things. We must 
 keep them away from evil, so that it shall not overtake 
 them. A man must carry himself, not so as to repent of 
 harm, but so as, by constant vigilance and forethought, 
 to prevent harm from befalling him. 
 
 PHILOSOPHERS go to the glaciers, those frozen rivers 
 that move with a slow and steady pace down the moun- 
 tain-side, and set stakes on the firm rocks, and meas- 
 ure how far the whole body moves within a given length 
 of time. By means of these unmoving stakes they can 
 detect its almost imperceptible but continuous motion, 
 through day and night, and summer and winter, which 
 the heedless never observe, nor believe in. 
 
 Now, if you take your stand on the firm rock of God's 
 truth, and watch men, I think you will see that they 
 move with a slow and steady motion. I take sight at a 
 good many men. I see where they start from, at what 
 pace they are moving, and in what direction they tend. 
 Their motion is slow and steady, like that of the everlast- 
 ing glacier ; and every moment they are moving down-
 
 184 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 ward! They are not law-breakers; they are not bad 
 citizens, it does not take much to be a good citizen ; 
 they are not men addicted to lust or drinking. But if to 
 transform one's whole being into the love of money ; if 
 to set before one's self, not God, not immortality, not jus- 
 tice, not purity, not faith, not any of the ethereal virtues 
 of the eternal realm, but the acquisition of property ; if 
 to seek, above all' things, to become money-strong, to 
 build pyramids for men to see, whose broad base shall 
 cover acres, and every stone of which shall be solid gold ; 
 if to think golden thoughts, and measure forces by a 
 golden measurement, and estimate men thereby, and 
 value customs, laws, institutions, sanctuaries, books, every- 
 thing, by the amount they will bring in the market, if 
 that is to move downward, then there are men who are 
 going down the sides of Mount Sinai as surely as the 
 glaciers move down the sides of the Alps ! And I tell 
 you it is time, not that men should watch for each other, 
 but that every man should wake up and watch for him- 
 self. 
 
 A LAW, to be of any use to you, must be higher than 
 your practice under it. There is no use in your attempt- 
 ing to learn to write, when already you can write as 
 well as the copy. There is no use in your going to 
 school when you know as much as your master. There 
 is no use of your sitting before a drawing-board to learn 
 to draw, when you can draw better than him that teaches 
 you. And no rule, no principle, is of any great use to a 
 man unless it is in advance of his attainments. From 
 the lowest forms of physical industry up to the highest 
 spiritual virtues, the indispensable requisite for growth is 
 the conception of something better than has been, or than
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 185 
 
 is, in us. All industries are prosperous as they are striv- 
 ing toward something better. 
 
 AN orchestra that should play through the whole of 
 Beethoven's Eighth Symphony and only chord five or six 
 times from beginning to end, would hardly be considered 
 first-class performers. An occasional discord can be tol- 
 erated, but such an absence of concord that perfect har- 
 mony is touched but five or six times in the playing of 
 the whole piece, is intolerable. 
 
 Now, our life touches concord only once in a while, 
 and all the rest of the time it plays in discord ; and when 
 a man who is striving to live according to God's law be- 
 gins to find this out, he says to himself, " I am perpet- 
 ually coming short of my standard ; I not only do not 
 love right, but I hate it often ; I not only do not obey, 
 but I positively disobey: I not only do not seek the 
 strait path, but I rejoice to walk in the broad road ; I 
 not only do not control my temper as I should, but I 
 allow it to scourge and torment others ; and how can I 
 call myself a Christian ? " He strives for a month, for six 
 months, for a year, to live aright, and finds. that in spite 
 of all his strivings his life is still imperfect, wofully 
 imperfect. 
 
 And then what happens ? Oftentimes under such cir- 
 cumstances a man says, " The standard is too high. One 
 never can reach it, and therefore it is too high. It ought 
 not to have been put so high." Now, the worst thing a 
 human being can do is to bring down his standard. That 
 does not bring up conduct. The conduct will be about 
 so far below the standard, whether it is high or low. 
 Many a Christian insensibly falls into a self-indulgent 
 state, and has in himself this unexpressed feeling: "It
 
 186 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 does very well to hold up these exaggerated ideals in 
 preaching, but it is impossible for men to live as minis- 
 ters tell us we ought to live ; and it is of no use for us to 
 make ourselves think that Christianity demands that we 
 should." And so he gets ease by lowering the standard, 
 instead of attempting to carry conduct up to the stand- 
 ard. 
 
 Do I, when I open my house as a refuge for orphans, 
 require that they should be perfectly clean before I take 
 them in ? No ; the dirtiest ones I take first. Do I re- 
 quire that they should be well clothed ? No ; their very 
 rags are their invitation. Do I take them in because 
 they are ready to graduate ? No ; they cannot read a 
 letter. Their only education is profanity. The reason 
 I take them in is because I am benevolent, and they are 
 needy. And the reason that Christ accepts us is because 
 He loves us, and we are in need of His loving-kindness. 
 It is only those who hug their sins, and refuse to give 
 them up, that He rejects. 
 
 GOD'S greatness and supremacy have been taught so 
 as in effect to produce the impression of solitary and un- 
 sympathizing sovereignty. I hold and teach that God is 
 supreme ; that in thought and will and government He is 
 sovereign ; and that, from the very necessity of His being, 
 He takes counsel of none, asks permission of none, and 
 is obh'ged to carry Himself above all government and all 
 suggestion. I hold that this is a glorious doctrine which 
 flames abroad not less in nature than in revelation ; and 
 the Divine superiority, supremacy, and sovereignty can- 
 not be taught too much for my rejoicing. It may be 
 taught in the wrong way ; for if it be taught that God 
 is sovereign in the sense that He is lifted so far above
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 187 
 
 men that He is out of sympathy with them, and that 
 they of necessity are out of sympathy with Him, then we 
 have lost our God. It is not necessary to make orphan- 
 age among men in order to make God sovereign. It is 
 not necessary, in order to make God radiant and glorious, 
 to make Him like Mont Blanc, which is beautiful, to be 
 sure, with its snow-white covering, but which is cold and 
 forbidding, nevertheless. Men seem to have lifted God 
 up into such solitariness of supremacy as to make Him 
 unsympathetic, careless of men, and regardful of nothing 
 but Himself. Men have seemed to think that there was 
 an entity called government, by which God so separated 
 Himself from men that their thoughts could not find Him 
 with any joy, hope, or pleasure. 
 
 THE great incarnation mystery, the peculiar mission 
 of Christ, is this : that He brought God down to us, that 
 He revealed God to us in His example, while walking 
 the streets of Jerusalem, while going about the high- 
 ways of Palestine, while sitting on the mountain side, 
 
 while in the vessel, while raising the widow's son 
 to life, while distributing all things, reserving nothing 
 for Himself, so that He had not where to lay His head, 
 
 while using His whole being for others, and not for 
 Himself. The example of Christ was, as it were a sec- 
 tion of God's eternal life let down into this world, that 
 men might see One whose nature it is to administer for- 
 ever and forever on the principle of making His own 
 being subservient to the welfare of those over whom He 
 presides. And when He was caught up again into heaven 
 the same blessed work went on, only in a higher sphere; 
 
 Christ is spoken of as " the Lamb slain from the foun- 
 dation of the world." That which men saw of God
 
 188 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 during the brief space of thirty-three years was only a 
 specimen of His life before and after. And that being 
 God, to give Himself perpetually for the good of His 
 creatures ; that being God, to eternally love and succor 
 the intelligences that He has made ; that being God, to 
 bestow the vast stores of His nature in endless benefac- 
 tion ; that being God, blessed be His name that He does 
 live for His own glory, that He never does stoop from 
 the lofty altitude to which He is lifted, and that He 
 never does swerve from the purposes of His adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 ONE man has kindness deep within him ; and when 
 the occasion comes, the rind or shell is cracked, and the 
 kernel is found. Such a man's heart, too long clouded, 
 like a sun in a storm-muffled day, shoots through some 
 opening rift, and glows for a period in glory. But there 
 are other natures that are always cloudless. With them, 
 a cloud is the exception, shining is the rule. They rise 
 radiant over the horizon ; they fill the whole heavens 
 with growing brightness, and all day long they overhang 
 life, pouring down an undiminished flood of brightness 
 and warmth. 
 
 WHETHER other men have received more or less than 
 you have, is not the question at all. Have you not re- 
 ceived all you have earned ? Has there been any oppor- 
 tunity withheld from you ? You desire ease ; but where 
 is the evidence that you have earned it ? You desire 
 pleasure ; but where is the evidence that you have earned 
 it ? You desire comfort ; but where is the evidence that 
 you have earned it ? Does society owe you these things 
 before you have earned them ? No more than the wil-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 189 
 
 derness owes me harvests which I have not sown, or 
 fruits which I have not planted. Society owes you what 
 you have gained, achieved, nothing more. 
 
 If you say there are men that have not worked half 
 so hard as you have, who have got ease, or wealth, or 
 honor, there may be a question to be raised as to why 
 they have got it, but there is no question to be raised as 
 to why you have not got it. You do not deserve it. 
 And if you say, " Neither do they," it may be so, and it 
 may not ; but that does not touch the question at all. 
 " Is thine eye evil because I am good ? " Has God de- 
 frauded you because He has dealt bountifully with other 
 men ? If I give one beggar a penny, and pass by the 
 next one without giving him anything, do I cheat the one 
 to whom I give nothing ? Have I not a right, on the 
 ground of generosity, to give to one when I do not give 
 to the other? Is it not optional with me to do what I 
 will with my own? Is it not my privilege, where I 
 violate no pledge, and where I am left simply to the dic- 
 tates of my feelings and judgment, to give to one, and 
 refuse to give to another ? And are a man's own feel- 
 ings to measure my conduct in this matter ? 
 
 " I COULD wish that myself were accursed from Christ 
 for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." 
 
 I wish you could see what stupendous ingenuity of 
 folly has been employed in finding out what that signi- 
 fies ; how men have put on spectacles, and double spec- 
 tacles, and quadruple spectacles, to pry into its meaning, 
 saying, " Did he really think he would be willing to lose 
 his soul for the sake of his brethren ? " thus screwing the 
 words up to exact measurement. It is as though an old 
 hard-hearted bachelor should hear a mother, in anguish
 
 190 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 of soul, exclaim, " I would give my life a thousand times 
 over to save my child ? " and he should stand and say, 
 " A thousand times ? Two hundred and fifty would be 
 a great many. A thousand times?" Why, feeling is 
 always, in its nature, full of overplusage. It defies and 
 scorns measurement. Such extravagant expressions mean 
 simply much. When a man's heart is full, and he wants 
 to rise to a royal conception, he disdains measured lan- 
 guage. The apostle says, " I could wish myself accursed 
 from Christ," and nothing else could indicate how strong 
 his feeling was. He did not stop to think what the literal 
 interpretation of these words would be. 
 
 " To the intent that now unto principalities and pow- 
 ers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the 
 manifold wisdom of God." 
 
 When God sets forth His manifold wisdom, what are 
 to be the leaves of the book that shall be revealed? 
 Palpitating hearts are to be the leaves of that great book. 
 From the beginning of the world to its last day, men 
 shall go up in order, and every human soul that has lived 
 and yearned for help, and received help, shall recite its 
 experience ; and it shall be an experience manifesting the 
 wisdom of God in this world. And every Christian will 
 be a new page, a new history ; but not one written with 
 ink nor cut in stone, but one that has been experienced 
 in the living soul. When God shall make manifest what 
 has been His wondrous wisdom, martyrs, and confessors, 
 and holy prophets, and apostles, and humble Christians 
 will rise up in thousands and tens of thousands, yea, in 
 multitudes without number, chanting and speaking that 
 wisdom.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 191 
 
 IF you bring me a basketful of minerals from Califor- 
 nia, and I take them and look at them, I shall know that 
 this specimen has gold in it, because I see there little 
 points of yellow gold ; but I shall not know what the 
 white and the dark points are that I see. But let a 
 metallurgist look at it, and he will see that it contains not 
 only gold, but silver, and lead, and iron, and he will 
 single them out. To me it is mere stone, with only here 
 and there a hint of gold ; but to him it is a combination 
 of various metals. 
 
 Now, take the Word of God, that is filled with pre- 
 cious stones and metals, and let one instructed in spiritual 
 insight go through it, and he will discover all these treas- 
 ures ; while if you let a man uninstructed in spiritual 
 insight go through it, he will discover those things that 
 are outside and apparent, but those things that make 
 God and man friends, and that have to do with the im- 
 mortality of the soul in heaven, will escape his notice. 
 No man can know these things unless the Spirit of God 
 has taught him to discern them. 
 
 THE mother suffers most for the child and is nearest 
 like the Saviour to him, for we are nearest those, 
 and most glorious in the esteem of those, for whom we 
 suffer most. Do not you know how things will loom up 
 and magnify when you see them through a haze ? So 
 when you see persons through tear-drops which they 
 have shed for you, and the things that they have suffered 
 for you, they are magnified, and seem more saintlike to 
 you. 
 
 RESPECTING the whole tendency of men here, this ia 
 true : that the less you develop them, the more content
 
 192 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 they are in regard to immortality. The nearer a man is 
 to a stone the less discontented does he feel. We talk of 
 punishing men by withholding joys from them. Men say 
 that misers are punished because they have not the joys 
 which spiritually-minded men have. You might as well 
 say that a toad is punished because he does not know 
 what the philosopher knows. If a man has not got a 
 thing, and does not know that such a thing exists, and 
 does not want it, is he punished by not having it? Do you 
 suppose a leaf is punished in the measure of the things 
 that it does not have ? Do you suppose a man is pun- 
 ished in the measure of the things that he has. not got? 
 Do you suppose a coward knows what he lacks in cour- 
 age ? Do you suppose a mean man knows what he lacks 
 in magnanimity ? The lower you go down in the scale 
 of human being, the less discontent you will find. And 
 the moment you begin to bring a man up, his every step 
 is taken with aspiration, susceptibility, yearning, and 
 longing, all of which point in one direction, and lead 
 him to feel in his whole inward experience, " I am not 
 of this world. There ought to be another place for me 
 to live in." 
 
 WE carry something of God in us. It does not exist 
 in such a form that we can define it. If the logician 
 says to me with reference to it, " State your position : 
 prove what you say " ; if, like an apothecary, he wants 
 that I should weigh it in scales, and give him the result 
 in drachms and scruples, I cannot meet him. Neverthe- 
 less, I think there are thousands of witnesses who will 
 say, " I have an undying certainty in my bosom that I 
 am allied to God in such a way that I shall not be extin- 
 guished when this life is ended ; that I shall not die when
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. '193 
 
 I die." I think there is a forelooking into the life to come. 
 It seems to me that there are in the lives of many 
 certainly there are in the lives of the more favored 
 hours in which they seem to themselves to stand with only 
 the filmiest separations between them and the spirit-land. 
 Some think that they can pierce it and discern it. I 
 hope they can. We cannot say much for each other. 
 But I think all of us have known hours when we have 
 said, " A little more, the least bit more, and I shall see 
 and know." I think there have been times when it 
 seemed as though voices spoke to you out of the great 
 concave; when it seemed as though you almost felt the 
 touch of a shadowy presence ; when it seemed as though 
 your soul was caught up, so that you did not know whether 
 you were in the body or out of the body, as the apostle 
 declared that he did not 
 
 SOME think that a Christian life is like a canal, with 
 proper locks to lift men up and drop them down as occa- 
 sion requires. There may be a sluggish, lazy, puddle-life 
 of that kind ; but there is no such Christian life. No 
 man can live a Christian life that does not avail himself 
 of all the power given him on every side. There is work 
 for the thought, work for the imagination, work for every 
 moral sentiment, work for every affection, work for all 
 the combinations of the faculties, in their different moods, 
 and through all the varying periods of life, youth, 
 middle age, and old age ; and if a man would be a Chris- 
 tian, a child of the all-working, unslumbering God, he 
 must be awake and vigilant. 
 
 MALARIAS, you know, are dangerous because they 
 do not address themselves to any sense. We can put up 
 9 M
 
 194 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 lightning-rods to ward off thunderbolts ; but no man can 
 put up rods that will protect him from a poisonous at- 
 mosphere. You can drain morasses that you can see ; 
 but you cannot free the atmosphere above them from im- 
 purities that you cannot see. The sweetest and most 
 beauteous days in New Orleans are those on which death 
 strikes most terribly there, in times of pestilence. It is 
 on such days that it is the most insidious. It has no 
 visible or perceptible exponent. It cannot be detected 
 by sight or by touch. And that is what makes it so 
 dreadful. 
 
 Now, we are walking in a malarial atmosphere all the 
 time : not one that attacks the body ; not one that pene- 
 trates the heart ; not one that congests the liver; not one 
 that crazes the brain ; but one that infects the soul. The 
 soul is poisoned all the time by pride, vanity, the love of 
 money, greed, competitions, rivalries, and the various 
 other noxious elements by which it is surrounded. Hu- 
 man life is one vast Campagna, and there are, in the 
 atmosphere round about men, silent, corrupting forces of 
 which they are quite unconscious. And nothing but this 
 inward spiritual vigilance will make a man a match for 
 these things. 
 
 IT is not the quality of the thing, but the quantity. 
 Too much watching becomes disease, not watching, but 
 too much of it. Too much bread is as bad as arsenic, 
 only in another way. Too much fruit, too much water, 
 too much light, too much of anything, is too much, and is 
 oppressing, and not nourishing or serving. The simple 
 overacting of good makes it mischievous. In respect to 
 the body, although the signals of trouble are hung out, 
 and the uncomfortableness of sensation reveals the im-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 195 
 
 prudence of our indolence, yet it is sufficiently difficult 
 for men to keep within the lines of moderation, in the 
 body. How much more need of watchfulness, when the 
 gradually-growing excess is in a thought-faculty, or in 
 the disproportionate use of a feeling ; when the excess is 
 not in the nature of the thing felt, but in the continuity 
 or degree of it ! We never sin by evil faculties, but 
 always by good ones misemployed. There have been 
 men that have used good faculties evilly, and that con- 
 tinually ; but God never made a bad thing in a man. 
 He made him well ; and every blade was to be good, 
 every instrument good, every quality good ; and the evil 
 that proceeds from him comes from the wrong use of 
 things that are good. 
 
 A DULL axe never loves grindstones, but a keen work- 
 man does ; and he puts his tool on them in order that it 
 may be sharp. And men do not like grinding ; but they 
 are dull for the purposes which God designs to work out 
 with them, and therefore He is grinding them. 
 
 I NEVER saw a man that did not believe in the im- 
 mortality of love when following the body of a loved one 
 to the grave. I have seen men under other circum- 
 stances that did not believe in it ; but I never saw a 
 man that, when he stood looking upon the form of one 
 that he really loved stretched out for burial, did not re- 
 volt from saying, " It has all come to that : the hours of 
 sweet companionship ; the wondrous interfacings of trop- 
 ical souls ; the joys ; the hopes ; the trusts ; the unutter- 
 able yearnings, there they all lie." No man can stand 
 and look in a coffin upon the body of a fellow-creature, 
 and remember the flaming intelligence, the blossoming
 
 196 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 love, the whole range of Divine faculties, which so lately 
 animated that cold clay, and say, " These have all col- 
 lapsed and gone." No person can witness the last sad 
 ceremonials which are performed over the remains of a 
 human being, the sealing down of the unopenable lid ; 
 the following of the rumbling procession to the place of 
 burial ; the letting down of the dust into dust ; the fall- 
 ing of the earth upon the hollow coffin, with those sounds 
 that are worse than thunder; and the placing of the green 
 sod over the grave, no person, unless he be a beast, 
 can witness these things, and then turn away and say, 
 " I have buried my wife ; I have buried my child ; I 
 have buried my sister, my brother, my love." 
 
 God forbid that we should bury anything. There is 
 no earth that can touch my companion. There is no 
 earth that can touch my child. I would fight my little 
 breath and strength away before I would permit any 
 clod to touch them. The jewel is not in the ground. 
 The jewel has dropped out of the casket, and I have 
 buried the casket, not the jewel. And you may rea 
 son, you may say what you please, you may carry the case 
 before the supreme court of my understanding, but there 
 is something higher than reason, and something back of 
 the understanding. All that is in me revolts at the de- 
 cision, and spurns it, and says, " You must try heart 
 cases before the heart. We will not believe but that 
 there is life somewhere else; we will not believe that 
 life is buried here ; and the soul goes out and cries, like 
 a child lost in the woods, to find itself in this strange 
 world, saying, " "Where am I ? and who shall guide me, 
 that long and yearn and reach upward ? " 
 
 IT is not so much the stalactites as the stalagmites that
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 197 
 
 I am looking after. Those crystalline columns that hang 
 down from the roof of the cave are stalactites ; but there 
 rise up also from the floor equally crystalline columns, 
 which are stalagmites. Now, in my thoughts spring up 
 the longing of my soul for honor, the longing of my soul 
 for perfect love, the longing of my soul for a sense of rec- 
 titude and purity, the longing of my soul for the society 
 of spirits of just men made perfect ; and I know that 
 these longings spire upward ; and in clear days, excep- 
 tional days, I think that I can see the light of heaven 
 glisten, and that my thoughts go to the gate, and almost 
 within the sacred precinct. I know not that their thoughts 
 are able to reach down to me. I hope they are; and 
 when there is evidence that they are, I shall be glad to 
 receive it. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that there are hundreds of men that are 
 exceedingly sceptical in regard to the Bible who have a 
 certain hidden reverence for it. "Why ? God sent them 
 an angel, and let her walk with them two years, and then 
 took her home ; and they hold her memory with such 
 sacredness, that they say, " If there ever was a Chris- 
 tian, my wife was one ; and she believed in that book, 
 and there must be something in it which makes it supe- 
 rior to other books." 
 
 GIVE me a hundred men, not men that are glowing 
 while they sing, and heavenly while they pray, though I 
 would have them so, but men that are, morning and noon 
 and night, born of God, and that so carry the savor of 
 Christ that men coming into their presence say, " There 
 is a Christian here," as men passing a vintage say, " There 
 are grapes here," give me a hundred such men, and I
 
 198 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 will make the world believe. I do not ask to be shown 
 the grape-vine in the woods in June before .1 will believe 
 it is there. I know that there are grapes near when the 
 air is full of their odor ; and the question under such cir- 
 cumstances always is, " Where is the vine ? " and never, 
 "What is it that I smell?" You are to be a savor 
 of love, and peace, and gentleness, and gratitude, and 
 thanksgiving, so that wherever you go, the essence of 
 the truth that is in you shall go out to men. 
 
 NATURES that are constitutionally overprone to vigi- 
 lance are apt conscientiously to redouble that which they 
 do not need in such measure. They are of the opinion 
 that fear is almost a positive Christian grace. They not 
 only set a needless number of sentinels about the dwelh'ng 
 of their soul, but they seem to frequent the company of 
 sentinels without, more than that of guests that are, or 
 should be, served within. Many a man has little time for 
 Christ inside, because he is so busy watching the devil out- 
 side. Theirs is a religion which is more in fear of evil 
 than in enjoyment of good. There are a great many men 
 that have never yet known the profound philosophy of 
 the command, " Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil 
 with good" The way to overcome evil is, sometimes, to 
 be sure to watch it ; but a man that does nothing but 
 watch evil, never will overcome it. 
 
 WHAT ! does a man sin when he is a Christian ? Cer- 
 tainly he does. If nobody ever came to the communion 
 of the Lord's supper except those who are void of sin, we 
 should have a great wilderness in the church. Do not 
 you sin ? Is there a day in which you are not selfish ? 
 What is selfishness ? It is acting with any one of your
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 199 
 
 faculties so as to promote your own good at the sacrifice 
 of the good of another. And do you not act so with 
 your pride and vanity every day, ten thousand times a 
 day ? Do you not act so with your very conscience and 
 benevolence ? Do you not with your love make an idol 
 of one side, and cheat the other side ? Does any man 
 live an hour without sinning in some of his faculties ? I 
 do not suppose a Christian would be a burglar, or sin in 
 the sense of violating a civil law, but in the sense of vio- 
 lating the law of God there is not a man who lives a single 
 hour without 'sinning. 
 
 GIVE me the men, and I will write a commentary on. 
 the Bible that will not need any explanation, for most 
 commentaries are more troublesome than the Bible which 
 they are designed to explain. I will put them, not in the 
 sanctuary on the Sabbath, but at home, in the street, in 
 their neighborhood, in all the intricacies of business, 
 everywhere ; and no matter where they may be, they 
 shall be a savor of Christ, sweet as the odor of blossoms. 
 They shall be garden-men that have some flowers for 
 every month, and that are always fragrant and redolent 
 of blossom and fruit. Give me a hundred such men, 
 and I will defy the infidel world. I will take them and 
 bind them into a living volume, and with them I will 
 make the world believe. 
 
 FA ITU in Christ has no tendency to make a man care- 
 less as to his conduct, or less eager to obey the law of 
 God. Do you think that a boy taken out of the house 
 of correction would be more in danger of picking the 
 pocket of his benefactor than if he had not shown him a 
 kindness ? Would not the kindness be the surest guar- 
 antee against such an occurrence ?
 
 200 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 There was a man in Boston (I know not whether he 
 lives yet, yes, he lives, but I know not whether he 
 lives in this world) who, though not rich, was accustomed 
 to go into the courts of justice every morning to give bail 
 for culprits that had no friends ; and it was his testimony 
 that of all those for whom he gave bail, not one betrayed 
 him, not one left him in the lurch. And do you sup- 
 pose that those creatures whom Christ has helped, and 
 whom he has given a hope of eternal salvation, would 
 turn against Him, their best friend, and the one to whom 
 they are indebted for their choicest blessings ? Would 
 that be human nature? Is there anything on God's 
 earth like gratitude to inspire a soul to act in the right 
 direction ? 
 
 Now, where a man sees all his imperfections swept 
 away by Divine love, has he not in this fact the greatest 
 stimulus that he could have toward holiness ? No man 
 is so little tempted to sin, and no man has such victory 
 over sin, as the man that loves Christ because He died 
 for him, because He lives for him, and because through 
 His love his sins are washed away to be remembered no 
 more forever. 
 
 GOD is near to many men that are unconscious of His 
 presence. The perfume of Divine love is round about 
 many men that do not perceive it. You are like men 
 who have no sense of smell. You are in the garden of 
 the Lord, and you call it a wilderness. But wake, 
 soul! out of despondency. If you are as you know 
 you are sinful, and you long for something better, 
 take hold of the hand of Christ, and go toward it. He 
 will hold fast to your hand, and will lead you to the end; 
 and then you will be saved, not because you are perfect,
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 201 
 
 but because He has swept you into that charmed and 
 blessed sphere where the flesh and the world shall drag 
 us down no more, but where our enfranchised manhood 
 shall lift itself up in ineffable glory, crystalline purity, 
 and perfect symmetry. 
 
 IT will be with men's excuses in the day of judgment, 
 when God looks upon them, as it is with the frost-pictures 
 on a window of a winter morning, when the sun looks 
 upon them, they will be gone with His looking. The 
 excuses which you paint in this life to justify pride, and 
 selfishness, and disobedience, and recreancy, will, the mo- 
 ment you stand before God, melt away. 
 
 WHAT is the Bible in your house ? It is not the Old 
 Testament ; it is not the New Testament ; it is not the 
 Gospel according to Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or 
 John : it is the Gospel according to William ; it is the 
 Gospel according to Mary ; it is the Gospel according 
 to Henry and James ; it is the Gospel according to your 
 name. You write your own Bible. To every njan that 
 sets up a Christian household, God says, "I am going 
 to reveal my grace through you." And if you have a 
 Bible in your family, it will be just so much of that grace 
 as you interpret to your children and dependents. And 
 do not you know that there is a Bible that has in it a 
 large Apocrypha between the Old and New Testament, 
 containing Esdras, and Tobit, and Judith, and Ecclesias- 
 ticus, and various other books. Now, there is in your 
 experience, besides the revelation of the Old Testament 
 and the New Testament, an intermediate revelation that 
 is false, that is untrue ; and your children read that 
 living Bible, particularly the Apocrypha. It is a 
 9*
 
 202 ROYAL 'TRUTHS. 
 
 solemn thing for a man to be a Bible that is read by 
 those about him. 
 
