SERMONS PREACHED IN Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, HENRY WARD BEECHER. FROM ELLINWOOD'S STENOGRAPHIC REPORTS. MARCH -SEPTEMBER, 1874 NEW YORK: FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT. 1896 COPYRIGHT IN 1874. BY I. B. FORD & COMPANY. \1 CONTENTS. I. CHARLES SUMNER (Isaiah i. 26) . .7 LESSON : Psalm zziil. 'HYMNS : 865, 962, 1004. II. SAVBD BY HOPE (Rom. viii. 24, 25) . . .26 LESSON : Rom. viil. 15-38. HYMNS : 130, 1230. 660. III. THE PRIMACY OP LOVE (1 Cor. i. 18-24) ... 4? LESSON: 1 Cor. zlll. HYMNS : 247, 1261, 1225. IV. FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION (Col. iii. 1-4) . . 71 LESSON : Col. ill. 1-17. HYMNS : 40, 364, 55L V. SUMMER IN THE SOUL (Luke xvii. 21). . . .98 LESSON: Horn. ziil. HYMNS: 255, 60* 1X3. VI. HINDERING CHRISTIANITY (Gal. v. 22-26) . . .117 LESSON : Rom. zli. HYMNS : 365, 668, 660. VII. SOUL-RELATIONSHIP (Gal. iii. 26-29, Eph. ii. 19-22) . 148 LESSON: Eph. i. HYMNS: 1298,816, 1230. VIII. CHRISTIAN JOYPULNESS (Rom. xii. 12) ... 169 LESSON : Eph. 1. 11-23 ; 11. 1-7. HYMNS : 217, 922. IX. LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES (1 Cor. xii. 31) . . 198 LESSON : Rom. zlv. 1-19. HYMNS : 119, 970. 949. X. THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20) . 238 LKSSON : Psalm zlx. HYMNS : 100B, 1001, 10BO. XI. GOD'S GRACE (Eph. ii. 8) 251 LESSON : isa. iv. HYMNS : 130, 180, 660. -XII. IDEAL CHRISTIANITY (2 Pet. ii. 1-4) .... 278 LESSON : 2 Pet. 1. 1-11. HYMNS : 898, 865, 1261. . THE PROBLEM OP LIFE (1 John iii. 2, 3 ; Rom. viii. 18-21) 291 LESSON : Matt. zz. 17-34. HYMNS : 255, 1235, 1263. * PLYMOUTH COLLECTION. tV CONTENTS. MM XIV. UNJUST JUDGMENTS (Matt. vii. 1) . . . 815 LESSON : James iii. HYMNS : 104, 1023, 1053. XV. THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK (Rom. xiv. 18) 343 LESSON : Matt. v. 1-16. HYMNS : ISO, 604, 907. XVI. THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD (Isa. liv. 5). . 365 LESSON : Isa. liv. HYMNS : 552, 655, 660. XVII. THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE (Matt. xx. 28 ; Phil. ii. 1-11) 391 LESSON : Psalm xcvi. HYMNS : 212, 907. XVIII. TRUTH-SPEAKING (Epri. iv. 25) 411 LESSON : Prov. u. 1-22. HYMNS : i02, 513, 657. > XIX. THE SECRET OF THE CROSS (1 Cor. ii. 1-6) . VT 429 LESSON : Phil. 11. 1-11. HYMNS : 666, 838, 346. XX. RESOLVING AND DOING (Phil. ii. 12, 13) . . . 449 LESSON : Psalm xc. HYMNS : 578, 513, 657. XXI. THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS (Rev. xv. 3, 4) . . 467 LESSON : Rev. v. HYMNS : 1251, 1230. XXII. FOLLOWING CHRIST (Matt. iv. 17-22) ... 488 LESSON : Isa. Iv. HYMNS : 1321, 847, 657. XXIII. PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE (Matt. vi. 19-2ij . . 501 LESSON : Matt. vi. 19-34. HYMNS : 1309, 901, 1294. , XXIV. WHAT is RELIGION ? (2 Tim. ii. 19) . . . . 517 LESSON : Gal. v. 1-13. HYMNS : 888, 705, DoxolOKy. XXV. CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY (Rom. xii. 4, 5) . . .541 LESSON . Rom. xli. HYMNS : 102, 632. IXVI. LUMINOI> HOURS (Luke ix. 28-42) .... 667 uke Ix. 28-42. HYMNS ; 119, 564, Doxology. PLYMOUTH COLLECTION. CHARLES SUMMER. "And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning : afterward thou shalt he called the city of right- eousness, the faithful city." ISAIAH i., 36. The best gift of God to nations is the gift of upright men especially upright men for magistrates, statesmen, and rulers. How bountiful soever the heavens may be ; how rich the earth may be in harvests ; though every wind of heaven waft prosperity to its ports, till the land is crowded with warehouses stuffed to repletion with treasure, that coun- try is poor whose citizens are not noble, and that republic is poor which is not governed by noble men selected by its citizens. The signs of decay in the life of a nation show themselves as soon as anywhere else in the character of the men who are called to govern it. When they seek their own ends, and not the public weal ; when they abandon principles, and administer according to the personal interest of cliques and parties ; when they forsake righteousness, and call upon greedy, insatiable selfishness for counsel ; and when the laws and the whole framework of the government are but so many instruments of oppression and of wrong, then the nation cannot be far from decadence. When God means to do well by a nation that has backslidden, among the earliest tokens of his beneficent intent is the restoration of men of integrity and of honor men who live for their fellows, and not for themselves. SUNDAY EVENING. March 15, 1874. LKSSON : Psa. xxtli. HYMNS r (Plymouth Col. lection) : Nos. 865, 982, 1,004. 8 CHARLES SUMNER. I propose to look back a little to-night over that great period of decadence with which so many of us are too familiar, but which must not be forgotten, lest the lesson which it teaches should also perish. The beginnings of our land, as you remember, were eminently religious. Our fathers came hither to establish a new and notable dispensation, seeking to lay it upon foun- dations of righteousness. For generations they succeeded ; and here was developed that consummate form of liberty which carried out, as it could not be carried out in antiquity, the idea of the freedom of the whole people. It was here that France lit her torch ; but she knew not how to follow our example. To a large extent it was from this land that liberty derived in Europe its modern impetus. We ourselves derived the seed of liberty from Holland and from England ; but we planted it here under a free sky and upon a noble soil ; and from this seed which we brought hither we reared a harvest ; and we sent back and resowed in France, in Germany, and throughout Europe, it would seem now, the same blessed truths which have emancipated us. But " when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, Satan came also among them ;" and when our institutions were framed for liberty and for righteousness, there was permitted to be twined among them an element false in morals, corrupt in political economy, and utterly subversive of all rights and doctrines of human liberty ; and there came to be developed a procedure which, while it gave partial benefit to a favored class, corrupted the whole system of industry, not alone in the immediate field where this procedure was established namely, in the slaveholding States of the Union but indirectly, and by the circulation, as it were, in the whole body politic. For slavery is essential treason to free labor, and to the rights of the working man, the world over. It is esteemed bad enough for labor to be indebted to capital ; but it was worse a thousand times when capital owned not only labor but the laborer too ; and that was the condition of labor and political economy over the fairest portion of this continent. Organized into our affairs, the principle of slavery infiu- CHARLES SUMNER. 9 enced national history in such a way as to inevitably pro- duce antagonism, clash, and grating of interests. When the Mississippi and the Missouri come together, and their waters push each other every whither, and their face is covered with eddies and wrinkles, it is in vain for the Mississippi to re- proach the Missouri ; and it is in vain for the eastward-com- ing river to reproach the southward-coming river. It is nol the fault of either of them that they scowl upon each other. There is a law that makes it unavoidable. So, that democ- racy which developed freedom in labor, and that aristocracy which developed bondage in labor, in the same government, could not keep their hands off from each other. They were born antagonists, and conflict between them was a necessity. There was, then, this latent principle of antagonism which threatened our existence. In the conflict which en- sued, and which increased as the elements of liberty and slavery ripened into full expression in national life, there was more and more a corrupting of the morals and the conscience of the whole nation. The entire South was corrupted by perversion ; for that which the fathers believed was a permis- sible evil, to be done away in the course of time, their de- scendants, when it 'became profitable in the fields of both money and politics, turned and justified. Although in the early days the opponents of slavery were eminently the ablest men of the South, in the more recent days all the leading men of the South her scholars, her poets, her publicists, and her ministers all joined in one great outcry to justify slavery, and to make it the very foundation of national life, as well as the very philosophy of national thrift. So the whole South went wrong, under the influence of slavery ; and it was taught in her schools and in her colleges, until a whole generation had been brought up from the cradle in the doctrine of its essential beneficence, and of its wisdom in po- litical economy. It is in vain to say that the people of the South did not believe this doctrine. The younger men of the South did believe it. It came to them almost with their growth. But none the less were they perverted and cor- rupted by it. The North was yet more corrupted, because her interests 10 CHARLES SUMNER. led her largely to placate and defer to tlie South. Nothing can be more melancholy, particularly for the Eastern part of our land, than to remember the public sentiment which existed in churches, when it was made an offense that almost ostracised a man to plead in a prayer-meeting for slaves ; when men bated their breath in speaking of human lights ; when pulpits not only were dumb, but were employed very largely in the defense or palliation of slavery, or only admit- ted in an underbreath that it was an evil an evil which must be borne with patiently. If there was not apology for slavery, there was at least a guilty silence concerning it dur- ing a long period in the pulpits of the North. The benevolent associations of the North especially those men who were relied upon to carry out the essential parts of their work were wrapt up in complicity with this great mis- chief, and refused to bear their testimony. I will not go into detail ; but you will remember how pitiful was the position of the great missionary and publishing societies of the Chris- tian community in the North. Following their lead, the commercial publishers took out of their publications of every kind those great truths which had been the meat of gener- ations before ; and in their reading-books nothing was said of liberty that could be construed as condemning American slavery. In none of their books for the use of schools was there anything that could offend the South. So fashion, commerce, religion, and politics throughout the North were lowered in tone ; and they did obeisance to slavery. In poli- tics, if possible, it was worse than anywhere else, by reason of ambition and political aspiration. From the peculiar position of affairs, no man in the North who hoped for preferment dared to speak on the subject of liberty. Do you not remember when every young lawyer was warned not to give way to intemperate enthusiasm in favor of free- dom, because it would certainly block up all hope of his advancement? Do you not remember when no man could hope to go to the Legislature of the State, and certainly not to the national Legislature, if he dared to utter an honest sentiment of liberty ? Men were marked ; and if they de- sired ready advancement, not simply must they be silent in CHARLES SUMNER. H regard to the sacredness of freedom, but they must say some kind and conciliatory things for slavery. When they did this, they were wnaid. Therefore, it came to pass that there was bred a genera- ation of men of whom the fathers in the upper sphere were ashamed. There were men in the North who were cor- rupted by the bribes which were presented to them by slavery. There were political eunuchs, emasculated men, fearing, cal- culating, tergiversating. We never had a period of more profound national humiliation than that between 1830 and 1860. I myself came into public life about the year 1837, and I was a witness of this condition of things; so that I speak from my own knowledge. The great struggle at that time, I, remember full well, was for liberty of thought and of expression. I was tutored. I had friends in high places who took me aside, and whispered in my ear, saying, " Pru- dence ; caution ; you have opportunity ; good society is open to you : do not blight your prospects. There is a chance for you in public life : do not spoil your opportunity of ascend- ing by rash speaking. Wait ; consider ; let your thoughts ripen." Muzzling and suffocation were the order of the day. I remember distinctly when Birney's press was mobbed, in Cincinnati, and dragged through the streets, and thrown into the Ohio River. I remember perfectly the night when I patrolled th3 streets, armed, to defend the houses of the poor colored people in that city. I remember when no prayer-meeting or church-gathering allowed men to speak on the subject of liberty. I remember when in Presbytery and Synod it was considered a heresy to advocate freedom. I re- member when it was regarded as next to treason in politics for a man to be an avowed advocate of national liberty. The battle began in the North on the question of whether liberty of thought, liberty of speech, and liberty of printing, should be maintained ; and we went through days when the birds of fate laid addled egg? and we had all we wanted of them ; days of darkness and humiliation and disgrace. The condition of Washington from 1830 to 1860 was worse than the court of Pharaoh while he held the Israelites in 12 CHARLES SVMKER. bondage. I speak not of its want of thrift ; I speak not of its slatternly condition ; I spe'ak not of its lack of enterprise ; I speak not of the smothering there of every element of pros- perity : I speak of the moral degradation that prevailed there, and of the rod of iron which was held over the heads of all the men who went there. Aggressive politics was there the order of the day. Among the movements in this direc- tion was the passage of that blessed infamy, the Fugitive Slave Law. I say blessed, because that, perhaps, marked the time when reaction really set in. It was the most cruel in- sult, and the most needless that was ever offered by men given over by fate to fatuity, to the conscience of Northern men. There was no necessity for it. It was a defiance thrown in the face of Northern men. Then came the Kansas struggle. Then came the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Ihen came preparations for the nationalization of slavery. Then came the scheme for allowing slaves to go in transitu through the Northern States. Changes in the Constitution were contemplated by which slavery should be as national as liberty. Those were the elements to which we had come when the war surprised us. Dark times were upon us then. I remem- ber them full well. I had drunk in the love of liberty with the breath of my life. I do not remember an hour, in my very boyhood, in which my soul was not on fire for the rights of men. I never wavered. I never bent. Although I had the same desire for kindness and consideration and sympathy which every generous and unperverted heart has, I never saw the moment when I would buy popularity or posi- tion in society by yielding one hair's-breadth of my feeling of enthusiastic conscience for human rights, and for rights that were sacred in proportion as they were denied to men, and in proportion as men were poor, and crude, and un- helpful of themselves. I very well remember groaning and travailing in spirit through all those dark days. I did not altogether give up hope ; but, from the year 1856 to the year 1860, events trod so fast on each other that I confess to so much relinquish- ment of hope that I feared that perhaps God meant to break CHARLES SUHNER. 13 this nation in pieces to teach the nations of the earth the guilt and delusion of human bondage. I could not bear it ; and many a prayer in this house, many a prayer in my own closet, many a prayer in the highway, and many a prayer in the forest, have I sent up, that this nation might be spared and purged, rather than destroyed for the benefit of pos- terity. The mercy of God was seen early, in raising up an army of men to resist the mischiefs that were threatened to the country. Private men there were not a few who enlisted in the cause of freedom. There was Garrison, the uncompro- mising and harsh truth-teller. There was the fiery Weld, like a second Peter the Hermit. There was the patrician Phillips, who never spoke without piercing whose tongue was a rapier. There was May, of sweeter heart, and equally noble courage. There was Jackson, who, though not known, was one of those secret sources of supply and influence which determined events. There were the two Tappans, one of whom was long with us. There was Joshua Leavitt, a citi- zen of Brooklyn until a year or two ago, when he departed. There was Rogers, who died of a broken heart early in the struggle. There were Whittier, and Longfellow, and Lowell, and Emerson, and others, of whom I shall speak again. It is often said that the church of the North was corrupt- ed. At one period, it certainly was guilty. Nor did we have the help of the great majority of the churches of the North in the Eastern States until a comparatively late period of the conflict. But I can say, to the credit of the New- school Presbyterian church of the West, with which my lot was cast, that, before the year 1837, it was effectually leavened by liberty. The first vote that I ever cast in the Presbyterian church was a vote that the Presbytery of Indian- apolis would never receive a licentiate, or would never license any man, who held slaves, unless he would show to us that he held them unwillingly, and that he would as soon as pos- sible give them up. My impression is that there was not in the New-school Presbyterian church in Indiana a minister who was not in favor of liberty. Long before the church in the East was aroused on the subject of slavery, the Western 14 CHARLES SUMNER. church stood established in opposition to it. The ministers of the New-school Presbyterian church in the West were early and faithful laborers for emancipation. Of public men, we shall not soon forget the mission of John Quincy Adams. Many of you have forgotten the noble tasks imposed upon himself by Governor Slade. There was Gerrit Smith and there was Alvan Stewart. There was Joshua Giddings, who early espoused the Anti-slavery cause. There was Hale, who served it in the Senate. There was Seward, both in New York and in the Senate. There was Greeley, foremost among journalists. Still later was Sum- ner ; and Stevens ; and later yet, Lincoln, and his great war- minister, Stanton. These, and many others whom time would fail me to mention, were the men who appeared to turn back the captivity, and establish the glory and radiance of universal liberty. Then came the blinding of the wise and the weakening of the strong. Then came the fatuity of Southern leadership. Had the leaders of the South been wise, we might still have been enthralled. Time and again it seemed to me that, not being wise, if they had been at least cunning, they still would have held empire. But " whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad." There has recently been an extraordinary conjunction. Two men have departed from us in the same week. The funeral services of the one overlap those of the other. They were both representative men he of Boston and he of Buffalo. Mr. Fillmore, in private life, was an irreproachable man, amiable, kind, and universally to be respected ; but as a public man, he was a type of that weakness and cowardice which was bred in the North by the accursed influence of slavery in the South. Sumner was the representative man of that reactionary spirit which was developed by liberty con- tending for its old rights and for its old ground. These two men have died almost at the same time ; and although I would not invade the sanctity of the grave, it befits his- torical reminiscence that these two antithetical men, one representing the old, and the other representing the new. within the period of a week going out from the generation CHARLES SUMNER. 15 of the living among the dead, should be mentioned in thia contrast Personally, privately, I honor Mr. Fillmore ; but as a public man he had no political conscience. He was without any apparent sympathy for any of those principles on which this great nation was founded. He gave to a party a miser- able party that which belonged to the higher interests o} humanity and of mankind. He gave up Liberty to be cruci- fied between Southern Slavery and Northern Mammon; and then washed his hands, and said, " I am innocent of the blood of this just person." Of another sort was Charles Sumner. By his birth, by his education, by his social surroundings, he was fitted to be an aristocrat ; nor was his disposition averse to such a place and title, for by nature he was self -considering. He was so intense in his own convictions as to become arrogant, and impose his views upon others with a species of oratorical des- potism. But from the beginning of his life a romantic moral sense allied him to justice, to rectitude ; and since in our day justice was most flagrantly violated by slavery, his love of justice and of truth took him, to his honor and to the glory of mankind, out from his class, and away from aristoc- racy, and made, essentially, an intellectual democrat of him. Personally he never was democratic. Intellectually he became so, by the force of tho struggle of the day in which he lived. I cannot but call to mind how strangely, and how very nobly, the old elect families of the commonwealth of the glorious old State of Massachusetts behaved. They were our only aristocracy, either of wealth or of historic association ; and yet, what more noble man was tli3re in Massachusetts than Adams ? Where have we found a man more nobly allied to liberty in the day of its peril than he was ? What higher credit rested upon any household than that which came from the name of Quincy ? Fathers and sons how true they were I Aristocrats do you call them ? They were the truest democrats. Longfellow, naturally tender and refined, shrinking from struggle and from the rude rush of unwashed multitudes, did not disdain to set his harp, in the earliest hours, and sing 16 CHARLES SUMNER. songs of liberty, when it was to bring upon him discords and bowlings, and not the music of praise. Emerson, the calm, the observational, the coldly reflecting, had not warmth enough to make him an enthusiast in religion ; but he had patriotism and humanity enough to make him bear witness in the teeth of slavery. Whittier, the beautiful singer who wraps indignation and wrath about with such gentleness of spirit, Quaker-like he could write Ichabod on the name of Webster, and doom him as though he had struck him with lightning, and yet all the time could seem as sweet as the Gos- pel. And there was the elegant patrician, the son of aristo- cratic sires, born sovereign, full of culture and of exquisite refinement, a noble man Phillips, who put aside all ambi- tions, who devoted himself to the thankless task of speaking to mobs, and who, through good report and through evil report, carried his lance, and never once had it shivered or cast vilely away, and lived to see triumphant the cause which he loved. In this band, of which I have not enumerated the half, belonged Charles Sumner ; and by force of circumstances he became its leader, being advanced to eminent trusts. He came forth at the time when such men as Story, Webster, Choate, and Everett were the heroes of Massachusetts. I remember that it was as much as a man's life was worth then to speak in derogation of Daniel Webster ; but how do men feel respecting him to-day ? I remember when Choate was as brilliant as a star. Now he is as a meteor, the memory of which, has gone with its radiance. And Everett his last days were his best days ; and all that he did in elegant litera- ture was not so much as he did when he wrote in Mr. Bon- ner's Ledger for the people ; because, then, for the first time, I think, Edward Everett stood among common folks, in sympathy with them, and employed his culture, and reason, and taste, and genius, for the masses. In all the great and masterful struggles for liberty, and for the redemption of our land, neither Choate nor Webster nor Everett was found. Charles Sumner was endowed by nature with a noble presence. He was physically of a most manly type. He had an admirably constituted mind ; and yet, he was not a child CHARLES SUMNER. tf of genius. His learning, joined to his high moral sense, con- stituted him what he was. He was a made man. He was well versed in law, in general literature, in history, in art, and in belles left res. He was fitted in all these respects to carry to his sphere in the United States Senate great influence and great power. He carried there an industry which was almost unmatched, and a straightforwardness and unchanging in- tent which was well-nigh without a parallel. The meaning of his life, the force of all his enthusiasm, was, Bondage must be destroyed, and Liberty must be established. For that he became a martyr. He has died, lately, and from the blow that felled him in the Senate chamber, that darkened many years of his life, and that gave to him a shock which his nervous system never recovered from. Not John Brown himself, nor Lincoln, was more a martyr for liberty than Charles Sumner has been. How glorious such a death as his ! How well it beseems his reputation ! Better so. Now, no pitying. As, when a man is knighted, the sovereign takes the sword and smites him on the shoulder, and says, " Rise up, Sir Charles !" so the club that smote Sumner on the head did more than knight him it brought him to honor and to immortality. His devotion, his suffering, his perseverance, have been without faltering. He filled nobly the place where God put him. And God worked largely by him in the restoration of the conscience in the politics and statesmanship of this nation, and to-day the whole nation stands still to honor the name of Charles Sumner. No son bears his name. No family will transmit it to the future. No descendant will gaze fondly upon his pictured face, and say, " It was my ancestor." He and his kindred are cut off. But the old State that gave him birth, and that he served so nobly, shall cut his name in letters so deep that time itself shall never rub them out ; and no man shall ever road the history of these United States of America, and fail to see, shining brightly, with growing luster through the ages, the name of Charles Sumner. No son, no daughter, weeps for him ; but down a million dusky cheeks there are tears