 Do any of you seem to yourselves to be useless, and 
 say, " O that I was eloquent ! O that I could wield the 
 pen of a ready writer! O that it was given to me to go 
 forth and be an apostle of Christ ! " It is given to every 
 one of you to be an epistle of Christ, known and read 
 of all men. By your humility, by your truthfulness, 
 by your justice, by all the things that make you like 
 Christ, you become His minister, and you are known and 
 read where you never suspect that you are being known 
 and read. Take care, then, and speak right things of 
 Christ. See to it that the testimony you bear of Christ 
 is such as He would have you bear. 
 
 A CHILD is in a distant country, and there she talks 
 of home ; and people who hear her say, " I am glad I 
 have not such parents as she had." It comes to her ears 
 afterwards, and she says, in tears, " Did I leave an im- 
 pression that my parents were bad?" She reproaches 
 herself for having done anything to produce such an 
 impression. She says, " My father and mother are 
 noble and true, and I fain would have left an impression 
 that they were so." And as children feel in reference 
 to the impression they leave of father and mother, so 
 ought we to feel in reference to the impression we leave 
 of God and Christ. We are to live so that men shall be 
 led by our works to glorify our Father in heaven. 
 
 THERE is a providence, not a fatality, not a coercive 
 necessity : but a broad, beneficent system which has, 
 whatever it may be, such a relation to you and this
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 203 
 
 world, that you cannot afford to be uneasy. You can 
 afford, when yon have done your best, to take things 
 easy, and enjoy yourself. Think, if you want to think, 
 as long as it is pleasant to think ; plan, where you ought 
 to plan ; labor, where you ought to labor ; achieve, 
 where you ought to achieve ; but thinking, planning, 
 laboring, achieving, let all be done in a spirit of 
 confiding trust. As little children will frolic, and play, 
 and talk to themselves, and sing, and be happy, if every 
 time they look up they can see their mother's form or 
 shadow, or hear her voice ; so we are, in God's greater 
 household, to have such a consciousness of our Father's 
 presence as shall make us happy, cheerful, contented, 
 in our sports and duties. 
 
 ONE reason why we are not trustful and cheerful is, 
 that we believe that there will be fulfilments of the prom- 
 ises of God only so far as they are wrought out in the 
 problems of our understanding. A great many persons 
 have said to me, when I propounded this to them, in 
 view of their adversities and extremities, " I cannot un- 
 derstand how there should be a special providence of 
 God. I cannot reconcile the theory of special provi- 
 dences with my ideas of general law, and of God's 
 agency in nature." That is to say, when God lays down 
 an unquestionable command, of the most explicit kind, 
 unless you can go behind that command, and can find 
 out the philosophy of it, you will not accept it at His 
 hands. Simply as a thing commanded by your Father, 
 you will not, with the faith of a child, accept it. If you 
 can spin it on your wheel, and then weave it in your 
 loom, and make it conform to your pattern, you will 
 accept it ; but as simply from the hand of God, you will 
 not accept it.
 
 204 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 Now, I like to reason; I like to search out results 
 from causes ; but it is sweet for a man, in the midst of 
 the turmoils and troubles of life, where he can, to rest 
 himself on his faith in God. It is sweet for a man to be 
 able to say, " I do not care for to-morrow. I do not fear 
 what shall befall me. I will trust in God." To under- 
 stand the philosophy of a Divine command, where I can, 
 afford* me satisfaction ; but where a command comes 
 from such authority, and with such variety of illustration 
 in nature, as this one, I do not care whether I under- 
 stand the philosophy of it or not. My soul is hungry 
 for it, and I accept it because my God has given it. I 
 trust and rest in God, simply because He has said, "You 
 may, and you must." That is ground enough. 
 
 CHRIST says, " Are ye not much better than they ? " 
 Yes, I hope so; though now and then I feel mean 
 enough to say "No" to this question. Now and then 
 I have such a sense of the poverty and the miserableness 
 of human life, that I am tempted to say that a man is no 
 better than birds. 
 
 It is only when you come to consider not merely our 
 relations to this world, but our relations to the future ; 
 not merely our imperfections and ungrowth here, but our 
 immortality in the world to come, that we seem better 
 than birds or flowers. When you take in the root, and 
 the stem, and the everlasting growth, and the fruit of 
 human life, then are we not much better than birds and 
 flowers ? 
 
 ONE text that hooks a man to God, and that makes 
 him feel that in Him he has a Father who wheels the 
 bright army of the stars, who carries the globe in its rev-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 205 
 
 olutions, who is the Controller of time and of eternity, who 
 is the Creator and Sustainer of all mankind, one such 
 text, 0, how it takes away care, and anxiety, and sor- 
 row ! How much food there is in your Father's house 
 that you never tasted! In that house there is hread 
 enough and to spare ; and yet you go fretting and wor- 
 rying through life, borrowing trouble about the future, 
 with which you have no concern, and making yourself 
 miserable in the present, with which you have concern. 
 
 OUT of every night God is making a path by His hand 
 for the morning, and for you ; and out of every day God 
 is making a bed of darkness for the night, and for you. 
 
 " BEHOLD the fowls of the air ; they sow not, neither 
 do they reap, nor gather into barns." 
 
 I thought of that to-day, for when I was very busy 
 sowing some seed, a bobolink flew over my head, with a 
 wild, sarcastic descant, as much as to say, " Go on, old 
 clod-crusher ! you sow, and I will rejoice." He flew 
 past, and I understood him. 
 
 O, IF this life were all that I could have, I should 
 weep, it seems to me, from the present hour to the very 
 end, unless I could say as the ancients did, " Let us eat, 
 drink, and be merry. To-morrow we die, so let us make 
 the best of the little time that is left us." I should be in 
 a state of wanton, merry despair, on the one side ; or of 
 tearful, sad despair, on the other side. I must live again. 
 I must make the experiment of life once more. I have 
 made poor work here, but I have met with just success 
 enough to feel that if I had a better chance I could do 
 something. I am like a man that takes the first canvas
 
 206 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 to paint a picture. He does not know what he will do. 
 He lays in forms in all sorts of ways without coming to 
 any satisfactory result. At last he says, " I cannot make 
 anything of that picture; but I have a cenception. Bring 
 me a fresh canvas, and I will try again, when I think I 
 shall have better success." I have long been trying to 
 paint n true life, and have only partially succeeded ; but 
 if God-Almighty will give me another canvas, I think I 
 can paint better. And He will. He that brought forth 
 from the dead our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, will 
 bring me forth. And, thank God, when I go home to 
 heaven, I shall leave behind many things that will be 
 of no use to me there. When an engine is taken from 
 one boat and placed in another, it is not necessary that 
 the fastenings should go with it. The screws and clamps 
 and feeding-pumps that belong to that peculiar ship from 
 which it is taken may be left behind. The screws and 
 clamps and feeding-pumps that have been necessary to 
 keep my mind in this body, and that it has given me so 
 much trouble to patch and mend, I shall leave in the grave. 
 But my supremest reason, my divinest sentiments of re- 
 ligion, my affections and loves, my tastes, these God, 
 the blessed Pilot, shall carry safely through the grave 
 and its darkness, and I shall be planted again in heaven, 
 where snows never fall, where frosts never come, and I 
 shall bring out leaf and blossom and fruit ; and then, 
 with leaf and blossom and fruit, I will present myself at 
 the Throne of God, saying, " Thou hast given me life, 
 and life again, and life forever : to Thee, and to Thee 
 only, be praise and honor and glory, evermore." 
 
 WHAT is more beautiful that that centrality, that self- 
 serving, that selfness, which God has given to every
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 207 
 
 man, and which leads him to take care of himself? 
 What business we would have if we were obliged to take 
 care of each other ! How wonderfully God has lightened 
 the work of life by giving to every human being an instinct 
 by which he is led to care for himself! This attribute of 
 our nature relieves the world of a vast accumulation of 
 painstaking. And yet how deep no man can measure, 
 how broad no man can estimate, have been the 
 mischiefs that have sprung from this element of selfness ; 
 for when selfness is carried beyond a certain point, it be- 
 comes selfishness, and therefore an instrument of evil. 
 The evil does not proceed from the quality of the thing ; 
 it is simply the result of not watching to see where the 
 thing ceases to be good, and begins to take hold on that 
 which is bad. 
 
 A HUNTER scorns a pigeon-roost ; because he would 
 fain have some reward in skill and ingenuity ; and he 
 feels that to fire into a pigeon-roost is shocking butchery. 
 But for that feeling I should like no better amusement 
 than to answer the sermons of men who attempt to estab- 
 lish the right of slavery out of the Bible. It would be 
 simple butchery ! A man must be addicted to blood who 
 would fire a twenty-four pounder into a flock of black- 
 birds or crows ! 
 
 As a boy that cannot write at all looks with wonder 
 and admiration upon the performance of a writing-master 
 who without thought can form the letters and sentences 
 so as to make the page look like engraving, while the 
 master himself has no idea that he is doing anything 
 extraordinary ; so men looked with wonder and admira- 
 tion upon the miracles of Christ, by which He fed the
 
 208 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 multitude, turned water into wine, healed the sick, 
 cast out devils, brought the dead from their shadowy 
 land, and evoked victory out of defeat, while Christ 
 himself did not regard these things as of very great 
 importance. They were merely the authentication of 
 His divinity. The real thing for which He came was 
 that which lay beyond this. His errand was to bring 
 upon the human soul a cleansing power, an inspiring 
 power, a formative power. He was to set us free from 
 sin, inspire in us a longing for purity, and form our char- 
 acter on that basis. .Accordingly, Christ is presented 
 mainly in the New Testament, from beginning to end, 
 in His relations to the soul of man. Even when He is 
 compared with His Father, it is always as a means of 
 exhibiting with greater power His curative relation to 
 the human soul. 
 
 ONE of the delicacies in this world is, that when two 
 souls come together, and unite with each other, no one 
 has a right to meddle with them, to know their most 
 blessed intercourse, or to interpret their thoughts to each 
 other. They are to be let alone. And when a soul goes 
 up in the enthusiasm of its affianced love to unite itself to 
 Jesus Christ, shall not its trust be respected ? Shall any- 
 thing separate it from Him? No, nothing. It is God 
 that surrounds us, it is the eternal Father that rejoices in 
 us ; and at no time does He rejoice in us more than when 
 we are giving our life and our being to Jesus Christ our 
 Saviour. 
 
 THE very word " God " suggests care, kindness, good- 
 ness. The very idea of God in His infinity, is infinite 
 care, infinite kindness, infinite goodness. We give God
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 209 
 
 the name of good ; it is only by shortening it that it be- 
 comes God, a vulgarizing almost of the term. 
 
 IN the exigences of business in all cases where men 
 are in doubt and perplexity as to what is right and what 
 is best, as to what you may do and what you may not do 
 be sure to give the greater advantage to the moral ele- 
 ment. If you make a mistake, let it be on the right side. 
 It is better that a man should not avail himself of liberties 
 that he might take, than that he should avail himself of 
 advantages that he should not take. It is better for a 
 man to be too careful and scrupulous, than for him to be 
 unscrupulous and careless. Men that look at everything 
 simply in the light of their own interests, grow narrow, 
 mean, and foolish, and at last come to stand in their own 
 light. I think there is nothing more foolish in life than 
 this kind of selfishness, which really stands in a man's own 
 way. I often see men that are so selfish that they can- 
 not prosper. Men that settle all questions by reference 
 to some higher standards by benevolence, conscience, 
 humanity will find that these arbiters of duty will 
 avail, in the end, not only for spiritual good, but for sec- 
 ular good also. 
 
 The broader the pattern which a man is made upon, 
 the more will he have it in his power to control the con- 
 ditions of success, even in this life. Therefore, let me say 
 to every young man, always reason up. In every exi- 
 gence reason up. Never reason down, under any circum- 
 stances. Never allow yourself to say, " But may I not 
 do this ? " Never say, " Has not this knot been tied too 
 tight? Is there not too much moral restriction in this 
 direction ? " Always make your Christian manhood come 
 between you and the endeavor to go down in the scale 
 
 N
 
 210 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 toward perdition. Do not say, " What may I venture to 
 do ? " but say, " Lord, help me to rise higher than other 
 men are, and to refuse the things that make men low. 
 Let it be mine to go from strength to strength, and from 
 nobility to nobility, till I become more pure, more just, 
 more benevolent, than the customs and laws require me 
 to be." 
 
 Men, instead of listening for a moment to this argu- 
 ment, say that a person who confines himself to such a 
 course of life as I am recommending, cannot be as smart 
 as one who does not ; but I say he will be smarter. 
 Goodness is smarter than baseness. Uprightness has 
 more genius, more executiveness, more power, more real 
 aptitude for business, than rascality. Give me a broad 
 conscience-man, who looks over the field of life with an 
 equitable regard for his fellow-men ; who makes their 
 interests his interests, because he loves them. Such a 
 man has more statesmanship in his conscience than other 
 men have in all their sharpness and discernment. Sharp 
 men, like sharp needles, break easy, though they pierce 
 quick. There is no fallacy more universal or more fatal 
 than that which teaches that there is no temper except 
 in wickedness ; for I aver that God puts into a man's 
 soul more temper, more executive power, more of the 
 elements of success, than the Devil ever did by his crafti- 
 ness, or than Mammon ever did by his selfish, wicked ex- 
 pedients. 
 
 Now, I should be ashamed to ask a man to be a Chris- 
 tian from motives drawn from the exchequer ; but if it 
 be true that godliness is profitable, the city is just the 
 place where there are men that want to know it ; and I 
 declare my faith in this doctrine, not merely because God 
 teaches it, (though that would be reason enough,) but
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 211 
 
 because I see it exemplified in life. For these reasons, 
 then, I say that a religious life, begun early, is the surest 
 road to honor, prosperity, and happiness. 
 
 IP I understand the words of Jesus Christ, He says, 
 " You had better lose your life than do wrong." If you 
 stand where a man says to you, looking with open eye on 
 that which is wicked, " You shall do this or forfeit your 
 place in my establishment," Christ says, "Forfeit your 
 right hand before you do it." And suppose he does kick 
 you out, where does he kick you to ? Into the bosom of 
 God Almighty's providence. You think of the man who 
 gives you permission to sleep under the counter in his 
 shop, and to draw one hundred pounds this year, and one 
 hundred and twenty-five next year, and deem it worth 
 your while to court his favor ; and are you not to regard 
 Him who sits on the throne of the universe, and gives 
 you your existence, and promises you eternal life ? Are 
 you not to regard Him who holds the earth in His hand, 
 and gives life to the wicked man that employs you, and 
 would pervert you for his own selfish interests ? He de- 
 clares, " Give up your eye, your foot, your hand, nay, 
 even life itself, rather than consent to do evil. For 
 what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul ? " 
 
 Now, I say to every young man, Go out of any estab- 
 lishment where it is insisted that you shall do wicked 
 things, quicker than a shot goes out of a cannon when it 
 is fired ; and not only go out of it, but keep out of it : 
 unless you made a bargain that when he bought your 
 services, he bought you. In that case I have nothing to 
 say, I do not speak to slaves. If, however, you went 
 into an office, a manufactory, a carpenter's shop no
 
 212 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 matter where as a man, and engaged your services, no 
 one has any authority to control you in moral things. 
 There you stand a free man, and there you are to pro- 
 duce the charter of your liberty, and say, " God Almighty 
 made me to bo His son, and shall I throw away my son- 
 ship ? No ; I will stand for that which is right, though 
 life itself shall fail." And I tell you, this is a salt of fire, 
 a baptism of blood, which no man can experience without 
 coming out a saint; and a man who has experienced it, is 
 as much stronger and better than one who has not, as a 
 man who is a man is better than one who only pretends 
 to be one. 
 
 I SAY to every man you ought to have a conscience so 
 active, so sensitive by daily communion with God, so 
 bathed in the sweet ways and meditations of a Christian 
 life, that you shall be misled and deceived by no example, 
 and by no specious reasoning. A man who has a correct 
 watch learns to trust it. After he has thoroughly tried 
 his faithful servant of the pocket, and knows that through 
 months and years it has given him true reports, he places 
 great reliance upon it. He may ask the time of the town 
 clock, but if it gives a different report from that given by 
 his watch, he at once says to the clock, " Thou liest." He 
 may ask the time of his friend whom he meets in the 
 street, and he takes the report t>f his friend's watch till he 
 looks at his own, when, finding that they differ, he says, 
 " Mine must be right, for it never deceives me." Every 
 man should keep an account of celestial time ; and setting 
 his own heart and his own conscience by the beats and 
 throbs of God Almighty's heart, he should take counsel 
 of, and believe in, no other. He should compare himself 
 daily with this standard, and should take no testimony
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 213 
 
 against that. He that has an open face, and looks into 
 the open face of God, shall be a child of light, a child of 
 liberty, and a child of glory. 
 
 I WAS living in the West, and was in straitened circum- 
 stances. I think that, for a period of four years, there 
 had not been a time when some member of my family 
 was not sick from the malaria which prevailed in that 
 part of the country. I did not expect or desire to be 
 anything except a missionary. I was contented, but 
 quite poor, so far as money was concerned. But there 
 came a time when it seemed to me that I should be 
 ousted from even the humble berth I occupied ; and I 
 made up my mind that if I was, I should go to some 
 smaller place where my services would be acceptable. 
 The reason why I expected to be ousted was, that I had 
 attempted to stand up against the leading men of the 
 vicinity where I was, on the slavery question, at a time 
 when the people of Indiana did not dare to say that their 
 soul was their own, or that the negro's soul was his own. 
 It seemed to me that my church would be shut, and that 
 I should be deprived of the means on which I depended 
 for the support of my family. And I recollect that on a 
 certain day, while reflecting upon the unhappy state of 
 my affairs, I read this passage, " Let your conversa- 
 tion be without covetousness," that is, Do not borrow 
 trouble about where your salary is coming from, " and 
 be content with such things as ye have." " Why, yes," 
 I thought, " I have not many things ; but I will be con- 
 tent with them." And now for the royalty of the reason 
 for contentment : " For he hath said, I will never leave 
 thee nor forsake thee." These words, as I read them, 
 seemed as really a message from God to me, as if the
 
 214 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 white form of an angel had spoken to me, saying, " Henry, 
 I am sent to tell thee from your God, I will never leave 
 thee nor forsake thee." And the rest of the passage is 
 this, " So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my 
 helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me." 
 I then thought, " Now, Mr. Elders, shut up the church if 
 you have a mind to. I am not afraid of any man that 
 lives, since I have this message from my God." It sank 
 like a seed into my soul, and it has never been rooted 
 out. If there is any text of the Bible that has been an 
 anchor to me, it is that one. I have swung with it 
 through many a storm. It has held me a thousand times 
 if it has once. I never think of it that it is not to my 
 soul like a touch on the keys of a piano. There is always 
 music in it to me. " Let your conversation be without 
 covetousness." Do not fidget, and worry, and vex your- 
 self about how the ends are going to meet. You may be 
 sure that they always will meet, though you may not 
 always see how they can meet. If they do not meet in 
 this life, a man dies ; and then they meet. I used often 
 to think, " If they do their worst, they can only kill me ; 
 and I shall thank them for that." When to shove a man 
 through a door is to shove him into heaven, you cannot 
 do him any great indignity. 
 
 WE cannot come to the conviction of the divinity of 
 Christ so well by the intellectual and philosophical meth- 
 od as we can by the spiritual and experimental method. 
 This latter method is the method of the New Testament ; 
 and I think, that in the wisdom of the ages to the end of 
 the world, it will be found to be the true method. We 
 are first to employ Christ by faith in all the offices which 
 He sustains to the soul ; and then, I hold, no other argu-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 215 
 
 merit can produce such a conviction of His substantial 
 and glorious divinity, as will come from His effects upon 
 the soul. In accepting Christ in all His glorious offices, 
 as prophet, priest, and king, we have the best conceivable 
 evidence of His divinity. 
 
 WHAT do you suppose Baron Humboldt would have 
 been to an Indian boy fifteen years of age, if he had come 
 before him with all his astronomic, geometric, and geo- 
 graphic knowledge, with all his scientific knowledge, 
 with all the boundless wealth of his great mind ? Why, 
 the largeness of Humboldt's being, his power of thought, 
 everything that made him the philosopher that he was, 
 would have fairly eclipsed the poor Indian boy. You 
 might as well bring the sun down before my eyes, blazing 
 me blind, to give me a conception of that mighty orb, as 
 to bring the fulness of such a mind as Humboldt's before 
 the mental vision of an undeveloped Indian boy, to give 
 him a conception of that mind. It is dark where there is 
 too much light, as well as where there is too little. If 
 being is to help being, there must be some proportion 
 between the being helping and the being to be helped. 
 
 Now, if it had pleased God to come to earth in all the 
 fulness of His glory, man could not, according to the dec- 
 laration of Scripture, have looked upon Him and lived. 
 He not only could not have understood Him, but he 
 could not have borne the shock of contact with Him. 
 Christ therefore veiled Himself, laid aside the glory of 
 the Father which belonged to Him, to such a degree as 
 to bring Himself within the ordinary reaches of the hu- 
 man mind. 
 
 CHRIST comes to every man, and demands of him love.
 
 216 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 He presents Himself in every aspect in which a greater 
 mind can be presented to a lower ; He presents Himself 
 as the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, your per- 
 sonal friend, and your elder brother ; He embodies in 
 Himself every tender relationship of which we can con- 
 ceive; and He asks, He claims as His right, that you 
 should love Him. 
 
 If love were a sealed fountain, if you had never 
 learned to love, you would be less to blame for neglect- 
 ing to love Christ. But among the things taught ear- 
 liest is love ; among the things most experienced in life, 
 is love ; and among the things remembered latest, is love. 
 "When the child comes into life, almost the first thing he 
 does is to send out his heart in trust and confidence and 
 love ; and though the objects of his primal affection are 
 limited and imperfect, they are sufficient to excite in him 
 the dormant spark of love. But when it is the infinite 
 Creator ; when it is the glorious God ; when it is He that 
 for you has laid down His own life; when it is He, 
 rather, that has taken it up again, and lives- to intercede 
 for you ; when it is He that sends you, day by day, fresh 
 glories, and that, night after nigHt, surrounds you with 
 mercies ; when it is He that through all the periods of 
 your life watches over you with most tender solicitude 
 and scrupulous fidelity ; when it is He that outvies all 
 other affections, and showers His own upon you more 
 copiously than clouds ever rained drops, or seasons ever 
 gave forth fruit ; when it is He that comes to you, and 
 says, " My son, give me thine heart," what will you 
 do with this Jesus that yearns for your love ? "Will you 
 love Him? 
 
 DID you ever reflect that there is not, in the whole
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 217 
 
 New Testament, one caution or guard against our over- 
 trusting and over-exalting Christ? You never would send 
 a child to a person under circumstances such as those 
 under which we are sent to Christ, if we are not to trust 
 in Him, and exalt Him. You never would dream of send- 
 ing a child into the presence of one in every way calcu- 
 lated to win its affections and confidence, unless it was 
 right and proper that it should cherish affection for, and 
 repose confidence in, that person. Suppose that children 
 were to be placed under the charge of a teacher by whom 
 would be presented to them all that was admirable in 
 character, all that was winning in affection, all that was 
 stimulating and glittering in imagination, that which drew 
 about itself every one of the tendrils of sprouting life in 
 them, when it was known that this was only professional, 
 and that they were in the end to be wrenched and torn 
 from the object to which their hearts had become so firmly 
 bound, as the husk is wrenched and torn from the corn. 
 "What would be thought of such a course in the case of a 
 teacher and his pupils ? 
 
 Now behold Christ. What being can be conceived of 
 that would be more likely to arouse aspiration, to catch 
 the longing heart, to win the affection and the confidence ? 
 Consider what must be the result if we are brought under 
 the influence of such a being. And if it is wrong, if it is 
 idolatrous for us to love Christ, and depend upon Him, 
 how cruel it is that we should be placed in such relations 
 to Him that we are drawn to Him and led to throw our- 
 selves upon Him, and obliged to say, "Our life is hid 
 with Christ in God. Without Him, we are nothing. In 
 Him, we are all things. He is our way, our hope, our 
 light, our bright and morning star," and receive not one 
 word of caution, not one monitory remark, not one hint 
 
 10
 
 218 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 or admonition that it is not worth our while to trust in 
 Him, or that it is wicked to worship Him ; not even so 
 much as this : Be careful that you do not put the crown 
 on His head, lest you cheat the eternal Father ! And if 
 it is not right for us to love Him, and trust Him, and 
 worship Him, then, instead of a Saviour, we have a rav- 
 ening, destroying being in the Christ of the New Testa- 
 ment. If I may put my being on Him ; if I may feel 
 that He has suffered for my sins, that He has borne my 
 sorrows, and that my life is grafted into Him ; and if I 
 may pour out everything in me of thought, and zeal, and 
 worship toward Him, then blessed be God for Him ; 
 but if it is wicked for me to do these things, then I can- 
 not thank God for Him. God should not have added to 
 the misery of our condition by giving us such a being, 
 and then making it wicked for us to worship Him. 
 
 But I am not afraid to worship Christ. I will trust 
 myself to worship Him. I will trust those dearest to me 
 to worship Him. In the arms of Christ's love nothing 
 shall hurt you. Love on, trust on, worship on. Let go 
 your most ardent devotions toward Him. There is no 
 Divine Jealousy. The anxieties "that afflict the sons of 
 earth in their ideas of God, never exist in heaven. Christ 
 is the soul's bread, eat ye that hunger. He is the 
 water of life, drink ye that thirst. He is the soul's end, 
 aim at Him. He is the soul's supreme glory, yield 
 to every outgush of joy and enthusiasm of worship that 
 springs up in your heart toward Him. Those that are 
 in heaven bow down before Him, and ascribe blessing, 
 and honor, and glory, and power, to Him that sitteth upon 
 the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever. Let us 
 not, then, fear to worship Christ.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 219 
 
 YOUR honors here may serve you for a time, as it were 
 for an hour, but they will be of no use to you beyond this 
 world. Nobody will have heard a word of your honors 
 in the other life. Your glory, your shame, your ambi- 
 tions, and all the treasures for which you push hard and 
 sacrifice much will be like wreaths of smoke. For these 
 things, which you mostly seek, and for which you spend 
 your life, only tarry with you while you are on this side 
 of the flood. 
 
 WHEN a man, standing before a magnificent work of 
 art, or some wonderful phenomenon of nature, some 
 rugged mountain, some thunderous fall, like that of 
 Niagara, or some beautiful landscape valley, finds his 
 taste so waked up that he loses command of himself, and 
 breaks forth into an ecstasy of admiration, his sensations 
 are transcendent. 
 
 But when we stand, not before unspeaking canvas, or 
 inert mountains, or senseless water, but in the presence 
 of some hero, some man that has stood among men 
 nobler than the noblest, and truer than the truest, and 
 has carried the fate of a nation in his hand without be- 
 traying it, how grand a thing is a true man, that carries 
 in his life and conduct something of God ! And who is 
 there that is so unfortunate as not to know what a glori- 
 ous thing it is to go out in admiration, almost in worship, 
 toward such a man ? 
 
 But what, then, ought our feelings to be when we 
 stand, not before a man, nor before a mere spark, but 
 before the everlasting God ; when we stand before that 
 Being who created the innumerable orbs of which this 
 earth is but a specimen ; when we stand before that Being 
 whose ways generations and ages have sought in vain
 
 220 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 to find out ; when we stand before that Being of whose 
 love all the affections of father, and mother, and husband, 
 and wife, and child, and brother, and sister, and friend, and 
 lover, are but faint intimations, and of whose attributes the 
 divine qualities of men are but the slightest hints ? ' And 
 when he conies as our maker and preserver, and the 
 author of the eternal inheritance of bliss prepared for 
 us, and asks that we experience this rapture of admira- 
 tion for Him, how reasonable is His request, and how 
 blessed to us ought to be the prerogative and privilege of 
 making Him the object of our highest worship ! 
 