trickling. They whom he served weep for him. He 18 CHARLES SUMNER. was the Moses that helped to bring out of bondage myriads of the oppressed, who to-day feel that a father a^id a protector is gone up from among them ; and I would rather have the sympathy, the sorrow, and the prayers of the smitten than all the eulogies and all the honors of strong and prosperous men. He has lived well. He has died well. His faults will go down with him. His virtues will live after him. He joined himself to whatever was best in his time. Now he is with God. Young men, let me speak a few words to you in respect to some parts of the example of this man who has departed from our midst. First, you will take notice that he identified his own interests with the noblest interests of his country. He was not a vermin statesman, a parasitic statesman, who looked upon his country but as a carcass from which he might draw blood. In a venal, corrupt time, he held trust and power unsullied and unsuspected. Nothing can speak better for the judgment of corrupt men than the fact that they never dared to approach him for Mr. Sumner said, with inimi- table naivety ' ' People speak of Washington as being corrupt. I do not believe a word of it ; I have been in Washington fifteen years and more, and I have never seen a particle of corruption !" No, he never had. He was the last man that any corrupt schemer dared to approach. It is not necessary that men should be greedy, and selfish, and corrupt, in order to be prosperous. The foremost man of his time has died with white hands and a clean heart. His patriotism sought no aggrandizement of his nation by defrauding others. His was not a belligerent nor a selfish statesmanship. He attempted to associate this land of his love with the best interests of mankind universally. He was an advocate of peace. He preached and inspired the sense of justice among nations. Known well in America and in Europe, and esteemed among statesmen and courts and law- yers everywhere, his voice was against violence, and for amity based upon justice. His ambition was not for the " manifest destiny " of greediness ; it was for the better destiny of temper- ance, forbearance, patience, and plenitude of power for the CHARLES SUJfNER. jg defense of ourselves,, rat yet more for the defense of the poor and of the needy. Everywhere aggression met his deter- mined resistance. He was a statesman because he based all procedure on great principles. He was a republican states- man because he sought the welfare of all ; and not of a privi- leged class. In his case this is the more noticeatte because his personal habits did not lead him to love association with com- mon people. It was principle, and not personal attraction, chat moved him. In some sense, it may be said that he denied himself, and loved those who were beneath him. M;iy, I think he thought more of mankind than he did of men. I think he loved the principles of justice and of liberty, rather than liberty and justice themselves. It was because liberty in practical life glorified the principle of liberty, that he loved it. He is an example of personal integrity an example not a little needed. Much assaulted, much misunderstood, partly from his own fault, and partly from circumstances, neverthe- less he was prosperous, and had an illustrious career, never drooping, and never really blackened by any taint. He has died in honor ; and his name remains a glorious name in the galaxy of American patriots. He was a man of courage, and of fidelity to his convic- tions. He never meanly calculated. He never asked the question whether it was dangerous to speak. He was one of those heroic spirits that carried the fight further than it need- ed to be carried. He erred by an excess of bravery. He was a self-sacrificing man, giving up every prospect of life for the sake of doing his duty and establishing rectitude. He lost his life, and found it. He has verified the truth that disin- terestedness is not inconsistent with the highest ambition. We have not a great many such men. There is not a disposi- tion, in this great, trading, thriving, commercial nation, and in this time of greed, to believe in romantic heroism of char- acter ; and it is good for us to be called to the considera- tion of a man who did not live for himself, and whose nature, naturally revolving about itself, was trained by the principle of justice to develop itself for the welfare of others. I can- not conceive of a man who by nature befitted the courtly 20 CHARLES SUMNER. circle better than he. If I had looked through all the old State of Massachusetts, I could not have found, it seems to me, one man who would have been more likely to ally himself to government, to party and to illustrious power than Charles Sumner; and it was a marvel of the providence of God to see this man, who was built apparently to play the part of a sovereign and an aristocrat, filling the office of nurse to the slave child ; giving his brilliant knowledge, his unwearied industry, and the fruit which he had gathered from every field, to those who needed succor ; and bringing the stores of his literary attainments, the richness of his historical re- searches, and the accumulated treasures of the ages, which were his, and employing them to build better huts for the emancipated bondmen. If he does not rank with the earlier men of our history ; if he does not rank with the inventive geniuses of the age to which he belonged ; yet, no man in America has ever sur- passed Charles Sumner in the entire dedication of the gifts which God granted him to the service of the poor and needy. Thousands and thousands are blessed by him who have only heard his name to rail at it ; for while he secured rights to the poor, and while he removed disabilities from those who were enthralled, not only the particular class for whom he specially labored were benefited, but every honest man in the country, whatever might be his nationality, participated in the bounty which he wrought out. He has gone to his reward. He has lived a noble and spotless life on earth. He has not been a hero without a blemish ; and yet, his blemishes were not spots of taint. His faults were weaknesses, not crimes of the soul. They were intensities, partaking somewhat of fierceness, engen- dered by the high conflicts through which he passed. And let us forget them. Let us bury them, as we bury his noble form, dust to dust, under the sod. Let us remember his virtue, his integrity, his self-devotion, his enormous in- dustry, his patient humanity, and his endurance unto the end as a martyr for liberty. CHARLES SUMNER. 21 PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. MOST merciful God, thou art our fathers' God. They trusted in thee, and were never put to shame. Thou didst in darkness bring light to them ; in danger, succor ; in perplexity, guidance. By them thou didst achieve great and glorious things for the honor of thy name, and for the welfare of thy cause upon earth. We rejoice that our lot was cast in this land, and that for us there has been, since our very childhood, the ministration of truth in free- doom and liberty. We rejoice that we have been reared under these benignant skies, and in this abundant land, amidst plenty. We rejoice that thy gracious providence hath timed and guided events for the furtherance of thy honor, and for the welfare of humanity. Be pleased, Almighty God, to breathe upon all this great people the same wisdom, the same forbearance, the same courage, the same seeking for the highest treasure, which shall bring in its train all earthly good. We beseech of thee that thou wilt be pleased to bless the great cit- izenship of this land, mingled together a rolling mass, deep as the sea, and as wide, and multitudinous as its drops. Thou hast brought hither this great people that they may be grounded in knowledge, and that they may be mighty in virtue. Take away from them, we beseech of thee, easily besetting sins. Take away from them all temptations to lust, and intemperance, and greed, and avarice, and corruption of every kind. Grant that they may be obedient under the laws, and seek for rulers men that are wise and just. We pray that thou wilt grant the light of knowledge to all the dark mass who are yet in our midst. We pray that thou wilt kindle in them a zeal for knowledge that shall increase until it shall be as the burning sun. Give daylight to this great nation, we pray thee. We pray for all who are in authority for all judges, magistrates, and rulers that they may be men who fear God, and esteem the interests of their kind, and do not pursue their own selfish ambi- tions. We pray that thou wilt grant that justice, and purity, and truth and righteousness may prevail everywhere. We pray that this nation may never embroil its hands in blood needlessly. May it be kept back from ambition, from invasion, from all mingling with the affairs of men which shall entangle it guiltily. May it fear God. May it love mankind. May it desire, by example:, and by all its legislation and policy, to pursue the things which are for peace, and things whereby one may edify another. We pray for the nations of the earth, that they may learn war no more, having no more need to learn war. Grant that knowledge may release men from weakness, and that they may become too strong to be handled by tyrants. We pray for the uprising of men, not by revolutionary passions, and not by the rolling tide of war. We pray that thou wilt advance the light of knowledge, and more and more subdue the heart to the amenities of love ; and more and more may mankind rejoice that so they may be free. And bring to pass, we beseech of thee, those great and glorious promises which portend the latter-day glory, when all the earth shall 22 CHARLES SUMNER. dwell in peace, when light shall shine, and when Christ shall come and reign a thousand years. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. Our Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt bless the memory oi those who are gone of all that have wrought well, and of all that deserve honor. Grant that their shadow may fall upon the young who are coming forward, and that men may not take counsel of the basely thrifty and prosperous ; of men who shall die in their success ; of men who are corrupted by their gains. We pray that thou wilt inspire in the minds of the young a loftier conception of character, and a purpose to educate themselves disinterestedly for the promo- tion of the welfare of their fatherland. Join their hearts to their race. The time has come when men belong to all mankind, and when all mankind are brothers. Grant, we pray thee, that this spirit may be more .and more developed ; and may the blcod of martyrs nourish it. We pray for more purity, for more truth, for more simplicity, for more straightforwardness, for more exalted aims, for riper principles. Deliver us from the power of bad men and evil exam- ples, and make this nation as great as it has promised to be. Accept, we pray thee, our thanks. Acccept our gratitude, that this church has been permitted to stand in these days a light in dark- ness. We thank thee that it has sent out words of truth and fidelity and courage for the right. We thank thee for the many names of those who have gone from among us. We thank thee for those who yet remain, and rejoice to see that their labor has brought success. O Lord, let this church live. Let it be for ever more a church work- ing for the poor, for the needy, for all mankind. May the time never come when it shall be held by shackles, when its eyes shall be dark- ened by policies, and when its heart shall be dry, or turned into nar- row channels. We pray that from this place may go forth the word of universal truth to universal man. And when this church can no longer serve God in the interests of humanity, may it die, and may something better spring up in its place. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit, for- evermore. Amen. SAVED BY HOPE. " For we are saved by hope : but. hope that is seen is not hope : f and by ; but sometimes they use that expression, meaning that they have accomplished or wrought out that which is in the nature of a hope to them ; and yet Paul says that what you already have is not hope. He says that hope is some- thing which lies in the future. " Hope that is seen is not hope ; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for ?" What futurity is there in that which is perfected, and which stands in the present ? " But if we hope for that we see not [that, which is not yet developed ; that which is to be grown into and reached forward to ; that which lies beyond], then do we with patience wait for it." Why? Because hope is i of such a nature that it gives impetus and courage by which 1 we are rendered willing to abide delay until the time for realV^ izatioa. or achievement comes. A boy would be regarded as very foolish, who, trying to learn to carve, should be so discontented and so dissatisfied with his hand that he would, as it were, throw the clumsy thing away, and say, "It can't learn its trade ! it can't do anything !" The master would say to the pupil, under such circumstances, " My foolish boy, you will come to it by-and-V-. Work and wait. My hand was clumsy as yours when I began." An eminent painter goes into his studio, and finds the young man who has been apprenticed to him in a state of towering indignation, and beating his hand ; and he says to him, " What is the matter with your hand ?" The young man replies, " I have been trying to paint with it, but it smeared the canvass with the colors ; all goes wrong, and I am tired of trying." What would you think of a pjivou who was be- ginning to learn to paint, if he became vexed with hi:: IUIH.], and abused it because it committed blunders, and could not do its work perfectly ? And yet, persons think thev are doing God's service when they abuse their faculties, ;r.ui call themselves names, saying, " I am such a sinner ! Oh, I never do anything right. I have no gracious affections. This old filthy soul of mine, this mean conscience of mine, this erring disposition of mine what shall I do with it?" They would like to kick it out and crucify it. But if it is wrong to do so by tlic hand or the foot be- t J^ A t i 30 SAVED BY HOPE. fore there has been time or opportunity for skill to be devel- oped in it, how much more is it wrong to do so by a faculty wbich has to go through a much longer apprenticeship, which requires great patience, and which cannot come to symmet- rical union with the other faculties except by a protracted experience of joy and sorrow, of burden-bearing and pleasur- able emotion, of all manner of fare by the way ? Does it take scores of years to make an efficient veteran or an able general? and ought it not to take as long to make a soldier of the Lord, who faces no visible antagonist, and the weapons of whose warfare are spiritual, and whose enemies are in high places the prince of the power of the air, leagued darkness, concealed temptations, hidden evils of every kind ? We patiently wait for perfectness in any direction, if we have foresight and hope that God, in the great scheme by which he governs the world, means that we shall be steadily developed, and shall go on and on, to higher and higher at- tainments. "We are patient with our pride, not in the sense of pampering it, but in the sense of waiting for the more perfect subjugation of it by love. We are patient with our vanity, not blinding ourselves to its weakness, but by culture con- verting it into a noble sentiment. We are patient with irri- table tempers, not because we wish to excuse them or justify them, but because the fire that is in them can be put to the noblest uses. So we wait patiently, or should, along the line of our whole life, and look forward, saying to ourselves, " I live by hope ; and every step forward is preparatory to the next. I live by faith ; and every stage of excellence that is developed in me is a prophecy of better things in the future. I live with my thought projected onward and upward. I throw forward my life, and run after it." As sometimes during a battle, in a crisis, when the fight is hottest and the chances are uncertain, the color-bearer hurls the flag into the midst of the enemy, so as to in- spire the soldiers to rush forward and rescue it, and bring it back ; so men, in the conflicts of life, throw into the future their hope of all that is dear to them, of fidelity, of purity, of Christian attainment, that they may more earnestly, more SAVED BY HOPE. 31 zealously and more courageously press forward after it, and finally attain it. I remark, then, first, that any presentation of the Gospel "\ which does not produce a cheerful forelooking is characteris- Y^ tically defective. All ways of preaching the Gospel of Christ which, as their characteristic result, inspire men with despond- ency and with an overpowering sense of difficulty, tending to discouragement and making the heart gloomy, are untrue to the spirit and genius of that Gospel. I cannot conceive ol any burlesque more grim, or any hemispheric and continental jest more hideous, than that which has been perpetrated by the mountebanks of time, where men have been taught that they are brought into this world on livid errands of eternal damnation, and that all things are fixed both in the secret counsels of God and in the everlasting overt decrees of God, holding them more mightily than a lion's paw holds the mouse ; and that, do what they will, there is the line laid down for them, and they are impelled along that line. Just as the shuttle is impelled, by irresistible power, to carry the thread which is put into it, and weave the fabric that has been designed, it being never consulted ; so it has been taught that men were sent into this world to carry on, with- out volition of their own, and in spite of them, a process tending towards their eternal damnation. And this has been called "Good News"! There is where the jest comes in. Why, out of the Egyptian caves they had a doctrine of fate which was as good as that. All through Roman life, back into Tuscan life from whence much of its spirit came, there was a doctrine of the future which was hideous enough with- out any further intensifying of its hideousness. Nature had groaning enough ; the great animal-bearing globe had fierce- ness enough and inevitableness enough ; and to add to that groaning, to that fierceness and to that inevitableness a doc- trine which should enslave the intellects of men so that they could not extricate themselves, and then to preach that as the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ, and call it "Good News " was there ever another such awful jest ! A jailor goes to a prisoner the father of a household a man full of the purest love to his companion and children, 32 SAVED BY HOPE. who has lost all his friends, and all his property a jailor goes to such a man, smiling and joyful, and says, " My dear friend, wake up ! I have something to teil you that you would like to hear." The man, startled, wakes himself, and says, " What ! am I pardoned ?" " Oh, better than that !" "Well, am I to have a new trial ?" " No, better than that ; the Court has taken your case into consideration, and has decreed that you shall be cut into inch-pieces, and that your wife and children shall be permitted to sit in a balcony where they can see the operation and rejoice over it " ! Do you tell me that God and the angels are to look into hell and see the torments of men who were foreordained from all eternity to reprobation, and that they will look approv- ingly upon the scene, and take comfort in it ? and do you call it "good news" ? and do you send it out into the world and tell men to preach it everywhere ? Why, the devil could have preached that without any help. He did not need any help or special skill for that. Any presentation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that does not come to the world as the balmy days of May come to the yet unlocked northern zones ; any way of preach- ing the love of God in Christ Jesus which is not as full of sweetness as the voice of the angels when they sang at the Advent ; any mode of making known the proclamation of mercy which has not at least as many birds as there are in June, and as many flowers as the dumb meadow knows how to bring forth ; any method of bringing before men the doc- trine of salvation which does not make every one feel, " There is hope for me in God, in the divine plan, in the very nature of the organization of human life and society," is spurious, is a slander on God, and is blasphemy against love. [At this point the congregation interrupted Mr. Beech er with an unmistakable and pronounced manifestation of applause, and then suddenly stopped, as if alarmed or ashamed. Mr. Beeoher smiled, and said :] [Some folks will be very much troubled at that. Don't ! We are so refined in modern times that when, in the church and on the Sabbath-day, truths are spoken that make a man's SAVED BY HOPE. 33 soul jump, and give expression to its emotions, people think it desecrates Sunday, and dishonors the house of God. I do not know what they would have done if they had sat and heard Christ deliver the Sermon on the Mount, when every- body interrupted him with questions, and there was talking backward and forward. I do not know what they would have done if they had listened to the preaching of the golden- mouthed Chrysostom, when the people felt much, and freely gave utterance to their feelings. I do not know why Sunday is too good for joy, or why a church is too good for the ex- pression of it, if it be a genuine impulse. / like it ; but then, do not let my likings mislead you; for you may get into the newspapers !] There is an error in preaching the Gospel which springs from a worthy motive, but which is mischievous namely, that of representing human nature as being so sinful, and the work of regeneration as being so difficult and so uncer- tain, as to throw doubt over the minds of men. There is, it is true, a sense in which our Master did that. He said, ' Many are called, but few are chosen." He said, "Straight and narrow is the way to life, and few go in it ; but broad is the way to death, and many throng it." He said, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." When asked, "Are there many that shall be saved ?" he said, " Strive ye to enter." He said all those things ; and I say them, too that is, to men who are care- less, to men who think they are going into the higher life without effort, without development, without transformation, without divine inspiration, without culture. I say it to men who, in the great thundering street, are rushing hither and thither, heedless of the higher life. But to any congregation that are enough interested in the subject of religion to give their hour for instruction in it, I would not say it, in any such way as to shut the door of possibility. I would not say it to men who are willing to hear the truth preached. Is the work of God on the human soul so uncertain that when men go to hear the Gospel a minister is justified in de- claring it so as to leave the impression on their minds supercautiousness and utter discouragement ? 34 SAVED BY HOPE. I hold that man, by nature, is low enough. He is an animal ; and I hold that only by unfoldings does he come to be a social being, a reasonable being, a moral being, a spiri- tual being. I hold that every man needs the inoculation of the divine Soul before that which joins him to the divine nature has been developed in him. As there must be the impregnation of pollen before you can have fruit, so I hold that there must be the divine impregnation before divine attributes can be brought forth in man. But I hold that that which Jesus taught in the Gospel was concurrent with the divinely natural tendencies of men. I hold that these natural tendencies lie in the plane of God's original decrees and intents, and that they are in accordance with the pur- pose and the wish of a guiding Providence. And I hold that the impression which is produced on a congregation should be one of hope, and not of caution, nor of fear, nor of hesitancy. There is an impression among persons in respect to relig- ion, that one may go through a revival, and enter the church as a Christian person, and be all right ; but that it is a thing so out of the ordinary line, and requiring such a preparation and such influences, that there is not much hope of your suc- ceeding if you undertake to become a Christian. Now, I say that to every honest man, and every rightly in- clined man, living in his household in normal relations and endeavoring to live correctly, who, looking forward into the future, undertakes to guide himself according to the great platform and law of divine love, it not only is not a matter of doubt, but it is a matter inevitable, that he will go right if he holds to his resolution ; it is as certain as that if you sow in your garden seeds of flowers that belong to our zone you will have flowers. Now and then there will be a season when the seeds will rot in the ground : and there are many sermons that come to naught ; and yet, as even such seeds add something to the richness of the soil, so there is something even in these sermons. There is foolishness in them, at least. Paul speaks, you know, of "the foolishness of preaching." But, as a rule, seeds, when sown, grow ; and it is worth any man's while to SAVED BY HOPE. 35 have a garden. There is no mail so poor that he cannot afford to have some flowers ; and every man who takes the pains to sow the seeds, and avails himself of light and warmth from the sun, and of moisture from the clouds, may confi- dently expect to have flowers and fruits. And yet, not more certain is the wise husbandman of his harvests, than is the honest-minded man of going right, if he wants to be right, and puts himself into the conditions which the Scripture recommends. Far be it from me to revile the memory of godly men who stood as pillars in the past ; but I bear in mind some instances of men who preached the Gospel with such dolorous caution that you would think the bell inviting you to the marriage supper of the Lamb was a funeral bell, and that the paean of victory sounding afar off through the air was a requiem. They were good men. They were splendid old fellows in many respects. If they had been husbandmen or mechanics or soldiers or professional men outside of theology and preaching, they would have adorned their business. They were grand specimens of their time. And yet, when men ventured to go to them, saying, "I think I am moved to con- verse on the subject of religion, and ask guidance," they looked solemn, and in a sepulchral tone said, " my friend, if God's spirit is striving with you, you are in a very danyer- <>tt* place. Now, my advice is that you go home, and look well into this matter. It is an awful thing to be self-deceived. It is an awful thing to grieve the spirit of God." I, too, think that self-deception and grieving the spirit of God are awful things ; and it is not necessary caution that I object to : it is representing to the young mind that the characteristic element of religion is danger, whereas the characteristic ele- ment of religion is hope. If the truer spirit of the Gospel should speak, what would it say? " ye, that know how to love father and mother, there has begun in you that divine quality which can teach you to love God. ye, who have nourished virtue and who know what it is to deny yourselves on every side that virtue may flourish, you have the germinant form of that which may, by the light of God's countenance, be ripened into better forms. 36 SAVED BY HOPE. ye, that have rays of hope now and then gleaming through fear and caution, you are in the line of unfolding." This is what God's spirit says. -^ Hope, then, is the characteristic element of the Gospel of Christ. There are temptations, there are obstacles, there are difficulties, and there are, in special cases, reasons in the constitutions of men, why they should be held to caution as a means of inciting and stimulating them ; but no man preaches the Gospel by putting out the light of hope, and saying, "When you have done so much, and so much, and ( so much, and gone so far, and so far, and so far, then I will kindle that light again." It ought to shine from the begin- ning, and all the while. ... - _,^ . O' ->. ^*^\And I say to every person, It is a dismal tiling to be without God ; it is a joyful thing to live in the hope of the Lord Jesus Christ ; and there is no reason why any young man or maiden, or any old man or matron, should not be a follower\of the Saviour. To yield him allegiance is in accord- ance with\ your right nature. God designed that you should be religious. Every man who is without religion has left a large part, knd the best part, of himself unopened and unused. All the forces of your constitution, all the elements of God's law and schefne, all the tendencies of divine providence, and all those things^ which enable a man to work out his own sal- vation with fear and trembling because it is God that works in him, should inspire hope. All those nice 'analyses which men make of themselves, and all that sitting of the court in which the conscience is justice-, to determine whether a man may or may not rejoice, is not in accordance with the true spirit of the Gospel. Con- science is a very good faculty, but it has been wrongly esti- mated. It has generally been considered chief- just' ce ; but no, it is not chief-justice, for a great many rea'sons. No other one faculty can be tampered with and bribed as the conscience can ; and a man who calls conscience to the chief- justice's chair, and says, "That will determine right and wrong for me," commits a great mistake. There is nothing that conscience works more with than will ; and there is no court in which the chief-justice should be under the domiu- SAVED BY HOPE. 37 ion of the will. Conscience is one of the most fiery, sensitive, nervous, and fault-finding of the faculties. It led Paul to go clear to Damascus and persecute the people of God ; and he thought that he was doing right. Conscience has kindled more fires, turned more breaking-wheels, put more men on racks, extinguished more humanities and equities, and filled the world fuller of mournings, than any other one faculty of the human soul. Now, nothing is worthy to be chief-justice that can be tampered with as the conscience can. There is one thing that cannot be tampered with, and that is the spirit of di- vinely inspired love. The easiest men in the world to man-i. age are those who are combative and obstinate and conscien- tious. You know exactly how to deal with them. If a man is obstinate, and you want him to go one way, you push him the other way, and then you have him. Men of hard knotty temperaments are not difficult to manage if you have the time, and think it worth while to manageHhem. But_wJien you take love (I do not mean^he^commoner quality ; I dcSiQt mean shinplasters passing for love : bullion ; I mean specie-basis love, such as springs from the inspiration of God, and is in sympathy both ways, toward God and toward men) when you take such love you cannot bribe it. It controls every one of the other faculties. It tempers the acerbity of anger. It brings pride into its ser- i vice. It leads the various elements of the soul selves to wholesome uses, as naturally as the sun turns" to saccharine. Therefore it should be the chief justice each man's soul. When a Christian is all the time trying himself by the of rectitude, he is not free. Paul said that when mei under the law they were in bondage. l T o man is happy ^ is subject to a condemning conscience. You never will have peace until you have trust in Jesus Christ, which is a synonym for living in the atmosphere of love. I wonder how it is that so many precious symbols and em- blems are lost to us. Men go through the seventh and eighth of Romans as though there were no interpretation of them, when there is one in every family. 38 SAVED BY HOPE. A boy is forbidden by his father and mother to go out in the night. At nine o'clock he quietly slips down stairs, and steals a little money out of his mother's drawer, and runs off to the circus or the theater ; and he falls in with some compan- ions ; and, wanting to make them think that he is a man, he goes to smoking and drinking. It is not long before he is found out at home. The father and mother say nothing to him, but he somehow feels that their eyes are upon him. He is conscious that he is not at one with them. There is an unusual stillness at the table ; he is not sent on such confi- dential errands as he used to be ; he is watched ; and he is quite unhappy. By-and-by his father says, "Henry, I want to see you in my study." The whole soul of the boy is stirred, and he begins to chide himself, and say, " I wish I had not gone. What a fool I was ! I have not been happy a minute since I went. How silly it was in me to make believe that I enjoyed it, when it made me wretched all the time. The re- sult is that I have got into trouble with my father, and I know what is coming now I shall get a whipping." He is a perfect embodiment of the seventh of Romans. He says, " I won't do it again ;" and he goes to his father expecting a discourse with an application ! The father meets the boy with great love and great gen- tleness, and tells him what he has heard ; and the boy begins to cry if he has a bit of boy in him he does ; and the father says, "Now, my dear boy, I love you as I do myself. I am sorry for all this ; but I am not going to scold you. I cer- tainly am not going to punish you. It cuts me to the heart that you betrayed my trust in you ; I cannot tell you how it pains me that my boy has not more honor ; and I am grieved beyond expression that I cannot lean on you." The boy says to himself, "I wish he would whip me, and stop this talk- ing." Now he would rather have that which before he dreaded. Finally, the father puts his arm about him, and says, " Now, Henry, is this the end ?" The boy says, " Yes, it is the end." " Very well," says the father, " let it be the end. You are my own dear boy ; I am going to trust you just as I always have ; and if you feel tempted, come right to me. SAVED BY HOPE. 39 If you want to do anything, I would rather you would tell me about it first, than do it and let me find it out after- wards." When a boy goes out of the presence of his father under N such circumstances, I should like to know what he would say >** of that father, if he had language with which to express his feelings. " Ah ! he is the royalest man on earth. What a father I have ! How I love him ! I am afraid I shall do something that I ought not to. I do not know how I can show myself worthy of such a father. I am going to try to do right ; and I will tell him when I do wrong." Here is the eighth of Romans begun. The boy has been forgiven. He went wrong ; he sinned against himself and his parents ; he had his little struggle ; his father manifested toward him a spirit of love ; he confessed his wrong-doing ; he received forgiveness ; and his father said to him, ." Trust me ; I am going to help you. Keep loving me ; I will keep loving you. You are a boy, you have a boy's weaknesses, / very likely you will be tempted ; and I am going to stand by I - you clear to the end." Would it not be abase and vulgar nature that would not be true after such an assurance as that? That is the eighth of Romans. That is Christ reconciling us to him, doing it by the power of love, and making us feel that our strength is not in ourselves, that we stand not in our goodness but in the goodness of God, that we shall find rest in communion with the divine, and that our devel- opment through providence is made certain by the inevitable law of love, if we persevere to the end. Wherefore, hope is the distinctive quality of the Gospel. " It is the quality which should be inspired by the love of God in Christ Jesus in the human souL And you are saved by ; hope not bviear. nor by conscience, nor by regrets of the past, nor by a realization of the meagerness and barrenness of the present, but by that future which is made radiant by the glow of God's face filled full of gracious promises of mercy, and breathing summer out of the heart of heaven upon the souls of men. In the love of God in Christ Jesus, which is higher than LI 4 ' 40 SAVED BY HOPE. the heights, lower than the depths, wider than horizons, passing understanding in this great love is hope for every- body. Poor, trembling, unhappy soul, do not think that your hope lies in your making your old clothes seem as good as new. Do not think that your hope lies in your repenting of your sins. Your hope lies in the abundance and generosity of the love of God in Christ Jesus. It lies in the fact that there is enough in the love of God for you, that God gives it to you, and that it is yours as long as you will take it. All those views, then, which set at defiance the blessed- ness of this hope in Christ and God are '^trary to the ex- plicit teaching of the Word of God. I beseech of you, Christian brethren, cast not away your hope. You that go astray, and are obliged to register against yourselves great mistakes ; you that stumble, and fight man- fully against inordinate affections and strong and fiery lusts ; you that struggle dubiously, at times, in the battle of life ; you that long for the development of positive graces for love, for purity, for joy, for peace ; you that would bring forth the fruits of the Spirit for you are all the blessed promises of God. So cleanse fear out of your lives. Come forth from bond- age. Escape from the prison-house. You are Christ's sons : wear Christ's badges. You are the children of Christ : put on the raiment that belongs to his children. Do not stand in the expectation that you are to be saved because you are good : you are to be saved because you are under the guid- ance of Him who is ripening you, as the summer's sun ripens fruits. It is with human beings as it is with plants. Some things come early, and die without developing either blossoms or fruit. So some children die before they have been able to show much growth. Some things wait till June, when their branches are filled with brilliant blossoms, and then die. So some young persons come to the threshold of life, and de- velop certain elements, and do a certain work, and are full of promise, and then disappear, God having taken them. Some things, like the aster and the golden rod, bloom in Septem- ber and October, and lay their glowing clusters right on the 5^4 VED BY HOPE. 41 very cheek of frost, and are good to the end. So there are men who live along till the very winter slays them. And they who go in the early spring, they who go in mid- summer, and they who go late in the autumn, are all undei the same beneficent guidance. It is the same season of grace s nourishing them, and preparing them, and carrying them up to a better sphere. ye that are wind-driven ; ye that are weather-bound ; ye that are frosted or frozen ; ye that are seeking fairer climes ; ye that are fruitless and unbearing your strength is not in your own good, but in the summer's sun, that comes nearer day by day to seek you and to work out of you that which is planted in you by the hand of God. Dear friends, the spirit of God seeks you, and will work mightily in you, unfolding and unfolding your nature, until the time comes when you shall disappear to us, that you may appear among the spirits of just men made perfect. Then hope ; hope on ; hope to the end ; and be ye saved by hope. 42 SAVED BY HOPE. : PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE thank thee, our Father, that our thoughts go along the way of life. We are not mourners, though sometimes we mourn ; nor are we children of darkness, though sometimes we sit in the shadow of death. We are called of God. To us, to every one that heareth, and to every one that will, is the call to life, to hope, and to joy. We draw near to thee this morning for our portion of the inheritance for the earnest of the promised possession, the foretoken, the something which thou sendest before to bring us up out of Egypt and into the promised land. We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant unto us such an assurance of thine own self, such a sense of the warmth of soul that comes from thy brooding, such a sense of God speaking within, that we shall know our fellowship and sonship, and that we shall be able to breathe a new consciousness of adoption, and feel that thou art our dear Father. Grant us, this morning, we beseech of thee, faith in God, hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, and life through the Holy Ghost. We beseech of thee that thus thou wilt win us from undue adhesions to the world. Deliver us from the bondage of overmuch labor, from the torment of vexatious care, from the fears that tyrannize over the soul, from the despotism of evil habits, and from all things that limit us, and hinder the freedom of our emotion toward thee, and take away from the sweetness of our communion with thee, and from the liberty and power of the gift of God that is within us. We pray that thou wilt, by thine own power, O thou blessed and holy One, deliver us from the thrall of sin. Give us strength in the day of temptation. Teach us how to use the world as not abusing it ; how to make all things lawful; how to convert whatever is in life to the usages of our reason, and to the honor of our higher nature that is of God, that we shall be able to walk as free men, a law unto ourselves, inspired continually with that wisdom which is from above. And so we pi'ay that thou wilt give us strength among men, that we may shed cheer upon them, and give courage to those who are in despondency, and wisdom to those who lack it; so that out of our souls may be breathed those sweet winds which shall bring in all such as lie in calm, and cannot move themselves. We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing, this morning, to all who have come up into thy sanctuary needing thee, and conscious of their need. May they who bear burdens be relieved of them. May those who do not dare to call themselves the children of God be drawn by childlike clinging to thee as their Father. Thou that dost by the shining of the sun bring all sweet and pleasant things out of the earth, canst thou not more, by the shining of the Sun of Righteous- ness, bring from our dead hearts glorious blossoms and fruits. We pray that thou wilt vindicate thy presence and power to every- one who is in doubt concerning them. Thou that art the Life-giver, give life to those who are dead in things spiritual. We pray that all thine oppressed ones, that all thy weak ones, that all thy tempted ones, that all thy sinning ones, that all thy people who are out of the SAVED BY HOPE. 43 way in any manner whatsoever, may be brought to thee. O thou blessed High-priest that hast corn passion, look upon those who need thee, and have compassion upon them. We pray that thou wilt open, to-day, to everyone of us, the greater horizon that hounds and glorifies this lesser horizon of time. May we behold, far beyond our heaven, the heaven of heavens. May we discern more than thought can find, and more than language can express. () grant that it may be for us, also, standing here, to discern things which it is not lawful to utter. And so grant that in our experience there may be developed that peace which passeth all understanding; that joy which is full of glory; that hope which overcometh; that blessedness which they have who are kept in the peace of the Holy Ghost. Draw near to any who mourn, and grant that their sorrow may be blessed of God, and sweetened into all nourishment for their souls. May those who are in bitter disappointments be reconciled to the providence of God, and kuo w how to be contented in the places and in the circumstances in which they are, and how by patience to overcome the rude thralls of temptation. Grant to those who are standing and waiting for the indications of thy providence to know the way of duty, light and guidance and assurance, that they may hear thee saying, This is the way : walk ye in it. We pray that we may so dwell in the deire of love, and of trust in God, and of peace in God, and of hope in God, that all things shall be clear to us ; and that those complications which come from the interference of passions, and those knots which selfishness doth tie, and those snarls which come from intemperate ways, may all be loosed or be destroyed ; and that we may live in that blessed empyrean which is light and guidance, so that whichever way the Lord shall waft us shall be the way that is most delightful to us. We pray, not only that we may have the consciousness of growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, l>ut that we may also bear with us more and more friendships and affections into the high and blessed realm above, so that we may feel t hat we are carrying our dear ones, and are being borne by them, into the assemblage of the spirits of just men made perfect. We pray that thou wilt enter into every dwelling, and that thou wilt say in each household, Peace be with you. We beseech of thee" that thou wilt teach us more and more to re- joice, not alone in the outward victory of the visible church, but in the victory of that great invisible church to which we belong, and from which we derive our inspiration. We thank thee that it is so rich. We thank thee that in every age multitudes run iuto it as rivers into the sea; that it is already filled with so many whom we have known and loved upon earth; and that it is no longer the great Sa- hara of our thought, barren and desolate but home-like. May it be- come to us more and more, as we transfer thither the things which are most beautiful and most desirable to our souls, our Father's house; and may we realize that we are strangers and pilgrims, seeking a better country a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God, and whose inhabitants lovingly call out to us, Come, 44 SAVED BY HOPE. come! Out ol trouble, out of sorrow, out of night, may we spread our wings and fly away to he at rest. Grant thy blessing, dear Father, to rest on all assemblies that are gathered together for worship this day ; and may the messages which are delivered to them be messages of faith and love. We pray that thou wilt remember all the efforts which are being made to further the cause of truth and justice and morality. Guide those who are inspired to labor in thy cause, that they may do the best things, and that they may do them in the best spirit. Bless the schools and mis- sionary enterprises that are connected with this church. May thy blessing rest richly upon the brethren who are laboring in them. We thank thee that under their ministrations so many are being called in, and brought to a knowledge of God. Grant thy blessing, especially, upon that Council* which is to be convoked, this week, in our midst. Grant that all who shall come hither may come with the sanctifying spirit of God resting upon them ; that there may be no discord ; that there may be the divine leading ; and that they may dwell in the perfect presence and spirit of the Lord and Master, and do those things which shall be for the furtherance of thine honor, and forbear those things which shall make for trouble and for harm. Everywhere, may all conferences, all presbyteries, all synods, all assemblies, all convocations, have the spirit of Christ within them, that -the things which shall be done in the name of Christ may be Christlike. Spread abroad the knowledge of the truth in all the world. Hasten the day when thy promises shall be fulfilled, and when from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same all men shall know thee and love thee. And to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, shall be praises everlasting. Amen. PRAYEE AFTER THE SERMON. Our Father, we pray that thou wilt bless the word spoken, and grant that it may not be in vain. Deliver us from all the tyranny of fear; deliver us from bondage in the disgraceful prison-house where anguish casts many a man. Deliver us from phantasy and from all insane visions. May we have the simplicity of children, and know that the way of life is the way of love and hope and trust; and to these may we give ourselves, and be nurtured in them till we have fulfilled our mission here, and until thou hast prepared us for bless- edness beyond; and then bring us home to Zion with songs and ever- lasting joy upon our heads. And to Thee shall be the praise of our salvation, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen. * Council of Congregational Churches, called by the Church of the Pilgrims and the Clinton Avenue Congregational Church. THE PRIMACY OF LOYE. " For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but uuto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the und el-standing of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." 1 Cor. i. 18-34. Paul's words in the opening of Corinthians look like an indiscriminate defiance of all intellectual excellencies ; for he sums up, under three titles, the significant names of intellectual development. " Wlicre are the ivise?" Or, in our phrase, Where is Grecian philosophy ? Where is that wisdom which developed itself in the schools of Greece ? it was to Corinth that he was writing. " Where is the scribe?" The scribe represented the Hebrew scholar the man who was cultured in all civil and religious knowlecVo among the Jews. " Where is the disjmter of tJtix irfirld?" By this, doubtless, is meant the dialecticians, whether among the Jews or among the Greeks the sophists the men vl.o instituted disputations along the streets, and everywhere throughout the cities. Those men that live by the develop- ment of intellectual truth, whether among the Jews or among the Greeks, in regular forms of schools and philosophy, or in SUNDAY MORNING. March 29, Io"4 ; Immediately following the adjournment of the Congregational Council, convened at the call of the Church of the PiVrims and the Clinton Avenue Conyreaational Church, for discussion of the forms of order and discip- line In the Plymmith Church. LESSON : 1 Cor. xltl. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection) . Nus. 247, 1,261. 1.235. 