 To me it seems, and has always seemed, very strange 
 that there should be a kind of hesitation at worshipping 
 Christ by those who believe that their ideas of the Father 
 are derived from Him. " No man hath seen God at any 
 time ; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the 
 Father, hath declared Him." If you take a given num- 
 ber of qualities, and lift them up, and call them God, you 
 worship, not the name, but the qualities ; and if you take 
 the same qualities, and lift them up, and call them Christ, 
 you still ought to worship the qualities, and not the name. 
 There are many persons who do not hesitate to lift up 
 the qualities which they see in Christ, and call them 
 " Father," and pray to them, and worship them, who 
 have a superstition about praying to these same qualities 
 and worshipping them when they are called " Christ" 
 But they are the same, whether you call them " Father " 
 or " Christ" All that you know of God, and all that 
 you have in distinction from the heathen world, has come 
 to you through the revelation of Jesus Christ It is what 
 you see in Him, and though you may worship it under 
 the name of " Father," it is Christ that you worship.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 221 
 
 Why not, then, worship Him under His own name ? We 
 need not consult our fear, we may consult our longing, as 
 to whether we shall lean upon the Saviour. 
 
 CHRIST says that in every burdened hour He is your 
 staff; that in every peril He is your rescuer ; that in ev- 
 ery temptation He is the gate through which you are to 
 escape; that in every sickness He is your physician. 
 Yea, He stands in the portal of the grave itself, and de- 
 clares that He has power over death. " Because I live, 
 ye shall live also." He takes the very keys of the other 
 life, and opens the door thereof, and stands the universal 
 Saviour, and with a voice like that of one born to com- 
 mand, and clothed with the supremacy of Divine power, 
 He says, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end 
 of the world." 
 
 Consider what scope there is in these representations 
 of Christ. All our wants for time and for eternity are 
 made to point toward and centre in Him, as their ever- 
 lasting supply. Suppose, then, instead of hunting texts, 
 and attempting to prove by force of logic that He is abso- 
 lute God, we should take that other process, which con- 
 sists in every day attempting to employ Him as He is 
 presented to be employed in the New Testament ; sup- 
 pose our life should settle this matter ; suppose we should 
 find in our personal experience evidence of His divinity, 
 what would be the effect ? If He feeds you, if He 
 quenches your thirst, if He wakes your imagination, if 
 He inspires your sweetest thoughts and feelings, if He 
 sustains you, if He is your vital breath and your strength 
 here and your salvation hereafter, and you acknowledge 
 what He does, and accept Him as what He is, then, I ask, 
 can any worship be higher than that which you offer to
 
 222 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 Him ? Can you reserve anything better than you have 
 given to Him ? 
 
 THE angels sang, " Glory to God in the highest, and 
 on earth peace " ; but the angels were prophets. They 
 saw through a long tube, and the peace which they saw 
 was the bright crystal gate of the future. Christ at the 
 other end of the tube, said, " I came not to send peace, 
 but a sword." He came to send tumult, revolution, war. 
 And why ? Because He meant to have peace. That is 
 just what He meant to have. 
 
 Suppose when a man goes to make a violin you follow 
 him, saying, " He must, of course, have music at every 
 step." When in the forest he cuts the timber, you hear 
 the blows of the axe, and the crash of the falling tree, and 
 you say, " That is what you call a musical instrument, is 
 it ? " Yes, that is the beginning of it. And when the 
 saw rips through the log, when the plane glides over the 
 board, and when the file and rasp are brought to bear 
 upon it, the sounds that greet your ear are harsh and un- 
 musical. All the processes by which you make the sound- 
 ing-board are accompanied with disagreeable noises. And 
 even when it is finished, it does not produce pleasing 
 sounds till it has been tuned. And have you ever heard 
 anything more unearthly than the scream of a violin 
 string when it is being screwed up ? How it yells and 
 yelps ! But when the instrument is tuned, a Paganini 
 or an Ole Bull will take it up, and upon it discourse the 
 sweetest music. 
 
 Christ did come for peace, but the process of work- 
 ing it out is like sawing timber, or like screwing up the 
 string of a violin. It is not meant that there shall be 
 peace till there is a consummation of purity ; till an ad-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 223 
 
 justment has taken place inside of every man; till the re- 
 lations of men are adjusted to their outward life; till men 
 are adjusted to their fellow-men, and the vast multitude 
 are chorded for God's choral harmonies. Therefore you 
 need not look for peace right away. Peace is not going 
 to dawn very soon, if there is to be no peace till there is 
 perfection in the individual. 
 
 IN a man's head there is an up and a down. The 
 upper and the lower faculties reside there. And every 
 vote that is taken in the mind is carried by a majority of 
 the ruling forces ; not by a majority of the faculties, but 
 by a majority of the ruling forces. Just as long as a 
 man is not in danger of changing from bad to good, 
 of going from wrong to right, just so long is he allowed 
 to think and meditate as much as he pleases about it. 
 And therefore the higher faculties of a man's mind are 
 like prisoners good men confined up stairs in a great 
 castle. Veneration, an admirable fellow, walks up and 
 down the apartment, and talks about the beauty of 
 worship ; the sanctity of religion ; the nobleness of 
 prostrating one's self before God. Imagination, hearing 
 Veneration preach in such a beautiful manner, gets up, 
 and begins to talk about the glories of the eternal sphere. 
 Yea, it flies thither, and sees the very battlements of 
 heaven, its pearly gates, and its walls of many precious 
 stones ; and in ecstasy of joy, it comes back with seraphic 
 intelligence from that blessed abode. Conscience, that 
 always sits like a chief-justice on the bench, pronounc- 
 ing judicial decisions, talks about duty, about right and 
 wrong, and fills the other prisoners with excellent views 
 of truth and rectitude. Each one of the higher faculties 
 having spoken in a way to inspire a yearning for liberty,
 
 224 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 they take a vote, and decide that they will break away 
 from their confinement. "Agreed," says Veneration, 
 " I '11 go " ; and Ideality says, " I '11 go " ; and Con- 
 science says, " I '11 go " ; and Faith says, " I '11 go " ; 
 and Love says, " I '11 go " ! Accordingly, they all start, 
 and the first thing they meet is the bull-dog, Temper. 
 He says, " No, you won't " ; and Pride, the jailer, says, 
 " No, you won't " ; and greedy Avarice, th.e sentinel, 
 standing and pushing in double bolts, says, " No you 
 won't." And by watch-dogs, and jailers, and sentinels, 
 they are ignominiously driven back to their cell, to look 
 out of the window, and think again ! 
 
 How often does a man, on Sunday, sit in the upper- 
 rooms of his mind, and think of glorious things that he 
 means to do. Veneration is all right, Conscience is all 
 right, Hope is all right, Faith is all right ; and they say, 
 " God, and divine purity, and true manhood, and noble- 
 ness, we are for those things : let us try to-morrow 
 to live for them." To-morrow comes, and the first step 
 the man takes, " Bow wow," says bull-dog, Bargain, right 
 before him. The next step he takes he is confronted by 
 that old tyrant, Party. Then in succession he comes 
 upon Partnership, Social Pleasure, Custom, ami Habit. 
 Old Adam, multiform, briarean, crosses his path at every 
 turn. And he does not get a vote till the top of the head 
 and the bottom of the head have both voted; and the 
 bottom carries it, usually. 
 
 NOT golden veins in mountains, not diamonds in the 
 sands, nor precious stones, not treasures which are heaped 
 up in cities, nor the things which minister to the senses or 
 to bodily ease or comfort, are best. They are second best. 
 They are useful if they serve ; they are evil if they rule.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 225 
 
 For the world is God's nursery. Here He brings up His 
 children. And, as in our houses all things are good, 
 pictures, books, carpets, furniture, the table and the couch, 
 if they aid us to rear well our children, and are good 
 but for that ; as our children are themselves the chief 
 treasures to us, and their character the chief part of them- 
 selves, so is it in God's great household-globe, on which 
 we dwell. We are to despise nothing as if the being tran- 
 sient or physical were a reason for contempt. We are to 
 treasure all things, only we are to measure their value 
 by their relation to our higher nature. 
 
 THE cradle empty blesses us more than the cradle 
 filled. Therefore if I had had my way, how much leaner 
 I should have been ; how much less I should have been 
 built up in affection ; how much more deficient I should 
 have been in faith ! But against wish, and against strong 
 crying and bitter tears, God held on His way, and took 
 one, and two, and many ; and I bless His name. I am 
 not good, but I am better. And that which I could not 
 see then, is very plain to me now. For each of the tears 
 that dropped has become a sentence, and the literature 
 which they form is as the interpretation of the wisdom of 
 God in Hia- administration in earthly things. 
 
 IP you go into the great manufactories at Lowell and 
 Lawrence, that which you see is that which you never 
 see elsewhere ; and that which you see elsewhere is what 
 you almost never see there. You see there, not colors, 
 but dirty dye-vats; wool rather than thread, or thread 
 rather than fabrics. Instead of seeing rolls of finished 
 carpeting or cloth, you hear the rattling of looms, spin- 
 ning-jennies, and other machinery. These things, which 
 10* o
 
 226 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 absorb your attention, you leave behind you, when you 
 go out ; whereas it is in New York, in London, in the 
 great commercial mart, that you see the fabric which is 
 produced by them. 
 
 Now, this world is a great rattling manufactory, and all 
 these physical things are but the stationary engines and 
 looms. These are the things that men never carry wkh 
 them from this world. And yet, how important they are ! 
 Our life, as it were, is placed in a loom, and woven by 
 these things. It rolls up, and is hidden as fast as it is 
 woven ; and it is to be taken out of the loom only when 
 we leave this world. We shall see the pattern of it only 
 when we abandon the things which act upon us here. 
 
 I PREACH the Gospel just as my Master gave it to me. 
 He told me that it should be a sword, and I am bound 
 that it shall be. He said it should be fire, and it does set 
 men on fire. You cannot find anything in the Gospel that 
 makes for peace when men are wicked. As long as lies 
 are told, so long every word of Christian truth is an exe- 
 cutioner of lies, that ferrets them out and visits summary 
 punishment on them. As long as dishonesties are rife, so 
 long every honesty of God's Word is God's sheriff sent 
 out to arrest them. As long as there is cruelty, so long 
 every humanity of the Gospel is God's angel sent like 
 Gabriel abroad to defend the right and smite the wrong. 
 As long as men are corrupt, so long the Gospel is God's 
 firebrand to burn out of them the dross, leaving but the 
 pure gold. 
 
 IN all the abysses of God's nature, in all the infinite out- 
 stretchings of His being, in all that wondrous personality 
 that fills heaven and eternity, in all that incomprehensible
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 227 
 
 magnitude that we call God, -what extraordinary capacity 
 there must be of loving ! How strange must be the con- 
 ception of ail infinite God, higher than the heavens, and 
 broader than the earth, upon every one of whose attri- 
 butes, upon every one of whose affections, we put the 
 term "infinite," a term expressing that which is bound- 
 less, limitless, exhaustless ! 
 
 DID you ever see men made in this world ? They had 
 no great wisdom ; they had no great honor ; they had 
 no great heroism ; they had no great patience ; they had 
 no great meekness; thej had no great wealth of love. 
 But they had a certain muck-wisdom ; they knew how to 
 thrust their hand in where dirt was to be moulded ; they 
 knew how to amass property ; they knew how to con- 
 struct ships and houses; they had a kind of ferreting eye, 
 a sort of weasel sagacity ; they were keen and sharp ; 
 they were said to be prosperous, thriving men ; they 
 were being built up according to the estimation of men. 
 Give a man a thousand pounds, and you have laid the 
 foundation on which to build him, you have got his 
 feet built ; give him five thousand, and you have built him 
 up to the knees ; give him ten thousand, and you have 
 built him to the loins ; give him twenty thousand, and 
 you have built him above the heart ; give him fifty thou- 
 sand, and he is made all over. Fifty thousand pounds 
 will build a man in this world. One hundred thousand 
 makes a splendid fellow, as the world goes. The great 
 trouble, however, is, that although the materials may not 
 be very costly as God looks upon them, men find it diffi- 
 cult to build themselves in this way. Besides they are 
 very easily unbuilt. Where a man is merely what he 
 owns, it does not take long to annihilate him. There are
 
 228 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 thousands and thousands of men of whom if you take 
 away their houses, and ships, and lands, and fiscal skill, 
 and such other qualities belonging to them as they will 
 not want in heaven, and cannot carry to heaven, there will 
 not be enough left to represent them there, of righteous- 
 ness, and godliness, and faith, and love, and patience, 
 and meekness, and such like qualities. They have used 
 all these qualities up for fuel for their machine. It has 
 been their business in life to sacrifice probity that they 
 might be rich ; that they might gain power and influence ; 
 that they might make their hold on this world broader 
 and stronger. And if they cannot carry forth these 
 things, which have been the objects to the attainment of 
 which they have devoted all their energies, what is left 
 for them to go out of life with ? Yon see not only single 
 specimens, but whole ranks of these dwarfed, insect class 
 of men, patting each other on the shoulder, registering 
 each other, weighing each other, and speaking of each 
 other as " our first men," " our largest men," " our influen- 
 tial men," "our strong men" ; and yet, if you were to take 
 away from them that of which the grave will divest them, 
 you could not find them, even with a microscope ! 
 
 EVIL is eternal in the sight of God, unless it be 
 checked and cured. Sin, like a poisonous weed, resows 
 itself, and becomes eternal by reproduction. Now God 
 looks upon the human race in the light of these truths. 
 And tell me what other attribute of God, what other in- 
 flexion of His character, is so noble and sublime as this, 
 His gentleness ? How wonderful has been its dura- 
 tion ; how deep its nature ; how exquisite its touches ; 
 how rich its fruit ! What assurance does it bring to our 
 hope ! How boundless is the scope it opens to our eye !
 
 AOYAL TRUTHS. 229 
 
 How wonderful is the combination of traits in His dispo- 
 sition ! It was because the lion and the lamb first lay 
 down together in the heart of God, that the prophet de- 
 clared that they should yet do it on earth ! 
 
 HE who unites himself to any great idea or truth which 
 God has established, may be sure that he will go forth 
 from conquering to conquer ; not by reason of any might 
 or skill in himself, but because he is united to God, and 
 is a laborer together with Him. The man that adopts 
 any divinely-appointed truth, no matter what the world 
 thinks of it, rides in God's chariot, and has God for his 
 charioteer. No man rides so high, and in such good 
 company, as the man that allies himself to a truth that 
 God loves and men hate. Where a thing is true, and 
 just, and pure, and noble, and right, let law say what it 
 pleases, let institutions say what they please, let men say 
 what they please, let the world say what it pleases, do 
 you cast yourself into that thing without heed, without 
 calculation, without fear, and you will be in the hollow 
 of the hand of God Almighty, and will be on the sure 
 road to victory, since He himself is the all-victorious 
 One. 
 
 I THINK the most piteous thing in this world is never 
 written. I have read many a poem, and novel, and tale, 
 that made me cry, and whether they were true or not, 
 it was all the same ; but of all affecting poems and novels 
 and tales, I think life itself is the most affecting, com- 
 mon life, just as it turns out in the world. And when I 
 go out to measure men, I say to myself, as one after an- 
 other they pass before me, " Suppose that man should 
 drop out of life, what would become of him ? " It pains
 
 230 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 me to see how worthless men are, to see how men 
 stand in life, and what they are. I am sometimes called 
 to perform the burial-service over men of whom I could 
 not say a word, and of whom, if I had expressed what I 
 felt, I should have said, " I bless God that he is gone. 
 The world is better off for his having been taken out of 
 it." Look at human life, break through all the sentimen- 
 tal ways of society, weigh men as you weigh gold, un- 
 mixed with dirt or quartz or any other substance, take 
 men up and see how much there is of them that really 
 answers the end of the life to come, and how many there 
 are that, dying, would not be missed. How few there 
 are that, dying, would make the community feel poor! 
 How few there are that, being dead, would yet speak ! 
 
 WITHOUT fault of their own, persons of other countries, 
 being driven from their homes by revolutions, flee to 
 Britain or America. They were educated to be gentle- 
 men, in their own lands ; and being born noblemen, they 
 had some seeming right to be educated as gentlemen, 
 that is, to live a lazy life, and have others support them. 
 But driven forth from their seeming fate, how can they 
 subsist? They cannot teach, for they cannot speak the 
 language. They cannot work, for they have learned no 
 trade. They have only learned to open their mouth and 
 take the food ready to drop into it. Of all miserable 
 men, I think they are the most miserable who have been 
 educated intellectually, and who have fine tastes and 
 strong emotive powers, but who have no sort of ability 
 to get along when they are thrown out of the circum- 
 stances in which they were educated, and are obliged, 
 under new circumstances, to shift for themselves. I have 
 seen very many such men, men built exquisitely for
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 231 
 
 mortification and suffering, and apparently for nothing 
 else. But how dreadful, compared with the misadjust- 
 ment of these men, is that of those who, having striven to 
 make themselves something in this life, die and go into 
 the other life to find that they, do not know its business ; 
 that they cannot speak its language ; that they have no 
 faculties educated which have respect to their relations 
 there ; that those faculties which they have educated 
 have no function there ; and that those which they need 
 to use there, have not been trained ! Such men will stand 
 fools and foolish forever ! The life that is substantial they 
 have thrown away. Their education, instead of being for 
 the other life, has been for this life alone. 
 
 GOD will never receive us upon any invoice sent from 
 this world. Every man is to be reappraised, unpacked, 
 examined, mostly thrown away ; and that which is least 
 esteemed here is to be measured most and judged most, 
 and the reverse ; so that the last shall be first, and the 
 first .shall be last. The ten thousand who go without a 
 procession to the grave, whom no man knows to have 
 died and no man misses, have their procession on the 
 other side, and armies in triumph shout them home ; 
 while men who are followed to the grave by a long pro- 
 cession, who are buried with much state, and who fill 
 the world for a time with the sound of their fall, are re- 
 ceived on the other side silently and without procession. 
 And happy is it for them if" they do not rise to shame 
 and everlasting contempt. 
 
 IF a man is righteous and godly, if a man's life consists 
 in soul-treasure, no matter what may befall him, his 
 nature cannot be touched ; it will ever shine on. If he
 
 232 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 is deprived of his worldly surroundings, it is all the more 
 affecting and influential. When a truly great man has 
 these tilings taken away from him, it is as when a 
 cocoa-nut has the rind taken off; it is as when a grain 
 has the husk taken off. Take a man who is good and 
 noble and true, and remove from him everything through 
 which he has stood and glowed and radiated, and men 
 will bow down to him, and say, " That is virtue ! That 
 is godliness ! That is God in the soul .!" And the man 
 will be more known, more felt, more revered, when stand- 
 ing merely in his own intrinsic wealth, than when clothed 
 with the trappings of this world. 
 
 THE whole globe, it seems to me, is a sacrament ; and 
 time is full of the most solemn lessons and the most mo- 
 mentous truths. And yet we let day after day and year 
 after year pass over our head, and our constant thought 
 is, what ? That the winter is severe ; that the day is 
 inclement ; that the rain incommodes our party, or mars 
 our pleasure. We sit and judge of the various events of 
 the seasons with reference to our selfish convenience. 
 We fret, and fume, and complain of God's phenomena, 
 judging them by our wishes, and . without thanksgiving, 
 or admiration, or gratitude, or reverence, but full of spite 
 and peevishness and ill-feeling. 
 
 MEN are seeking for only this life. A short life it is, 
 and exceedingly imperfect "and rudimentary, at best. It 
 is like a road, which is good for travelling, but poor for 
 sleeping. This world is magnificent for strangers and 
 pilgrims, but miserable for residents. The very moment 
 a man carries himself as though this were his home, and 
 begins to build as though he would live here, that moment
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 233 
 
 the world is not a fit place for a temporary residence for 
 him. It is only when a man considers this world as a 
 school-house, and not a dwelling, that it will serve the 
 purpose it was intended to serve. The academy is not a 
 place to live in. We go into it that in due time we may 
 come out prepared for a higher sphere. What the anvil 
 and the blacksmith-shop are to the sword of the warrior, 
 that this world and its instrumentalities are to us. We 
 are forged here to .be used hereafter. We are to receive 
 our perfected selves, and to come to the fruition of our- 
 selves, only when God shall open the door of this world, 
 and let us out. We are like a ship that, being built, lies 
 high and dry, and whose sea-going qualities cannot be 
 known till she is launched upon the ocean. We do not 
 know our own powers. When at death we are launched 
 upon the sea of eternal life, then we shall know what we 
 are. 
 
 Do you not know that the Devil never makes a rout in 
 a man's heart so long as he bears undisputed sway there ? 
 It is only when it is attempted to throw him out, that he 
 shows the man how strong a hold he has upon him. He 
 lets him talk, and say, "I can rid myself of this habit 
 whenever I please," and such like things. It rather 
 pleases him to have him talk so. But when he under- 
 takes to rid himself of the habit, he lets him know that 
 he cannot do it so easily as he supposed. 
 
 " WHO have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope 
 set before us, which hope we have as an anchor." These 
 figures do not succeed each other, but they intermingle. 
 It may be a violation of rhetorical rules, but it is the ful- 
 filment of a rich imagination thus to commingle figures ;
 
 234 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 for no one who is apt to see thiugs in symbols and by 
 pictures, but knows that for the same thought there will 
 often arise several distinct figures striving to represent it, 
 and that the mind will, in its more fervid moods, take both 
 figures or many of them in part. A fervid imagination 
 uses figures just as freely as words, and as we often change 
 words or inflect a sentence from the very overflow of feel- 
 ing as the progress of thought develops in our mind, so is 
 it with figures and illustrations. In this case I think there 
 is a sublime unity in these figures that is not often seen. 
 It is as if the apostle had seen the soul beset with great 
 troubles like storms. Doubts and temptations fill the air 
 black ; the poor driven soul flies for shelter, the very wind 
 drives it; the peril of the elements and their terrible 
 threat speed it to some covert, and so it makes for the 
 refuge. And then, in the universality of his imagination, 
 the apostle sees the storm not alone upon the land, but 
 upon the sea ; the mariners are swept with the wind and 
 dashed with the overwhelming waves, and for his peril 
 the anchor is the refuge. The storm is common to both 
 figures : the refuge is for the land, the anchor for the sea ; 
 and both of them mean one thing, security. For what 
 a strong house is in the one sphere, that a sure and stead- 
 fast anchor is in the other. 
 
 WHAT strange creatures men are ! They bow down 
 and bend under God's mysterious dealings ; and when 
 they find their hands empty, their hearts full, their plans 
 frustrated, their wishes crossed, and their life burdensome, 
 they go mourning and wondering why it should be so ; 
 and then they go back to the household and pursue upon 
 their sons and daughters the same policy that has been 
 pursued upon them, and marvel that the little child can-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 235 
 
 not understand that it is for its good that it is denied 
 things that it desires, and that it has put upon it things 
 that it dislikes ; and why it cannot understand that life is 
 a unit, and that its welfare in the future depends upon its 
 right management in the present ! They reproduce in 
 their dealings with their children God's dealings with 
 them, and are yet forever wondering why God deals 
 with them as He does, and why their children do not un- 
 derstand that their administration over them is beneficial 
 and wise ! 
 
 THE nature of a seed is such that when it is thrown 
 into the ground it unfolds itself without culture, without 
 any exterior influence beyond the light and air and soil, 
 to be just that thing which it was meant to be. Every 
 flower comes to its own nature ; and although culture 
 may make it larger and finer, yet it expresses the radical 
 idea involved in the seed. It is so with every insect, and 
 every animal. But man is not a creature that, according 
 to this analogy, being born into the world opens and 
 develops himself to that which God meant manhood to 
 be. "When left in the most favorable conditions, man 
 does not, and will not, so develop himself; for that which 
 is required to make manhood is not in him. There were 
 elements left out of the nature of man without which that 
 nature never can come to its perfection. For, as in fruits 
 sugar comes from the sun, so in man grace comes from 
 the Sun of righteousness, working in us, and elaborating 
 the things that we need. But they are never wrought 
 out by any process that takes place by the natural facul- 
 ties in the soul. 
 
 As in a piano two chords are united to make one sound,
 
 236 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and they both respond to one stroke of the hammer, so in 
 Christ His own will and the will of His Father were 
 united to make one parallel motive, and they both re- 
 sponded to the action of one nature. There was no dis- 
 tinction between them. To please, to honor, to expound 
 and declare, to serve, to love His Father, was that which 
 gave Him rest and comfort. Without this meat of doing 
 the will of the Father, His life would have been empty, 
 and His soul forever hungry. 
 
 IT is a noble view, this, to take of Christ's life, 
 namely, that it was spontaneous ; that it had calm zeal 
 and the willingness of enthusiasm. It was not borne as 
 a load ; it was performed as a joy. " "Who for the joy 
 that was set before him endured the cross, despising the 
 shame." I know that Christ is predicted as a man of 
 sorrows, and acquainted with grief; yet it is the very 
 wonder and mystery, that up through every sorrow His 
 heart sent such a flame of love and joy that affliction be- 
 came the very fuel of gladness. I think that our views 
 of the Saviour are perfectly destructive to all respect 
 even. I think the painters' ideas of Christ, as repre- 
 sented in material suffering, are simply vulgar and infer- 
 nal ; and if I had the power I would take every one of 
 those disgracing canvases and rip them and burn them, 
 that make such a masquerade of the divinity of Christ in 
 His suffering state. For do we not know that there are 
 in our own houses children who, for their father's sake, 
 will bear suffering, and not shed a tear? and are they 
 more than Christ? Are there not parents and compan- 
 ions that will carry troubles vehement, for the sake of 
 those round about them, and make them so luminous that 
 none shall see them ? And is it not woman's peculiar
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 237 
 
 office to walk a martyr, and yet wear a face of joy and 
 hope and radiancy, so much does her affection overcome 
 and quite subdue material suffering and lower forms of 
 disappointment ? And how many men carry a world of 
 trouble for the sake of their country and their fellow-men, 
 and yet stand prophets of peace and joy themselves ! 
 How many confessors and martyrs have borne inexpres- 
 sible torments for the sake of truth, singing while the 
 flame itself was scorching their flesh, their soul beating 
 down the nerve and overcoming the body, and making 
 them triumphant over physical and mental suffering by 
 the power of higher feelings which quite adumbrated and 
 put out the lower ones ! And must we conceive of Christ 
 as one who crouched under suffering ? Was He the only 
 one that did not know how to make clouds carry colors ; 
 or all of whose clouds were lead-color or black ? Was 
 He one who bore suffering with weakness ? Was He one 
 that was overcome and cast down by suffering ? No, the 
 glory of Christ was this : that He accepted His mission 
 with such cheerfulness and gladness and enthusiasm ; that 
 He did the will of God with such alacrity ; that though 
 He was pre-eminently, and above all that ever lived, a 
 man of suffering, yet He counted it a joy to suffer; that 
 He was an overmastering sufferer. 
 
 THAT Christ loved, longed for the personal presence of 
 His disciples, was very patient with their rudeness, ran to 
 their help with more love, when they fell into sin, than 
 before, pitied and excused their infirmities ; that Christ 
 mourned over those whom He condemned, and sadly 
 denounced Jerusalem, amid tears; that He loved birds, 
 flowers, children ; that He loved to sit at twilight under 
 the olive-trees on the mountain over against Jerusalem,
 
 238 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and commune with His followers of the day's experience ; 
 that He loved the solitude of the mountain, and prayed 
 through the night ; that He would gently steal upon the 
 evening walk to Emmaus, and talk like a stranger to 
 those whom He entirely knew, and hesitate at the door, 
 to draw forth a more earnest welcome, in short, if these 
 ten thousand shades of thought, and feeling, and conduct, 
 that give individuality and personality to Christ, also in- 
 terpret the disposition of God, how near do they bring 
 Him to our tastes, our affections, our imaginations, and 
 our reason ! I love to carry every act of Christ right 
 home to Him as very God ; and to say, This tells me 
 how God feels, and what He is, for it is God himself! 
 