48 TR& PRIMACY OF LOVE. irregular and peripatetic forms where are they ? God has made them seem foolish by the presentation of Jesus Christ, who is the power of God in the world. Now, I am far from understanding this as meaning the degradation of reason or of reasoning, on the part of the apostle ; for he uses reason and reasoning himself pre- eminently. It does not deny nor undervalue the uses of the intellect, in the promotion either of science, of philosophy, or of knowledge more generally. It does not undertake to say that these things are of no validity. It does not touch that question. It is not a declaration that the grand Chris- tianizing processes of the world can take place without the use of the human intellect. It is this : the assertion that in the work of regenerating the world mere intellectual forces are secondary, subsidiary, auxiliary ; and that the power by which the human heart is to be transformed, and by which the race is to be carried up until it is in the likeness of God, is the power of "the heart. I understand, then, in a large interpretation of this pas- sage, that it is a declaration of the primacy of disposition, or heart-power, in the great work of elevating the human race. Not, however, to the derogation of the intellect, but to the derogation of its arrogant sense of superiority. Men will not be changed from their lower flesh-nature into their higher spirit-nature by any amount of intellectual reason- ing. When men are transformed, it will be because there has been breathed into them a disposition which will change everything in them. It is not, then, that we are called, in this declaration of Paul, to choose between intellect on the one side, and misty feelings of emotion and tender impulses on the other. We want them both. The question is as to their rank. Which is the superior ? Which serves the other ? Are we to use the disposition for the sake of glorifying the intellect, and making men knowledgeable creatures : or are we to use the intellect as an instrument and a servant for making men good, pure, just, loving, true ? In which is man's man- hood in his intellectual force, or in his moral nature ? As to that, there can be no question ; for Christ declares that THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 49 the fruit of the Spirit is the foundation of the Law, and that it is love to God and love to man. lie says that on this stands the whole Scripture. He says, "A new command- ment I give unto you, That ye love one another." The fruit of the Spirit, as he represents it, consists in joy, and love, and faith, and peace not knowledge. In that matchless thirteenth chapter of first Corinth- ians which I read in the opening service (and one can scarcely tell whether it be a sonnet or a discourse, yet, what- ever we think of its form, its spirit is the Charter of the Christian Church) in that matchless chapter Paul himself brings the question to terms, and says that all knowledge, all prophecy, all power of teaching and discerning, all faith (that kind of operative faith by which mountains might be removed ; that kind of faith which consists in the strength- ening of the human will as a means of exerting immense force), all self-sacrifice in the way of zeal, all fidelity to a man's side or party that all these things are relative. Knowledge is relative. "When yon know all possible things, you only know them in spots and particulars. It is not given to man to understand either the nature of the world in which he dwells, or all its relations to the universe. And when we rise out of the childhood of this life into the man- hood of the great life above, we shall find that all the particles of knowledge over which we swelled with pride here were but parts and fragments, and that we knew as little of the whole system of creation as the wandering Bedouin knows about the old Assyrian civilization. "Now we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, thon that which is in part [the partialisms or relativities of this mortal life] shall be done away." In this universal scattering, death shall take all things which the intellect has cognizance of, because they are par- tial, the scope of the intellect being partial. There is a sphere of our existence, a great treasury of truths, which is far be- yond our reach ; and when we rise out of this nascent state ; when we leave this school on earth, and go into that other life, we shall find that the things which men most pride themselves about have disappeared. Those things which the 50 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. scribe and philosopher in this world think to be so important are things of which, as wo stand looking nt them in the world to come, wo shall say, "When I was a child., I did think as a child ; but now that I hayc become a man, I have put away these childish things." You might just as well attempt to persuade Newton to go back into the nursery and play with a string and a top, as attempt to persuade any wise soul that has escaped from this life into the heavenly sphere to go back to the questions and arguments which made him so proud in this world. They have gone down to nothing there. And yet, in the decadence of convictions, in the waste of imperfect faiths, in the destruction of these proud schemes of philosophy, there are some things which are not going to pass away. Love abidcth yea more, faith and hope, as well as love. When the auxiliary and all-helping understanding shall in the other life be convicted of its fatuous follies, there will rise up the reality of our manhood its disposition that which we mean by " the heart." That is going through life and through death, and will emerge in the other life. It will not be relative to the constitution which belongs to us here. It will not be shredded away, but will go through the processes of translation. That which remains of us stead- fast after death is the heart, and that which changes at death is the understanding and its knowledges. The end to be sought in this life, then, is the suppression of the passional man, cf the animal dispositions, and the development of the germs of heart-life which are planted in the soul. We are to unfold in this mortal sphere Christ-like dispositions. Now, what was Christ as our Exemplar? I am not asking what were the relations which flowed from his appear- ance in time. Neither am I asking what his relations had been to the anterior and invisible. I am not asking what were his relations to that with which arrogant men think them- selves to be so familiar the universal nature and government of God. I am not asking these things, because we are igno- rant of them. I do not know, nor does any man know, Avhat these relations are ; and no man should be audacious enough THE PlilM.H'V OF LOVE. 51 to profess to know. There are other relations in the death and sufferings of Christ than those which we can interpret. But we can understand those which are obvious those which are clear to our powers of comprehension. Christ appeared ki order to call man from his lower life of the flesh to his higher life in God. His appearance was a manifestation of that higher life in himself, showing men how the great new spirit-life was wrought out, and how that life centered itself in love ; and he declared to them a new command- ment. In words, the commandment " Thou shalt love" was not new ; and yet, it was a "new commandment." It was new, not in mere externals, but in the scope, in the function and in the primacy then for the first time given to it. Love is the central power. It is that which subjugates the passions, and opens the soul's sensibility to God. And this is to predominate ; this is to suffer ; this is to inspire and work out truth, justice, purity, and liberty in itself. And so, being made the great architect of the work that God has to perform in the human soul, the disposition, centering on love, and representing it, and being inspired by it, is to be the architectural force by which the world is to be recon- structed in wisdom, in doctrines, in rules, in regulations. It is to develop in the souls of men the greater divine element of love until its force is such that out of it shall be evolved all elements of truth, of justice and of liberty. We want to know what to steer toward. If it be true that men must steer toward earth first, if it be true that they must steer toward exact right-believing first, we otight to know that. If, on the other hand, men are to steer first for those grand dispositions which are manifest in Jesus Christ, the gift of God to the world, teaching that the central force of the universe is love, and that by love he is to re-create this lower sphere, then let us know that. Some men stand say- ing, "First pure, and then peaceable." As if that were the order of development in time ! As if a man had no right to be peaceable until he was pure ! As if the world would not be like a vast squabbling menagerie of animals let loose, if they could not be peaceable until they were first pure ! As if 52 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. purity were not the term which represents the consummation of all other processes ! It is the putting of this heart disposition over against the mere force of knowledge that is declared to be God's method. Tlilc is the power which will subdue the world. The condi- tions which are required for it, however, must be complied with. In the first place, if divine benevolence, divine benignity, divine sympathy, or in other words the great truth of the di- vine element of love breathed into the human soul, is to redeem men from animalism, and lift them up into the sphere in which they shall be in unison with God, it must be devel- oped with a fervor which has scarcely been known hitherto. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, aud with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself." Men stand shuddering over against that command, and say, "It is impossible to obey it. Nobody can do that. That is metaphorical, and has to be taken in a general way." But there it stands from age to age, and declares that the power of God in this world is to be made known in the development in the human soul of this creative force of love ; and every household on earth says, mutely or whisperingly, ' Amen." Where is there anything which rises up from the animal so near to the spiritual as father and mother ? Where are there schools, where are there parties, where are there sects, where is there anything on earth that does the work of overcoming the lower nature and fortifying it against all temptation, and blossoming out of it the higher, the sweeter, the benignant element of love, like the household, which is the primitive church, and the model of the church ? It re- sponds, " Thou shalt love, or thou art not worthy to be child ; thou shalt love, or thou art not worthy to be brother ; thou shalt love, or thou art not worthy to be sister." And having grown up out of family, having grown through new alliances, "Thou shalt love" stands at every threshold of permission. Over every door leading to amenities and liber- ties, stands, "Thou shalt love." In the path which leads to the joys and the happiness which belong to wedded souls, THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 53 stands "Thou shalt love." Everywhere in the course of the upward development of men, stands this great commandment of the universe : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself," coupling, by its thou- sand threads, mankind, in every sphere of life, and in every stage of development, from the lowest to the highest, and giving continuity to all human experience. Now, to call the world to love is a very different thing from calling the world to orthodoxy. Repent of your sins, and forsake them. Well, that is comparatively easy. To repent of and forsake a man's sins is nothing but to plow under the weeds, and let the ground lie fallow. That is a great deal better than nothing; but it would be poor farming, I take it, if a man were running his farm on that principle. There would be no weeds, but there would be no harvest. We are called to repentance, and we are called to new purposes of life. Well, purposes of life are quite indispensable ; but no man ever throve on purposes. Yes, but we are to serve God. What is serving God ? You are converted : where is your evidence of conversion ? Does it consist in this : that you are born into such a spirit of kindness and love that that is the one controlling element of your nature ? Are your pride and your selfishness obliged to lie down at its bidding ? Is your taste inspired by it ? Is your imagination colored by it ? Is your will subordinate to it ? Is it the one element that, like the sun, gives light, and lustre, and beauty, and form, and proportion to everything about it? Is it your central experience? ''Thou shalt love " is that the law by which you are governed ? Have you been born into that ? Many and many a man has been born into zeal, into faith, into orthodoxy, into partisan church-ship, into aspirations for eternity ; but no man is really born that is not born into love. All developments are miscarriages until you are born into that. Even this love is not sufficient when it is only born as a babe. It must creep before it can walk ; and it must creep fast in order to learn how to walk ; and it must walk fast in order to learii how to run, and fly, and come into perfect 54 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. u/scendency. It is the only one thing that has a right to en- slave a man. There is nothing else that has a right to crown itself, and say, "I am sovereign in the human soul." It is that which is of God, and goes again to him, in all its ten- dencies, and bears in itself, more than the conscience does, the right to be a vicegerent of God. No man preaching righteousness alone, no man preaching rectitude alone, no man preaching virtue alone, no man preaching wisdom alone, no man preaching taste and beauty alone, preaches the whole Gospel. These are but the fringes of the great truth of Christ which lies in this : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." You may have everything but that, and have nothing ; and you may have that, and, though everything else is imperfect, that is the recreative force which will make it perfect. With fervor, then, it must exist. Where it has existed, it has been in single isolated cases ; it has been sporadic ; it has not been the one central doctrine of the church ; nor has it been the public sentiment of Christian communities from the beginning. Many have held that in the process of regeneration a man must be brought to a condition of attention; that he must be arrested in his feelings ; that he must be serious ; that he must be convicted ; that then he must be converted ; that then he must rejoice ; that then he must feel right ; that he must have faith ; that he must have activity ; that he must try to do good; and oh, yes, that he must have love, too, as one among other things as one of the graces. But that is just the wrong view; love is the thing, it is the one thing, out of which are to sprout and root all other things good and wholesome. Nor must it be an occasional exercise. It must have in it continuity and universality. This beneficence of soul must be proof against the soul's own self. Never a monarch sat on the throne that there were not a dozen others who wanted his crown ; and while love sits re- gent, especially in its minority, the other faculties seek to THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 55 usurp its place. Pride comes in a thousand ways, and reaches out its hand for the crown, saying, " Get thee behind me, Love, and tell me what to do.'' It has usurped the place of love, and it is the better able to keep that place, because it is pride gilded with love. Or, there comes Veneration in the same garb, stooping low, twin-brother of Fear, cousin to Superstition, and says, ' ' Love, put off the shoes from off thy feet ; this is holy ground ; stand thou aside ; thy light is too glaring ; darken the window ; put away all worldly and glittering realities ; let men stand in mystic twilight ; for I shall control the soul. Love, be thou a trembling star on my horizon, that I may be a hemisphere." So veneration is a usurper. Beauty also comes, claiming that the universe was made for esthetic elements, for harmony, for innocent pleasures, and joys that spring therefrom; and therefore she, the sense of taste, of fitness, of fineness, assumes to be regnant in the soul. Yet, after all, the word of the Lord standeth sure. There is but one commandment which is central, and that is love. Sit thou, Love, on the throne, and rule in the name of God, thy Father. Thy sway must be supreme, if need be arbitrary, and continuous, until the very end. More, there must be an atmosphere created of this feel- ing. It is not in the power of any individual to develop his faculties to the highest degree until he is brought under the influence of correlated developments, so that he shall have not only the help which comes from his own will-power, or from the strength of his own faculties, but also the stimulation which comes from the magnetic force of like faculties in other men. For no joy of one man alone is like the joy of a thousand men. No single voice is like the voice of a great multitude. No solitary impulse of patriotism is like the im- pulses of patriotism in a great people. And we can never know what love is, in its highest form, so long as it is like a single wax candle in a saint's shrine burning by itself. You cannot know what is the love of God in this world while it is manifested by one here, and another there, with distances so great that the interstitial spaces between are void. But when 56 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. churches are pervaded with the consciousness that the thing which Christ came to develop was the principle of self- sacrifice, of suffering, and of benevolence; when there is a uni- versality and continuity of this spirit of love, so that churches shall feel it, and be filled with it, so that the voice which goes from one church to another shall be the voice of love when they are gathered together in their assemblies, and so that the one crowning experience shall be love, gonls yearning for each other, and gleaming light upon each other from the varied shining facets of their lives, this love forever changing, for- ever growing, and being forever new and fresh then its effect will begin to be felt. When the atmosphere which is created by love is such in a whole church that every man in it be- lioves that he is what he is, not by his own organization and education and endeavors alone, but by reason of this feeling among the brethren, then you will begin to know what its power is. Love, if it is to subdue the rebellious passions in men, must find those passions weakened under its influence. But is this the atmosphere of churches ? Now and then the light of a revival pours into a church, and men do rise somewhat along the scale of love, and there is fellowship and good-will one toward another, and there is enthusiasm in co- operative labors of benevolence, and all discords die out, and old quarrels are settled, and stubborn hatreds disappear of themselves. The light and warmth of love at times are like the summer sun in March and April, which destroys that snow which all the winds could not blow away. On special occasions all things go down before it ; and for moments we have an intermittent experience of what a church would be if all its members were inflamed with a spirit of love. And suppose that not only one whole church, but all the churches of any one great denomination, had this spirit as a prime element of faith continually burning within them! If you have that spirit of self-sacrifice and love, you are right, and are in affiliation with God. If you have it not, you are so far wrong. You are wrong, not in proportion as you vary from articles of faith, and not in proportion as you go from this heterodoxy toward that orthodoxy. True orthodoxy is right- ness of heart. Orthodoxy is nothing if its pervading and THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 57 controlling element is not love. If orthodoxy is to be of any value, it must bear blossoms as well as leaves, and fruit as well as blossoms ; and that fruit must spring from a loving disposition. And in order to reap the full fruition of love, it must be atmospheric and continuous. And when it is the fashion for men to manifest this feeling at all times ; when it has currents, and electric influences, and communal forces overhanging the church and the community as a summer- brooding atmosphere overhangs a continent, then it will have power to subdue the passions and appetites in men. But more, love must, by the example and stimulation of the church, be exalted and made a working force in society. Broad social relations must be cast according to its directions and determinations. All civic and judicial proceedings, all police arrangements, all affairs of legislation, all conduct of business, also, must be guided and controlled by this same element before it will have its perfect work in the world. I am not speaking of the possibility of bringing about this result to-day or to-morrow ; but such is the ultimate tendency. And, when love is the crowning virtue ; when it is the main experience of the individual ; when it is the great element of churches, by which one is joined to another ; when it is the atmosphere in which the processes of society are developed and carried on ; when we recognize, at all times and in all places, that selfishness is heterodoxy, and that love is orthodoxy ; and when the public sentiment of the whole community is surcharged with this divine principle, then will come in another and a final element namely, that of he- redity . You cannot re-create the world so fast at the adult end as you can breed sinners at the childhood end. If men are to be born into life with such disproportion of disposition, and with such malformation of body, if whole generations of men are to carry in themselves the sins and the tendencies of sin which have been accumulating for generations back, then you cannot convert them so fast as to make any great head- way in the world ; bat, as moral qualities are transmissible as well as immoral qualities, when the church has done its duty and society is leavened by the spirit of love, then there will 58 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. be, as a part of the co-operative plan of God's providence, larger and larger proportions of children born into life with this great principle more and more clearly recognized tban it was even in tbe days of Moses, when, as we are told, in the Old Testament, blessings were sent down from parents to children, and to their children's children. Men will be started in the world on a higher plane, and in a condition such that the animal faculties will bo brought under the control of the moral and spiritual faculties more and more easily. And at last, under the inspiration of the providence of God, and under the influence of the church of Christ, operating to- gether, the true gospel will be established. I do not despair of the time when the earth shall be filled with men who are centered on love, who are governed by love, and who through love govern one another. I remark, then, first, in. view of this development of the love-disposition, in all its forms, that the intellectual elements will help indirectly. Increase of knowledge as to the condi- tions of a man's life, his structure, and the best conditions of society, with all its forces this tends to build up the out- ward form of our life. It throws its light on the true lines of development. Far, therefore, should ib be from any wise 'man to deride the progress of scientific knowledge. What we affirm is, that this knowledge is not that which b to convert the lower man, the ordinary flesh-man, into the c/pirit-man. Nothing will do this but the disposition of love. We recognize the value of thought ; we recognize the value of exactitude of statement ; we recognize the value of the discovery of the arrangements of the truths of scientific research ; we hold that true religion demands the growth of man all around, and, if possible, consentaneously ; but after all, the central element of manhood lies not in the direction of knowledge, but in the direction of disposition. The in- tellect is not the master : it is the servant. Dealing with matter, it is more nearly independent than under any other circumstances ; but the moment the intellect has to do with the facts of interior human life, with the conscience of man, with nature in its most highly developed form (for nature de- THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 59 veloped means man and mankind) that moment it is itself the subject of the lower faculties. A man can understand only that of which he has some- thing in himself. If a man has goodness in him, then good- ness flashes into his intellect, and he discerns it. The intellect is dependent upon the disposition. If it be a problem of truth, justice, humanity, rectitude, or large be- nevolence that is to be looked at, the intellect is absolutely obliged to stand and wait till the disposition throws its light into it, in order that it may interpret its nature. The intel- lect therefore is subordinate. This is the very antithesis of Buckle's theory. Secondly, the Christian forces of the world to-day are struggling, like Esau and Jacob in the womb quarreling as to whether or not the world's religious growth is to stand in its outward relations and regulations and doctrinal lines, or not. That is the struggle of the churches to-day. You may look through Christendom and you will find that there is everywhere a high and a low party a party of liberty and a party of authority though neither party altogether realize what they are doing or know what they mean. The struggle of to-day is not between two parties one that represents selfishness, and arrogance, and pride, and self-seeking, and the other that represents love as the central element, and demands that everything else shall be under its control ; though that is the battle which must be fought out before the Lord shall reign in the hearts of men. But the conflict of the time indicates the rebellion of thinking religious men against the bonds with which ecclesiasticism seeks to hold them bound. Look at the struggle in the Roman church abroad. What mean all these fitful outbursts in the direction of liberty under the lead of Pere Hyacinthe and his German colleagues, in which men attempt to break away from the restraints of an external system which surrounds them ? The quarrel is between the liberty of man's understanding and authority in externalities and in faiths. Look at the condition of the Church of England. It is broken up into some four sects. If you were only to cut one 60 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. or two of its hoops, four churches would spring out of the Church of England to-day. There used to be a time when the Presbyterians and Congregationalists had tbeir little pet quarrels on hand, and when the Episcopal church used to open its great slumberous doors, and say, " brethren, come into this harbor of peace, and rest." The time was when they had good rest. They slept soundly ! But they do not extend that invitation to those of other denominations any longer. It is too sarcastic. It would be absurd to throw open the great cathedral doors of England, and say to any- body, " Come in here, so as to get out of dispute and debate." Why, there are four fighting armies on the field spiritual there to-day. Go and look at the condition of things in France and Germany, and see what the struggles of Christianity are. See how largely they are external. See how much is being written which relates merely to its outward features. See how all the schools are studying back along through books and libraries to establish the usages of the past. See how every- body is working to ascertain what are the relations of Papacy ; what is the right of bishops ; what is the condition of the ministry ; what is the status of the priesthood ; what is the nature of the organization of the church ; what is liberty in a church ; what is servility in a church ; how far the observ- ance of ordinances should be carried ; what is right or what is wrong on this, that, or the other subject. The whole Christian world to-day is embattled on these externalities ; and the power of the church is not now, any more than it has been at any other time, concentrated in this : Man must be like God in loving. Now, there will never be a conversion of this world until there is an enthusiasm of love ; until men at last understand that the kingdom of God comes without observation ; until it is recognized that Christianity may make use of anything which will promote its objects, but that it does not stand in external forms, in governments, in orders, in ordinances, in a priesthood, in the ministrations of the sanctuary, nor in scholastic appliances of any kind ; until men believe that the kingdom of God is within them, and that it is made up of THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 61 the fruits of the Spirit love, peace, joy, humility, and good- will toward men. If you throw this out, you throw every- thing out. You may erect your cathedrals till they kiss the heavens with gold, you may build your altars till they glow like the rainbow, you may drape your priests, and let them walk in solemn processions, you may have your songs, your chants and your music in the sanctuary ; and yet, without love these things are nothing, or are like the bubble which the boy blows, which he tosses in the air, in which he sees his face for an instant, and which is then gone forever. And after two thousand years, in which the example of Christ has been held up to teach the world what love means, how much does the world know of its meaning ? Love means willingness to suffer ; it means what the mother in her heart feels toward her babe, and who will perish in the snow, in the sun, or in the flame, to save that babe which is dearer to her than her own life it means all these things ; but who will ever learn it ? ye that will not learn it of Christ, will ye not learn it of motherhood ? Love that counts itself nothing, love that is a force for good and for happiness ; love that is patient, bearing all things, enduring all things, believing all things, and waiting, without envy, without jealousy, without vanity and without incivility ; love, with all its wondrous traits where have you ever found a church that was filled with it ? Where have you ever found a denomination that was marked off from other denominations by the essential predominance of this quality ? Here we are sending our missionaries to the heathen, and quarreling at home ! [Applause.] Yes, you enjoy it when I lay it on others, but you are just as bad as they are. There exists yet the old essential depravity. It is that which has wrought woe, and mischief, and blood, and tears, and suffering, and torments unutterable, since the world began. In the name of religion the rack has ground bones to powder. In the name of religion, the priest has blown the taper, and put it under the faggot. In the name of religion men have been cast out of home and out of country. In the name of relig- ion men have been thrashed with flails, poisoned with serpent fangs. In the name of religion there have been criticisms 62 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. and agitations and persecutions endless. In the name of religion in church organization, there has been every spirit manifested but that of patience and gentleness and sweetness and love, which brings a man into God's bosom, and brings the bosom of God among mankind. That we have not seen. God so loved the world that he gave His son to die for it ; but we have not yet learned to appreciate and to appropriate that dearest gift. The love of Christ was manifested in this: that he died for men while they were his enemies; but we have not yet learned what that was. And we are not in danger of going to the extreme in that direction. Our trouble does not lie in this: that the hoops are not tight enough on the church barrel. It lies in this : that the hoops, being tight enough, are on empty barrels, or on barrels in which the wine has turned to vinegar. And yet we go on coopering, and coopering, and coopering, driving the hoops down here, and driving them down there ; and, after all, when we look on the inside we find nothing there that is worth keeping. This, in my judgment, is the sin of the world. In the times of men's ignorance God winked at their sin; but we are born to a better day than they were, to better light, to better instruction, to better uses. It is not enough for you to be as good as men were who lived five hundred years ago. Your business is to be infinitely better than they were. One thing more. While I speak of the relative subsidence of all external things, or their subordination to divine love in the human disposition, you must not understand me a^ undervaluing auxiliaries; you must not interpret my words as meaning that it does not matter what a man believes, and that there is no difference between one form of organization and another; but I say that where the heart of the individual and of the whole church is surcharged with the spirit of God, it is the nature of that spirit to act on the human under- standing, and rectify what aberrations there may be in all instruments, and fill every heart with this divine element. You cannot think right or do right unless you have the principle of love at the root of your thought and action; and with that principle you cannot go wrong. It is the helm of the soul. It is the pilot by which God is to guide this old THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 63 staggering world through all darkness and all storms into the haven of peace and rest. Under its guidance the world will oro right ; but without it mankind will still have the o o * same wearisome strifes that it has ever had. The church is never much more than a bucket of water dipped out of the ocean. The water is the same in the bucket and in the ocean ; but in the one case it is in the bucket, and in the other it is in tho ocean that is all. You are in the church ; yes, but your nature is the same that it was when you were in the world. You are as greedy for money now as you were before. You are in the church ; but you are as proud and sensitive about th3 infringement of your rights as anybody. You are not willing to lie down that some other man be the better for it ; you are not willing to surrender your place and your dignity in order that others may be lifted up and benefited ; you are not willing to prostrate yourself under the foot of an enemy because it will make him a better man to tread on you ; but Jesus said, " I am the way," and generations have trodden on him to find heaven and glory. How many men say, " I will give my life, if need be, for the cause of humanity," and go and do it ? Men talk about knowledge and about eloquence ; but what are words, what is philosophy, what is learning, what is the intellect itself, as compared with this one flame of God, this all-cleansing, all- nourishing, all-guiding love, which, when a man has it, makes him suffer for others, and makes him humble himself and bow down before others, in order that he may show that spirit which was in Christ ? When once love is supreme in the church, and such Christians are in it, the salvation of the race will not linger nor delay. Christian brethren, T feel, from day to day, in the near- ness of the kingdom that is to come, and in the beauty and glory of my God in Jesus Christ, how poor and worthless are the assaults and victories which racket about us here. They are hardly worthy to be considered. The dear thoughts of God toward us are worth more than all the thoughts of man- kind. How we shall serve Christ by love, and how we shall in our turn be Christlike toward men, whether they love us or hate us these questions transcend in importance, to you 64 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. and to me, all questions of empires, all questions of science, all other questions. He that is humblest, he that is meekest, he that is most like a little child I take him, in the name of Jesus, and place him in your midst, and say, ; ' Honor the childlike heart, the heart that gives up, the heart that sacrifices its pride and interest for the sake of another's wel- fare. It is the soul that can lay down its weapons of pride, and not the soul that can take up and wield them, that is nearest the kingdom of God, and the best representative of the Master. And when this spirit of love shall once be con- tagious, infectious, and atmospheric, then we shall hear the word of God sounding through the heavens, and saying, " Arise, shine ; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. " And then, earth, the scowling cloud that has overhung thee shall be struck through with light, bearing the colors of heaven. Then, world, groaning and travailing in pain until now, thy tears shall cease, and thy groans shall be ended. And little by little, as birds begin to sing in the morning, first one, and then three, and then five, and then a score, and then a hundred, and then all in the whole region burst- ing forth, so there shall go up from out of this world single strains of joy and triumph, and then more, and then still more, until at last they shall roll as the waves of the sea and the thunders of heaven, as the voice of a multitude, or as the sound of mighty waters. THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 65 PRAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON. WE beseech of thee, our Father, to lift us up above the dominion of our senses, and above the influence of care and trouble, and the sound of things upon the earth, into that sacred stillness where thy Spirit communicates into that realm where we know thee, and know not how we know. Breathe upon us the inward tranquility and silence of the uttermost thought and feeling, that God may beam in upon us things celestial. Grant, we pray thee, this day, such a sense of the glory of our in- heritance, such joy unspeakable, such gladness in view of that life which waits for us, and such a sense of the gentleness of Christ, of the iuflniteness of his love, of the wonderful tenderness of his compas- sion, and of the transcendent patience and gentleness of his adminis- tration, that we shall seem to ourselves surrounded with all the forces of the infinite and of the omnipotent, and with all the glory and wisdom of the life above, so that we may not stand for a moment in any sense of our own wisdom, or power, or excellence. For to us there is something better than that the love of God ; the bosom of thy kindness; thy disposition of goodness. How sure a refuge it is! and how blessed are they who are able, in opening their eyes, to be- hold thy face smiling upon them, and saying to them, In me is thy strength. Lord God, if thou art willing, we are at last made willing in th day of thy power. We strive by all the strength that is in us to lay aside our pride ; thou knowest that we have battles with ourselves; and though we are so small, and so far away from thee, none of our strifes and struggles are insignificant in thy sight. Thou knowest that we strive to lay aside selfishness, and all its hateful brood; and thou beholdest with what ill success we labor; and thou seest how we lift up feeble hands, tired at the oar, and pray for that wind from thee which shall waft us against the forces of our nature, and the forces of life and corrupted society. Thou knowest how we are be- stead by the powers of the world around about us, and by the princes of the power of the air. Thou art not ignorant of the host of temp- tations which are brought to bear upon us. Thou beholdest how all our most precious senses and faculties beguile us, and lead us away from the true path. Thou seest how strong we are toward the things of the flesh, and how feeble we are toward the things of the spirit. Our helplessness is such that we seem to ourselves like children that have been lost on a ship, and are in the midst of the mighty deep, with the storm above them and the waves around them, and with nothing to save them. O Lord, our God, thou art the Saviour of Israel. Not by what thou hast done, but by what thou art, and hast been from all eternity, thou art the Saviour of the lost. This is thy Godship, this is the meaning of thy holiness, and this is the great truth of the sanctuary of thy nature that thou dost love the unlovely, and strengthen the weak, and bring back the wandering, and restore the souls of those that have gone astray ; and that by the power of good- ness thou dost inspire goodness ; and that by everlasting love thou dost wait patiently for the healing of every soul, and for its forma- tion in thin, own image. 6(5 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. Now, we worship thee, and rejoice in ihee. We praise and magnify thy name, not because we must, but because our souls do ache within us to give back to thee something of that which we feel that we are receiving in overmeasure every day and every hour. And if all the flowers of the field by their fragrance do not cease to speak of their dependence upon the sun that created them, what should be the vol- ume of the praise and joy which should go up from the multitudes of flowering hearts which thou, Sun of Righteousness, hast, with the kindling of thy beams, brought into life and beauty? Oh, that there might be a wider sense of thy presence in us! Oh, that there might be a joining together of heart to heart! And as we humble ourselves, and are conscious of our weakness and our littleness, Oh, that a tide of gratitude might flow forth to-day, the songs of heaven mingling with the songs of earth in praising thee, Lord God Almighty, in love, and wisdom, and power, for what thou art, and for what thou art doing. And now, we beseech of thee, that thou wilt glorify thyself by the services, by the sacrifices, by the suffering, by the joy, by the life, by the activity, by the standing still of thy servants by all their ex- perience. And we pray, to-day, that thou wilt fill them with such a eense of thy goodness to them, and of the graciousness of thy love to them, that they shall have no other feelings but those which shall rise spontaneously into the feelings of God himself that our thought, and our feeling, and our will, and all our affections may be swallowed up in thine. O, bring near to us the other life. Dear Lord, there are many souls that are very sick, and that would be healed if they might but once look into thy heart. There are many who are filled with pain : reach down one leaf from the tree of life that they may find their usual strength. There are many who cannot see tbee because the images of their dear children are in their way : through their beloved let them see thee come forth to them, bearing their infants in their arms and blessing them again. There are those who stand in solitari- ness, and hardly know their own soul in its fitful griefs and wild mazes of suffering: thou Comforter, who hast dealt with sorrow from the beginning, canst thou not deal with their sorrows and bereave- ments? Behold those, we beseech of thee, who seem toiling in vain ; who are borne down by burdens which are heavier than they can bear; whose hearts are filled with innumerable cares and troubles. O, thou blessed One, thou that canst bring forth from the mute earth and dead matter things which are rare and beautiful, canst thou not, from the spent and parched soil of souls, bring forth all sweet and pleasant experiences? May the wilderness bud and blossom as the rose in many a dry heart ! Lord Jesus, we beseech of thee that thou will revive thy work here again. Show forth, we pray thee, thy power, as in days gone by, and fill this house with rejoicing, not for ourselves, but for the excellency and the glory of thine own name. Now, we pray thee that thou wilt teach us, more and more, les- sons of trust, lessons of peace, and lessons of contentment, in the way of the Lord God toward us, and lead us in thine own way, so that we may not stumble nor be beyond the reach of thine hand, or the hear- THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 67 ing of thine ear, or the throbs of thine heart. We pray that thus we may walk, fulfilling the errands of God in this life, till the hour of our departing shall come. Then, O thou that hast known the way of death, and through it the way of triumph, become our God ; and when we walk the valley of the shadow of death may we fear no evil. May thy love inspire, and sustain, an 1 comfort us. Nor would we stand praying alone for ourselves. Look upon thy people of every name; upon all thy churches; upon thy ministering servants everywhere; and grant that this may be a day in which the hearts of all thy people shall be filled with a sense of God present Immanuel. O Lord God, wilt thou revive thy cause everywhere. Bless those who, in far-off and destitute places, toil in weakness, and sickness, and with hope deferred. Help them that their faith may not fail. Be with those exiled ones who are in the midst of the poor and the ignorant, and without companionship, and under the scorn and even the rejection of m.'.n, seeking still to imprint the image of Christ upon the souls of such as are lying in darkness. Lord, breathe their re- ward upon their souls In that peace, in that faith, which never shall fail. Draw near to all those, we pray thee, everywhere, who are seeking to build the ways of men upon a purer morality, and to inspire a no- bler manhood. Grant thy blessing to all those who are extending the bounds of human knowledge, and are endeavoring to build up the foundations of human life more and more compactly. And we pray that thou, who art the Guide of mankind and hast been from the beginning, and that art marching from triumph to triumph unto eternity, wilt let thy providence, which has inspired and guided thy people in all times, bring forth in this nation and in every nation the peaceable fruits of righteousness. From the brightness of thy com- ing may all darkness flee. And with darkness may ignorance go, and superstition, and cruelty, and every evil thing. May all the earth see thy salvation. And to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit shall be praises everlasting. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OtTB Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt bless us In the truth, and bring to us a sense of our own deficiencies of knowledge not knowledge of ideas, nor of things, but above all, knowledge of self-sacrifice and of humiliation for others' sake. Make us feel how base we are in our selfishness. We call ourselves Christians ; and yet how far we are from perfection! How many faults we have! O Lord, we beseech of thee that we may be more and more mellow, and brought into that love, like Christ's, which was willing to lay down its life a ransom, by its sufferings, for those who were not only sinful, but arrogant and inimical. We pray that thou wilt fill this church, and fill all the churches of the city, and all the churches of our land, 68 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. with this divine impulse. Oh, how weak we are ! Pitying, waiting God, how wonderful is thy long-suffering ! Yet, give not up the work of thy hand. Thou that art the Author, be the Finisher, of the faith of thy people. And finally, when we have gone through our own discipline, and our own limited life, and are called, and we fly up- ward with joy, imperfect as we are, ransomed by the love of God in Christ Jesus, may we find ourselves joined to those who have gone before to the General Assembly and the church of the first born ; yea, may we find ourselves joined to thee, O Jesus. And we will give the praise of our salvation to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. "IE ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right baud of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." Col. iii. 1-4. Taken by itself, the Christian teaching on the subject of the resurrection of Christ has, from the earliest days, been laid open to many objections. Much philosophical opposition lias been arrayed against it, and much exceedingly ingenious apology has been written for it. It is not fair to take any one of the elements the capital elements of the history of Jesus, and discuss it as if it stood alone. They are or- ganic elements ; they belong to a composite whole ; and we cannot get the best and the truest light except we judge, not simply of the probable value of single individual features, but of the combined whole. If one should see a brow upon a transparency or a canvas, it might be subject to criticism which if it were joined to the whole face would not be justified. We should think it unfair if a human face were dissected, and we were called to form a judgment in respect to the mouth, the nose, the pair of eyes or the brows. We should say under such circumstances, "Put them together ; for that which they are is not simply what each is by itself, but what they are by their symmetry and proportions with each other." Now, the history of our Saviour must be judged as a (EASTERN SUNDAY MORNING, April 5, 1874. 'LESSON': Col. 111. 1-17. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection) : Xos. 40, 364, 551. 72 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. whole, and not merely in its separate elements. No single great feature of the revelation of God through Jesus Christ followed the light of foregoing probabilities. At every step expectation was disappointed ; nor until ages, in many cases, were certain elements justified by results which had not been suspected. The conception of redeeming from their animal conditions an under race, raising them from physical life to spiritual not by miraculous power, not by lifting them sud- denly up through all stages and spheres, but by a gradual unfolding, by increment upon increment this whole con- ception was hidden from the wisdom of antiquity ; and yet it was beyond all question the divine method, and the Script- ural method. The nature of Jesus as God's representative, as from God, as very God in the flesh, cannot answer exactly to God in the spirit. Jesus Christ, therefore, is the manifestation of God not in entirety not in the full amplitude of divine attributes. Only so much of God's nature was made manifest as was within the sphere of that intelligence to which the Saviour came. The circumscription of human faculty limited the degree to which there could be a manifestation of the full nature of God. How much you can tell to a child does not depend upon how much you know, nor upon what the force of the English language is, but upon what is the condition of the child's mind. You are stopped by those absolute limits which belong to the capacity of the child ; and all that is beyond the apprehension of the child's nature is surplus- age, so far as the child is concerned. We speak, there- fore, of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, not as if the absolute and infinite and universal God walked in Christ upon the earth, and so was represented by him, but as if so much of God as could be made manifest through the flesh was disclosed, the residue being hid in the divine nature, which is unapproachable and unintelligible to us in our con- ditions. That Christ should have been born among the Jews would seem strange to every nation upon the earth except the Jews. That he should have been born of the family that he was born of surprises those who take only a superficial view of his mis- FORETUKI-:\X OF RESURRECTION. 73 sion. That he should have been born from a peasant work- man's family, obscure, and under circumstances so out of the way that it would be difficult to conceive of anything lower this seems marvelous to some. And yet the birth of Christ in a cave (for doubtless the stable in which he was born was a cave) in some way carries us back to the cave-life of man- kind, when they were scarcely more than abject animals. He began at the bottom. He was born where the race first herded, of the obscure, among working men ; and yet the ties of relationship coupled him with all that was most memorable and noble in Jewish association. When we come to consider what was the real proposition namely, the in-coming of Christ, and the joining of him- self to the human race in such a way that every living creature should have in his life an objective token of God's sympathy and of God's purpose to save every individual soul that is salvable when we come to consider what that was, then all discrepancies and improbabilities disappear, and the plan falls into place most admirably. It did not meet fore- going expectation, but it justifies after reflection. Throughout his life, he being a wanderer, and having no- where to lay his head, those miracles which have excited so much reprobation, so much suspicion, and so much skepticism, were in entire accordance with the marvel of the divine nature with the great motive and purpose for which he came into life ; and they held on their way consistently with each other to the very end of his life. At last comes the final and the grandest, though the sad- . scene of the life of Christ the dreadfulest fact in human earthly life dying ; but he who had come from heaven to lift up the race ; he who had walked among those who were most needy ; he who had joined the infinite power of God to men at the point of lowest human weakness, that he might lift the race out of the sphere in which they were born into the higher sphere he, in dying, gave a moral sig- nificance to death which was totally revolutionary. And since Christ, through dying, brought life and immortality to light, death is itself vanquished, and is spoken of by the apostles as a conquered foe. 74 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. Now comes the resurrection from the dead, as the climax of such a history as this. The divine nature ; the reasons of it ; the harmonious execution of all those objects that brought God into human conditions ; that detail of teaching and of miraculous interference ; the death by which Death itself was to be divested of its terror, and made morally significant all these require an appropriate ending, and they all have it in the fact that Christ rose again from the dead, and became the first fruits of those who shall die. Now, looking at the coming, at the living, at the dying, and at the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, in this con- tinuous view, where was there ever a drama so sublime ? Where was there ever one lifted up so far above any possible conception or invention of man ? Where was there ever one which included in its scenes and contents such a vast sweep of things which were so unimaginable to antiquity, but which, as the race develops, become more and more admira- ble to men ? And what is the origin of such a life, such a progress, and such a disclosure ? What is its origin other than divine, which is so large in its scope, and so wonderful in its contents, that men, with the light of nature, and with successive disclosures in history, are not competent to take in the whole of it, nor even a full conception of it ? It is said that historical Christianity is waning. It is waning, if at all, only as the blossom wanes, that the apple or the orange may swell under it into life and beauty. It may be that there are many conceptions that have grown out of the physical conditions of Christianity, which are changing and are to change ; but their spiritual import, the relations of the divine nature to the human, the route of the progress and destiny of the human race, the revelation of the great oversphere of spirituality, the powers that have been at work in times past and that are at work now to deliver men from the thrall of the flesh these things are not waning. They are augmenting, and are growing in the intelligence and in the faith of men from generation to generation. The broad question of resurrection, which will occupy our thought for the residue of the morning, I shall not discuss as a matter of fact although as a mere matter of fact it is full FORETOKEXS OF RESURRECTION. 