 THERE are two ways in which the word nature unfor- 
 tunately is employed. One represents the characteristic 
 use which we make of ourselves. That we call nature ; 
 but only when the word is used in its perverted sense. 
 A man's nature is spoiled in that sense. But there is a 
 higher and prior use of the word, namely, that which 
 represents the soul and the faculties as God created them, 
 and meant that they should be. Now, I hold that the 
 original nature of man was to love God and serve Him ; 
 that that is the secret of harmony in the soul ; that any 
 othjer theory by which you attempt to reconcile man to 
 himself on earth will fail ; and that the only way fof a 
 man to have the full possession of the powers and forces 
 of life, is that in which he is most addicted to love and 
 trust in God. 
 
 THE faculty of veneration is itself to be educated into 
 Christ, and every one of its offices is to be made Chris- 
 tian. For, according to the. law of Nature, fear and
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 239 
 
 dread are the handmaids of worship. Worship should 
 be festive ; but ever since the ascetic element entered it, 
 it has been the darkest and most dreaded thing possible. 
 Men have symbolized it in their churches. Stone above, 
 stone below, and stone on either hand ! Darkness in the 
 roof, and darkness in the window ! Churches have been 
 crypts. It would seem as though men had drawn their 
 conceptions of the sanctuary from the places of worship 
 of the earlier Christians who were forced to worship 
 under ground. * Cathedrals and churches have been dimly 
 lighted ; and the little light that. has come into them has 
 come through paint and ground glass, in a way that has 
 misinterpreted God's sunlight. And men have entered 
 them shuddering, and on tiptoe, as if the presence of 
 God was to be dreaded ; have bowed down as if to wor- 
 ship Him was the most terrible thing in the world ; have 
 risen up scarcely daring to whisper ; and have hurried 
 out as if they had been disembodied spirits, rather than 
 warm-hearted men of flesh and blood. The conception 
 of worship has been sombre and dark. It has been 
 heathen ; for the conception of worship in Christ's time 
 was as light as the canopy of heaven. A most noble 
 doctrine of Christian life was that which the Saviour 
 taught when He declared that whatever proceeded from 
 any heart Godward, was true worship ; and that not in 
 Jerusalem, nor in the mountain of Samaria, nor in any one 
 place, but wherever a heart went out to God, was accept- 
 able worship. In that great teaching Christ showed us 
 that worship is to be Christianized. We are in the 
 bondage of old superstition, and the worship of nine hun- 
 dred and ninety-nine churches in a thousand is yet tinged 
 with the sombreness illustrative of the heathen element 
 of fear. The lightness, the gayety, the cheer of true wor-
 
 240 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 ship, is but little known among men. What the hilarity 
 of children is, breaking away from masters aud schools, 
 and romping home to overpower the household with joy, 
 such is to be the worship of God's children. The name 
 of Father ought not to make any man tremble that is a 
 child. 
 
 SOMETIMES, in dark caves, men have gone to the edge 
 of unspeaking precipices, and, wondering what was the 
 depth, have cast down fragments of rock, and listened for 
 the report of their fall, that they might judge how deep 
 that blackness was ; and listening ! still listening ! 
 no sound returns ! no sullen splash, no clinking stroke as 
 of rock against rock, nothing but silence, utter silence ! 
 And so I stand upon the precipice of life. I sound the 
 depths of the other world with curious inquiries. But 
 from it comes no echo, and no answer to my questions. 
 No analogies can grapple and bring up from the depths 
 of the darkness of the lost world the probable truths. 
 No philosophy has line and plummet long enough to 
 sound the depths. There remains for us only the few 
 authoritative and solemn words of God. These declare 
 that the "bliss of the righteous is everlasting; and with 
 equal directness and simplicity they declare that the 
 doom of the wicked is everlasting. 
 
 The incorrigibly wicked, the deliberately impenitent, 
 have nothing to hope in the future, if they set aside the 
 light and the glory that shines in the face of Jesus Clirist. 
 And therefore it is that I make haste, with an inconceiv- 
 able ardor, to persuade you to be reconciled to your God. 
 I hold up before you that God who loves the sinners and 
 abhors sin ; who loves goodness with infinite fervor, and 
 breathes it upon those who put their trust in Him ; who
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 241 
 
 makes all the elements His ministering servants ; who 
 sends years, and weeks, and days, and hours, all radiant 
 with benefaction, and, if we would but hear their voice, 
 all pleading the goodness of God as an argument of re- 
 pentance and of obedience. And remember that it is this 
 God who yet declares that He will at last by no means 
 clear the guilty. 
 
 WE must not confound devotion with piety. The one 
 is the means : the other is the result. The one is the 
 fire : the other is the food which it cooks. Devotion is 
 merely a method by which you attempt to enkindle in 
 yourselves spiritual life. It is not piety ; it is the instru- 
 ment of it A man may read his Bible, the Prayer-book, 
 and devout treatises, and give much time and attention 
 to religious services, and yet be far from piety ; just as a 
 man may whirl a millstone and have no grain, no flour. 
 And there are many persons that run the mill of piety, 
 who grind nothing but bran, who certainly grind very 
 little flour for the bread of life. There is a hundred times 
 more devotion than piety in the world. Many men pray 
 not so much for the sake of being better, as to furnish a 
 substitute for not being better. They are not honest, they 
 are not truthful, they are not noble, they are not loving, 
 they are not disinterested, they are not ingenuous, and 
 they know it, and they pray hoping that their prayers 
 will be put against thejr deficiencies. They are conscious 
 of doing wrong, and they have an idea that they can make 
 amends for it by praying. They seem to think that if 
 they praise God a good deal, and tell Him what they 
 think of Him and of His government a good deal, and all 
 that, He will accept their devotion as an equivalent for 
 right conduct. Now, the only earthly object of devotion 
 11 p
 
 242 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 is that it may afford means, instrumentalities, fuel, to en- 
 enkindle in men a true spiritual life. The life is some- 
 thing separate from the cause that produces it. 
 
 IT is no virtue to be patient down hill; but to be 
 patient up hill is some virtue. In being patient with an 
 angel, in being patient with a saint, in being patient with 
 a model nature, in that, there is no credit; but in being 
 patient with a man that is hard, and arrogant, and con- 
 temptuous, and that carries himself loftily, so that his 
 very look and gesture are an insult to you, there is some 
 credit. 
 
 Why to tell a nurse that she must be patient with her 
 sick ones, and yet excuse her from being patient with 
 those that have the dropsy ; with those that have fevers ; 
 with those that are delirious ; with those that are weak, 
 and cannot help themselves, that would be like giving 
 a direction to be patient with people in general, but 
 nobody in particular. But to be patient with men, is to 
 be patient with the whole sum of human infirmities, 
 with all weaknesses, with all wants ; and with all wicked- 
 nesses, as well. 
 
 IT is a period of the world when men should take 
 courage and be glad. I thank God every morning and 
 every night, and ten thousand times a day, that He per- 
 mitted me to be born in such an age as this. Now a man 
 lives a year in a day. Now men are not living in Jan- 
 uary, in mid-winter, in a frozen ground where the roots 
 can suck no juice, where no leaves are playing in the 
 wind ! We are living in the month of May, when winter 
 is gone, when the snows no longer cover deeply the earth, 
 and when birds are singing in the air. There are storms,
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 243 
 
 to be sure, but, after every thunder-storm, the leaves play, 
 the roots grow, and ten thousand influences are operating 
 to bring summer. Let us, then, be patient. Let us be 
 hopeful. Let us have faith in God. He is very near to 
 us : we know it by the wrath of the Devil ; we know it 
 by the way evil men cry out, saying, " Art thou come to 
 torment us before our time ? " we know it because some 
 are cast down and are made to wallow, that the Devil 
 may be driven out of them. Let him go ; but let them 
 arise, clothed, and in their right mind, and be found sit- 
 ting at the feet of Jesus. 
 
 SOME men think of religion as if it were, on the whole, 
 simply a title to heaven. They love the hymn, " When 
 I can read my title clear." They understand deeds, and 
 titles, and conveyances. Their heavenly title seems to 
 them, in the earlier part of their religious experience, to 
 be disputed. It is as if the Devil were some sneaking 
 man seeking to invalidate their title to their property. 
 They go into court, invalidate the claim of their adver- 
 sary, and establish their own. That is to say, they are 
 awakened, convicted, and converted. And now they say, 
 " I have a title to heaven." It is as if a man had a large 
 estate which he was carrying on in a certain way, and 
 for which there had risen up a claimant, and he went be- 
 fore the tribunals, and there contested his right, and got 
 a verdict in his favor, and then returned home, and lived 
 on the estate as before, without repairing the fences, with- 
 out better tilling it, without building new mansions upon 
 it, but allowing it to remain the same old thistle-grown 
 estate that it was before ; the only change being that his 
 title to it is confirmed, so that he can say, " I own it." 
 There are a great many men to whom religion seems to
 
 244 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 be simply the authentication of their title to heaven. 
 When they think they have obtained it, they say to them- 
 selves, "Now, whatever may befall the world, while 
 they have a heritage, perhaps, of brimstone and fire, 
 I am called, elected, sealed, and adopted. I am going to 
 heaven ! " But their life remains the same as before. 
 They are no better, no more honorable, no more truthful, 
 no more spiritual, no more devout, no more holy. 
 
 WHEN, after a long, frigid, barren winter, the spring 
 comes and loves the earth a little while, how wondrous is 
 the change that takes place ! When the month of May 
 comes and sits upon the North as a bird upon her nest, 
 there come forth from under its feathers sounds of new 
 life ; the forest echoes with the voices of joyous songsters ; 
 the roots start; the grass grows; the air smells sweet; 
 all things are full of richness and beauty. Just so it is 
 when spring comes to the soul ; when the heart is touched 
 with the fructifying power of love. How instantly, under 
 such circumstances, does there grow up beauty, and fit- 
 ness, and satisfaction ! When it is human heart that 
 touches human heart, what a wondrous spring it brings ! 
 what flowers and promises of fruit ! But 0, when it is 
 the heart of God that brings spring to our hearts ; when 
 it is the heart of God that sets every root, and every bud, 
 and every leaf in us a-growing, how wondrous is the 
 beauty that is evoked ! how wondrous is the promise of 
 fruit that is held out ! And when we have once loved 
 Christ with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, 
 and are able to say, " To do Thy will is my meat and my 
 drink," we have achieved the victory ; we have overcome 
 all adversaries ; we have found the way that is cast up, 
 on which the ransomed of the Lord are to return and
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 245 
 
 walk, with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. 
 When we serve God reluctantly, fitfully, by turns, par- 
 tially, we are living a hard life, a starved life, a wretched 
 life ; but when we are so brought to Christ that we can 
 say, " Thy will be done," we are living an easy, a fed, a 
 happy life. The heart that every day can say " Father"; 
 that every day can say, " I love Thee " ; that every day 
 can say, " Not my will, but Thine " ; that every day can 
 say, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? " that, in 
 short, can say, " My life is hid with Christ in God," 
 the heart that can say that is able to pronounce the words 
 of consummation, the words of victory. There is little 
 more in life for him to do except to go on as an exemplar 
 and laborer for God, waiting till the Divine call summons 
 him to his glorification in heaven. 
 
 CHRISTIAN brethren, we are advancing nearer apd 
 nearer, every year, to the consummation of our life-work. 
 We are coming, every year, nearer and nearer to that 
 final disclosure when God shall reveal to us what we are. 
 I have sometimes fancied what would be the cause of 
 most surprise and joy in the other life. In some hours, 
 when higher moral feelings predominate, it seems to me 
 that the first thing that will fill the heart of men will be 
 the vision of God, the vision of the Redeemer. In 
 other hours, when craving affections are strongest, it 
 seems to me that whatever may be the glory of the pres- 
 ence of God, the first things the heart will recognize will 
 be its lost ones. At other times, when high and heroic 
 purposes of life are in the ascendency, it seems to me that 
 the sanctified spirits of the noble men that have dwelt upon 
 the earth the great assembly of the just made perfect 
 will first astonish and rejoice the heart. But I think,
 
 246 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 after all, that scarcely less than before God himself, we 
 shall stand in utter surprise and wonder before ourselves, 
 when what we are is brought out ; when what life has 
 made us begins to be disclosed ; when, standing in the 
 Divine presence, the soul seems, even in that comparison, 
 so noble and so full of glory that it is able to say, " I am 
 satisfied." The glory that is to be ours doth not yet ap- 
 pear, but there are glimpses of it. 
 
 THE life of every Christian on earth has much in it 
 that is mysterious ; for it is aiming at an awful grandeur, 
 which has never yet been unveiled. God carries in His 
 bosom the full ideal. We know it not. We go moaning 
 after music. We rudely grope for beauty. We are sick 
 men leaning on a staff, and walking slowly for convales- 
 cence. We do not ^now the things toward which we are 
 tending ; but God knows them. There are few that 
 suppose their moanings or yearnings mean anything, but 
 God. The apostle says, " The Spirit helpeth our infirm- 
 ities ; for we know not what we should pray for as we 
 ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us 
 with groanings which cannot be uttered." 
 
 We see, then, the meaning of those strange longings 
 and aspirations which so many have. They are the fore- 
 workings in us of that which is to appear in the heavenly 
 estate. They are not a mere vagrant restlessness. They 
 are the yearning of the soul for itself. They are the 
 homesickness of the heart for its future home. They 
 are the attempt of the child to say " Father." We see, 
 too, the meaning of those glimpses and visions which so 
 many have. John says, " It doth not yet appear what 
 we shall be." We are the sons of God, we know ; but 
 what that means, we do not know.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 247 
 
 How unhappy must be a community bred to the in- 
 evitable meanness of slavery. Men that have such a 
 load to carry may well stagger. Society built upon a 
 foundation of injustice cannot bring forth just men. Sla- 
 very does not eat the slave half as much as it does the 
 master. It is a scorpion-whip, deadly to the hand that 
 wields it, as well as to the back that receives its lash. 
 
 A MAN that makes cloth cannot eat cloth. A man that 
 makes porcelain, off which men eat, cannot eat porcelain. 
 That which is to hold men's food cannot satisfy their ap- 
 petites. It is not your worldly avocations, nor the imme- 
 diate results of your worldly avocations, that can satisfy 
 you. There is a great mistake made in this regard. Men 
 suppose that if they rise early, and sit up late, and give 
 themselves to right callings in right ways, they ought to 
 be happy. No ! your calling never was meant to be food. 
 You must have something better than that to feed upon. 
 Suppose a man does rise early, and sit up late, and drive 
 a profitable trade, and suppose that to do it he extin- 
 guishes taste, takes no pains to contemplate Nature, re- 
 fuses to walk where God speaks through His works, cares 
 for the family only in a small way of duty, and neglects 
 to develop his higher affections, is it to be expected that 
 he can be happy ? He means, he says, to succeed in bus- 
 iness ; and when he has come to be fifty or sixty years of 
 age, and has succeeded in business, he wonders that he 
 does not enjoy what he has made. But it is not that 
 that can satisfy him. I think that when men are stranded 
 on wealth, and left to wander on its desolate shores, where 
 nothing can grow, they are among the most pitiable of all 
 men in the world, and not the less so because they 
 have made the mistake of supposing that a man's worldly 
 avocation will feed his soul.
 
 248 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 MIRTH is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe 
 in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety, all this rust of 
 life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is 
 better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself 
 with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without 
 springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by 
 every pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is 
 like a chariot with springs, in which one can ride over 
 the roughest road, and scarcely feel anything but a pleas- 
 ant rocking motion. 
 
 THEKE is no isolated thing known to us in creation. 
 Everything is a part of something else. Nothing lives 
 except by depending on some other thing. The bird eats 
 the insect; the insect ate the leaf; the leaf fed upon the 
 sap ; the sap came from the ground ; the ground drank 
 at the cloud's lips ; and so you may push all things back, 
 and find that one stands on another. In this arrangement 
 of creation, we need food for every part of the body. 
 The body was not built so that it should stay built, but 
 so that it must be rebuilt, in part at least, every single 
 day. The bone needs one food, the hair another, the 
 nerve another, and the muscle another. And, in analogy 
 with this, the mind, just as much, demands stimulus and 
 occupation that shall give to it the nourishment and vi- 
 tality which food gives to the body. The child feeds 
 upon the mother and the father. The parents' affections 
 wake up the child's, and then feed them. The child's 
 thoughts, too, are waked up by those of the parent, and 
 fed by them. The mind-influence of the parent stimu- 
 lates the child's mind, and gives it fulness and satisfaction. 
 The soul will not have solitariness. That is hunger. 
 It loves to dwell with those congenial to it. In the ordi-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 249 
 
 nary and casual relations of life this is true. Men love 
 to travel in companies, and to work in companies, simply 
 because, it is said, they are social. But what do you 
 mean by that, but this : that there is a yearning thought 
 which goes out to the life by which one is built. 
 
 And it is to be remarked that the lower down upon 
 the scale a nature stands, the less it is developed, the less 
 it is civilized, the more it seeks food for the body and 
 from matter ; while, on the other hand, the higher we 
 rise upon the scale, the more our nature is educated, the 
 more characteristically we become men, the more we 
 reach toward and touch the divine idea in our creation, 
 the more do we find that our life and our life-food are 
 in commerce with other natures. Now, all the while, this 
 nature is developing, and life is educating it, that it may 
 find its true nature in feeding upon God. What we are 
 doing every day is tending toward that which we are to 
 do when we come to the fulness of our being, and take 
 hold of the soul's real end and final supply God. This 
 is the final end of every man. Plants do not express 
 themselves as soon as they come up. They grow to what 
 they mean, in the vegetable kingdom. So do men. They 
 are growing to their final forms. But everything in life 
 is in analogy. Everything is tending upon each lower 
 to develop the next higher, upon matter, passion ; 
 upon this, affection ; upon this, sentiment; and upon this, 
 Divine love. 
 
 The Lord Jesus Christ declares Himself to be, and has 
 by thrice ten thousand believing ones been found to be, 
 the soul's true food. That is, there is not one single 
 thing in a man's nature which, if brought into commerce 
 with the Lord Jesus Christ, will not find its development 
 and satisfaction. There is not one element of a. man's 
 11*
 
 250 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 being that cannot be so brought into connection wita 
 the Lord Jesus Christ that intellectually he shall be both 
 developed and fed. 
 
 Do you suppose Paganini, who can play on one string 
 of the violin, could play on one key of an organ, which is 
 capable of giving forth but one sound ? Even under the 
 hand of Paganini, one string can be made to discourse 
 only but poor music. But here are men whose being is 
 provided with forty strings, who have left thirty-nine, 
 and go about fiddling on one and wondering why they 
 do not succeed in playing high harmonies with orchestral 
 lives. They neglect all but one of the many instruments 
 the use of all of which is necessary to the attainment of 
 happiness, and wonder why they are not happy. 
 
 IT is supposed that a man ought to preach what is 
 called practical truth. I think so myself. But then 
 some truths are practical just as a whip is which has no 
 lash, and with which you can touch only a near horse. 
 Other truths are practical as is the whip of a stage-driver 
 when driving a team of four or six horses, a whip with 
 a long lash. He has to take a long stroke behind, and a 
 long throw forward, in order to get the crack ; but when 
 he has got it, it is a good one. Some truths are without 
 lashes, and are only good to whip with close by, and oth- 
 ers are long-lashed, and have to be carried through long 
 circuits before they can be made to produce their legiti- 
 mate effects. That is the distinction I make between 
 preaching practical ethics and doctrine. 
 
 I believe, therefore, in doctrinal preaching. Doctrinal 
 preaching that has no feet, and does not know, when it 
 has taken flight, how to get down to the ground again ;
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 251 
 
 doctrinal preaching that never touches life : all that gas- 
 eous stuff called doctrinal preaching, this I heartily 
 disbelieve in. But that doctrinal preaching which is like 
 the moisture that rises from the ocean, the lakes, the 
 rivers, and the damp places, and fills the upper sky, and, 
 collecting in clouds, descends in the form of rain, to give 
 seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, I most firmly 
 believe in. I care not how broad you make the foun- 
 dations of it, I care not how voluminous you make the 
 principles of it, I care not how exact you make the in- 
 tellectual processes of it, so that it is juicy, so that it is 
 bud-bearing, so that it yields fruit, so that it aims at this 
 thing the building up of men in human life. 
 
 I HOLD that a world without a Sabbath would be like 
 a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, and 
 like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day 
 of the whole week. Men, however, feel, " Why, I thought 
 the Sabbath-day was holy. I was taught that it was 
 wicked to laugh or whistle till after sundown. But now 
 I perceive that I was wrongly instructed, and that I can 
 do what I please without committing any crime." 
 
 You may not break Sunday, but you may do great mis- 
 chief. You have no right to take a liberty without think- 
 ing that there are children around you, and considering 
 what effect your example is going to have on them. You 
 are to hold this liberty of the Sabbath-day if you choose 
 to take it subject to this law of edification. And I, for 
 one, cannot conceive how any Christian man can make 
 the Sabbath-day a day of secular pleasure, instead of a 
 day of religious improvement. 
 
 " FOR my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are
 
 252 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens 
 are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than 
 your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." 
 
 What is the teaching here ? It is this : that God does 
 not sit at the North Pole in cold, iceberg glory, saying, 
 " Come here, and I will save you." He sits in the very 
 bosom of tropical summer, and says to every one that 
 wants to repent, "Come toward daylight ; come toward 
 growth ; come toward blossoms ; come toward fruit, 
 come ; for with royal power I will draw you, and with 
 royal power I will forgive you. Do not think that I am 
 like other potentates : do not think that I am like a venge- 
 ful king that will lay some severe penalty upon his sub- 
 jects, and then, perhaps, at last, accept their submission. 
 My thoughts of generosity and of magnanimity are as 
 much higher than those of the noblest man, as the heav- 
 ens are higher than the earth. Therefore, forsake your 
 way only, and return to me, and you shall live." 
 
 "AND I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judg- 
 ment was given unto them ; and I saw the souls of them 
 that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the 
 word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, 
 neither his image, neither had received his mark upon 
 their foreheads or on their hands, and they lived and 
 reigned with Christ a thousand years." 
 
 This is an account of the resurrection of the witnesses. 
 I do not know what the commentators make of it, but I 
 prefer to think that the resurrection of the witnesses is 
 going on all the time. We are now beholding the resur- 
 rection of men that a thousand years ago laid down their 
 lives for principle. Nobody was capable then of appreci- 
 ating the act or giving it publicity. The Devil had
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 253 
 
 swept his pall over the whole world ; but when these 
 men had slept a thousand years they were to have resur- 
 rection in this world. Old Cromwell, why, they trod 
 him into the dust, and despised his grave. Even down 
 to our day, they would not let a statue of him stand in 
 the House of Parliament, and he has been made more 
 memorable by its not being there than he could have 
 been by its being there. It would have been a disgrace 
 to the memory of this heroic Christian to have placed 
 his monument in the midst of those base men who treated 
 with contempt his noble example. But he has had a 
 resurrection in old England. To-day the spirit of Crom- 
 well is felt there. He is judging in that country. It is 
 Cromwell, and Cranrner, and Latimer, and Ridley, and 
 Rogers, and Wickliffe, and the other great men of Eng- 
 land that died gladly for truth, and justice, and equity, 
 and humanity, who are the enthroned sovereigns that sit 
 now crowned in that nation. No man shall eject them ; 
 no revolution shall throw them out of their sovereignty. 
 Who rules in Florence to-day ? Old Savonarola. They 
 hung him, and quartered him, and trampled him into the 
 dust. But God hid him, and in these latter days God 
 has said to him at last, " Come forth, my son, and wit- 
 ness ; now thou shalt live and reign a thousand years " ; 
 and he is coming forth to live and reign. Old Huss was 
 burned in Bohemia. He is not alive yet. He is only 
 beginning to shake off the cerements o/ the grave. But 
 he is yet to come forth and witness for the right, and live 
 and reign a thousand years. All true men away back to 
 the days when Noah built the ark, when patriarchs be- 
 lieved in God, when Daniel, rather than sacrifice his con- 
 victions, went to the lion's den ; all the old prophets and 
 confessors, with Christ at their head ; all the disciples and
 
 254 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 apostles ; every martyr all the way down to the present 
 day that has been slain for the sake of principle, these 
 are royally to live again. It takes a great while for such 
 seed to come up, because when it is up it is not going to 
 die. The longer anything is to endure, the longer it is 
 in being organized. 
 
 THE Christian truly accepts God as a father ; not as a 
 father in the sense of exterior fatherhood, but as a father 
 of the soul. And the Christian is united to Him, as a 
 child is to a parent, more by affection than by mere ex- 
 ternal ties. For my father is not father to me merely 
 because he is blood-kindred, but a great deal more be- 
 cause he is soul-kindred, to me. And this is the case 
 with the fatherhood of God to the Christian. It is not in 
 a figurative sense that he accepts God as his Father, but 
 in a real, literal spiritual sense. 
 
 O, THE insignificance of most of our lives! Very 
 few men are permitted to be poets ; very few men are 
 permitted to be wise ; very few men are permitted to be 
 eloquent ; very few men are qualified to be statesmen. 
 
 A woman that seemed to be endowed with everything 
 that was noble, and that was calculated to fit one for the 
 most emmefcl service, was called, in God's providence, to 
 marry a man that was not her equal. She was placed in 
 an obscure position. She was eclipsed in the household. 
 She could not walk the saloon. She did not move in the 
 midst of a circle of admirers. Her duties were to stay at 
 home, to nourish the little sickly child, and to serve her 
 stupid husband. "While she might have been listening to 
 the chime of the spheres, while she might have been 
 communing, one would suppose, with the very Eternal,
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 255 
 
 she was occupied with rocking the cradle, darning, knit- 
 ting, sewing, washing, and cooking. She worked out her 
 life in these little insignificant things ; and sometimes, 
 perhaps, she thought to herself, " Woe is me ! To what 
 end am I living ? " Her child developed under her 
 care, and learned to call her mother ; and when it said, 
 " Mother," she thought God spoke, so sweet was its 
 voice to her. Now she began to walk up the golden 
 path of love. In that child, born of her sufferings, and 
 reared by her hand ; in that child, for whom she had 
 been a vicarious sufferer and saviour, freely giving her 
 inward life, as first she gave her outward life ; in that 
 child, summoned to go forth as a messenger of truth, ap- 
 pointed to do some great work of love, in that child, 
 she expected more than a thousand times to reap her 
 reward for all that she had done and suffered. But her 
 hopes in him were blasted. Just as, after having passed 
 through the glorious period of boyhood, he was touching 
 manhood, in a moment the wave closed over him, and he 
 was gone forever ; and the labor of her life was ended, 
 and she was stranded on the shores of despair ; and she 
 cried out, " Why was I born ? and to what end have I 
 lived?" 
 
 A hundred had marked her fidelity, and she had been 
 schoolmaster to every one of them. A hundred had wit- 
 nessed her patience, and all the sermons they had ever 
 heard had not preached such a lesson to them as her si- 
 lent example. Multitudes that had learned of her, in turn 
 became teachers of others. Her influence spread wider 
 than she dreamed. It was not until she had gone up to 
 the end of life in obscurity, and God had caused the light 
 of eternity to shine on her work, that she understood how 
 glorious little things might be.
 
 256 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 MANY m^n carry the promises of the Word of God as 
 a miser carries bank bills, the face of which calls for 
 countless treasures, but which he does not carry to the 
 bank for presentation. An ignorant man takes a hundred- 
 pound-note. He does not know what the stamp means, 
 bat he has been told that it means that the note is worth 
 a hundred pounds sterling. It is worth nothing at all to 
 him unless it will draw what it promises ; and the way for 
 him to ascertain whether it is worth anything or not, is to 
 take it to the paying teller and see if it will draw the 
 money. It is time to say that there is no money behind 
 it, when, on its being presented, it is rejected. 
 
 I HAVE sometimes had the misfortune to sit in concerts 
 where persons would chatter and giggle and laugh during 
 the performance of the profoundest passages of the sym- 
 phonies of the great artists ; and I never fail to think, at 
 such times, " -I ask to know neither you, nor your father 
 and mother, nor your name : I know what you are, by 
 the way you conduct yourself here, by the want of sym- 
 pathy and appreciation which you evince respecting what 
 is passing around you." "We could hardly help striking a 
 man who should stand looking upon Niagara Falls with- 
 out exhibiting emotions of awe and admiration. If we 
 were to see a man walk through galleries of genius, to- 
 tally unimpressed by what he saw, we should say to our- 
 selves, " Let us be rid of such an unsusceptible creature 
 as that." 
 