75 of the profounclest interest ; nor shall I discuss it as a pledge of immortality, as the apostles did notably Paul, who. in the fifteenth of first Corinthians, and in other writings of his, argues it against Grecian scepticism, and makes it the open- ing of the door of hope to the whole human race. Besides the constant witness of the resurrection of Christ which the apostles gave ; besides their continual appeal to it as the ground and reason of hope of our own immortality, as it were repeating continually the words of the Master, " Be- cause I live ye shall live also" he being the first fruits, and we the after harvest besides that, the apostles were accus- tomed to spiritualize this fact, as they were likewise accus- tomed to spiritualize the divine nature of Christ and his passion and death. They looked upon them both as historic facts ; they looked upon them both, also, in their spiritual relations ; and the death of Christ stood over against the decay, the weakness, the want, the perpetual dying, that is going on in mankind. The resurrection of Christ was spir- itualized, also, by the apostles, and made to stand over against one of those steps or degrees of development by which the spiritual element in man gains ascendancy over the phys- ical and carnal element. Look at the passage which I read in your hearing : " If ye then be risen with Christ [the resurrection evidently was meant; but they were not dead as to the body; they had never died a natural death; and if he was speaking of the physical resurrection alone there is no understanding the passage; but he is spiritualizing it, as it comes out in the sequence] seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead." They were walking about, living in their houses, breaking bread from house to house, singing songs, saying prayers, ex- horting each other, etc ; and yet, he says to them, " You are dead," spiritualizing death, or assuming that men who are yet encompassed in the flesh and under its supreme control iimv be fitly called dead ; and that every emission from, every going out of, that encompassing of the flesh about them, is in the nature of, or corresponds to, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That great personal uprising of Christ from the dead stood not alone as a fact in his history, and not alone 76 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. as a disclosure in respect to immortality : it had also con- tinuity, and a relative application to that work which is going on in the hearts and dispositions of men under the divine influence. " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." Nobody is what he seems. The life which is outside and which we see is not the real life. The real life, as yet, is locked up is hidden. You will not know what it is to be until you see it complete. A person, going into a jeweler's shop to look at a neck- lace, is shown one opal, and another opal, in their separate- ness, a diamond here and a diamond there ; but he sees not the whole. He sees not their real proportions, their grada- tions, their setting, every thing that belongs to them ; and yet, he has some conception of how exceedingly rich the necklace will be from seeing the individual parts of it, al- though he knows nothing of the particulars as to how these t>arts will be put together. So we, in this life, see manly strength, and courage, and pi ity, and truth, and patience, and love, and the other higner elements of the soul ; these are scattered parts of our future life ; but what we are to be we do not know. We are entombed, as it were ; we are undisclosed ; we are, using Christ Jesus as a figure, buried in him, as he was buried in the sepulcher ; and as he waited to come forth, so we arc waiting to come forth, and to be as he was in power, in beauty, in harmony, and in joyfulness. We are to be that compared with which all this mortal state is as the blackness of death. Spiritualizing both ways, on the question of death and of the resurrection, it is perfectly fair, then, to say that the resurrection may be employed in the way of practical application, and in the way of comfort and of cheer, after the manner of the apostles. It is fair to say of it, if we spiritualize it, and apply it to all the separate elements of our life from day to day, and derive comfort and consolation FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. 77 from it, taking it, as it were, in particles, in broken parts, that it is like the separate elements of a beautiful coronet. We are not doing violence to the spirit of Scripture, nor sub- stituting our own ingenuity for the divine teaching, but are following the apostles' example, in spiritualizing it. I remark, then, that every man is born buried in the flesh, imprisoned in matter, sensible to decay and death, and that all the steps by which he rises from his burial in the flesh are a participation, and are in some sense an intimation and prefiguring, of the great and complete resurrection. In other words, that change which takes place at death and after death in its entirety is also taking place little by little as we go on in this world. The full disclosure of resurrec- tion that is to say, the rising of the spirit, in all its ampli- tude and power, after the body is dropped is the grand cli- macteric fact ; but the preparation for it, which is a part of it, and which leads to if, is going on in all this mortal struggle. In a few days now, when the hyacinth shoots its bold stalk of flowers into the air, and when the tulip, hardly waiting for the fro.-jt to let go, begins 1 to expand its brilliant bud, do you suppose they will have organized all their work since the north wind forgot to blow ? Do you suppose that these early blooming bulbs first think of that which they develop, the moment their inflorescence comes out? Do you suppose that inflorescence is the result of immediate action or cause ? Last August and September my hyacinths were beginning to develop the flowers which are about to show themselves. They were at work preparing for them then. All through tho.se months there was being stored in the little invisible cells of the cormus, or bulb, that which was to support and take care of it during the cold season ; and it lay through the dead winter waiting for liberty to come forth. And now, in the milder nights and warmer days of spring it is blossoming and bringing out that which has been getting ready to come out since last mid-summer. Do you suppose that when, by-and-by, the crowned spirit spreads its wings and begins its wonderful flight from earth to heaven, from light to greater light, that flight will LJ a 78 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. miraculous, instantaneous creation ? All the victories of that spirit will run back through its earthly years. All its attain- ments will have been gathering through its whole life. All the efforts by which the body has been kept under, so that the mind, inspired of God, might go forth and take hold upon resurrection and upon immortality these have wrought out their fruits in the time that is past, and the great change discloses what has been effected. Every true man ; every man who is unwilling to live as he is living ; every man who is seeking to be better, to purify his soul, to exalt and ennoble himself every such man, in everything that he is gaining of education, and of victory over that which is low, is preparing the elements of resurrection, and is beginning, as it were, to have a foretaste of it in himself. Hence, every clear ascendancy of our nobler nature over the body brings us within the charmed circle of resurrection. Every man who finds himself unhappily situated ; every man who is set afloat on the sea of life ill-equipped, with a thou- sand influences throbbing in him, and driving him on with basilar forces every such man who, by the inspiration of the truth, and by the power of the Holy Ghost in his soul, makes fit resistance to whatever is evil in him every such man, at every single step, in which he puts the yoke on the beastly neck, and bows down his passions into a proper servitude, and gives ascendancy in himself to that which is right and good and true and just every such man is, by each victory which he gains, reaching forward toward the sphere of spir- itual resurrection. Now, I would not lower the standard of rectitude one whit ; but I say that when God shall show us the truth balanced and proportioned, there will be a great many men that are hardly considered more than respectable here of whom he will say that they have done more, and fought a braver battle, than those who have gone out of life with all eyes streaming, and everybody looking up to them, as the servants of the prophet looked up to him when he went up in his chariot of fire. There are men low down in the scale of spirituality and morality, who, if you weigh the power which is required to FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. 7$ enable them to resist their organization, and the circum- stances in which those organizations are placed in this life there are men who, if you consider how much patience thej exercise, how much suffering they endure, how much per- sistent endeavor is necessary to keep them above absolute wickedness, and to develop in them even a little of the spir- ituality of Christ there are men who, under such circum- stances, you would say deserve more, a thousand fold (if you put it on the ground of deserving), than those who are organized more fortunately, and therefore have not the great battle of life to fight. Now, I see men snubbed and put down because, being filled with brute forces and instincts, they do not reach a higher experience of the spiritual nature ; I see men who are perpetually condemned for not having made greater moral progress ; whereas, they may have made attainments which not one man in a thousand has reached who was more for- tunately organized than they. It is not to bring down the standard of human life, but to encourage men who are far down, that I speak thus. I say these things to them that, at every step which they take to- ward the spiritual life, in the direction of that which is higher and better, they may feel that it is a step which God observes ; that he helps them in, and will reward them for, their work ; and that though it may be far away from the light and glory of the resurrection, it is a foretoken thereof. There are great, huge, rude men, representing the coarser physical elements of life ; and yet, in them are the seeds of i H mortality, growing in the midst of thorns ; and the thorns have been rent away; and the hands have been torn in the process. Those seeds are growing amidst poisonous weeds ; and the weeds have been torn up by main strength ; and the hands are poisoned and swollen. We witness it ; and these plants of righteousness may seem to have but little growth. Ah ! bring a plant out from your green-house, where wealth has been able to buy skill, where it has blossomed un- chilled by the winter in an artificial climate, where every in- sect has been kept off from it, and where all that was most favorable to the conditions of vegetable life has been secured 80 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. to it. It is most seemly in its bud, and most exquisite in its blossom. Now, go and set it down by the side of a starveling, in the wilderness ; and I say that that poor plant, striving to blossom there, is more beautiful in the sight of God than this great and comely one. It has had no such nourishment and no such soil as the green-house plant has ; it has had every enemy to contend against; and yet, in spite of these cir- cumstances, it has come to itself in some slight degree. Men who, in adverse circumstances, through moral resist- ance, and through aspiration, attain inferior results in the right direction are worthy of more praise than men who, in favoring circumstances, attain superior results in the same direction. How easy is it for a general with ten thousand old veter- ans to subdue a mob of disorderly citizens ! but does he ever mention a victory over such a mob in the annals of his mil- itary career ? No. His victorious battle in the wilderness, where his means of transportation were cut off, where he was hedged in by a superior force, and where by dexterity, in- domitable courage, suffering and death, he hewed his way out that is the battle which he records, and which he loves to have praised. It is what men do against adversity and up steep places ; it is what men do against the lower nature under the inspira- tion of the higher nature it is this that will be recorded in the other life. And if there be in my hearing to-day men who have an impulse all the time to live better lives, but who feel an influence drawing them down, who are conscious that the force of their organization is pulling them back, and who are in a sort of discouragement, because they think there is no use in trying, since they never can be such saints as some men whom they see around them if there be such men in my hearing, I would preach the resurrection to them, and would say to them, Whosoever emerges in any part of his na- ture from animal conditions, and gains victories in the direc- tion of moral superiority, has in those victories foretokens sent to him as prophets, saying "There waits for you a more glorious morning." Every step of emancipation from that which is base toward that which is noble is a forerunner which points to a yefc more sublime emergence. FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. gl If you cannot be as good as you would be, fight for what you can reach, and never give over the battle, nor herd your- self with that which is animal, for the sake of living in worldly conditions of peace and prosperity. Believe that there is resurrection for you, and begin it here. Every time men rise, not above single faults and faculties, but to a better plane of life, they do that which foretokens resurrection. This foretokening of resurrection is the mission of trouble. If the sky be fair, and the air be dry, men sleep out of doors in California ; and heaps of grain stand through the long months uncovered, and barns are never built, because there is no danger of the falling of moisture ; but if the climate were to change, and there were to be rains through the sum- mer, the inconvenience and damage occasioned thereby would modify men's arrangements, and they would no longer sleep out of doors, and barns would be built. In other words, they would begin to have foresight. That is, they would lengthen out their life by looking forward and organizing better conditions of husbandry. Trouble is architectural. Thousands of men but for trouble would not have been half the men they are now. The things which make men cry when they are young make them laugh when they are old, if they only knew it. It is not the men that get along the easiest that are the best off. Some men think that the consummation of a pros- perous life would be to be on a golden canal boat, and go smoothly, without bumping, along the old dull canal, and never have to wake up, or do anything ; with no oar, no steam, no noise, nothing to disturb them ; only having to eat, and drink, and sleep, and be happy, all the day long. I would as lief be the boat as the man under such circumstances. That is not the way by which men emerge from lower condi- tions into higuer ones. You are all dead to begin with. You are all entombed in the body. You are all, more or less, in every faculty shut up ; and every man is to be got out in one way or another ; and the blows which disturb you are the blows which, on the rocks, are letting loose the crystals. The blows that disturb 82 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. you are the blows of the Deliverer on thj lock or hinge, that are to set you free. If men knew what God's blows meant, they would say, "Lord, thou art knocking; thy knocks are hard ; but I will open unto thee." Accept trouble when it comes, for with it comes the Lord Jesus Christ. I go and sow my seed on the unprepared ground, and tho birds pick it up ; but let me rip up the ground, ploughing deep, so that the soil lies mellow ; and then when I sow my seed the birds cannot eat it before the ground shall sprout it. Sorrows and troubles prepare the way for the sowing of seeds from which come plants and flowers. God is serious. He has business. You are his children, and he loves you better than you love yourselves ; and ho is thinking unfor- gettingly of emancipating you from lower conditions, and bringing you up step by step to where you shall get a larger view of life. Every time a man has trouble which leads him to take new observations, and steer a better voyage ; every time a man has an experience which makes him dissatisfied with the poor conditions of this life, and makes him long fcr the life to come ; every time a man is conacious that lie has been lifted up by an invisible force to a higher level cf life, so that he discerns something more in himself than a creature of this world, and begins to feel that he is an heir to the divine and spiritual realm, then he realizes in part his resur- rection. He has a fore-token of it. It shines on him. Therefore do not wait till the time that follows the great life I was going to say death. I can imagine how seeds feel in autumn. I can im- agine how an acorn feels. I can imagine how it shivers through December, saying to the tree, "Have you measured me for my clothes ? Do you know what a winter I have got to go through ? I shall need to be thickly clad. Weave my fibers tighter and snugger. Oil me, so that the rain will not penetrate my coating. Make me so that I shall get through the cold season." The old oak sings and sighs, and says to the acorn, "I will do better for you than you think." So the acorn is thoroughly protected for the winter. And now it says, "I am perfect. This is what I was made for." But when the Spring comes a squirrel takes it and drops it in a FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. 83 leafy covert, and cannot find it ; or, the seed-planter takes it and puts it in the soil. Soon it begins to find its fibrous cover relaxing ; and the acorn says, "I am losing my clothes : I am being ruined ; I feel that I am sinking into the ground." And as the root runs down, it cries, "Ah, I do not know where I am going." But, as the plumule shoots up, by and by, and opens its leaves, and looks out, it says, Where am I ? What am I ? Why, where is my acorn ?" Eh ! it is dead ; and what have you in the place of it ? Root below branches above the sunlight and the whole horizon. Which is better ? Men are buried in the various elements of physical life ; and when here and there come troubles and trials and influ- ences which begin to crack them open, and they go through the labor-throes of a new life, and their roots reach down and develop themselves in the soil, and their germs, heeding the call of light and air above, rise higher rnd higher, how they mourn ! How distressed they are ! They are being taken out of seed-forms, and are coming into plant-forms, and they do not know that they are coming to resurrection. Every victory in your personal experience, however hum- ble, is a part of that spiritual resurrection from the dead which is going on all over the world among God's people. I mean by this, that every time you distinctly make some moral element more bright, more beautiful, and more constant in you than it was before, whether it be with or without con- sciousness, you are making some advance toward that resur- rection. Men's experiences are too often like illuminated houses when a great victory or a great peace is celebrated. On such occasions men buy candles two or three inches long, and put them in little bits of tin sockets, and stick them up at every pane of glass, and light them, so that they may be seen by everybody that goes past in the street. And was ther^evcr anything more beautiful ! That is just like folks under preaching and often in revivals of religion. They have little bits of enthusiasm, little bits of candles, that will not burn an hour. And after they have gone out how much tallow there is on the window, and on the carpet, and all about ! 84 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. Now, if men, instead of having these petty illuminations, would establish in themselves a fountain of light, how much better it would be ! I have candles that will burn all day, and all night, and never go out. There is a reservoir which supplies them ; and the light that come from it oh, how brilliant it is ! The watcher blesses God for it. The mother, rising to look after her sick children, blesses God for it. It is a light that does not go out, and that needs no trimming and no replenishing. It stands in the house, and is always ready for use. What men want is not virtues that shall rise and shine for a little while and then go out again, but virtues that shall remain ; and every time you establish an element of truth in yourself ; every time you give permanence to a principle of honor ; every time you take the old thorn-bearing branch, and cut it off, and graft upon it a fruitful branch, and see that it "takes," that it is not "blown out," and that it be- comes fruitful ; every time you gain any element of truth, or faith, or meekness, or gentleness, or love, or patience ; every time you give stability to anything good, in any direction, no matter if it be feeble, you have emerged ; you have gone up ; you are going out of the body, out of the flesh, out of burial, out of death ; you are going toward life ; and so you are hav- ing resurrection in dividend. Every time men not only deliver themselves, but are made the instruments of God in delivering others, they have a participation in resurrection, and they also become a power of God, and ministering angels of resurrection. The choir in this world which God listens to is not the great choir in the cathedral ; it is not the exquisitely trained choir of the Sistine chapel ; it is not the thundering choirs at the anniversaries of Meyerbeer, of Beethoven, of Handel, of Haydn, or any of those great musicians : the choirs which God listens to are mothers singing to their little children, and little children singing back to their mothers. On this side of the gate of Heaven there is no place so near to heaven, or go much like heaven, as the household, if it be held under the power and dominion of wisdom and love. Mothers opening to their children the spiritual realm ; FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. 85 mothers teaching their children to fly and to sing bird-like ; mothers scattered up and down through villages and towns, in the wilderness and in far off places, instructing their children in things divine these are the choirs from which rise the sweetest notes that ever survive the influence of this world and the disturbances of time, and mount up through storm and fire, and are wafted to the heavenly laud, where they mingle themselves with the voices of the redeemed in glory. Do you feel that you are living lonely ? Do you feel that you are unrecompensed in this life ? Do you feel that no- body knows you or cares about you ? thou that from morning to night art full of weariness, full of aching, full of watching, and full of anxiety ; thou that sayest in the morning, " Would God it were evening," and at evening, " Would God it were morning," be not desolate nor cast down. Prisoner of hope, look up ; for thou art giving birth again to that to which thou didst first give life, in that thou art opening the child's soul to immortal blessedness. Thou art an angel of God ministering resurrection to that soul. And there is joy waiting for thee. And here is where that great word shall be fulfilled, " The last shall be first and the first last." Kings shall come and cast their crowns before God and rejoice, if they have been governors in righteousness ; and generals and great men of the earth shall come to bring their honor and glory into the kingdom of God ; and when all that were great and all that were strong have made their con- tributions, the Judge shall say, " Make way, and let my chiefest ones approach. And then shall come the poor who have divided their poverty that those who were poorer might live. Then shall come the weak who took upon themselves mighty burdens, that those who were weaker should have a chance of life and hope. Then shall come the joyous who laid aside their brightness that they might make happy those who were joyless. Then shall come the obscure and the un- known who have suffered for others, and by their sufferings have given birth to the souls of men. Then shall come many a poor village schoolmistress, pale and tremulous, who labored 86 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. hard and faithfully and long for penurious wages, and at last, with broken health, went home to die. Then shall come many a poor man who had no patrimony, nor patron, nor wealth, nor place, but who did not, by reason of that which he lacked, hold himself aloof from the world, but strove to rescue his fellow-men. And these benefactors shall stand high in glory. There are many poor slaves who shall out- strip the magistrates who remanded them to bondage again. There are many who toil in the lowest places of earth, and who are unheard of and outcast, whom God and heaven are waiting for. To all who are discouraged in their family life ; to all who are disheartened in their mission labors ; to all who are work- ing in darkness, and with a poor prospect of success ; to all who are engaged in their pastorates far away, without honor or remuneration or earthly comfort that to them might be brought the sense of God's coming glory ! For all those who are patiently and lovingly ministering the truth of the resurrection to such as are around about them ; for all those by whom souls are being delivered from bondage ; for all those who are developing the higher and nobler traits of spiritual life, and are casting death little by little under their feet for all such God waits ; and the crowns are shining, the palms are waving, and the songs are written and ready to burst forth, which shall greet them in the other life. And many and many who died alone, the next minute after the last throb of life on earth, shall find themselves in the midst of innumerable saints in heaven. Here pauper, and there prince ; here joyless, and there joyful ; here dying, and there life forever and forever in the presence of Him who shall say, amidst wreathed smiles divine, "Because I live, ye shall live also." Work for yourselves, and work for others. Let your res- urrection not be waited for. Take the earnest of it and the foretaste of it, that by and by the full blessedness of it may be yours. FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. 87 PEAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON. WE draw near to thee, our heavenly Father, as they who watch in the iiight draw near to the morning; for though they cannot reach the Source of light, though they know not what it is that brings forth the morning, they behold its brightness, they see how all things shine and rejoice in the light thereof, and they set their faces toward that light, to be themselves bathed with it, though they may not know its cause. How shall we ever make ourselves joyful if we wait until we understand thee? We set our faces toward the thought of divine love iu infinite power, working out wisdom, and truth, and purity, and nobility. Thou sittest in the seat of everlasting power for good- ness is everlastingly powerful ; and over all chaotic? things, over all tumults, over all conflicts and oppositions, goodness shall yet prevail, and the kingdom of God shall be a kingdom of joy and singing. The whole universe shall resound without sadness or sorrow to the praise of God, and with the gladness of infinite hearts made worthy to be the children of God. To this consummation our thoughts go forward. Though we are living far apart, in one chamber of thy universe, doing work the ends and issues of which we do not understand, we desire to be patient, believing that the great Husbandman knows that which we do not, and that thou art seeing throughout the growths of time, throughout all the prolongation of the seasons, as One who dwells in the whole universe ; and thou art rejoicing and dost rejoice from day to day. For, though to those who are in the valley the storm shuts out the sky, yet those who are upon the mountain behold the sun above them, and in the light thereof see what is taking place in the valleys below on either side of them. And so thou, sitting upon the circle of the earth, dost see how men are beset with sorrows and troubles; and yet thou dost know that thy work is going on. Thou dost know that amidst infinite confusion there still runs the clear line of God's purpose. It is the divine tendency that every soul shall grow brighter and brighter; and the river of life is flowing stronger and deeper unto the end. We rejoice, O God, that we may rise into the faith of that, and so into the faith of time, and into some comfort and courage of our own selves, that we may join those who seek purity, and elevation, nnd spirituality, and that we may have that confidence which out- runs the senses, and takes hold of the great invisible treasury of truths. We pray that we may be lifted up on thia day of rejoicing all the world around. We pray that we may be joined in the universal acclaim and gladness, and that we may bring our hearts and praises to Him who hath brought life and immortality to light O Lord Jesus ! thou art on this bide our brother, and on that side our God. Thou art to us the interpretation of that which we cannot find out by reasoning or research. Thou dost bring down to us such a sense of what is going on in the spirit-life, that through that we have approach unto God; and by thee we are able to stand before him. We rejoice in the tenderness, in the personal sympathy, and in gg FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. the love which couples thee with ourselves. We rejoice that it is a love which springs not from our excelencies but from thy compas- sion. Thou seest our toil, thou seest with what labor-throes we are being born ; thou seest how we are straitened on every side, and are as children who have not cast off their childhood, and cannot cast it off, struggling for growth and for strength in growing; and thou hast been as a merciful high-priest touched with our infirmities, and tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, that thou might- est be our Deliverer; and when we are naked and open unto thee with whom we have to do, thou criest still; "Come boldly unto the throne of grace," that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help us in time of need. We ask, O Lord Jesus! for the mercy of God, not as they who are without it, but as they who recognize the supply, and still desire its continuance. We pray for the strength which we need day by day; for the renewal of hope in its very foundation ; for patience; for en- tire submission to the divine will. Grant, we pray thee, that we may never give over our faith in a God over-ruling all things for good, in mercy toward us in propor- tion to our need. We pray that this day we may draw near to thee with thanksgiving and rejoicing, and with renewed hopefulness, and that this may be a day full of divine blessings to every waiting soul. Wilt thou especially draw near to every one that hath come hither seeking, in the sanctuary of God, strength and light that shall help him in his struggle of life. Draw near to every one according to his need. As thou didst address thyself on earth to all according to their several necessities, so again, and evermore, bring thyself to us as we need thee to the poor in their poverty; to those who are feeble in weakness; to those who are disappointed and cast down, in their desolateness ; to all who are uncertain, in their want of confirmation, in their perplexity, and in their over-turnings from day to day; to all that are suffering by reason of their faults and by reason of the faults of others round about them ; to all whose hearts are sore with blighted affections; to all who are afflicted with bitter bereavements; to all from whom thou hast taken the light and the staff of strength ; to all who remember the sorrows of days gone by. Grant, we pray thee, that all may be able, this morning, to bear witness, that thon hast been present to them, and that thou hast given the strength and li^ht of consolation to every one in due season. We pray that thou wilt grant that all who have come up hither this morning, to bring their joy and their hope and their courage and their prospects of life before thee for thy blessing, may be able to offer themselves, in their gladness, to God, as an acceptable offering, may they never forget thanksgiving in the midst of sorrow. May they rather remember how much more reason there is for thankseiving than for bitterness. Grant that every day we may bring to thee, not our unceasing complaint, not our daily mourning: may we be the children of light, and bring something of love, and something of gladness, and some- thing of courage, and something of aspiration, and something of hope, that we may please thee. Grant that our faces may reflect thine, and be full of brightness. FORETOKENS OF RE*ri!l!i:< T/O.V. 89 Change even our night to day, or send stars to minister therein. We pray that thy blessing may fill us all with a sense of our own bless- ings, and with a sense of that better life and that better land which lie just beyond this world. We pray, O God, that thou wilt grant thy blessing to-day upon all that gather together in the great congregations of these contiguous cities. May all who preach be able to do it with simplicity, with an inward understanding of thy truth, out of hearts that have been melted by that truth, and with power sent down by the Holy Ghost from on high. And we pray that thou wilt grant more and more that the truth may be efficacious in turning men from darkness to light, and from sin to holiness. We pray that thy blessing may rest upon all those who devise morality; upon all those who work for the purification of morals; upon all those who seek to build up our times in justice, and temper- ance, and fidelity, and honesty. Wilt thou bless this whole land ? Remember the President of these United States, and all those who are joined with him in authority; and grant that thy blessing evermore may guide them into the things which shall be for the stability of our times, and for the welfare of this great people. Bless the Congress assembled, and all the legisla- tures of our several States, and the courts, and their officers, and all the citizens of this great land. May the poor and the needy be min- istered unto. May the ignorant have light and knowledge brought unto them. May those who are drawn away from thee by prosperity be brought again to their Lord and their God. Spare this great people. Save them from judgments vindicating thy justice. Grant that they may walk in the ways of truth and righteousness into fidel- ity, and that they may become a people raised up of God to rain the light of liberty and true piety on all the nations of the earth. Make haste to fulfill thy promises, to bring in Jew and Gentile as one family, without divisions, without hatreds, without bickerings and conten- tions. May the whole earth at last rest in peace, in the salvation of its God. And to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit shall be praises everlasting. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. O0K Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt bless the word spoken, that it may be a word of instruction, of incitement, and of comfort. Be with those who need thee most; those who are under temptation; those who are grievously burdened; those who are dis- couraged by the greatness of the way. Be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land to those who are faint in the wilderness of their life. O Lord, we pray that thou wilt be bread to those who are starv- ing, whether of heart hunger or hunger of body. Draw near to those who are blind so that they cannot see the way, and be eyes to them. 90 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. Be near to those who are sitting desolate as captives in a prison. Grant that they may have deliverance in thee. Be with all thy serv- ants of every name. More and more fill them with thy spirit. Take away their sins and their temptations, and exalt them into the beauty of holiness. Lead thy flock like a shepherd through the wilderness ; and bring it at last, with exceeding joy and glory, into thine own presence in the world to come. And to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit shal' be the praise evermore. Amen. "Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you." LUKE xvii., 21. This same declaration runs through the New Testament. Under different forms, the truth was known in the Old Tes- tament that the power of life lay, not in external things, but in the internal nature and dispositions of men ; yet there was great emphasis put upon it by the Saviour and his apostles. You will find, for instance, Paul, in the 14th of Romans, saying, " The kingdom of God is not meat and drink." Now "meat and drink" refers unquestionably to the sacrifi- cial elements, or to the most solemn and significant part of the symbolic worship of the Temple that, therefore, to which the Jews attached a very precious significance. The apostle says, " The kingdom of God is not these instruments of wor- ship, these symbols of truth : it is righteousness, right-living that is, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." And then, as if he had an eye to the thousand and one sects which prevail, each one claiming everybody, and each one, with more or less uncharitableness, holding it to be very uncertain whether any would be saved that did not belong to their church, he adds, " He that in these things [that is, in righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost] serveth Christ, is accepta- ble to God, and approved of men." He that has these right inward dispositions, then, is or- thodox, put him in any sect you please. You may set a diamond in pewter, or in lead, or in copper or brass, or in silver or gold, and it is a diamond still. It is a diamond in all settings. So you may put a man who SUNDAY MORNING, April 12, li. LKSJON : Rom. xill. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 255, 604, 13B3. " 94 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. pre-eminently lias the spirit of Christ in him into any sect (I do not care which one you call the lead, or the pewter, or the copper, or the brass, or the silver, or the gold), it is the Christ-disposition that makes him approved of men and accepted of God. It is not his orderliness, it is not his lineage, it is not his social connections, it is riot his various obediences, it is not his worship or service, but all that lies back of these, and which these were designed to feed and to educate, that determines his manhood. It is not in points of belief, it is not in organized philo- sophical doctrines, that the kingdom of God consists. The kingdom of God may be ministered to by these things, but the kingdom of God itself is soul-power. It is the living force of a living man. And when that living force of a living man is inspired of God, when it moves according to the divine disposition, then it is the kingdom of God. There is something in this declaration namely, the local- ization of the root of God's kingdom in the individual. We are accustomed to hear it said that the kingdom of God is in the church. I hope it is. It would be hard for any church that had not in it one man who had the kingdom of God in him ; and when the church, has such a man in it, it has in it the king- dom of God; but the church is not that kingdom. No association of good men distinctively and primarily is the kingdom of God. God's kingdom establishes itself in the individual ; and wherever there is a single person who has in him righteousness, joy, love and peace, these distinctively Christian traits ruling in him, there is the kingdom of God, and, so far as the individual is concerned, the disposition of God, the whole of it, or the elements out of which its whole- ness is yet to be completed. It is a perfect thing in an indi- vidual. Now, you may multiply individuals, and thus aug- ment their power by association ; but the Kingdom of God resides in each person, or nowhere. You will take notice how, in the New Testament, without ostentation, without the blowing of any trumpet, without the making of any declaration, the unit is shifted. In the Hebrew economy, the father was the federal head of the family. The whole family stood in him. Still more wa^ th'g SUMMER l.\ THE SOUL. 95 80 in the Roman administration and commonwealth. The child was in the father, and the father owned the wife and the servant. Therefore, in the more barbarous periods of the early ages, when the father had committed a sin, the whole family was punished ; because the family was he, and he was it. The household was a unit. But, without saying any- thing on the subject, the New Testament quietly assumes that the individual is the unit in society, and that the child is not held responsible for the parent, nor the parent for the child when he is grown, but each one for himself. It is thus declared in the language of the apostle : " So theu every one of us shall give account of himself to God." Now, if you put the emphasis wrong, you stumble on that passage, Many men read it, " So then every one of us shall give account of himself"; they think it is a solemn dec- laration of accountability. But the emphasis should not be put on the word account ; particular reference is made to every separate individual person, and the passage should be read, " Every one shall give account of himself to God." It stands in the argument, saying that a man must be let alone; that is, that he is free ; and that because he is free, you have no right to domineer over him by your authority, nor to make your conscience the pattern of his thought that he is responsible to God. To his own master he stands or falls. "Every one shall give account of himself to God." There- fore stand out of his way, and do not oppress him, nor hinder him, nor shackle him. It is an argument of individual liberty. This is the great truth of the New Testament namely, that in the spiritual realm each one stands for a whole. We are not regarded by the Lord primarily as composite elements of the church nor as members of a family or of a nation though we hold all these subsidiary and subordinate rela- tionships. Each individual of us is looked upon as an empire, as a kingdom ; and when rightly builded and related, it is the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven. Now, Ihis kingdom does not exist in men by nature. It COTTS not with observation. It is not a physical kingdom ; it is not a fleshly kingdom : it is a kingdom that is set up in 96 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. each person's heart, and earned on step after step, by disci, pline, by instruction, by influences of a thousand kinds ; anc although, being begun, it is carried far forward in this life, often it is perfected only in the life which is to come. We have been taught that men by nature are without ho- liness. We have been taught that by reason of the fault of our great ancestor we are all of us inheriting a certain some- thing, a part of which is a want of righteousness. We are taught that we are not good naturally that we are not by nature holy. It is just as true as it can be that we are not holy by nature. Whatever Adam had to do with it, one thing is very certain : that every one who is born into this life is born as empty of the kingdom of God as possible. So a man is born empty of walking. A man is born empty of seeing. And a man is born empty of hearing. We are told that men lack oiiginal righteousness. Well, they lack original muscle- ness. They lack bones. A man is nothing but gristle to start on. When he begins in this life he does not know how to stand, or move, or run. He is empty of saltatory accom- plishments. He is empty also of carving, and painting, and arithmetic, and geography. He is empty of science. He is empty of everything. He is a bundle of emptinesses that are to be filled up. And men are bom destitute not only of phys- ical accomplishments, but of intellectual, social, and spiritual elements. They are born destitute of spiritual elements, be- cause they are born destitute of everything. They begin below everything, and then quietly develop, and rise up, step by step, and come, not to righteousness alone, but to every physical excellence, and to every social excellence. Whatever they reach, they come to by a process of education and un- folding ; and at the beginning they are not more deficient in spiritual and moral elements than in social and physical ele- ments. It is given to man to be born as a mere collection of tendencies; and it is the business of life to develop these tendencies. Men will develop differently, because there is a potent force which exists in different proportions in different indi- viduals. The great question of heredity comes in here. Men start composed differently. They have the same faculties, SUMMER IN THE SOUL. 97 just as all English literature has one alphabet ; but as with this alphabet infinitely different spellings are allowed, and words and meanings are multiplied, and phrases and sen- tences are varied and combined, so men having the same fac- ulties have them in different proportions ; and men starting differently are ultimately to represent very different forms or, as we are accustomed to say, very different characters. All are substantially alike in general : it is only specifically that they are different. In this work, then, of building up the kingdom of God, each man is regarded in his separateness ; and the root in each man is to be developed, and the kingdom is to be estab- lished by each one in himself. It is only another name for education carried on to the higher forms of the faculties. We understand perfectly what it is to develop the physical ' kingdom which consists of strength and skill. We know what it is to educate men intellectually. We know what it is \ to educate them socially to refinement of manners and accom- plishments. We understand how to develop the kingdom of society, the kingdom of matter, and the kingdom of thought in men ; and by precisely the same lines and analogies we are to develop the kingdom of heaven, or the higher spiritual^ graces and elements, in men. It would seem as if, since this is the highest and comes 3 the latest, it would be the most difficult. It is in fact, but not in philosophy; for there is in the development of man as a spiritual being a central element which does not belong, that I know of, to any other part of his development. When a man is being educated physically, you are obliged to think of a thousand things ; you are obliged to watch over the dif- ferent relationships which he sustains to matter, to food, to air, to water, to light. There is no one central element which, being observed, takes care of the others, in the physical de- velopment of man. And the same is true of his intellectual and aesthetic and social education. But when you come to the spiritual and highest realm, there is a distinctive pecul- iarity in that range namely, that there is given to us in our higher nature, in our spiritual relations, a central and sovereign disposition which, when it is brought to force, 98 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. to power, regulates and controls all other elements. This is the great central element of love, of which the New Testa- ment is so full, and of which theology is so empty. This great central spring when ooce put in play, so that it acts in full force in its own sovereign tendency, regulates, expels things that are to be expelled, throws out excrementitious matter, harmonizes, subordinates, and gives tone to the mind. If a man takes care of that one central element, it in turn takes care of all the other elements. Now, there is no one quality or tendency in the physical realm which, being educated, brought into the ascendant, and cared for, takes care of everything else ; nor is there any- thing in the intellectual realm which, being once made central, impleted and kept full, acts as a regulator ; but in the moral and spiritual realm, in the dispositions which are the hardest to attain, which are regarded by men almost as shadowy, and sought for in a thousand difficult ways, there is this central regulating principle of love to God and love to man, which, being strong and active, exerts an influence under which everything else takes care of itself under which humility takes care of itself, meekness takes care of itself, and patience takes care of itself. All qualities that seek to estab- lish themselves according to righteousness will fall out nat- urally under the influence of continuous and purified love to God and to man, and will come of themselves, as do all flowers under the influence of summer. Moralists are like men who want flowers in winter. Every flower that a man gets in winter he has to look after. If lie gets twenty geraniums, he has to take twenty roots, and put them in twenty pots, in twenty places, under glass ; and h; 1 to keep them warm by means of furnaces ; and has to watch against their being destroyed by frost ; and has to keep them from aphides, and everything else that threatens them ; and he gets just what he seeks for, and nothing more ; and what he gets, he gets by the hardest. But when June and July come you do not get alone just what you plant in your garden. If you put in roses, and tulips, and hyacinths, and daisies, you will get these, to be eure ; but you will not stop with these ; because the sun, SUMMER IX THE Son. 99 shining and warming the atmosphere, will bring forth all forms of vegetation ; and myriads of flowers and grasses besides those which you plant will edge your bed about. All nature broods, and broods, and develops many things which man does not sow, nor plant, nor cultivate. Now, there is this same analogy in the moral realm. Men C^ often seek to build up this, that, or the other petty virtue. One man learns to hold his tongue. Well, that is a good thing to do (and, on the whole, I was unfortunate in that illustra- tion ; because I recollect that one of the apostles somewhere says something to the effect that if a man is able to hold his tongue he is a perfect man. The declaration is, substantial- ly, that if a man can do that, he can do anything else not that he necessarily does.) But, men attempt in spots to es- tablish single virtues. They attempt in special emergencies to bring out a certain Christian quality just as they deal out medicine. There is an ache ; and there must be this pilule or pill, as the case may be, Tvhich is special to that particular trouble. So men are -rying to be Christians by specialties. They try to build up a moral and spiritual character by watch- ing against separate temptations here and there. But the\ truth is that a man whose soul is educated in the atmosphere \ of divine love has that within him which ministers to all J these qualities, all the time ; and the soul is full, and is con- / stantly overflowing them automatically. Tt is summer in a ^ man, and everything is growing there, when once you raise / this element into ascendancy in him. Furnace heat will be ) no longer needed when the solar blaze, this wonderful prin- / ciple which germinates and regulates everything, gains con- trol. Without it, everything is force-work ; with it, every- thing is spontaneous. Without it, everything is clashing and irregular; with it, everything is harmonious and perfectly orderly. Without it, everything is special and partial ; with it, everything is systematic and universal all through life. If one can mount up to that higher development of the soul where God's kingdom lies ; if one can come into possession of that conquering benevolence which is of God, which is like God, which goes back to God, and which has in it something of the infinite power of God ; if one can establish himself on 100 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. that, and give it force and instrumentality, then he occupies a position in which he is master of himself and the various elements that are around about him. The whole work lies in this one thing and that is more than you can say of any other development. We have heard it said that the higher forms of spiritual growth are the most difficult. They have been the most diffi- cult because men have attempted to produce them by special- ties. They have undertaken to unfold this virtue and that virtue as elements independent of all others. In so doing they have reversed the true order. If one, at the beginning, rises to this great central principle ; if he unites himself by faith with the spirit of Christ, then with that spirit comes re'gulation, and harmony, and growth, and all spiritual truth. The true work of life, then, is the development of this divine disposition in the soul, not simply for the sake of the thing itself, but for the sake of all those other things over which it has an expulsive or educating force in the mind. This never happens of itself. We come to this divine dominant disposition not by chance, but by choice. If any man supposes that men are born