 Now I ask you to pass upon yourselves the same judg- 
 ment. What do you suppose angels, that have trembled 
 and quivered with ecstatic joy in the presence of God, 
 think, when they see how indifferent you are to the Di- 
 vine love and goodness in which you are perpetually
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 257 
 
 bathed, and by which you are blessed and sustained every 
 moment of your lives ? How can they do otherwise than 
 accuse you of monstrous ingratitude and moral insensibil- 
 ity which betoken guilt as well as danger ? 
 
 THROUGHOUT the Bible it is declared that the things 
 that we are permitted to see in this life are but intima- 
 tions, glimpses, of what we shall see hereafter. " It doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be." There are times when 
 it seems as though our circumstances, our nature, all the 
 processes of our being, conspired to make us joyful here ; 
 yet the apostle says we now see through a glass darkly. 
 What, then, must be the vision which we shall behold 
 when we go to that abode where we shall see face to face ? 
 What a land of glory have you sent your babes into! 
 What a land of delight have you sent your children and 
 companions into ! What a land of blessedness are you 
 yourselves coming to by and by ! Men talk about dying 
 as though it were going toward a desolate place. All 
 the past in a man's life is down hill, and toward gloom ; 
 and all the future in a man's life is up hill, and toward 
 glorious sunrising. There is but one luminous point, and 
 that is the home toward which we are tending, above all 
 storms, above all sin and peril. Dying is glorious crown- 
 ing ; living is yet toiling. If God be yours, all things 
 are yours. If Christ be yours, all heaven is yours. Live 
 while you must, but yearn for the day of consummation, 
 when the door shall be thrown open, and the bird may fly 
 out of his netted cage, and be heard singing in higher 
 spheres, and diviner realms. 
 
 GOD governs in the affairs of men, though we do not 
 see Him. God watches the flow of daily life. He stands 
 
 Q
 
 258 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 in the market ; He walks in the street ; He beholds the 
 ways of business, the paths of temptation, the lanes of 
 pleasure, the sinks of evil, in all places where men are 
 tasked, and tried, and made temptable, there stands God 
 looking, taking account ; and not only beholding, but en- 
 couraging, cheering, and saying, if men would but hear 
 His voice, " It is always safe to be right ; there is always 
 reward in virtue ; there is always solid foundation in 
 righteousness." Everywhere the voice of God to men 
 is, " Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteous- 
 ness," that is, seek, as the best and highest end of de- 
 sire, my kingdom, and my righteousness, and it shall 
 take nothing from, but shall add all things to you. 
 
 TRUE religion carries health and strength into the souL 
 It regulates all things ; it subordinates all things to their 
 just positions ; it withdraws from men no faculty ; it ties 
 up no power ; it extinguishes no instinct ; it imprisons no 
 part of the mind, it directs and regulates. Religion is 
 only another word for the right use of a man's whole self, 
 instead of a wrong use of himself. It puts men into con- 
 nection with God ; it brings them into harmonious rela- 
 tions to their fellow-men ; it gives them direction for the 
 achievement of duty ; it opens to them the coming world, 
 and inspires them with ardent desires for it; it makes 
 them love whatever is good, and abhor whatever is bad ; 
 it inspires reverence, obedience, and love toward God and 
 toward our superiors among men ; it inculcates justice, 
 mercy, and benevolence toward our fellow-men ; it indues 
 us with courage, with patience, with contentment ; it com- 
 mands industry, frugality, and hospitality ; it enjoins hon- 
 esty, truthfulness, uprightness, simplicity, and integrity. 
 And that men, in their ignorance and weakness, may feel
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 259 
 
 the importance of virtue and of the truest piety, Christ 
 reveals the immortality of man's nature, the glory of the 
 heavenly state, the sympathy of God with the struggles 
 of human life, and, above all, sets before men, in a perfect 
 pattern, the example of the life of Christ, who was 
 tempted in all points like as we are in this earthly strife, 
 and yet without sin, teaching us both by precept and his 
 victorious career. 
 
 No man knows half the fulness of his own being until 
 inspired to a Christian life. If you will walk with me in 
 January over the fertile places in the fields, and through 
 the forests, you will see what man is in his natural state. 
 The earth is full of roots, not one of which knows how to 
 live. The trees are full of buds, every one of which is 
 closed and bandaged so that it cannot expand. All 
 things are populous, but all things are curdled, congealed, 
 restrained. Although, in his natural state, man is full of 
 high, godlike powers, yet they are in a condition of bond- 
 age, and inactivity ; and the coming of religion to him is 
 like the coming of spring to the soil and the forests, when 
 all things begin to grow. When a man attains some 
 degree of ripeness in his spiritual nature, he may be 
 likened to the fields and the forests in midsummer ; and 
 when he has passed through life under the stimulating 
 influences of religion, he may be likened to plants and 
 trees in autumn, when they yield their fruit in exceeding 
 abundance, and in a state of perfect ripeness. 
 
 IT is not what a man gets, but what a man is, that he 
 should think of. He should first think of his character, 
 and then of his condition. ..He that has character need 
 have no fears about his condition. Character will draw 
 after it condition. Circumstances obey principles.
 
 260 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 OUR Master said, " Strive to enter in at the strait gate, 
 for many will seek to enter in, and shall not be able." 
 For it was taken for granted that no man could afford to 
 be damned. No man can afford to lose immortality in 
 heaven. No man can afford to be condemned to shame, 
 and swept out from the presence of God with the off- 
 scouring of the earth. 
 
 THERE are times, I suppose, in which the most zealous 
 would, if it were God's will, be glad to die, to retire 
 from the battle of life, because they think it will make 
 no difference whether they live or die. They have such 
 a consciousness of imperfection, of inferiority, of unfitness 
 in themselves, that they feel that it could scarcely be 
 worse, and that it might be much better, if they were out 
 of the world, and their places were filled by others. 
 
 What is a drop of water of itself? What can be more 
 harmless ? What is weaker ? What is less potent for 
 any effect ? It is mist, invisible. It rises through the 
 imperceptible paths of the air, and hangs unseen in the 
 heavens, till the cold strikes it, and it congeals into 
 clouds, and falls in the form of rain, perhaps on the 
 mountain's top, and is sucked up by the greedy earth. 
 Still sinking through the earth, it reaches the line of the 
 rocks, from whose sides it oozes out and trickles down, 
 when, finding other drops as weak as itself, they unite 
 their forces ; and the sum of the weakness of all these 
 drops goes to make the rill ; which flows on, making 
 music as it flows, until it meets counter streams. These, 
 combined, form the river ; the river forms the estuary ; 
 and the estuary the ocean itself. And now, when God 
 has marshalled the sum of the weakness of myriad drops 
 together, they lift the mightiest ship as if it were but a
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 261 
 
 feather, and play with the winds as if they were mere 
 instruments of sport. And yet, that very drop, which a 
 man could bear upon the end of his finger, is there, and 
 has its part and lot in the might of the whole vast, un- 
 bounded sea. 
 
 "We in our singleness, in our individuality, in our own 
 selves, are weaker than a drop of water, and more un- 
 stable ; but as gathered together in the great ocean of 
 life, as kept together by the mighty currents which God's 
 providences make, we attain, working together with Him, 
 under the inspiration of His Spirit, to a might that makes 
 life not ignoble, but sublime. It is most worthy of re- 
 mark that the things that have called forth the most 
 strength and endeavor of life have been things that we 
 have most utterly failed in doing ; while the things that 
 seem to draw about themselves only the endeavors of 
 weakness, have been the things that God has established 
 most. 
 
 I THINK that if you will look back upon the history 
 of scholarship for two thousand years, you will find that 
 those things to which the pride of human intellect has 
 addressed itself, those things which were expected to be 
 monuments of triumphs of thought by the men that put 
 them forth, have achieved next to nothing. As it is with 
 webs that are destroyed as fast as spun, and that are re- 
 spun as fast as destroyed, so it has been with the scholas- 
 ticism of two thousand years. If you look at the efforts 
 of the most learned statesmen, if you look at the most 
 laborious plans and the wisest endeavors of the chief men 
 of almost every nation, you will find that they have toiled 
 and labored to build up things that stood only while they 
 had their hand upon them, and hardly as long as that.
 
 262 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 Laws have been overthrown almost before the face of men 
 that thought they had done most curious and wonderful 
 things in the scale of legislation. Administrations have 
 ceased almost before the last vote had rung upon them in 
 their structure. The things that men have done in their 
 own strength have been things that have scarcely outlived 
 their makers. 
 
 IDEAS are cosmopolitan. They have the liberty of the 
 world. You have no right to take your swords and cross 
 the bounds of other nations to enforce upon them laws or 
 institutions which they are unwilling to receive. But 
 there is no limit to the sphere of a man's ideas. Your 
 thoughts and feelings, the whole world lies open to 
 them. Every right-thinking man has a right to send 
 abroad his thoughts into any latitude, and to give them 
 sweep around and around the earth. He has a right to 
 do it, but of course, like all other rights, it must be regu- 
 lated with prudence. It would be difficult for a man to 
 propagate his thoughts in some lands ; but his right to do 
 it exists, nevertheless. I have a right to preach Christ 
 wherever my heart will. It may be that the crescent, 
 the scimitar glittering under it, may say to me, " At the 
 peril of your life ! " but that does not affect my right. I 
 have a right before idols, before Juggernaut, everywhere 
 on the whole earth, to preach not only Christ, but the 
 ethics of Christ ; and not only the ethics of Christ, but 
 the civility that is drawn from essential Christianity, and 
 that must flow from it. I have a right to carry all the 
 ideas developed in consequence of Christianity, in their 
 ideal forms, to the mind of every living human being. 
 
 A CHRISTIAN accepts, first, the Divine idea of his own
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 263 
 
 development of character, and labors to produce in him- 
 self those things which God seeks. It makes no differ- 
 ence that the results are imperfect. The artist that seeks 
 to make a portrait, seeks it just as much when by unskill 
 he makes no resemblance to the subject, as when by skill 
 he makes a perfect representation of the subject. He 
 seeks to make the portrait, whether he succeeds or nt. 
 And a Christian perceives what is the Divine idea in hu- 
 man life and character, and aims at it ; and though every 
 day he comes short, or overacts, though his results are 
 filled with manifold imperfections, and the whole work, to 
 him even is a blur, instead of a true picture of the joy 
 and righteousness which he meant to paint, nevertheless, 
 he has aimed at it. For what we set out to do is not to 
 be measured by our success in it. The bankrupt aimed 
 at wealth as much as the millionnaire. The man that 
 was defeated aimed at victory as much as he that wore 
 the laurel. And the Christian, though from weakness 
 and temptation he may stumble, if he accepts the Divine 
 idea of what human life and character should be, and 
 seeks it with all his heart, works together with God. 
 
 THERE are two kinds of heroes in the world, one of 
 which we stand outside of to admire, and the other of 
 which we take inside of us. The former are men indif- 
 ferent in morals, but of great intellect, great genius, great 
 executive force. Peter the Great, Napoleon, and many 
 others, were men of such singular power that we cannot 
 but admire them. But there have been some men in the 
 history of the world whom we not merely admire, but 
 whom we desire to take into our souls, and into whose 
 care and keeping we desire to yield up our life. Men 
 that are willing to stand up for the truth against all
 
 264 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 comers ; men that never equivocate ; men that are always 
 full of truth, those are the men that the soul elects to 
 be its heroes. It is a glorious thing indeed for a man to 
 be able so to carry himself that every one who sees him 
 shall say, " He is transparent in all that he says and 
 does : his yea is yea, and his nay is nay" If only such 
 afe heroes, we are not in danger of being surfeited. 
 
 IN those ages of the world when God more apparently 
 guided the courses of man personally, promises were 
 made to individual men. For the most part the men of 
 old believed with the simplicity of childhood. It was 
 counted to Abraham for righteousness that he believed 
 God against the evidence of his own senses. With them 
 a promise of God put an end to all controversy and 
 doubt. 
 
 In so far as we are concerned, it may be said that 
 God's promises respect conduct and character, rather 
 than personality. "We are to make them personal by 
 coming into certain states of character, or into certain 
 conditions of life. And in this way God's promises be- 
 come applicable to the whole human family. 
 
 Thus, the Word of God is filled with assurances of 
 blessings. No book was ever so characterized by the 
 element of promise. There are threats not a few, but 
 I think promises greatly outnumber them, as if it were 
 the Divine wish to draw us by hope, rather than drive 
 us by fear. Promises cover the whole period of human 
 life. They meet us at our birth ; they cluster about our 
 childhood ; they overhang our youth ; they go in com- 
 panies into manhood with us ; they divide themselves 
 into bands and stand at the door of every possible expe- 
 rience. You cannot bring yourselves into a condition
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 265 
 
 for which I cannot find in God's Word some promise. 
 Therefore, there are promises of God to the ignorant ; 
 to the poor ; to the neglected ; to the burdened ; to the 
 oppressed ; to the discouraged ; to the solitary ; to the 
 imprisoned ; to the sick ; to the heart-broken ; to the 
 remorseful ; to the weak ; to the strong ; to the timid ; 
 to the brave ; to every affection ; to every one of its 
 exigencies ; to every sphere of duty ; to all perils ; to 
 every temptation that waylays good men in their jour- 
 ney. There are promises for joy ; for sorrow ; for vic- 
 tory ; for defeat ; for adversity ; for prosperity ; for 
 those that run ; for those that walk ; for those who can 
 only stand still. Old age has its garlands as full and 
 fragrant as youth. The sick, the dying, all men, every- 
 where, and always, have their promises of God. 
 
 GOD'S promises are fresh with everlasting youth. The 
 stars never wear out ; they are just as good to-day as 
 when Abram saw them directing the Oriental people by 
 night. The sun is not weary from the number of years : 
 there are no wrinkles on its brow. The urns of God are 
 replenished by outpouring, and they increase their ful- 
 ness by that which they yield. And so God's promises 
 are of the nature of laws. The heaven and the earth 
 shall pass away, but they shall not change in one jot or 
 tittle, nor pass away. 
 
 THE music of this world has been for the most part in 
 a minor key. This choral globe has groaned and trav- 
 ailed in pain until now. God knew the fallen condition 
 of the race, and His promises were made explicitly to sin- 
 ful men. And when He wrote to you, do you suppose 
 He thought you an angel ? He knew well that you were 
 12
 
 266 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 not. He knew that the world was full of men tempted 
 and temptable. He knew that men were in a world of 
 sin, themselves sinners. And He sent His Son to you 
 because you were in peril, and because unless there was 
 Divine rescue there would be universal ruin. And shall 
 a man say, " I cannot plead the promises of God, because 
 I am sinful ? " Therefore plead them, because you are 
 sinful ; therefore plead them, because you are wicked ; 
 therefore trust them, because though you are bad God is 
 good, and the nature of goodness is to relieve want, even 
 though that want be founded on sin. 
 
 OFTEN and often Christ comes walking to the disciples 
 on the stormy sea and in the night, and it is necessary 
 that there should be some power of faith, some cogent in- 
 fluence, that shall make a Christian man willing to follow 
 rectitude, duty, honor, truth, no matter where they seem 
 to lead. And therefore it is that God has put all the 
 bows, all the coruscations of his Word around about the 
 issues and ends of essential truth, honor, duty, and recti- 
 tude, and that He says to us, " If you would save your 
 life, lose it. Do not be afraid." You are oftentimes 
 brought into trials when it seems as though everything 
 would be wrecked, and the world says, " Prudence " ; 
 experience says, " Draw back " ; policy says, " Change a 
 little " ; and expediency not the noble expediency of 
 Divine wisdom, but the lower and baser expediency of 
 human calculation says, " Commute, compromise " ; but 
 the Word of God stands saying, " If you would save 
 yourself, be willing to throw everything away ; if you 
 would be safe, risk everything, and stand by that which 
 is essentially right and true and noble." The Word of 
 God that stands sure and steadfast, and is yea and amen.
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 267 
 
 says, " He that will lose his life for a right principle, shall 
 save it.'" And in the end, when you come to count the 
 wrecks along (he shore, you will find that those men "who 
 would save their lives by losing their principles are the 
 men that have lost their lives; while those men who 
 braved the storm, those men who followed the superior 
 light that shone in their hearts, those men who said, 
 " Come what will, there is but one way for me, and that 
 is the way that God has marked out," are the men that 
 have saved themselves. 
 
 MEN know where they are going when they follow a 
 principle ; because principles are like rays of light If 
 you trace a ray of light in all its reflections, you will find 
 that it runs back to the central sun ; and every great line 
 of truth, every great line of heroism, every great line of 
 honesty, every great line of honor, runs back toward the 
 centre of God. And the man that follows these things 
 knows that he is steering right Godward. But the man 
 that follows policies, and worldly maxims, does not know 
 where he is steering, except that in general he is steering 
 toward the Devil. 
 
 " CAN the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his 
 spots ? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed 
 to evil." 
 
 This is not the language of exact physical science. It 
 is said simply to signify how terribly difficult it is to break 
 off from a bad habit. Ten thousand witnesses testify, too, 
 that there are sins which carry such branches, such roots, 
 such amazing vitality, that they fever the whole soul and 
 body, where one is subject to them, till it is almost like 
 giving up life itself to be freed from them.
 
 268 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 THE Jew thought that God was the God of the Jews, 
 that the Jew had a right to be saved, and that no other 
 man could be saved without becoming a Jew, or yielding 
 obedience to the requirements of the Jewish religion ; but 
 the apostles declared that Christ might be preached to 
 the Gentiles as well as to the Jews, and that the benefits 
 of Christ's blood were for the whole world. And Paul 
 here goes into this reasoning : " God has a right to do as 
 He pleases ; He has a right to save men that do not be- 
 long to the Jews, nor fulfil the demands of their religious 
 system ; He has a right to call people unto Himself wher- 
 ever and whenever He pleases, for the sake of making 
 known His own excellent glory, the beneficence of His 
 nature, and the richness of His grace ; and who art thou 
 that thou shouldst question His wisdom ? " That is to 
 say, here is a question of Divine mercy which involves 
 the whole schedule of government, and which, therefore, 
 you cannot understand. You cannot understand what 
 God ought to have done, and what would have been the 
 
 O ' 
 
 wisest thing, in matters of creation and administration. 
 You are obliged, respecting such things, to take facts 
 as they come to you, and not attempt to go behind the 
 facts, as though you had greater wisdom than God. 
 
 IT is folly for a man to question the Divine wisdom in 
 respect to mere matters of administration about which he 
 is of necessity most ignorant ; whose elements are beyond 
 his reach ; whose conditions involve complexities incal- 
 culable ; and into which enters a principle of time that is 
 infinite. Thus, for example, suppose a man should say 
 to God, " Why did you make the world as you did ? 
 Why did you make men as they are made ? Why did 
 you establish the law of hereditary descent, by which the
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 269 
 
 qualities of the parent go to the children, and through the 
 children to many generations ? Why was the. world 
 made so that the abstraction of heat should produce 
 ice?" Such questions as these addressed to God are 
 supremely foolish, and the man that addresses them to 
 God is a fool. 
 
 But suppose that God has, with infinite pains, in- 
 structed us as to what is the difference between self- 
 ishness and benevolence, between sympathy and love, 
 between indifference and self-seeking and seeking anoth- 
 er's welfare, until there is formed in us a clear and 
 correct ideal of moral character, then it is not either 
 presumptuous or blasphemous to apply to the Divine 
 character that very criterion of moral excellence which 
 He himself has given to us. The difference, in other 
 words, between applying a moral measure that has been 
 given to us, and asking questions in respect to adminis- 
 trations and governments which are beyond our reach, is 
 a world-wide difference. 
 
 GOD'S Word is a great unopened treasure. It seems 
 to me like some old baronial estate that has descended to 
 a man who lives in a modern house, and thinks it scarcely 
 worth while to go and look into the venerable mansion. 
 Year after year passes away, and he pays no attention to 
 it, since he has no suspicion of the valuable treasures it 
 contains, till at last some man says to him, " Have you 
 been up in the country to look at that estate ? " He 
 makes up his mind that he will take a look at it. As he 
 goes through the porch he is surprised to see the skill 
 that has been displayed in its construction, and he says, 
 " Indeed, they had some ideas of architecture when this 
 house was built." And he is more and more impressed
 
 270 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 as he goes through the halls. He enters a large room, 
 and is astonished as he beholds the wealth of pictures 
 upon the walls, among which are portraits of many of his 
 revered ancestors. He stands in amazement before them ! 
 There is a Titian, there is a Raphael, there is a Correggio, 
 and there is a Giorgione ! He says, " I never had any 
 idea of these before." " Ah ! " says the steward, " there 
 is many another thing that you know nothing about in 
 this castle " ; and he takes him from room to room, and 
 shows him carved plate and wonderful statues, and the 
 man exclaims, " Here I have been for a score of years 
 the owner of this estate, and have never before known 
 what things were in it ! " 
 
 But no architect ever conceived of such an estate as 
 God's Word, and no artist or carver or sculptor ever 
 conceived of such pictures and carved dishes and statues 
 as adorn its apartments. Its halls and passages cannot 
 be surpassed for beauty of architecture, and it contains 
 treasures that silver and gold and precious stones are not 
 to be mentioned in connection with. 
 
 IF there are any that have made up their mind to 
 know life, I say to them, Stop ! you may pay too dear 
 for your knowledge. Men have looked into the crater 
 of a volcano to see what was there, and gone down to ex- 
 plore, without coming back to report progress. Many and 
 many a man has gone to see what was in hell, that did 
 see it. Many and many a man has looked to see what 
 was in the cup, and found a viper coiled up therein. 
 Many and many a man has gone into the house of lust, 
 and found that the ends thereof were death, bitter, 
 rotten death. Many and many a man has sought to 
 learn something of the evils of gambling, and learned it
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 271 
 
 to his own ruin. And I say to every man, the more 
 you know about these things, the more you ought to be 
 ashamed of knowing ; a knowledge of them is not neces- 
 sary to education or manhood ; and they ought to be 
 avoided, because when a man has once fallen into them, 
 the way out is so steep and hard. Many and many a 
 man has ^ begun to climb the giddy cliff of reformation ; 
 but, 0, how few have succeeded in getting over its brow! 
 Methinks I see men sweltering in passions, and swim- 
 ming out to the base of the cliff, and attempting to climb 
 up. Some are higher than othejs. One after another 
 falls back, or is plucked down by some fiendish hand. 
 Some are half way up the cliff, and struggling hard to 
 reach the top. Some turn ghastly pale when they look 
 down at the abyss below ; and they are filled with de- 
 spair when they look up at the height above them. And 
 where one goes over and is saved, ninety-nine fall back 
 and are lost. 
 
 EVERT praying man and every woman on the globe 
 who lives in the intelligent knowledge of Christ, and 
 employs the Spirit and truth of Christ intelligently, just 
 as much as councils, and synods, and conventions, and 
 churches, has the power of the keys. God gives it to 
 every one that desires to have the living nature of Christ 
 in him. Ah ! do you not suppose there have been thou- 
 sands of men who have gone down through life arrogating 
 this claim that never opened the door of heaven to one 
 single soul? There have been hundreds of popes, I 
 suppose, who have opened the door of the future, but 
 it was the door of perdition, who have not opened the 
 door of heaven even for themselves, and much less for 
 any that came after them, or went before them. And
 
 272 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 yet there have been hundreds of poor bedridden Chris- 
 tians whose key was bright with perpetual using, and 
 who, by faith, and example, and testimony, did bind in- 
 iquity in the world, by the golden cords of truth, and did 
 set loose, by the same truth, those that were bound, 
 giving them power of spiritual insight, giving them eman- 
 cipation, and bringing them into the large light and lib- 
 erty of the children of God. Emancipators of the soul, 
 they were, humble, uncrowned, uncanonical, unordained, 
 God-sanctified souls. They knew Christ, and loved Him, 
 and poured out His spirit upon men. 
 
 There is a solemn sens.e in which they that are enlight- 
 ened and converted by the truth should hold the keys to 
 enlighten all those who are vicious and ignorant beneath 
 them. By your superiority you are tempted to make 
 yourself the monarch of those beneath you. But God 
 ordains you to be the schoolmaster of all who are less 
 enlightened than you are. Are you higher than men ? 
 It is not that you should sit enthroned in their praises, and 
 demand their suffrages, and the tribute of their admira- 
 tion. The higher you are, the more prompt you should 
 be to go down to those that sit in the region and shadow 
 of death. Has God given to your soul the knowledge 
 of salvation by Jesus Christ? Are you linked with 
 other brethren that are of the same blessed procession ? 
 Do you constitute a class ? Do you rear your own chil- 
 dren in the light and knowledge of these truths ? Where 
 are those that are below you ? Where are the vicious ? 
 Where are the criminals? Where are the unlettered 
 and ignorant wanderers in the street ? Where are the 
 great mass that have subsided to the bottom of society ? 
 Somebody must be their illuminator. Somebody must 
 point their way to the city. Somebody must open its
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 273 
 
 flashing gates to them. Every one that has the mind 
 and will of Christ, and abides in His Spirit, stands in the 
 relation to those below him of the holder of the keys. 
 Woe be to him that in time of famine has bread and lets 
 men starve because he will not part with it ! Woe be to 
 him that in time of plague has medicine, and lets men die 
 untended ! Double woe be to him that has been enlight- 
 ened of God, and lets men perish because he will not 
 take, by the authority of God, the light that he has re- 
 ceived and carry it to them. Are there not within the 
 touch of the hem of your garment ; are there not in your 
 business places ; are there not in your daily travels ; are 
 there not in the thoroughfares of the city, scores and 
 hundreds into whose darkened minds never pierced the 
 light of God's truth, to whom you never came with a 
 lantern ? Here you stand unconcerned, you whose 
 soul is luminous, you that by the power of the Holy 
 Ghost have been ordained to be a teacher, a leader, and 
 a dispenser of spiritual things, and men are wasting 
 and dying in darkness all round about you ! God has 
 given you the keys, and He will hold you to a responsi- 
 bility for the right use of them. 
 
 IT has been said with a^atal carelessness, that God 
 lives for Himself, that is, for His own glory. 
 
 I do not deny that all the way through the Scriptures 
 this monarchic idea is maintained, which represents God 
 as creating and ministering for His own glory, and that 
 He may be said in a certain sense to live for His own 
 glory ; but He does not create and minister and live for 
 such a glory as it has been represented that He does. 
 We are not to dwell upon one class of texts, and form 
 our ideas of -God's nature and government from them. 
 12* K
 
 274 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 We are to take all the representations of the Bible in 
 respect to God, and our conception of His nature and 
 government is to be the resultant of them all. And in 
 interpreting even those texts which seem to make God's 
 glory the end and aim of His existence, we must beware 
 of employing the analogies which come from the weak 
 side of human nature. We are obliged to interpret God 
 from ourselves ; and our danger is that we shall interpret 
 Him from the baser side of human experience, and not 
 from the nobler. If we interpret the Divine government 
 from human monarchy, we must take the ideal monarchy, 
 and not the real ; we must take those conceptions of mon- 
 archy which have carried in them the most gladness and 
 generosity and royalty for others, and not those which 
 have produced the impression of an iron nature, and a 
 sceptre clenched for the sake of oppression and wrong. 
 But a man that is a natural-born governor ; a man whose 
 self-esteem and firmness are large, and whose benevo- 
 lence and social faculties are small, in interpreting -mon- 
 archy, and applying it to God's government, will think 
 and feel that a being that -possesses supreme power has a 
 right to govern as he pleases. But such a view perverts 
 the analogue from which we form our conception of the 
 Divine nature. 
 
 THE true glory of God must be interpreted in Christ 
 Jesus; and when you understand what it is that God 
 makes to be His glory ; when you understand that the 
 glory of God is not self-laudation, nor enriching His own 
 power, nor multiplying His own treasures, but that it is 
 supremely to make others happy ; when you understand 
 that the glory of God means loving other people and not 
 Himself, mercy and not selfishness, the distribution of His
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 275 
 
 bounty and not the hoarding it up ; when you understand 
 that God sits with all the infinite stores of redemptive 
 love only to shed them abroad upon men forever and for- 
 ever, then you form a different conception of what 4t i.s 
 for God to reign for His own glory. If love is His glory ; 
 if generosity is His glory ; if giving is His glory ; if think- 
 ing of the poor is His glory ; if strengthening the weak is 
 His glory ; if standing as the defender of the wronged is 
 His glory ; if loving and watching over every being that 
 He has created forever and forever, is His glory, then, 
 blessed be that teaching which represents that God does 
 reign for His own glory. That is a glory which is worthy 
 of the Divine regality. It will bring out blossoms of joy 
 and gladness in heaven and on earth. 
 
 WE measure things by the point wherein their supe- 
 riority lies. The swine we estimate for fatness ; oxen for 
 strength and flesh ; dogs for scent and sagacity ; horses 
 for speed and endurance. 
 
 Now, man is to be measured by that which makes him 
 MAN, in distinction from everything else ; and that is not 
 foot, nor hand nor body, nor appetites, nor passions, nor 
 economic or commercial power. These are not the things 
 that make him man. It is that which has been stamped 
 on him God's image that makes him man. That 
 part of his nature which introduces the moral element, 
 right and wrong ; the spiritual element, invisible reali- 
 ties ; and the benevolent element, the very divinity of 
 love. Here man must be measured ; for here, and only 
 here, he becomes man, among the creatures of the world. 
 And our substantial judgment of what we are, what our 
 character is r and what we are worth as men, is to be 
 formed upon this high moral development, You are 
 worth just how good you are !
 
 276 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 IT is one of the rarest things in the world to find a 
 man who, when he looks upon a fellow-man, sees him as 
 God sees him, as a spiritual being. Men foremost in 
 the" church, fluent in prayer, and great at exhortation, 
 when they go forth, do not see God in man. Such men 
 have devotion as a sentiment, as an ecstatic emotion; they 
 have temporary Christian feelings ; but they are wanting 
 in deep-seated piety. To make moral character the 
 standard by which to judge of a man, and to look at him 
 in the immortality, is a thing which is not done by one 
 out of ten thousand. I think no more revolutionary 
 thing could occur than for an angel to descend from 
 heaven, and operate upon the mind of every man, so that 
 he would of necessity look on every other man as God 
 sees him ; so that whenever you looked upon your child, 
 it would stand to you as the babe Jesus stands to our ad- 
 miration, as a child of God ; so that, whenever you 
 looked upon your neighbors, you would not see what 
 their bodies represent them to be, but as angel eyes see 
 them, when their moral nature flames up invisibly before 
 eyes that can see the invisible ! O, if every day, when 
 you went to your business, and executed your law of 
 selfishness, you saw men just exactly as they are, how 
 different would be your feelings on beholding them ! If 
 when men raise the lash above the head of the helpless, 
 or lay the grinding hand upon the weak, they were in- 
 stantly, by some mysterious change, made to see that it 
 was God's angel they were holding in the dust, how 
 would they start back amazed, and say, " I thought it 
 was a man, and behold I was wrestling with an angel ! " 
 If men were to see their fellow-men as God's angels in 
 embryo, and were to judge of them, not by their spheres 
 in life, not by their physical relations, but by their rela-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 277 
 
 tions to the eternal state, and were to feel that every 
 man was a child of God, and an heir of immortality, 
 what a revolution there would be in the structure of 
 society ! 
 
 I THINK that a man struggling against Christianity 
 when under conviction, is like a fractious child struggling 
 against a dear mother, when she reproves and punishes it 
 until, overcome by discipline, it rushes into her arms, 
 and kisses her with a paroxysm of tears, and sobs even 
 when it sleeps. I have seen men who, under conviction, 
 fought terribly against God till Christ was manifested to 
 them, when they yielded themselves up to Him, saying, 
 " My Lord and my God ! " and with sweet peace fell 
 into His arms, and were carried by Him the rest of 
 their lives. Is not Christ precious in such hours ? 
 
 CHRISTIANS are like freight-engines at night. They 
 carry a powerful lamp in front, which casts a light far 
 ahead, but in no other direction, leaving the everlasting 
 snake-train which they drag behind them enveloped in 
 darkness. This light corresponds to the Christian's hope, 
 which casts its rays heavenward, but leaves the long 
 train of bodily appetites and necessities which go with 
 him through life unilluminated. Men regard their world- 
 ly business and their family duties as distinct from their 
 religion. They carry the light of hope on their brow, 
 and that is what they call their religion ; whereas, I un- 
 derstand religion to be this : the right carriage of body 
 and soul, all together. I understand that no man is liv- 
 ing a Christian life who is not a Christian in the world, 
 in the family, in the church, in his mind, in his soul, in 
 the emotions and appetites of his nature, in his hand, in
 
 2Y8 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 his foot, in his head, who is not a Christian every- 
 where, and in everything in him. To take every faculty 
 or power God has given you and bring it under Divine 
 influences, and make it act right, that is being a 
 Christian ; and all partialisms, by just so much as they 
 are partialisms, are, therefore, misunderstandings or mis- 
 appropriations of Christian truth. 
 
 DOES the Bible tell you the truth about your nature 
 and your condition? Does it tell you how to make 
 yourself better ? Is it a book which reveals the grandeur 
 of immortality ? Above all, does it lift upon the crude 
 imaginations of men in every age, upon the imperfect 
 picturings which men have made of the Godhead, the 
 clear and sublime light of certainty? Does it collect 
 from our higher experiences and our nobler feelings, 
 those elements which do truly represent God ; and 
 magnifying them, passing upon them the proportions 
 of infinity, and lifting them up above all obstruction, 
 impurity, and unworthiness, does it hold forth to the 
 enraptured sight a God at once in sympathy with human 
 nature, yet transcendently greater than it : comprehensi- 
 ble in kind and nature, though, by virtue of infinity, 
 utterly unsearchable in degree and magnitude ? Does 
 it present a God standing upon Truth, and upon Justice, 
 but blazing upward into Love, which, like an atmosphere, 
 fills the infinite round of eternity ; glorious in holiness ; 
 fearful in praises; but sublime, above all other things, 
 for Love? Is it a book which, evoking from the far 
 and impalpable heavens the ideal conception of God, 
 causes Him to walk in human form, interpreted thus 
 into human conditions ; and in the life, the teachings, the 
 unexplainable sufferings, the sublime death, the sepulchre
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 279 
 
 hiding, the resurrection, the ascension, the glorification of 
 Jesus Christ, presents a Saviour suited to a man's wants, 
 weaknesses, and sins ; taking hold of us by all that is 
 tender and generous, touching whatever in us there is of 
 honor, of gratitude, of pity, of love ; transforming us 
 both by the power of our own understandings, lifted up 
 upon the mightiest truths, and by the co-operative greater 
 power of the Holy Ghost, shed abroad upon the heart ? 
 Does it present such a Saviour as every man feels that 
 he needs, so soon as his moral life is thoroughly awak- 
 ened ; so soon as he begins to measure himself by a law 
 higher than any which the world gives ? Is it a book 
 from which men without number have drawn motives of 
 sublime life? Is there any other heroism recorded .on 
 earth so sublime as that which has sprung from faith in 
 Christ ? Without a revelation, now and then, rare and 
 great souls there have been, capable of endurance, of self- 
 denial, and the loftiest heroism. It is the New Testa- 
 ment that has taught the poor, the ignorant, the common 
 people, to live heroic lives. And since men began to 
 believe in it, and to form their lives from its inspiration, 
 heroism has become cheap. Yea, it is oftener found in 
 the cottage, now, than on the battle-field. And when 
 the last great day shall reveal the unknown things of 
 time, the heroes of the cradle-side ; the heroes of the 
 sick-chamber ; the heroes of poverty ; the heroes of tha 
 dungeon ; the heroes of labor ; the despised heroes,^hat 
 grow, thick as grass, in the low places of the earth, and; 
 like the grass, are trodden down, often, under the hoofs 
 of men ; these that great army of the last that are 
 destined to be first, this illustrious host that shall flame 
 upward from the bottom to the very top and summit of 
 glory shall tell of the divinity of the New Testament
 
 280 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 what it does, declare what it is. Its power upon men 
 measures the power of God in it. That which can bring 
 men to God must itself have come from God. 
 
 IT is Christ that I would make personal to you. He 
 is not a Being that dwells in the inner recesses of the 
 eternal world, inaccessible, incomprehensible. He is not 
 the stern king, unbending, upon a throne of justice, lifted 
 up above the reach of sighs and sinful wants. He is not 
 as one fortified behind the bulwarks of law, so that one 
 must cannonade, and breach the walls with prayers, and 
 then rush in to take Him captive. Men never find 
 Christ, but are always found of Him. He goes forth to 
 seek and to save the lost. It is not the outreaching of 
 our thought, it is not the attraction of our heart, it is not 
 the strong drawing of our sympathy and yearning, that 
 brings Him to us. It is the abounding love of His heart 
 that draws us up toward Him. His love precedes ours. 
 " We love Him because He first loved us." We kindle 
 our hearts at His. As the sun is up before the sluggard, 
 so the twilight and dawn of His love is upon the hills 
 when we wake ; and when we sleep, even, His thoughts 
 burn above us as the stars burn through the night ! 
 
 It is this willing, winning, pleading Christ, who wields 
 all the grandeur of justice and all the authority of uni- 
 versal empire with such rare and sweet gentleness, that 
 in all the earth there is none like unto Him, that I set 
 before you as your personal friend ! He knows each of 
 you better than your mother knew you ! He has called 
 you by name ! In your households you are not so famil- 
 iar to your most cherished friend as you are to the 
 thought of Christ ! Not so indelibly is your name re- 
 corded in your father's memory, or in the baptismal reg-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 281 
 
 ist.er of the sanctuary, or in the family Bible, where the 
 tabular leaf for births holds your infant name, as upoa 
 the ever-remembering heart of the Lord Jesus Christ ! 
 
 BE not discouraged because you are sinful. It is the 
 very office of Christ's love to heal your sin. Not, then, 
 when you have overcome them yourself, is He prepared 
 to receive you ; it is His delight to give you help while 
 wrestling with your sins. He is your pilot to lead you 
 out of trouble. No pilot would he be that only then 
 would take my ship when I had gone through the nar- 
 rows, and could see the city, and was quite free of all dan- 
 ger. Who would need a physician if he might not come 
 to his bedside until after he was healed ? What use of a 
 schoolmaster if one may not go to school till his educa- 
 tion be complete ? What hope of salvation if God would 
 give us no help till the whole work of subduing the nat- 
 ural heart were completed? And our Saviour is one 
 who begins and completes in us the work of grace. He 
 Is the author of our faith, and the finisher of it. It is His 
 power that works in us to will and to do of His good 
 pleasure. Pie comes to you when you are dead, and by 
 His touch brings you to Jife. When you are weak, He 
 inspires you with strength. When you are tempted, He 
 opens the door of escape. When you are vanquished, He 
 appears to lift you up and binds your wounds. Yea, 
 bending under all our burdens, and loaded down with our 
 own sins, behold that Christ of whom it is said, " He was 
 wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our 
 iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; 
 and by his stripes we have healing," 
 
 WATCH unto prayer! Many have supposed that it
 
 282 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 was impossible for a man to be in this state of watchful- 
 ness, and yet be a buoyant, singing Christian. Just as 
 though a man could not whistle while acting as a senti- 
 nel! Just as though he could not think of home, of his 
 lady-love, and of a ttiousand things beside, while faith- 
 fully watching at his post. 
 
 A MAN is said in the Bible to be more precious than 
 the gold of Ophir ; and of a woman it is said, " Her price 
 is far above rubies." These were common comparisons. 
 There is something in the glow of precious stones that 
 peculiarly fits them to serve for such spiritual figures. 
 There is about them a subtle light a brilliancy that 
 burns without fire ; that consumes nothing, and requires 
 no supply ; that forever shines without oil ; that is ever 
 living, unwasting, unchanged by any of the natural ele- 
 ments. A diamond that glows in the sunlight flashes 
 yet more beautifully in the night. No mould can get 
 root upon it ; no rust can Jarnish it ; no decay can waste 
 it. The jewels that were buried two thousand years ago, 
 if now dug up from royal and priestly tombs, would come 
 forth as fair and fresh as they were when the proud 
 wearer first carried them in his diadem. Such stones 
 seemed to the ancients, and are, fit emblems by which to 
 represent spiritual qualities, and the beauty and imperish- 
 ableness of Christian virtue. And a company of holy 
 men, resting upon the Lord Jesus Christ, may well be 
 compared to a palace built upon broad foundations, and 
 sparkling to the very summit with living stones, which 
 throw back to the sun a differing flash through every hour 
 of his rise or fall through the long day. 
 
 IT is one thing to be a believer in God's government ;
 
 . ROYAL TRUTHS. 283 
 
 it is another thing to hold company with God, to be- 
 hold Him, to love Him, and to commune with Him, to 
 twine your life about Him. 
 
 Sometimes a child is removed from its mother's care, 
 and put out to nurse to a foster-mother. Through all its 
 earlier years it is, as it were, the child of this new-found 
 mother. For some reasons the parents may not choose, 
 for a time, to own their child. They may secretly go 
 where it is, and look upon it as it sleeps. It shall hear 
 about them, and shall know that all its wants are supplied 
 by them. It may even yearn for mother and father, and 
 wonder what those words must mean at last. And yet 
 the child never sees its parents. But, by and by, they 
 send for their child, and it is brought home. Now, little 
 by little, it grows acquainted with them. It rides with 
 them ; it eats with them ; it talks with them ; it loves 
 them ; it begins to live with them. And is there no dif- 
 ference between depending on parents whom you do not 
 know, and a conscious communion with them when you 
 are united to them ? Is there no difference between the 
 relation of a child to its parents when it is a foster-child, 
 kept aloof, supported by the parents through others, and 
 its relation to them afterwards, when it is brought home, 
 embraced, embosomed, and made hourly conscious of their 
 presence and personal love ? Now, there is such a thing 
 as our being put out to nurse in this world. There is, 
 also, such a thing as our being brought home to God, as 
 our Father ; and in the light of this illustration it is easy 
 to perceive that there is a world- wide difference between 
 a conscious dependence upon God and a conscious com- 
 munion with Him. 
 
 You may ask, " "Vfaiat will become of those men who
 
 284 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 are so good, but whom you do not class among Chris- 
 tians ? " I do not know. Thank God, I am not God ! 
 Every man hears the drum-beat of the eternal world. 
 Every man must stand for himself, and every man must 
 answer for himself there. It is enough for me to bring 
 myself and my t>wn charge to God, without stopping to- 
 answer questions which belong to the future. One thing 
 I know, and that is, that there is no other name but the 
 name of Christ given under heaven, that we know any- 
 thing about, whereby we can be saved. One thing I 
 know, and that is, that he who trusts in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ shall never be moved. One thing I know, that 
 there is a power in Christ to translate a man above his 
 sins, and almost above temptations, in this world. I be- 
 lieve there is a power in Christ to disfranchise a man, and 
 take away from him the livery of hell ; and to enfran- 
 chise a man, and give him the livery of heaven. I be- 
 lieve there is a power in the faith of Christ Jesus to 
 transform a man from evil to good, and from good to 
 samtship, and bring him to the haven, to the home above. 
 If there is any other way for a man to be saved except 
 through this faith, I do not know what it is. But one 
 thing I know, and that is, that the joy which I derive 
 from faith in Christ is ten thousand times greater than 
 any of the other joys which greet my heart in this world. 
 I know no other light ; I will steer for that. I feel no 
 other influence ; I will be drawn by that. I have no 
 other faith ; I will trust in that. For he who lives and 
 dies believing in Christ, shall not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life. 
 
 HIGHER than morality, higher than philanthropy, 
 higher than worship, comes the love of God. That is
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 285 
 
 the chiefest thing. When we have that, we reach the 
 very thing for which the- New Testament scheme was 
 administered. Love ! it is that which brings forth out 
 of obscurity the hidden God which we seek. Send forth 
 all the powers of the soul to search for God, and there 
 is not one of them which, making inquisition according to 
 its own nature, can find Him out and reveal Him, except 
 this divine spirit of love ! Put wings of imagination upon 
 Conscience, and let it fly forth. Say to it, " Go, and find 
 thy God ! " Flying through night and through day ; 
 above and beneath ; among clouds and thunder ; through 
 darkness and through light; it would return at length, 
 wing-tired, only to say, "I have found marks of God, in 
 law, in pain, and penalty ; I have seen the traces of 
 thunder, and the path of lightning, and the foundations 
 of eternal power ; but nowhere have I found the full 
 God." 
 
 Give the wings of faith to Reason, and send it, in turn, 
 forth from east to west, around the earth, and through 
 the heavens, to see if by searching it can find out God ; 
 and it shall say, " I have seen the curious work of His 
 hand, and have marked the treasures that He hath heaped 
 up. The whole earth is full of His glory, and the heav- 
 ens are unsearchable by us. What God hath done I 
 have felt, but God himself is hidden from my sight." 
 
 Let Fear, equipped with faith, pursue the same errand. 
 It would not even know which way to fly, and, turning 
 downward, groping or flying directly amidst infernal 
 things, it would rehearse a catalogue of terrors, of gloomy 
 fears, or brooding superstitions ; but the bright sun-clad 
 God it could not see. 
 
 Let Reverence go forth. But what there is in Rever- 
 ence can never interpret what there is in God. This
 
 286 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 feeling can touch the divine orb but in a single point. 
 And the Heavens would say to Reverence, " Such an 
 one as you seek is not in me " ; and Hell would say, 
 " He is not in me " ; and Earth and Time would repeat, 
 " He is not in us ! " 
 
 It is only Love that can find out God without search- 
 ing. Upon its eyes God dawns. Wherever it looks, 
 and whatever it sees, that is God ; for God is love. 
 Love is that regent quality which was meant to reveal 
 the Divine to us. It carries its own light, and, by its 
 own secret nature, is drawn instantly toward God, and 
 reflects the knowledge of Him back upon us. 
 
 I KNOW that my Redeemer liveth. I have stood near 
 the grave, and then I knew that my Redeemer lived, and 
 that because He lived I should. I have gazed through 
 that most powerful glass of all, through which God re- 
 veals the invisible, the fresh-opened graves of my 
 children! and there, in the tumults and revolutions of 
 grief, I knew that my Redeemer lived, and that He was 
 with me to comfort me. I have seen trials and troubles 
 of various kinds in my life ; and I bear witness that there 
 was never a time when I needed help that He was not by 
 my side to help me. And I have no sort of doubt that 
 Christ will stand by me to the end, and conduct me 
 through the gate of death to eternal life. And no man 
 shall move me from my faith in Him ! 
 
 TELL me that it is an impossible thing for a man to 
 love the Lord Jesus Christ, who is invisible ! You 
 might as well, if I were now to go forth beneath the 
 glorious sun, and its rays were to fall down through the 
 air upon me and about me on every side, tell me there
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 287 
 
 was no sun ! Councils of owls and bats may come to me, 
 under the name of philosophers, and say, " Do you not 
 think that all these which you are talking about rays 
 of the sun, flowers, singing-birds, curling smoke, and the 
 like are a delusion ? We have lived almost as long as 
 you have, and we have consulted the oldest owls and 
 bats, and we do not believe in them." Let owls and bats 
 take their experience from dens and caves, but let men 
 take their knowledge from the open heavens. I know, 
 whatever men may say, in the low places and the high 
 places of life, I know that there is such a thing as lov- 
 ing Jesus Christ as a friend, as a brother ; and that there 
 is no other love that is so sweet, so deep, so lasting, so 
 wondrous, as that which the soul can bear toward Him. 
 
 WOULD you think that man fit for a hero who should 
 occupy the leisure of peace in telling what hard commis- 
 sions he had during the last campaign, how tired he was 
 on the march, and how painful it was to wear his armor? 
 Would you think that man fit for a hero who should thus 
 rehearse all the petty annoyances that he experienced in 
 the camp and on the battle-field ? What idea would you 
 have of a general or a soldier who should be more 
 thoughtful of such contemptible personalities than of 
 those things that pertain to the interests of the cause in 
 which he is engaged ? You that are called from dark- 
 ness to light, and made to know the eternal obligation 
 of your own souls ; you into whose hands are put jewels 
 more precious and glowing than stars in the heavens; 
 you who are made God's instruments for redeeming men, 
 you ought to be ashamed to talk about your cares and 
 responsibilities, as if they were onerous things. The 
 permission for laboring for God's cause is undeserved,
 
 288 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and granted by His free grace, and yet you are moaning 
 and repining about your sufferings ! Either die, or else 
 work and hold your peace about your sufferings ! 
 
 I HAVE seen the vision of Christ a thousand times as I 
 wanted to see Him. I have seen the vision of Christ 
 bend over me with tenderness. I have seen the vision 
 of Christ instruct me with divine wisdom and radiant 
 knowledge. I have seen the vision of Christ standin^ 
 
 o o 
 
 up as the advocate of the poor, and the defender of the 
 wronged. I have seen the vision of Christ clothed with 
 clouds ; and I have seen those clouds changed to gor- 
 geous colors of glory. I have seen ten thousand visions 
 pictured of Christ Jesus ; but I have never yet seen Him ! 
 There is a day coming when I shall see Him as He is ; 
 not as I feign Him to be ; not as my heart paints Him ; 
 not as my wants interpret Him ; but as He is ! In that 
 illustrious day I shall have no fear. Chief among ten 
 thousand, He shall then be precious to me, and forever 
 and forever my heart's treasure and my soul's delight. 
 Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly ! 
 
 HAD you a mother that was a woman of God ? and 
 was faithful ? Do you scarcely dare to look back and 
 think of the instructions which, upon her knee, you re- 
 ceived ? I have hope for you ; not because you are 
 good, you are base and most unworthy ; but, O, the 
 power of a mother with God, it is great ! And I 
 believe that for the children that are consecrated in the 
 lap and bosom of maternal love, there is hope until 
 they pass away, and the whole scene closes. The whole 
 world may seem to thwart her counsels, rising up against 
 them; but I think there is a golden thread, which a*
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 289 
 
 mother's love spins, that will not be broken. Tossed 
 about like a gossamer, it may be tangled, and apparently 
 broken and gone ; but by and by, when storms come, 
 and the sea roars, and the heavens are black, something 
 is seen beginning to hold the drifting human heart. And 
 then it shall appear that, stronger than hempen cable or 
 iron chain, a mother's teachings and love hold fast the 
 imperilled heart, and it rides out the swelling gale, and is 
 found, even if crippled and damaged, yet safe anchored 
 at length on a tranquil sea. Great is the promise and 
 great the hope. 
 
 THERE are some persons who seem so constituted that 
 their religious feelings almost never flow so readily as 
 when they act for other people. They are persons of 
 great constitutional benevolence. They make benevo- 
 lence their conscience. When they go forth into life, 
 benevolence is their guiding principle. Such persons 
 oftentimes say, " I never can have deep religious feelings 
 by ordinary means ; but when such a man was in trouble, 
 and told me of the wants of his family, his wife and 
 children, and I took my hat and went home with him, 
 and mingled my tears with theirs, it did seem as if I was 
 not a handbreadth from heaven. I never had such a 
 sense of the goodness of God as I had then." Probably 
 you were never so near like God as you were then. No 
 wonder you felt near Him. You are not far from Him 
 when you get so near Him as to give your time and en- 
 ergies for the good of His needy creatures. 
 
 DID you ever, in a summer's day, when you had drawn 
 from the bottom of the well the cooling draught to slake 
 your thirst, stand and dream, and gaze at a drop, orbed 
 13 s
 
 290 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and hanging from the bucket's edge, reflecting the light 
 of the sun ? What the rounded form and size of that 
 drop is in comparison with the whole earth itself, that 
 the round earth itself is in comparison with God's maj- 
 esty of being or degree of magnitude ! And that such 
 an One, living in such a wise, so far above the earth, 
 so far above its inhabitants, so far above the noblest spirit 
 that stands in the unlost purity of heaven, that such an 
 One should deal with His erring creature with a gentle- 
 ness and patience, such as characterizes the administra- 
 tion of God toward man, is sublime and wonderful ! 
 
 THE Bible says that God is past finding out. But it 
 does not mean that His physical power is past finding 
 out. It is His disposition, His moral nature, that are 
 beyond research and measurement The unsearchable- 
 ness of the love of God in Christ Jesus ; the greatness, 
 the grandeur, and the glory of the Heart that, hating in- 
 iquity with an intense hatred, can love the doer of it, and 
 that, abhorring sin with an infinite abhorrence, can give 
 itself to save the sinner, these are the things that are 
 past finding out. The marvel of meeknes?, and sweet- 
 ness, and love in the arch-Thunderer of eternity, this 
 it is that is past finding out ! 
 
 THERE are a great many persons who think, " I must 
 take care of my religion." They have got something that 
 they call religion, which they conceive needs to be 
 guarded. Just as if I should say, " I must take care of 
 my health," and should yet neglect my body, so that my 
 nerves were out of order, and my heart was out of right 
 beat, thinking that I had something distinct from the 
 body, which was health ; whereas health means a body
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 291 
 
 acting right in every one of its parts ! And religion is to 
 the soul what health is to the body, it is the right or- 
 dering of all the faculties. Many persons think it is con- 
 fined to certain faculties, which must be set buzzing at 
 particular times. They treat it very much as a boy 
 would a caged bird. They keep their religion at home 
 all the week, and on Sunday they go and slip it into the 
 cage, and let it sing ; but its voice is hushed the moment 
 they take it out. They say that you must not act out- 
 side of the ohurch in a way that is inconsistent with your 
 religion, or violate it, but that you are not to mind right 
 living. Their religion is a certain spiritual partialism. 
 They skin off and set aside a part of their nature, and 
 regard that as the element of religion. How many times 
 do men carry this thing to such an excess, that it becomes 
 a glaring absurdity before the world ! 
 
 There is this damnable heresy, that religion is a tech- 
 nical element, which you can separate from a man's throb- 
 bing life ! Why, whatever you do at twelve at night, or 
 at twelve in the daytime ; whatever you do at six in the 
 morning, or at six in the evening ; whatever you do on 
 the Sabbath, or on any week-day ; whatever you do in the 
 ship, or in the blacksmith's shop ; whatever you do in 
 the house, or in the street ; whatever you do in the sanc- 
 tuary, or at the concert ; whatever you do at any time, or 
 in any place, you are to do to the glory of God. By as 
 much as you come short of doing this, by so much is your 
 religion deficient. 
 
 CLOSET meditations and devotions which used to char- 
 acterize piety, are far less common than they were. In 
 old times, when men were persecuted for their religion, 
 they had nothing to do but to read the Bible, and pray,
 
 292 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and be burned, and what not. And in our own day, in 
 our childhood, the Bible was the principal part of the 
 library that we cared to read. Since that time there has 
 been created an enormous literature ; and no man is too 
 poor to have it in his house. It carries with it great 
 blessings. To be enfranchised from ignorance is, of it- 
 self, no small blessing. But with all the collateral bless- 
 ings of this literature upon the world, there are some 
 side dangers to be guarded against. The mind may be 
 diluted. Men are covered over with papers, novels, and 
 books, as fences are covered with vines and weeds. The 
 time consumed is not the chief evil ; but the perversion 
 of taste, the destruction of a hearty relish for the sober 
 certainties and solemnities of God's Word. We have 
 fallen off immensely on the side of religious culture, 
 earnest, prolonged, habitual, domestic, religious culture, 
 conducted by the reading of God's Word and by prayer 
 and its family influences. And this tendency is still fur- 
 ther augmented by the increase of religious books, of 
 tracts, of biographies and histories, of commentaries, 
 which tend to envelop and hide the Word of God from 
 our minds. In other words, these things which are called 
 " helps " have been increased to such a degree, and have 
 come to occupy so much of our attention, that when we 
 have read our helps, we have no time left to read the 
 thing to be helped ; and the Bible is covered down and 
 lost under its " helps." Far be it from me to say that 
 we are worse off with all the books in our libraries than 
 we would be without them ; but while we are to have the 
 benefits of these, we are to mark the tendency to which 
 I allude. 
 
 O, HOAV many different ways there are by which God
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 293 
 
 comes into the soul ! The great God, so prolific of 
 thought, so endless in diversity of function, has a million 
 ways by which to express Himself. He, in His power, 
 works on the soul not through one thing alone, not 
 alone through steeple, nor meeting-house, nor lecture- 
 room, nor closet, though often and much through these ; 
 but through all things, through the heavenly bodies, 
 and animals, and insects, and worms, and clouds, and 
 mountains, and oceans, and rivers, and the productions 
 of the earth ; and not by these only, but by everything 
 that affects man's comfort and happiness in this life, by 
 store and anvil, and plane and saw, and hospital and poor- 
 house, and music and forms of beauty, and sweet feelings 
 and trials, and sufferings and victories over temptation, 
 and light and darkness, and joy and sorrow, and ten thou- 
 sand unnamable subtle influences that touch the human 
 soul ; by all these God reveals His greatness and good- 
 ness to us, that He may win us to Himself, and make us 
 heirs of immortality ; and, blessed be His name, not to us 
 alone, but to every one, everywhere ! 
 
 THERE is a strange law of vicarious suffering wrought 
 into the very structure of human life. The child does not 
 come singing like a cherub from the hand of God. The 
 mother cries, and the child cries, and men say, " A man 
 is born." It is suffering that gives life, and then it is 
 suffering that is worn as a robe for life. For every one 
 that has been ministered unto ; for every one that has 
 been educated ; for every one that has been advanced by 
 development through the stages -of animalism up to the 
 social element and the moral sentiments, for every such 
 one there have been some to suffer. Our thrift and ad- 
 vancement in moral things are the result of the sufferings
 
 294 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 of others. To say that we are morally developed is sy- 
 nonymous with saying that we have reaped what some 
 one has suffered for us. There is no friend that does not 
 suffer for friend. It may almost be said that we measure 
 friendship, not by excess of joy, but by joyfulness of suf- 
 fering one for another. There is no good accomplished 
 that is not accomplished through the medium of some- 
 body's suffering. No great thought was ever born that 
 was not born through suffering. No great principle was 
 ever wrought out except by toil and trouble and suffering. 
 No great truth was ever applied to the cause of morals 
 in this world that was not accompanied by suffering pro- 
 portionate to the good that it effected. God measures 
 the magnitude of blessings by the sufferings that men are 
 willing to bear for the sake of attaining them. 
 
 "When in the peace and serene joy of the tranquil 
 household children sit round about the encircled table, 
 how little do they know that all their delight and all 
 their sweet peace has been purchased by midnight vigils, 
 by maternal tears, by parental strivings with God ! We 
 that buy our joy and peace by trouble sow seeds. Tears 
 are God's seeds. They come up joys. It might almost 
 be said that groans are the key-notes of joy on earth. 
 "Weakness is the beginning of strength ; humility, of 
 exaltation ; shame, of glory ; toil, of ease. 
 
 Men seem to set themselves against the monstrous in- 
 justice, as they call it, of Christ's bearing the sins of the 
 world. They seem to revolt at the idea of the just suf- 
 fering for the unjust. They seem to think that this is a 
 thing that cannot be either illustrated or proved by the 
 moral sentiment of men. But I declare that there is in 
 social life an illustration of the principle of vicarious 
 Buffering. As Christ suffered for the world, so one man
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 295 
 
 suffers for another man. And in our joy we reap the 
 fruit of what others suffer. The example of Christ is 
 but a symbol and magnificent type of that which we in 
 our several spheres find out in the details of life. 
 
 WHERE, in all the round of human experience, worthy 
 men suffer, not from an accident, not under penalty, but 
 for the sake of emancipating themselves or others from 
 an evil ; where they suffer for the sake of advancing a 
 truth or establishing a nobler principle in their own life 
 or in the lives of others, every tear, every watching, 
 every weariness, every groan, every sorrow, every exclu- 
 sion, every self-denial, every pain, is known, is registered, 
 and will ever be remembered and honored. Our suffer- 
 ings seem barren here, but when we see them blossom in 
 heaven we shall not know them. Here they are like 
 sharp thorns; there they will be like flowers waving 
 in the garden. We see the seed-form, the sprout-form, 
 of our troubles, we see our troubles without comeliness 
 or beauty ; but when God shall have developed their 
 full growth and symmetry in heaven, how different they 
 will seem to us ! 
 
 A GREAT many persons deny themselves with the 
 most superfluous self-denial. They seek for things of 
 which they can deny themselves. But you need not do 
 that. Let your opportunities for self-denial come to you ; 
 but when they do come, do not flinch. God will send 
 you occasions enough for denying yourself. There is 
 wood enough in every man's forest to build all the cares 
 he will need to carry. You need not withhold yourself 
 from any proper joy ; but when for the sake of honesty, 
 or benevolence, or love, or purity, or truth, it is needed
 
 296 . ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 that you should suffer, step boldly forward, even if to do 
 so is to go into fire. The form of Christ will be by your 
 side, and the smell of the fire shall not be on your gar- 
 ments. 
 
 ONE would suppose that there had never been a printed 
 Bible in some men's houses. Some men do not appear 
 to have any conception of the sufferings of their Lord 
 and Master. There are parents that seem to think that 
 their life is well worn out and worthily bestowed, if they 
 spend it in accumulating a fortune. And for what ? To 
 save their children from the toil that they have endured. 
 But what made the parents ? "What made your arm 
 stalwart, and your head clear and discriminating ? What 
 was it that made your life patient and enduring ? What 
 was it that made you a force among men, accomplishing 
 and achieving? What was it but that very necessity 
 from which you wish to hide your children ? Ah ! your 
 trouble was your armor, as well as your arms, and yet 
 you would send your children down into the battle of life 
 naked, with nothing to cover them ! There are a great 
 many whose thought, by day and by night, is, " How 
 shall we put our children in a position of honor and ease 
 and comfort?" The wish of Christian parents, often- 
 times, is, not that their children shall be less than virtu- 
 ous, but that, being virtuous and pious, they shall be 
 where no hardships shall be able to come to them. O, 
 if the cherished ones of their bosom could be placed be- 
 yond contention and hidden from strife ; if they could be 
 lifted above the necessity of going forth to toil and con- 
 flict, the great desire of their life would be realized ! 
 
 What God-blighted children such children must be ! 
 What a baptism of desire is that which you put on your
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 297 
 
 children, you that wish to shield them from trials and 
 cares ! You are like the mother of the sons of Zebedee, 
 who went to the Saviour, and said, " Grant that these my 
 two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other 
 on the left in thy kingdom." Not understanding that 
 solemn response, " Are ye able to drink of the cup that I 
 shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I 
 am baptized with ? " you want honor and distinction for 
 your children, but you do not want that they should be 
 exposed to that strife out of which these things must 
 inevitably come. 
 
 THERE are a great many persons who think themselves 
 equipped to do good, but who can find no proper place 
 wherein to exercise the eminent gifts which it has pleased 
 the bounty of Providence to confer upon them. They 
 are so elegant, so refined, that it is a pity that they should 
 go among the vulgar ! They are so large in their expe- 
 rience and reading, that it is a pity that they should go 
 into societies where people have circumscribed ideas ! 
 They have such gentility on their side, that it is a pity 
 that they should go into a place where folks are not gen- 
 teel! And so these martyrs, these reformers, these 
 would-be ministers of God's Word to this lost world, are 
 unable to find a place suitable for them to labor in ! 
 
 Have you never seen, at sunset, a hen walking around 
 a tree irresolute as to the bough which she would take, 
 stooping for one, and then quitting that and stooping for 
 another, and then quitting that and stooping for another ? 
 Just like such a hen are some ministers that I have seea 
 running about for a settlement, stooping for one, and then, 
 thinking that it was not quite good enough, quitting it 
 and stooping for another, thus frittering away their time 
 
 13*
 
 298 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and energies to no purpose. Let such men turn away 
 at once from the camp of God, and go to the camp of the 
 world. There they belong. They are not ministers of 
 God whose prime thought is as to how they shall serve 
 God without incommoding themselves, and how they shall 
 redeem men without suffering in anywise for them. 
 
 WHEN men have befriended us, suffered for us, perilled 
 themselves for us, the whole of every noble feeling with- 
 in us rises up and pours out like a flood from the temple 
 of the soul, and we go to them with beneficences and 
 benefactions. So it is with men, men that yet are 
 selfish, that are proud, that are circumscribed in all 
 good. 
 
 What, then, must be the nature of the same feeling 
 when it issues out of the heart of the infinite God, and 
 manifests itself in the immensity of His generosity, and 
 the glory of His magnanimity ? 
 
 How wonderful is it, in the first place, that God should 
 be pleased to accept as suffering for Him, the things 
 which we suffer in the warfare of our dispositions in life ! 
 How wonderful is that grace that watches the whole 
 earth, that sees all the innumerable sufferings of men, 
 however hidden, obscure, or out-of-the-way they may be, 
 and marks every tear and every heart-throb, and with 
 wonderful magnanimity says, "These sufferings are for 
 me ! " How wonderful is that grace by which God iden- 
 tifies Himself with the poor, with striving and struggling 
 sinful men who are seeking emancipation, taking as ben- 
 efactions offered to Himself all things that we do or risk 
 for ourselves or for our fellow-men ! And what, think 
 you, will be the wonder of God's heart when He pours 
 forth from it tides of gratitude ?
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 299 
 
 When God wished to express His thoughts of taste, He 
 filled the heaven, the earth, and the sea with beauties 
 varied and innumerable. When God wished to speak 
 His ideas of skill, He covered the globe with wonderful 
 and exquisite structures of animals and birds and insects. 
 When God wished to display His wisdom, He created the 
 universe, in all its various parts, and with its multitudi- 
 nous relations. And if God writes such a handwriting as 
 that, if such are the ways in which He is wont to express 
 Himself in this world, what will be the sweep of His soul 
 when with honor and glory He remunerates those who 
 have suffered for Him ? 
 
 I AM ashamed when I think how we find dissatisfaction 
 where we should find satisfaction ; how we extract bitter- 
 ness where we should find sweetness ; how we create 
 stench where we should find perfume ; how we strive 
 to make ourselves unhappy in the very relations where 
 God meant that we should be blissful. I am ashamed to 
 think how we find argument for sullenness, for complaint, 
 and even for charge against God, who has rounded out 
 the world in mercy, fed us with His bounty, and clothed 
 us personally in kindness. When I think how God has 
 borne in upon our spiritual life the promises of help, and 
 fulfilled those promises from day to day, from week to 
 week, from month to month, and from year to year, and 
 how we have met the acts of His goodness toward us with 
 selfishness, and pride, and complaints, I am ashamed of 
 myself and of my kind. God has not deserved such treat- 
 ment at our hands. 
 
 You never know, till you try to reach them, how ac- 
 cessible men are ; and if, with an earnest desire to pro-
 
 300 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 mote their eternal welfare, you seek to bring them to a 
 knowledge of the truth, you shall find that outside of 
 churches, and outside of ordinary iufluences, by the mys- 
 tery of providence, as well as by the mystery of grace, 
 God is working in the hearts of men, and preparing them 
 to be gathered by us into His fold. 
 
 It is said that at the battle of Solferino, what with the 
 fear of being crushed, what with the mortal fear of the 
 
 O ' 
 
 barbarity of the French soldiers, of which they had heard, 
 hundreds of wounded men crept out of the fields into ra- 
 vines, and coppices, and thickets ; that after three days 
 had been passed in searching for them, many were still 
 lying unfound. Many were found so far spent that they 
 died ere they could be. taken to the hospital. 
 
 There are hundreds of men hiding themselves in ra- 
 vines, and coppices, and thickets, on the battle-field of life, 
 who need medicament, healing, care, and consolation ; and 
 if you were to go out searching for them, you should ev- 
 ery day find men, here and there, crying out in their dis- 
 tress, and asking for sympathy and help. 
 
 THERE is an army of memorable sufferers who suffer 
 inwardly, and not outwardly. The world's battle-fields 
 have been in the heart chiefly. More heroism has there 
 been displayed in the household and in the closet, I think, 
 than on the most memorable military battle-fields of his- 
 tory. 
 
 One of Kaulbach's most remarkable paintings is founded 
 on a legend, that on a certain anniversary spirits were in 
 the habit of assembling and fighting in the air. However 
 that may be, the battles of the spirits and the battles of 
 the air, in the Christian conflict, are much more memo- 
 rable than any of the declared battles of sense and of the
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 301 
 
 body. And although these spiritual and airy battles seem 
 to be without trumpet, and without record, and without 
 a witness ; although there are no poets that chant the 
 praise of the closet ; although there are no historians that 
 chronicle the conflicts of a man with his own spirit, with 
 pernicious habits, with evil inclinations, with violent temp- 
 tations ; although the eye of a man cannot see these 
 things, yet they are not unwatched. Angel eyes see what 
 our eyes are too gross to see. God, over all, takes notice 
 of everything that concerns us. We are His children, 
 and He hangs over us in love as a mother over the cra- 
 dle. He sees our sufferings, and will remember them. 
 
 IT is a great thing to have been put into this life 
 through a right gate. If it be a golden gate, covered all 
 over with glorious inscriptions and legends and memories 
 of past goodness, no man can thank God enough. Did 
 your mother travail in faith and prayer ? Were you born 
 amid supplications ? Were songs, not of angels, but of 
 one scarcely less than angelic, round about your advent ? 
 Were you baptized in your cradle before priestly hands 
 made aspersion of water ? Did you come forth into life 
 from out of a household of faith ? It is no small thing 
 that God nested you thus, and that He gave you such a 
 parentage and such a beginning in life. Have you ever 
 made it an object of thought ? 
 
 AMONG the Alps, when the day is done, and twilight 
 and darkness are creeping over fold and hamlet in the 
 valleys below, Mont Rosa and Mont Blanc rise up' far 
 above the darkness, catching from the retreating sun 
 something of his light, flushed with rose-color, exquisite 
 beyond all words or pencil or paint, glowing like the gate 
 of heaven.
 
 302 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 And so past favors and kindnesses lift themselves up in 
 the memory of noble natures, and long after the lower 
 parts of life are darkened by neglect, or selfishness, or 
 anger, former loves, high up above all clouds, glow with 
 divine radiance, and seem to forbid the advance of night 
 any further. 
 
 IF your God is made out of conceptions derived from 
 the great and heartless round of the natural world ; if you 
 have a great crystalline God, such as philosophy deduces 
 from the material globe, you can conceive of no such thing 
 as His detracting from His dignity by coming down to 
 burrow, as you call it, in this lower sphere. If you have 
 a God whom mountains represent, or if you have a vast 
 marble God, that sits as the central idol of the universe, 
 it is to you contemptible to think of His bowing down 
 and coming among men ! 
 
 But if you have a God fashioned from the elements 
 revealed in the human soul, if you understand that great- 
 ness in the Divine Being does not mean muscular great- 
 ness, nor physical greatness, but purity, and depth, and 
 scope of all the feelings of the heart, then the greater 
 your God is, the more exquisite will be the things He 
 will do in detail, the more possibility will there be of 
 His descending and coming among men, and the more 
 certainly will He be expected to be found among His 
 family. As the mother is found where her child cries, 
 and as the father is found where his son stumbles, so we 
 should expect that, if God is a being whom we may know 
 from the analogies of our own nature, He would be found 
 living where men are tempted, and where they sin, and 
 suffer, and die. 
 
 This is the whole New Testament view of Christ It
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 303 
 
 springs naturally and inevitably from a God who is 
 Father. It cannot be grafted on any other view. 
 
 IF you measure any religious proceeding according to 
 the highest standard of the mind, there is nothing this 
 side of Calvary that can be looked upon with compla- 
 cency. The whole reformatory work of mankind goes 
 on, and ever has gone on, imperfectly. The world is 
 full of imperfection. And no person should measure 
 things by strict propriety. Religious courses should not 
 be measured by it. Such courses are scoffed at by men 
 because they are so full of imperfections. They are full 
 of imperfections, as full as summer woods are of flies ; 
 as full as the harvest-field is of worms ; as full as the 
 corn-field is of mildewed ears ; as full as nature is of 
 rudenesses. The tropics bear, the temperate zones bear, 
 the extreme zones bear beautiful flowers and delicious 
 fruits, and the earth is full of evidences of God's good- 
 ness ; although there is bark, although there are poison 
 insects and noisome things, although there are cutting 
 edges of rocks, although there are morasses, and although 
 there is miasma. 
 
 Carrion-crows and turkey-buzzards are the only things 
 that like carrion, and hunt for it. And where I see men 
 going round and watching for faults and imperfections, 
 and seeing nothing good, I mark those men, " Turkey- 
 buzzards and carrion-crows." For the dove shall fly 
 through that sunlit air that reveals naught but loathsome 
 corruption to the crow and the buzzard, and shall see no 
 carrion, and only blossoming growths and sweet fields. 
 What you see, depends upon the eye with which you look. 
 If your eye is gangrene, you will see only putrefying 
 gores. And if a man wants to see evil things, he can see
 
 304 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 enough of them, in ministers ; in churc lies ; in sects, 
 new or old ; in professed Christiana that do not hold out ; 
 or in professed Christians that do hold out, O, how queerly ! 
 For men are crazy and sick. The whole world is an hos- 
 pital. The best men walk like men just trying to walk. 
 And what would you think of a man that should stand at 
 the door of an hospital, and laugh till he could not hold 
 to the door-post at the men that had been cured and 
 discharged ? There comes a man with one leg ; there 
 comes another staggering ' from the effects of a wound 
 that has made him a cripple for life ; there comes anoth- 
 er whose face was burnt and scarred by the powder-flash 
 in battle, because he was so close to the enemy, before 
 \vhom he would not retreat ; and what would you think 
 of a man who should stand and look at them, and laugh, 
 and say, " Cured ! cured ! That is the beauty of health, 
 is it?" 
 
 Now, the world is full of invalids. All men are sick. 
 Everybody is imperfect, and will be till God gives us 
 final perfection. And what do you think of those men 
 that stand looking at revivals of religion, the results of 
 God's influence in the world, and only see the scars, and 
 the staggering, bloated, dropsical forms of the men that 
 emerge from them ? It is pitiful for the men who are 
 the subjects of them, but it is a thousand times worse for 
 those who are critics of these. 
 
 I SEE in many churches, and among many Christians 
 and devout ministers, what seems to me to be uninstructed 
 wisdom, or rather great folly. A man supposes that he 
 is converted. They say, " If he is converted, his conver- 
 sion is a work of God ; and if it is a work of God, it will 
 stand. If he holds out, we will receive him : and if not, 
 he will go back to the world ! "
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 305 
 
 Suppose I had lain where all night I had heard the dis- 
 charge of minute guns ; suppose as the morning dawned I 
 saw here and there parts of a ship that had sunk ; sup- 
 pose among the fragments I saw a man that had survived 
 the wreck, and who, clinging to a plank, was working his 
 way to shallow water ; suppose that as he got off and 
 staggered toward the shore a wave took him and swept 
 him out again ; and suppose that, as he gathered his 
 remaining strength and got upon his feet once_more, and 
 made a desperate struggle to save himself from a watery 
 grave, I sat and said to myself, " I think that fellow may 
 escape : I will watch him, and if he succeeds in getting 
 to the shore and out of the water, I will take care of 
 him " ? I would deserve to be drowned tnyself ! If you 
 see a fellow-creature in a perilous situation like that it is 
 your business to rush down and seize him, and give your 
 strength to his weakness, and bear him so that the reflu- 
 ent waves shall not carry him back. 
 
 Here is a man that has been gambling. In some afflic- 
 tion he goes to this or that church, that perhaps is a god- 
 send church to him ; and he says, " Would to God that I 
 could live a better life ! " Men seeing him there, say, 
 " I wonder what he is here for ! " as if a gambler had not 
 a soul, and had no business in a church ! He weeps ; 
 and they say, " As sure as I live, I saw the fellow cry ! " 
 And it is whispered about that he is under conviction ; 
 and these good people say, " God's grace is very power- 
 ful, and even this man may be saved : we will watch him, 
 and if he holds out let us receive him, and be kind to 
 him ! " But in the beginning when ten thousand fiery 
 fiends are round about him ; when his evil associates are 
 plucking at him ; when the channels are yet deep in 
 which his life has run ; when hundreds of malign influ- 
 
 T
 
 306 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 euces are crying out to him, " Return ! return ! return ! " 
 and when God's call comes faint to his ears, so that he is 
 in doubt as to whether it is God that calls, then is the 
 time to run down to him, and, if he is not quite sincere, 
 make him so by kindness and sympathy. 
 
 LET me tell you that those hours when you feel a 
 strange drawing toward that which is pure and true and 
 right, are hours of God's visitation. Your soul is not far 
 from its Maker in such hours. Be grateful for those 
 periods of peculiar yearning away from evil and toward 
 good. Take them. They are open doors to your prison- 
 house. Are there any bad habits, any evil courses to 
 which you have been addicted, about which you have 
 pondered, and of which you have said, " O that I could 
 be set free from them " ? Now there will come hours, 
 probably before a week passes, in which God will say to 
 you, " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, 
 and Christ shall give thee light." Venture ; break away 
 from your wicked ways ; do not wait till your impulses 
 are stronger ; do not wait till the spark becomes a flame ; 
 take a little, and go to that toward which it points. You 
 know it was a star that led the wise men to the place 
 where Jesus lay. When but a single star shines from 
 that which is right and pure and true, follow it, and it 
 will lead you to the place where the young child Jesus 
 lies. Are there not many in our midst that are borne 
 down by perplexities of business, cares of the family, 
 and trouble of various kinds, who feel themselves solemn- 
 ly called of God to reformation of life, reformation of 
 morals ? Are there not men that are pursuing secret 
 courses of undetected wrong, who have aspirations to 
 lift themselves above their entanglements and besetting
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 3 
 
 sins ? Are there not times that come to some in which 
 they reflect upon their wrong conduct, and desire to do 
 right ? These are times of salvation to you : I do not 
 mean to men in general, but to you, dishonest man ; to 
 you, insincere man ; to you, impure man ; to you, drink- 
 ing man ; to you, sinful, worldly nature. These times 
 when God calls, and you cannot but hear, are your set 
 times of salvation, in which God has come with all-help- 
 ful power. 
 
 IT matters little to me what school of theology rises, or 
 what falls, so only that Christ may rise and appear in all 
 His Father's glory, full-orbed, upon the darkness of this 
 world ! It matters little to me what church comes forth 
 strong, or what becomes weak, so only that the poor, the 
 sinful, the neglected, the lost among men, may have pre- 
 sented to them, in the church, a Saviour accessible, 
 reached easily by the human understanding, and avail- 
 able in every hour of temptation, of remorse, or of want ! 
 
 IP a man lives for his own selfish enjoyment, it makes 
 no difference that he wrongs no one. It is wicked for a 
 man who is blessed of God with great intellectual power, 
 and who is born to a station in which he can command 
 his support without labor, to shut himself up in a library, 
 and be a student, and devour books for eighty years, even 
 though he may never injure a fellow-creature. To gor- 
 mandize books is as wicked as to gormandize food. You 
 have no more right to be a literary epicure than to be a 
 physical epicure. And if a man makes his only aim in 
 life scholarship, and lives merely for his own mental grat- 
 ification, he is a criminal. If a man follows art simply 
 for his own pleasure, he cannot justify himself by saying,
 
 308 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 " I never injured a fly." That is not the question. Did 
 you ever benefit a fly ? With all your powers and oppor- 
 tunities, what have you done for the good of others ? 
 You should give as well as receive. "We are divinely 
 taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive ; 
 and we should hold a man accursed in this world just in 
 proportion as he has capacities and opportunities for use- 
 fulness, if he appropriates those capacities and opportu- 
 nities merely for his own private enjoyment. For if there 
 be one truth taught in the New Testament more emphat- 
 ically than another, it is, that moral indifference to an- 
 other man's welfare is a sin and a crime. It is not enough 
 to say, " I have not imbrued my hand in blood ; I have 
 not stricken down anybody ; I have wronged nobody." 
 Moral indifference is culpable. The fact that we are 
 stronger and better than our fellow-men does not justify 
 it. That fact makes it more guilty. We have no right 
 to live entirely for our own sake, and not at all for the 
 sake of others. "Freely ye have received, freely give," 
 said the Master to the disciples. He made the benefac- 
 tions of which they were the recipients, the endowments 
 which had been conferred upon them, to be the measure 
 of that which they were to bestow upon others. Paul 
 said, " I am a debtor to the Gentiles." Why was he a 
 debtor to the Gentiles ? What did he owe them ? Well, 
 it pleased God to give him such abundant revelations in 
 spiritual truth and life, that he knew more than the wis- 
 est philosophers and priests of the Gentiles, and he felt 
 himself to be their debtor in the measure of his superior- 
 ity to them. 
 
 THE heart of God is the world's hospital; and men 
 that have been striving to get well by medicating them-
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 309 
 
 selves, becoming no better, but rather growing worse, at 
 last gain this conception of God as one whose nature it is 
 to accept man, not on account of any arrangement or plan 
 that He has made, but for the purpose of healing him. 
 When a man lays his case. at the feet of his Master and 
 says, " Lord, I am a sinner come to be healed of sin," 
 with grace and benignity his Lord and Master says, 
 "Thee I accept. Thou art my child, I forgive the sins 
 thou hast committed in the past, and accept thee for guid- 
 ance, and education, and salvation in the future." The 
 point of adhesion between the human heart and the Sav- 
 iour is just the same as that between the patient and the 
 physician, which is the incompetence of the patient to 
 take care of himself and heal himself. It is his inability 
 to take care of and heal himself that leads the patient to 
 go to the physician, that he may be taken care of and 
 healed. It is of this that Christ speaks when He says, 
 " They that are whole need not a physician, but they that 
 are sick." " I am not come to call the righteous, but sin- 
 ners to repentance." 
 
 WHEN a sinner can go to . Christ and say, " I have 
 committed my soul to Thee; Thou hast accepted it; 
 Thou wert not deceived when Thou didst accept it ; Thou 
 knewest what was the strength of my pride and vanity ; 
 Thou knewest the whole gulf-stream of selfishness that 
 was in me; Thou knewest the force of my inordinate 
 affections; Thou knewest all the imperfections of my 
 nature ; there is nothing in me that Thou didst not know; 
 Thou didst undertake my case with a knowledge of all 
 my weaknesses and wickednesses ; and I am no worse 
 now than when Thou didst take me. Thou art my physi- 
 cian ; Thou art my schoolmaster ; Thou art my guide ;
 
 310 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 and in the end Thou shall be my exceeding great reward, 
 and this not because I am good, but because Tbou art 
 good." That is enough. It will meet every case. In 
 every exigency of life, Christian brethren, this is your 
 refuge ; not your own works of righteousness, not your 
 own power to do good, but O, the exhaustless bounty 
 and power of Him that has loved you for His own name's 
 sake. 
 
 HAVE you never seen how when they were finishing 
 the interior of buildings they kept the scaffolding up ? 
 The old Pope, when he had Michael Angelo employed 
 in decorating the interior of that magnificent structure, 
 the Sistine Chapel, demanded that the scaffolding should 
 be taken down so that he could see the glowing colors 
 that with matchless skill were being laid on. Patiently 
 and assiduously did that noble artist labor, toiling by day, 
 and almost by night, bringing out his prophets and sibyls, 
 and pictures wondrous for their beauty and significance, 
 until the work was done. The day before it was done, if 
 you had gone into that chapel and looked up, what would 
 you have seen ? Posts, planks, ropes, lime, mortar, slop, 
 dirt. But when all was finished the workmen came, and 
 the scaffolding was removed. And then, although the floor 
 was yet covered with rubbish and litter, when you looked 
 up it was as if heaven itself had been opened, and you 
 looked into the courts of God and angels. 
 
 Now, the scaffolding is kept around men long after the 
 fresco is commenced to be painted ; and wondrous dis- 
 closures will be made when God shall take down this 
 scaffolding body, and reveal what you have been doing. 
 By sorrow and by joy ; by joys which are but bright 
 colors, and by sorrows which are but shadows of bright
 
 ROYAL TRUTHS. 311 
 
 colors ; by prayer ; by the influences of the sanctuary ; 
 by your pleasures ; by your business ; by reverses ; by 
 successes and by failures ; by what strengthened your 
 confidence, and by what broke it down ; by the things 
 that you rejoiced in, and by the things that you mourned 
 over, by all that God is working in you. And you are 
 to be perfected not according to the things that you plan, 
 but according to the Divine pattern. Your portrait and 
 mine are being painted, and God by wondrous strokes 
 and influences is working us up to His own ideal. Over 
 and above what you are doing for yourself, God is work- 
 ing to make you like Him. And the wondrous declara- 
 tion is, that when you stand before God and see what 
 has been done for you, you shall be " satisfied." O, word 
 that has been wandering solitary and without a habitation 
 ever since the world began, and the morning stars sang 
 together for joy ! Has there ever been a human crea- 
 ture that could stand on earth while clothed in the flesh, 
 and say, " I am satisfied " ? What is the meaning of the 
 word? Sufficiently filled ; filled full ; filled up in every 
 part. And when God's work is complete, we shall stand 
 before Him, and, with the bright ideal and glorified 
 conception of heavenly aspiration upon us, looking up to 
 God, and back on ourselves, we shall say, " I am satis- 
 fied " ; for we shall be like Him. Amen. Why should 
 we not be satisfied ? 
 
 THE work of securing your salvation is a real business. 
 Not by dreaming ; not by sweet sentimentalities ; not by 
 going into a congregation and chanting hymns that bless 
 God, and weeping at prayers that touch the fountains of 
 susceptibility, and thinking airy thoughts of the past and 
 rosy thoughts of the future, not by these things can
 
 31-2 ROYAL TRUTHS. 
 
 you be saved. Be born again. Turn round and say, 
 and you might as well say it, " The day in which I 
 begin to try to live for God is my birthday." 
 
 0, blessed promise ! 0, wondrous economy of grace ! 
 by which a man, after having lived forty or fifty years in 
 sin, can start again, God saying to him, " I will cancel the 
 past ; we will let that go for nothing ; you may set up 
 business again, and begin as if you had never stumbled 
 and done wrong." Is there grace to help in such a time 
 of need ? Yes. There is a descending Spirit of God, 
 there is an inspiration of God, there is a Divine power, 
 which, when you are willing to be helped, will help you 
 in every time of need. God will help a man that will 
 help himself. Try it. Put God to proof, and see if these 
 words be not true. 
 
 WHEN we shall come to Zion, and stand before God, 
 it will then plainly appear that of all the myriads whose 
 radiant faces shine like stars in the firmanjent there, not 
 one from earth has come up except by the mediation, the 
 patient instruction, and the forgiving love of the Redeem- 
 er ; and we shall turn and say, " Not unto us, but unto 
 thy name, be the praise of our salvation, forever and 
 forever ! "
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PACK 
 Abelard and Ilcloise, . . . . . . .145 
 
 Accessibility of Men, ....... 299 
 
 Advantage of having a Rule of Life, . . . .155 
 
 Adversity the Test of Hope, ..... 9 
 
 All Things Naked and Open, 56 
 
 American Slavery not Hebrew Slavery, but Roman, . 127 
 Annie Howard, ........ 101 
 
 Another Life, ........ 205 
 
 " Are ye not much better than they ? " . . . 204 
 
 Ashamed of Myself, 299 
 
 Aspiration in every Man, ...... 22 
 
 Assaulting God through His Children, . . . . 135 
 
 Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, . . . . .185 
 
 Beginning Life, ........ 37 
 
 Beware of the Religion of the Counter, . . . .82 
 
 Bible and the Saddle, ....... 40 
 
 Bobolink, The,' 205 
 
 Bodily Organization Wonderful, . 37 
 
 Body, The, the Scaffolding of the Soul, . . . .310 
 
 Bruised Reed Smoking Flax, ... . . 53 
 
 Burying the Casket, not the Jewel, .* . . . .195 
 
 " By their fruits ye shall know them," . . . . 158 
 
 " Can the Ethiopian change his skin ? " . .- . . 267 
 
 Character makes Condition, . . . . .- 259 
 
 Child, The, and his Playthings, 117 
 
 Child's First Doubt of its Parent's Perfection, The, . 131 
 
 Children come in the Seeming of Angels, .... 132 
 
 Children of Fear, . 171" 
 
 Christ, A Personal, . . . ' . . . 280
 
 314 INDEX. 
 
 Christ, A Precious Manifestation of, . . , 277 
 
 Christ Better than Theology or Churches, .... 307 
 
 Christ Doing the Will of His Father, .... 235 
 
 Christ's Awakening Power, ...... 73 
 
 Christ's Curative Relation to the Human Soul, . . 207 
 Christ's Demand of Every Man, . . . . .215 
 
 Christ's Individuality and Personality, .... 237 
 
 Christ's Life the True Consolation, 130 
 
 Christian Brotherhood, . . . . . . 177 
 
 Christian Character not an Inventory of Negatives, . . 98 
 Christian Contentment and Philosophical Contentment, . 27 
 
 Christian Life and a Worldly Life Incompatible, A, .157 
 Christian Life like a Progressive River, . . . 151 
 
 Christian Life not like a Canal, 193 
 
 Christian, The, Related to all Men, . . . . 177 
 
 Christians Accept the Divine Idea of their Character, . 262 
 
 Christians like Glass Beehives, ..... 99 
 
 Christians like Freight-engines, . . . . .277 
 
 Christians ought to be Warriors, ..... 84 
 
 Christianity and Imagination, . . . . . .162 
 
 Christianity a System of Liberty and Joy, . . . Ill 
 Christianity neither Duty nor Drudgery, .... 107 
 
 Christianity Non-repressive of Life, .... 93 
 
 Christianity not Asceticism, ...... 81 
 
 Church making known the Wisdom of God, The, . . 190 
 Churches like Conservatories, . . . . . .159 
 
 Churches ought to be Lights of the World, ... 46 
 
 City Life, 40 
 
 Clock of the Conscience, The, . . . . . 212 
 
 Cloudless Natures, ". . -.188 
 
 Comfort in Trouble, . 59 
 
 Coming Boldly to the Throne, 48 
 
 Coming into Life through a Right Gate, . . . 301 
 Commentary, A Living, . . . . . . .199 
 
 Common Life, The Piteousness of, .... 229 
 
 Conclusion of a Voyage the Test of its Success, . . 21 
 Confirmation of Hope Wanting, . . . . * . 58 
 
 Conjunctive Particle, The, 136 
 
 Connection between Spiritual and Secular Bankruptcy, . 104 
 Consummation of our Life-work, ..... 245 
 
 Contempt for the Common People the Guilt of the Pharisees, 137 
 Contempt and Coldness a Violation of the Spirit of the Bible, 140 
 Cross, Doctrine of the, in Paul's Days and in ours, . 3 
 
 Cross, The, and the Garden, ...... 84 
 
 Crucifixion of the Passions, 160
 
 INDEX. 315 
 
 Daisies of Life, The, and the Plough of Trouble, . . 71 
 
 Darkness in the Alps, ....... 301 
 
 Deceits of language, ....... 65 
 
 Defeat and its uses, ....... 35 
 
 Despotism Unchangeable, ...... 31 
 
 Devotion the Means Piety the Result, . . . 241 
 
 Dew-drops, ......... 67 
 
 Difference between Dependence upon and Communion with God, 282 
 
 Difference between Heathenism and Old Testament Worship, 115 
 
 Difference between Paul's Christianity and ours, . . 16 
 
 Difficulty of Subduing Reason, ..... 141 
 
 Disappointments and their Uses, ..... 23 
 
 Divine Government, Facts of the, 268 
 
 Doctor Sun, 42 
 
 Doctrinal Preaching, ....... 250 
 
 Does the Christian Sin ? 198 
 
 " Don't Care," Infidel's, and the Christian's, ... 97 
 
 Drop of Water, The, 289 
 
 Dwarfed Bodies, ........ 46 
 
 Dying in Harness, 21 
 
 Earnestness in doing Right an Omnipotent Example, . . 131 
 
 Education and Development, . . . . . 114 
 
 Education for this Life and the Next, .... 230 
 
 Elements of Hatred to God in every Man, . . . 121 
 
 Employment of Time, ....... 66 
 
 Encouragement from the Doctrine of the New Birth, . 119 
 
 Epistles of Christ, 202 
 
 Erroneous Conceptions of Divine Worship, . . . 238 
 
 Essentials, not Accidental Relations, .... 133 
 
 Every Man can Sin, . . . . . . . 114 
 
 Excitement better than Silence and Death, . . .129 
 
 Excuses at Day of Judgment Melting at God's Look, . 201 
 
 Existence of Evil Spirits, ...... 85 
 
 Expedients and Principles, . . . . . . 117 
 
 Experience Enriches Life, ...... 26 
 
 Faculties Ineradicable, ...... 61 
 
 Faith has no Tendency to Produce Carelessness, . .199 
 
 Faith, The Order of, 21 
 
 Faith, The Radiancy of, . . . . . . .95 
 
 Falling off in Religious Culture, . ... . 291 
 
 Fear False and True, . ..'.'. . . 94 
 
 Fighting Pride and Vanity, . . . . . . 145 
 
 Filial Trust, 169
 
 316 INDEX. 
 
 Finding out how to Live, . . . . . . 127 
 
 Fled for Refuge The Anchor of Hope, . . . .233 
 
 Floats on the World-tide, 63 
 
 Folly of Questioning the Divine Wisdom in respect of Gov- 
 ernment, 268 
 
 Folly of Waiting for Conviction, 148 
 
 Forces, The Euling, 223 
 
 Forfeited Immortality, ...... 92 
 
 Formation of Young Men's Ideas, . . . . .14 
 
 Fortune, A Princely . . . . . . . 158 
 
 Free Speech the Tonic of Nations, . . . . .131 
 
 Freshness of God's Promises, ..... 265 
 
 Genteel Christians, 297 
 
 Gladness, A Source of ....... 62 
 
 God at the Helm, 171 
 
 " God " suggests Care, Kindness, Goodness, . . . 208 
 
 God Supplies Materials Man Works, .... 28 
 
 God Supreme, but not Solitary, . . . . . 186 
 
 God the best Judge of Man's Needs, 102 
 
 God the Centre of Glory, 80 
 
 God's Bride, : .' . 52 
 
 God's Fatherhood to the Christian, . . . . 254 
 
 God's Gentleness, 228 
 
 God's Glory to be Interpreted in Christ Jesus, . . 274 
 
 God's Government Unseen, ...... 257 
 
 God's Hidden Ones, 23 
 
 God's Love Eternal, . . . . . .55 
 
 God's Love not Dependent on our Character, , . 54 
 
 God's Payments, ........ 39 
 
 God's Sovereignty in his Love, . . . . ; . 90 
 
 God's Thoughts not as Man's Thoughts . . . . 251 
 
 God's Union with Man, . . . . . . 174 
 
 God's Ways of Coming into the Soul without Number, . 202 
 
 God's Word an Unopened Treasure, .... 269 
 
 God's Word a Spiritual Treasury, . . , . . 191 
 
 God-blighted Children, 296 
 
 Godliness Profitable for all Things, 103 
 
 Godly men possessed by the World after Death, . . 87 
 
 Going before God with our Guilt, ..... 49 
 
 Going Down like the Glacier, . ' . , . . 1 83 
 Golden Mean in Religion, The, . . . . .151 
 
 Goodness smarter than Baseness, . . . '- . . 209 
 
 Gospel, The, a Sword, . . . . ." . . 226 
 
 Gospel's Comprehensiveness, The, 173
 
 INDEX. 317 
 
 Grace necessary for Growth in Man, ..... 235 
 
 Green Devils, 41 
 
 Grief should be Embosomed in Hope 93 
 
 Grindstone, The World a, 27 
 
 Growing Rich by Giving, ...... 80 
 
 Guilty Silence, ,35 
 
 Habits of Hearing, 68 
 
 Happiness and Prosperity, . . . . . . 113 
 
 Hard to be a Saint in a Golden Niche, . . . .135 
 
 Hatred of Selfishness in Others, not in Ourselves, . . 145 
 Health and Happiness, . . . . . . .37 
 
 Heaven, a Daily . . . . ' . . . . 73 
 
 Hidden Reverence for the Bible, ..... 197 
 
 Holy Ghost, The Doctrine of the, 176 
 
 Home-sickness of the Heart, ...... 246 
 
 Honesty in Business, . . . . . . . 217 
 
 Honors only Useful in this Life, ..... 219 
 
 Hospital, The World's, 308 
 
 Hours of God's Visitation, . . ... . . 304 
 
 How the World Values Things, 132 
 
 How to be Released from Inclinations, .... 88 
 
 How to Come to Christ, 309 
 
 How to produce Conviction of Christ's Divinity, . . 214 
 
 How to stop Feelings, ....... 69 
 
 Human Heart, The, and its Effects, . . . . . 65 
 
 Human Life a Campagna, . . . . . . 193 
 
 Human Weathercocks, .... . ' . . .105 
 
 Humboldt and the Young Indian, . . . . 215 
 
 Humility and Strength the Divine Ideal of Character, . 6 
 
 Ideas Cosmopolitan, . . . . . . . 262 
 
 Ignorance of what Concerns Ourselves, . . . .14 
 
 " I know that my Redeemer liveth," . . . . 286 
 
 " I must Take Care of my Religion," .... 290 
 
 " I will never leave thee nor forsake thee," . . . 213 
 Imaginary Troubles, . . . . . .118 
 
 Imagination God's Self in the Soul, .... 48 
 
 Imbecile Men, ........ 160 
 
 Immediatism the Fool's Philosophy, .. . . . 106 
 
 Imperfection, The World full of, 303 
 
 Importance of Self, . . . . . . . 63 
 
 Impossibility of Incarnating Ideas in Words, . . . 106 
 
 Impressions we Leave of God and Christ, . . . 202 
 
 " lu honor preferring one another," . 138
 
 318 INDEX. 
 
 Incarnation Mystery, The, 187 
 
 Incompatibility of Faith and Much Thought, ... 76 
 
 Increasing Distance of our Ideal, ..... 48 
 
 Infinity, 226 
 
 Influence of Talk, 64 
 
 Inseparableness of the Soul and Christ, .... 208 
 
 Intensity of the Divine Love, ..... 13 
 
 Intolerable Conscientiousness, ...... 94 
 
 Intrinsic Wealth, . . . ' 231 
 
 Invisible Witnesses of Human Conduct, .... 4 
 
 Inward Light Quenched, ...... 66 
 
 Inward Sufferers, ........ 300 
 
 Inwardly Rich and Inwardly Poor, . . . . 108 
 
 " It doth not yet appear what we shall be," . . . 257 
 
 Justice Grows upon us, ...... 74 
 
 Justice Worth more than Corn-fields, . . . . .128 
 
 Last First, The, and the First Last, .... 221 
 
 Law an Index of God's Way, ...... 89 
 
 Laws of Nature in Abeyance, . . . . . 1 29 
 
 Leniency to Others Rigidity with Ourselves, ... 36 
 
 Life a March, ........ 11 
 
 Life Blossoming at Different Seasons, .... 100 
 
 Life God's School-house, . . . ... . 124 
 
 Life of Piety a Common Life, ...... 45 
 
 Likeness of Men to Machinery, . . . . . 154 
 
 Likeness of Mothers to the Saviour, ..... 191 
 
 Likeness of the Constitutionally Benevolent to God, . 289 
 Lopsided Christian Characters, . . . . .178 
 
 Loss of Personal Identity in the Church's Identity, . 66 
 Love and Worship, . . . . . . . .19 
 
 Love the Chiefest Thing, 284 
 
 Love the Gauge of True Manhood, . . . . . 1 80 
 
 Love the Motive Power, . . . . . ' . 135 
 
 Love, The Savor of, 197 
 
 Lowering the Standard, . . . . . "185 
 
 Lugubrious Complaining about the World, - , . . 19 
 
 Man as a Spiritual Being, . . . . . . 276 
 
 Man God's Courier, . . . . . . . 56 
 
 Man like a Cask of Wine, .' . . . . .140 
 
 Man to be Measured by that which makes him Man, . 275 
 Man to be Measured by the Faculties given him, . .133 
 
 Man's Development the Measure of his Happiness, . . 191
 
 INDEX. 319 
 
 Man's Freedom and the Absolute Will, .... 31 
 
 Man's Good the Highest End 144 
 
 Man's Ignorance of his Real Nature,' . . . .110 
 
 Man's Reproduction of God's Dealings, . . . 234 
 
 Manhood, A Receipt for, ...... 95 
 
 Manifestation of the Divine Love, .... 12 
 
 Manufactory, The World a, .233 
 
 Maternal Love a Revelation of the Love of God, . . 2 
 
 Michael Angelo and the Sistine Chapel, . 310 
 
 Microscopic Differences, ...... 55 
 
 Mirth God's Medicine, 248 
 
 Misapplied Forethought, ...... 96 
 
 Miserere, The, of the New Testament, .... 145 
 
 Mission of Suffering, ....... 122 
 
 Mistaking Callings, ....... 78 
 
 Meaning in Flowers, . . ... . . 124 
 
 Meanness of Cowardly Christians, ..... 97 
 
 Meanness of Slavery, ....... 247 
 
 Men get what they Deserve, . . . . . . 1 88 
 
 Men need Grinding, . . . . . . . 195 
 
 Men not to be Measured by their Callings, . . .137 
 
 Men Unconscious of God's Nearness, .... 200 
 
 Men who get what they Deserve Nothing, ... 78 
 
 Message of the Trees from God, . . . . . 180 
 
 Metallic Lives, 108 
 
 Moral Insensibility, ....... 256 
 
 Moral Principle, The Might of, 34 
 
 Moral Principle the True Compass, .... 131 
 
 Mother's Teachings, A, ....... 288 
 
 My Mother's Hyacinth, . . . . . 17 
 
 Natural Things afford no Analogue of Spiritual Development, 95 
 
 Necessity for a New Birth, . . . . . . 17 
 
 Necessity of Expression, . ... . . . . 116 
 
 Nervous Scrupulosity, ....... 93 
 
 New Testament View of God in Christ, .... 302 
 
 Niagara, Fool Crossing, . . . . . 152 
 
 No Barrenness in the Soul's Summer, .... 75 
 
 No Danger of Over-exalting Christ, . ... 216 
 
 No' Death to those who Know how to Die, ... 73 
 
 No Experience Exactly Pure and Natural, ... . 150 
 
 No Home in this World, ....... 232 
 
 No Homeliness in Natural Objects, . . . 115 
 
 No Isolation in Creation, 248 
 
 No Peace till the Consummation of Purity, . . . 222
 
 320 INDEX. 
 
 No Room for Hesitation in Worshipping Christ, . . 220 
 
 No Salvation out of Christ, ...... 283 
 
 Nobody without his Equivalents, ..... 86 
 
 Not Quality, but Quantity, 194 
 
 " Not unto us, but unto Thy Name !" . . . . 312 
 
 Odorous Vines, ........ 105 
 
 Old Katy, 44 
 
 Old Testament Cheerfulness, 162 
 
 Omnipotence of Small Things, 22 
 
 Only One Way, 266 
 
 Opposition to God both Open and Declarative, . . 123 
 
 Outward Life not an Index of Inward State, ... 87 
 
 Outward Prosperity, ....... 32 
 
 Outward Success Worthless in Itself, . . . .15 
 
 Overcome Evil with Good, 198 
 
 Owl and Bat Philosophy, . . . . . 286 
 
 Parent, The, a Bible to His Family, .... 201 
 
 Parental Love an Image of God's Love, . . . .10 
 
 Paths of Light and Beds of Darkness, .... 205 
 
 Patriarchs of the Pool, . . . . . .35 
 
 Paul's Contentment, . . . . . . . 125 
 
 Paul's Self-abnegation, . . . . . .16 
 
 Paul's Wish for his Kinsmen, . . . . . 189 
 
 Peace at Last, ........ 24 
 
 Penalty of Guilty Knowledge, ..... 270 
 
 Permission to Labor for God Undeserved, .... 287 
 
 Perpetual Recipients, . . . . . - . . 54 
 
 Personal Experience an Evidence of Christ's Divinity, . 221 
 
 Picture-gallery, A 59 
 
 Pigeon-shooting, ... ..... 207 
 
 Pitiableness of merely Wealthy Men, . . . 247 
 
 Playing on One String, 250 
 
 Plenty in the Father's House, 204 
 
 Policy of the Devil, ....... 233 
 
 Power of Public Sentiment, 32 
 
 Power of the Keys, 271 
 
 Praise, The Union of, . . . . . . 178 
 
 Preaching by Silent Example, . . ... 254 
 
 Precious Stones, ........ 282 
 
 Present Premonitions of a Coming Future, ... 1 
 
 Present Trials trifling when compared with Coming Glory, 124 
 
 Pride, The Disease of, 29 
 
 Principles like Rays of Light, ..... 207
 
 INDEX. 321 
 
 Professional Air of Piety, 88 
 
 Promises for every Condition, 264 
 
 Providence and Luck, . . . . . . .104 
 
 Providence Not Fatality, 203 
 
 Pruning by the Heavenly Husbandman, . . . .12 
 Puritanism's Essential Idea, . . . . . 159 
 Puritans the Swords of God, 170 
 
 Regulating by False Standards, ..... 68 
 
 Religion like the Coming of Spring, 259 
 
 Religion not like a Bird in a Cage, .... 144 
 
 Religion not merely a Title to Heaven, .... 243 
 
 Religion the Right Use of a Man's Self, . . . 258 
 
 Religion Working Vertically and Horizontally, ... 43 
 
 Religious Egotism, . . . . . . . 70 
 
 Remuneration of Suffering for God, ..... 298 
 
 Repentance and Humiliation, . . . . . 11 
 
 Resurrection of the Witnesses, ...... 252 
 
 Revolutions by Mind-power, ...... 34 
 
 Rich Moral Nature a Doubtful Blessing, . . . .108 
 
 Righteousness Hereditary, . . . . . . 158 
 
 Righteousness the Foundation of Human Life, . . .126 
 
 Romantic Ideas of Sinfulncss, ..... 57 
 
 Running Mad for Philanthropy, ..... 18 
 
 Sabbath, A World without a, ..... 
 
 Sacrament, The Whole Globe a 
 
 Sacrificing Piety to Save the Church, .... 
 
 Satan overreaching Himself, ...... 
 
 Scepticism of our Time, ...... 
 
 Scripture Teaching regarding our Nature and Condition, , 
 Seclusion from the World not necessary for the Christian, 
 Securing Salvation a Real Business, .... 
 
 Seeming Gradual Disclosures of God's Love, 
 
 Selfness and Selfishness, ....... 
 
 Self-abandonment Hope in Christ, .... 
 
 Self-knowledge a Divine Work, .... 
 
 Self-reliance to be Cultivated in Children, 
 
 Self-seeking and Stewardship for God, .... 
 
 Selfishness of Grief, ....... 
 
 Sense in which God lives for His own Glory, 
 Sensitiveness of the Soul, ...... 
 
 Sermonizing easier than Pastoral Visitation, 
 
 Silence of Great Developments, ..... 
 
 Sin no Cause of Discouragment, ....
 
 322 INDEX. 
 
 Sin of Living for Selfish Enjoyment, .... 307 
 
 Single Virtues of Little Account, . . . . .120 
 
 Society a Training-school for Heaven, .... 25 
 
 Solitude of the Divine Love, . . . . . .166 
 
 " Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these," 164 
 Something of God in every Man, . . . . .192 
 
 Soul Formless, The, 99 
 
 Soul, The Bountiful Mother of the, 142 
 
 Soul, The Who Sees or Knows it ? . . . . 71 
 
 Soul's Likeness to a Seed, . . . . . -118 
 
 Soul-ancestry, . . . . . . . . 178 
 
 Soul-longings, . . . . . . . .195 
 
 Soul-union, . . . . . . . . 175 
 
 Sounding the Depths of the Precipice of Life, . . . 240 
 Spiritual Scale for Measuring Character, . . . 15 
 
 Spiritual Truths written on Fleshly Tables, ... 68 
 Spiders' Webs Invisible, . . . . . . 157 
 
 Spontaneousness of Christ's Life, ..... 236 
 
 Spring in the Soul, 244 
 
 Spring, The World's, 242 
 
 St Peter's at Rome and the Epistle to the Romans, . 7 
 
 Staple Cause of Scepticism, . . . . .152 
 
 " Stand fast in the faith," 219 
 
 Standing in the Presence of God, . . . . .109 
 
 Strength in Weakness, ...... 260 
 
 " Strive to enter in at the strait gate," .... 260 
 
 Striving toward Something Better, . . . . 184 
 
 Stunted Love, 82 
 
 Sudden Conversions not to be Disbelieved, . . . 147 
 Suffering Blossoming in Heaven, . . . . 295 
 
 Suffering the Measure of Love, . . . . . 19 
 
 Superfluous Self-denial, 295 
 
 Superstitious Piety, 90 
 
 Superstitious Reading of the Bible, 112 
 
 Surface Feelings, ....... 157 
 
 Sweetness of Resting on Simple Faith, .... 203 
 
 Sympathy ought to run Downward, not Upward, . . 143 
 
 Taking Advantage of the Love of God, . . . .165 
 Tantalizations, ........ 60 
 
 Teachings of the Empty Cradle, 225 
 
 Telegraph, The Longest, . . . . . . 51 
 
 Terrible Convictions of Sin Better than None, . . .148 
 
 Theology Changeable, 53 
 
 Thistle-down, 142
 
 INDEX. 323 
 
 Three in One, The, 46 
 
 Thy will be done !" 116 
 
 Times in which Men ought to Wish to Live, . . . 109 
 
 Too Little Relaxation, 42 
 
 Treating God's Promises like Bank-notes, . . . 256 
 
 Tree of Life, The -122 
 
 Trial the Proof of Things, 76 
 
 Trouble and Consolation, 74 
 
 Trouhle and its Uses, 70 
 
 Truant Child and his Hidden Guilt, The, . . .49 
 
 Two Kinds of Heroes, 263 
 
 Two Meanings of the Word " Nature," .... 238 
 
 Two Ways of Preaching Love, . . . . 138 
 
 Unappreciated Men, ....... 36 
 
 Unexpectedness of Death, 85 
 
 Unfathomable, The Soul, 15 
 
 Unfinished Work, . . . . . . . 172 
 
 Uninstructed Wisdom, ....... 304 
 
 Union with a Great Idea, 229 
 
 Unison and Concord, ....... 63 
 
 Universal Belief of the Immortality of Love, . . . 195 
 
 Unknown Habits, 68 
 
 Unreasonable Doubts and Fears, ..... 28 
 Unreasonable Forebodings, . . . . . .61 
 
 Unsearchableness of Love, 290 
 
 Up-hill and Down-hill Patience, 242 
 
 Utilitarians, ........ 42 
 
 Value of Things, The True Measure of the, . . . 224 
 
 Vanity Desecrates all Things, . . . . 146 
 
 Vicarious Suffering in every Detail of Life, . . . 293 
 
 Visions of Christ, ....... 288 
 
 Walking Bibles, 92 
 
 Walking on Stilts, 101 
 
 War's Lessons 26 
 
 Watch unto Prayer, 281 
 
 Weakness of Worldly Things, ...... 261 
 
 What it is to become a Christian, ..... 80 
 
 What Men are Built of, 227 
 
 What to Die on, . 61 
 
 When the Heart begins to Know its Grief, . . 64 
 
 Whitfield and the Wesleys, .... 168
 
 324 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Who are the Worst Infidels ? 
 
 Why should our Courage Fail ? 
 
 Wicked Boldness, ....... 
 
 Wonderful Convictions no Test of a Man's Christianity, . 
 World Music in the Minor Key, .... 
 
 82 
 
 57 
 
 51 
 
 150 
 
 265 
 
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 Ticknor and Fields. 13 
 
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 Ticknor and Fields. 15 
 
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 Ticknor and Fields. 17 
 
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 Ticknor and Fields. 19 
 
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