into life absolutely good, he knows but little of human nature. Some men are born far better organized than others ; men are born relatively differ- ent ; but after all, there is an element which is not born with men, and the tendency to which is not born with men namely, this central God-element this disinterested benevo- lence. Centrality of power in efficient love this is not born in men. No man gets it by waiting. It does not come by accident. No man receives it through an unexpected flush. It is a matter of deliberate intelligence and deliberate choice. Men must obtain it as we obtain anything else the seed-form coming first, and the developed form afterwards. The beginnings of the kingdom of God in every man are not knowledge, not zeal, not conscientiousness, not truth and that I say without any imputation on these things. The true soul-force which is to recreate every man, and prepare him for heaven, is this central disposition of divine beneficence. There is a definite order of development ; but the beginning and the end of it are love. There is an order of development SUMMXlt L\ THE SOUL. 101 of men in all their subordinate faculties in their under- stunJing, in their social relations, in their business affairs, in their connection with the world, with the family, with the church, and with the commonwealth of mankind ; but this element of love is common to all and central to all. It is to a man what the main-spring is to a watch. If you ask me to criticise, by this standard, the thought and purposes of men, I will say first, in regard to morality, that it is not a thing to be despised nor to be inveighed against. It is an indispensable excellence. There can be no spirituality without morality. It is that which every man should seek, or that which every man should develop. But alone, by itself, it is simple conformity to external rules and regulations. External rules and regulations are admirable, many of them ; nevertheless, the kingdom of God is within you. Help yourselves just as much as you have a mind to by external rules and regulations ; but the main thing is to establish in yourself that disposition of power and control which shall change thought, purpose, will, feeling, every- thing. Mere conformity to morality may not be against pro- priety in the family, in the State or in. the church ; it is far better than nothing. But, after all, a merely moral man ^ with a good temperament, and a good disposition, is an^^ uneducated and spiritually fruitless man. A moral man surrounded by a moral state of the public mind is like a grape-vine taken up and laid on a trellis, running up ten feet, and being proud because it covers the trellis with great broad leaves. You cannot see anything except the leaves ; but the vine plumes itself on being so thrifty, and says, " Am I not laid in well ? Don't you see what the gardener has done ? He has taken the stems near the ground, and carried the one on the right up there, the one on the left up there, and the central one up here ; they are all close pruned ; and they cover the trellis perfectly. They have just as much wood as they ought to have, and no more. Now, really, am I not well laid in ?" I say, "Yes, you are laid in beautifully." About June I go and survey that vine again, and, vainly \ searching the air for the delicate fragrance, say, " Where are 102 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. your blossoms ?" " W^^X^flB^Jajgwjabout blossoms. I have heard a great "deal about blossoms ; but I 'believe in tough, hardy leaves. See my leaves. See how well I am laid in. See how orderly and regular I am." By and by I go again, and look, and say, "Where are your clusters ?" ' ' Clusters ? I have heard about clusters ; there are some fancy vines that think a great deal of clusters ; but look at me. See how healthy and regular I am. See how well I am laid in." It is empty of blossoms and empty of fruit ; but it is very proud to think that it is well laid in, and that it has such great healthy leaves. What is such a vine good for ? Now, men think in regard to morality just in the same way. They think, "I am a good husband; I am a kind father ; I am an honest man ; I pay my debts ; I am a good neighbor ; I am laid in all right." Yes, in your lower nature you are. I do not despise grape-stalks when I find fault with the vine because it has no clusters. I do not despise the leaves that are on the vine. It is what is not there that I find fault with the vine for. I say, You ought to be a good father and a good husband ; you ought to be a good mother and a good wife ; you ought to be a good brother or sister ; you ought to be a good teacher : all these things are right ; but they are nothing more than leaf-forms. You are regular ; you are pruned in respect to excrescences and ram- pant growths ; you are laid in well ; you are admirable as far as you go ; but where are your blossoms ? Where is your fruit ? Men were born to be more than animals, more thaa social beings, more than civic creatures of this horizon-bound clime. The circuit of the sun is not the circuit of the soul. The paths which we are to tread are not such as the stars tread. We are of God. Ours is infinite duration. We belong to the commonwealth of the universe. We are allied to the noblest natures, to princes, and thrones, and dominions, and powers infinite and innumerable. They are ours ; all things are ours ; and we are Christ's. When I look upon men I do not find fault with them be- cause they are good in their neighborhoood they ought to SI'MMER IN THE SOUL. 103 be good there ; I do not find fault with men because they are\ upright in business they ought to be ; but where is your ) manhood ? These other things are your earthhood ; where is / that which distinctively is your spiritual manhood ? Those S things which unite you to God are within you higher and J nobler dispositions ; virtues ; spiritual qualities ; those that/ rise above the ordinary and lower ranges of human life. I criticise, by the enunciation of these principles, the Method by which men attempt to come to Christian devel- opment namely, painful watching; specializing of daily duty ; in short, the whole dominion of conscience. It is true that every man needs all the faculties which he possesses; but it is not true that every man works as well by one faculty as by another, when it is in the ascendency. Every man, in order to be an eminent Christian, should have the various faculties of his mind more or less brought into play ; the rea- son, among other things, should have its part, and perform an important function ; and there should be pre-eminent in men an interpretation of conscience : but experience has \ shown that men who attempt to develop the kingdom of God \ in power, by the submission of their life to conscience, are un- , happy just in proportion as their conscience is acute; for this / is a faculty which grows by what it feeds on. It is in- ^ exorable. The more sensitive it becomes the more it blames. The more nearly you come to perfection the more imperfect you feel. Conscience, when it is the ruling faculty, fills men with discontent, and so with a kind of perverted moral con- sciousness. There are many men who would scorn the impu- tation of living for themselves ; but they are all the time re- volving about themselves, by reason of the influence of their consciences upon them. And it makes not only them, but those that are around about them, unhappy. Some men's consciences are like some old-fashioned New England housewives. They are so intolerably indus- trious, they are so outrageously neat, that nothing has any peace in the house. They are searching and sweeping night and day. They run hither and thither in their zeal ; and no- body dares to sit down, or stand up, or come in, or go out. Everybody is disturbed and made uncomfortable by those 104 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. insatiable housewives who want everything clean and orderly The house is so very orderly and clean that nobody can live in it. And there are persons whose consciences will not give them any rest, and who are all the time thinking about what they are thinking, and what they are not thinking ; about what they are doing, and what they are not doing. Their consciences are like an intrusive light that goes about peering into every secret place ; and they have no repose, no self-con- fidence, and no trust in God. Inquisition, inquisition, search, search, is the order of the day with them. A man's conscience is like some detectives that I meet. I know them. They may be without belt or star; but they are unmistakable to one who observes them. There is a looking and seeing everything, behind and before, and all around, without seem- ing to see anything. A man comes into the car, and takes a glance, and scans everybody there in a minute ; and yet he does it in such a way as not to be noticed by ordinary persons. A man comes on to a steamboat, and moves gently about, and sees every group, and takes a general estimate of all the pass- engers ; and yet keeps himself inconspicuous, and quiet, and unobserved. There are people whose consciences go about in the same way. They crouch down, and look, and see every- thing ; and they do it in such a way as not to attract any notice ; and yet they are all the time stirring men up, tor- menting them, and taking away their peace. You cannot thrive under conscience. It is impossible. Conscience is the traditional stepmother, that knows how to wash and dress the children, and how to whip them. She gives them lessons, and lessons, and lessons, but very little bosom. Love is like a mother indeed. Many a mother takes the wicked child into her lap and melts the depravity out of him. There is more in one love-crush to make a child feel guilty than in all the spanks you could put upon him. The arm is stronger than the hand. And men who attempt to live by conscience-force; men who attempt to build the kingdom of God in themselves by the mere power of conscience might as well take the job of organizing summer in Westchester County, and seeing that all the sorrel, all the grass, everything that grows there, comes SUMMER IN THE SOUL. 105 up at the right time and in the right way. How absurd it would be for a man to attempt by special care of each to produce in their due season the various kinds of plants and flowers! Let him stay at home, and when, under the -s influence of the sun, the air is warm enough, they will come forth. Now, in the higher Christian life this incessant attention to a man's self, and attempting to act under the dominion of conscience, is full of disquiet, and acridness, and distress. You never can reach peace along the way of conscience.*^- There is but one way in which to reach it, and that is along the way of love. What men want is something that has in it the divine^ nature the breeding, the inspiring of reflection and that quality which we derive from Him who came to give his life for the world that was destitute, in degradation, and at enmity with him that element of the character of God by which the heart is stimulated and made to aspire that form of love which brings life, and spiritualizes life, and beautifies life that which gives continuity, and ease, and victory to a man's better self that which the Bible is so full of, and so little of which is to be found in theology. I have heard of men being put to death because they did not believe in the real Presence in bread and wine ; but I never heard of a man being put to death because he did not love. I have heard of men being put to death because they did not believe in the true church ; but never did I hear of anybody being put to death because he had not divine dis- positions. A man may be stingy, selfish, grasping, hard, bitter- tongued, and bitter-thoughted, and no man arraigns him ; he is as happy in the church as a swallow in a barn, and nobody excludes him ; but if a man says that he does not believe in the Trinity, then the cry is, " Out with him ! out with him ! out with him ! He hasn't right ideas. He don't believe ' In Adam's fall, we sinned all.' He don't believe in the total depravity of mankind." A man may be rancorous, he may be cold-hearted, he may be unsympathizing, he may be uncharitable, he may be full of worldliness exteriorly wrapped 106 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. in admirable propriety ; he may be like a bundle of nau- seousness done up with paper and a string that are all right and beautiful ; he may have all manner of things like these about him, and yet he is tolerated ; and men looking upon him say, "Of course, we are all fallible. The church is meant for sinners, therefore the church is full of them ;" but once let a man vary in respect to the ordinance of baptism, once let him believe that the exhibition of water as a symbol is enough as compared with sprinkling or immersion, as the case may be, and it goes hard with him it goes hard with him even here, and in this nineteenth century. There are now four Episcopal Churches in England. The Church of England has four divisions at least, and I have no doubt that if I took a microscope I could see four- teen ; and these divisions do not turn, in any instance, on the kingdom of God in men. The question is not, in one single instance, a question about consecration, love-power, faith, inspiration, insight, or victory over the world. It is a question about altars and candlesticks in some cases ; it is a question about cassocks and all sorts of furniture in other cases ; it is a question about methods and subordinations in still other cases ; it is a question about facing to the east or to the west inside of a church in yet other cases. Sometimes the question turns on lineal descent or whether we came down on right lines or not. I myself believe in the Apostolic succession ; I do not believe that any man is fit to be a min- ister of the Lord Jesus Christ who cannot show that he is lineally descended from the apostles not, however, as to the ilesh, but as to the spirit. Any man who can say, " Though the more I love you the less I be loved, I am willing to spend and be spent for you : I count not my life dear unto me ;" any man who can say, " I am willing to be an off scouring, and to die deaths daily ;" any man who can say, " I have learned both how to abound and how to be abased ;" any man who reaches out after that manhood which is in Christ Jesus, and shows that he came down from the apostles in that line in his inwardness, in his moral traits, in the beauty of holiness any man who can do that, I think is fit to lead the church, and is ordained by the Holy Ghost. But if any man comes >T.V .V/-;H IN THE SOUL. 107 right straight down from the apostles, and has not the king- dom of God in him, I do not think he is fit to be a preacher of the Gospel. Therefore, while I believe in apostolicity, while I believe in the line of descent from the apostles, it is inward and spiritual, and not outward and physical. It is a tiling which is not imposed by any touch yes, by the touch of the Holy Ghost it is. He is of Christ who is Christlike, and he is not of Christ who is unchristlike. Church work, then, as a substitute for the life-work of men, is another point of criticism. Men suppose that they are doing the will of God when they keep Sunday ; when they read their Bible ; when they say their prayers ; when they go to church ; when in church they maintain decorous deport- ment ; when they comply with all church forms and requisi- tions. They have an idea that attending to these duties is religion. Well, now, a boy of fifteen years of age wishes to develop in himself the kingdom of health. He sits down at the table in the morning. There is not a thing in any dish ; but there is a plate, there is a knife and fork, there is a cup and saucer, there is everything which is needful in the line of dishes ; and he commences, with a vain show, and makes as if he were eating off from his empty plate, and drinking out of his empty cup ; and when he has gone all through the motions of taking a meal, he gets up, and goes out, and says, "There now, I am ready for my day's work." Is not a boy who does that like thousands and tens of thousands of Christians on Sunday ? They rise up in the morning ; and they arc so con- scientious that they would not shave on the Lord's day ; nor would they black their boots on that day. They are too con- scientious to do any work on Sunday. They go to church, arid the moment they arc within the building they are very sober. They are shocked at anybody who looks as though he were happy. They sit down in the appointed seat, and put their feet in the regular position, and wait till the services commence. Then they go tli rough the proper singing, and listen to the sermon ; and then they get up and go home. On their way home, they say, " Our dominie was not quite so good as usual this morning. Well, you cannot expect a 108 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. man always to do his best. But the singing was admirable, very nice, this morning." When they get home, they walk into the house very sober, and eat their dinners very earnestly ; and afterwards (it being a day of rest) they sleep. When they wake up, they wonder whether it would be wicked to read a newspaper. So they get the New York Observer, half of which is meant for week days and the other half for Sunday. But they never can find where the boundary runs ; so they read on, and read on, with a sort of suppressed feeling that they have done wrong, though they do not know as they have. And when the sun goes down they have the feeling, " There ! I have got through it. Haven't I held out well ?" That is called growing in grace ! Is it not like eating nothing out of empty dishes ? How many there are who never, in all their life, form a vivid conception of the distinction between the work of God in the soul, ripening powerful dispositions into noble forms and fruitfulness, and the mere instruments by which that is done ! I revere the Sabbath. * I think it is God's blessing to the world. I certainly revere the church, and love it ; but I regard it as simply a slave my slave. What are all these things but your implements and your tools ? Where is your work ? It is in yourself. What is it ? The lessening of pride ; the reduction of selfishness ; the inspiration of faith ; the larger development of joy into peace, and of peace into joy. You are to have such sympathy with God that God himself shall come to be enthroned in you by the power of love ; by its prophecy ; by its action ; by its discriminations and disciplining relationships. By this you become men ; and if the Sabbath ministers to this, blessed be the day. If it does not, it is empty. If the Bible helps you in this, it is good. If it does not, it is a dish bottom-side up. All these are helps ; but the thing itself the kingdom of God is in you. Men and brethren, do you think I preach too much on this subject ? I believe and feel that we are coming to a new Dispensation not to a new sect. I should abhor a sect. And anything in this world that I should abhor more than an- other would be a sect with my name on it. There is but SUMMER IN THE SOUL. 109 one name that should be borne by Christians, and that is the Name above every name. What I hope for and long for is to see in the Roman Catholic Church, and the Episcopal Church, and the Lutheran Church, and the Presbyterian Church, and the Baptist churches, and the Methodist Church, and the Congregational churches, and the Swedenborgian Church, and the Universalist Church, and the Unitarian Church, and all the other churches whose names I have for- gotten what I hope and long for is to see in them all the spirit of Christ so prominent that their characteristic quality shall be the one which is in the candle not in the can- dlestick, which may be of gold, but which of itself is good for nothing. The characteristic of the candle is the light which it sheds out, and by which it lights everyone that comes into the house. The power which I wish to see in the churches is the scarcest, and yet the most competent to do things the most marvelous. I mean the power which there is in the regenerated soul in the realm of divine love. Oh for the day when there shall be an enthusiasm of fighting by the power of love ! Oh for the day when the silver trumpet shall throw away the brass one, and when the war shall be such a war as summer wages against spring, or as spring wages against winter, warmth fighting against cold, and germinant growths against barrenness ! Oh for the day when men shall recognize the fact that it is not in the lower life physical, nor in the lower life social, nor in the lower life intellectual, nor in the lower lite aesthetic or beautiful or im- aginative, but in the life that is higher than all these, and that blossoms out from these as the flower blossoms from the stem, that manhood stands, and in which the purity of the church stands namely, the power of Christ in men, the hope of glory ! There is the whole charter. My own life passes fast. My years are few and mostly spent. I am not far from seeing, who have never yet seen ; from hearing, who have never yet heard ; from knowing as I am known, who never yet knew. And as the days go on, and the city comes nearer, this burden is rolled on me, which I cannot rid myself of Christian manhood ; the kingdom of (&od in peace and joy and lore ; the power of Christ in his 110 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. disciples. This seems to me the first, the middle, the last, the glory of time, the hope of the world ; and it is given to me to preach it, with growing ardor, with intcnser faith, with more yearning and longing. And may God grant that, when some few years more are spent, and you and I shall rise to see each other in the heavenly land, it may be with nothing to take back, with more glory than now we dream of, as we clasp inseparable hands, and move together to the cadences of love around about the throne of Him who loved us, and gave himself to redeem us, that we might become kings and princes unto God. SUMMER IN THE SOUL. PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE have no need to come to thee, O our Father, to tell thee what we are, or. what we need. Thou knowest what things we have need of before we ask thee; and from thine abundant store we are provid- ed with thy gifts perpetually. We need not search; for thy paths drop fatness; and we walk therein and find thee there. If at times they be hard, and straight, and narrow, yet at other times they are flower-clad and full, on either side, of bounties and mercies. But our life is not in our sense, nor in our outward experience, but in our soul. Our best joys are those which are deepest, and our affections need more than these bodies. The life is more than meat. We rejoice, then, that thou hast made thy gifts such as they are, and that thou hast held them in such wise that if they are to be enjoyed iu their full we must needs come to thee. Their fragrance is of thy love and of thy kindheartedness in giving ; and we draw near to thee with supplication, but yet more with thanksgiving; with petitions, but yet more with a recognition of mercies in over-measure. We draw near to thee, knowing that thou hast first drawn near to us. It is not the bird that calls the sun, but the sun that wakens the bird to sing; and it is not our voice that calls thee near to us: it is thy coming near that draws us to thee, and fills our hearts with strange joy. We thank thee for thyself, and for as much of the revelation of thyself as we can understand; but how much lies beyond! How <-an selfishness interpret boundless beneficence? How can they who ingurgitate everything, and would draw the very seas into a whirl- pool of selfishness, understand Him who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many? We are withstood by our passions, which cannot represent thee, through which thou canst not pierce to show us the image of thyself; and how dead, how feeble in blossom, and how fruitless are those affections in us which represent the divine nature! Our condition brings us to thee, and we approach thee with multiplied petitions, that we may be delivered from our lower self, that we may be born out of the flesh into the spirit, and that by holy dispositions and sweet affections we may have in us those elements which can interpret thee. We pray that thou wilt make thyself known to us by all those trials which are needful; by all that discipline which shall cleanse; by that pressure to escape from which we must needs fly up and find exaltation. We pray that thou wilt so inform us by thy spirit inwardly that we may see that God who is invisible, and dwell as seeing him. We pray that thou wilt grant to us, this morning, a sense of thy great goodness, and of the glory of that goodness, and a sense of the universality of thy kingdom. We come from our small ways and narrow affairs, pressed in, hedged about, beaten, buffeted, racketed hither and thither, in this noisy world where men are as stones. Grant, O Lprd, our God, that we may have some conception of the kingdom of God that shall deliver us from the poorness and the bnr- renness of this lower sphere. Thou that didst come to open the 112 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. prison doors and to set free the captive, deliver us from the confine- ment of the flesh, from the limitations of our narrow ways; and grant us some sense of that kingdom of God which is within us, and which is to go on enlarging and brightening, and becoming more and more summer-like in the production of all the fruits of righteousness. Grant that we may rise somewhat into that sphere where t'hou dwell- est habitually. It is easy for thee to think infinite things; and grant, though we may not follow thee, nor run in the line of thy thought by our poor limping way, that we may still have such encourage- ment as that which comes from the fact that the Sun of Righteous- ness hath arisen with healing in his beams and be held up above the storm, where silence dwells that is full of untroubled peace. So ruay we have a sense of the largeness of our lives, and of the glory of the upper sphere. May we be able to enter into it, and find the realiza- tion of thy promises. Be to us as the door into which we may run in the day of battle. Be to us as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, full of grateful coolness. Be to us as a fountain in the desert where we may slake our thirst and yet live. Be to us as brooding wings underneath which we may trust. O Lord our God, fulfill all those images of peace and protection with which thou hast tempted our thoughts. And we pray that in thee we may find rest, inspiration, hope, joy, life. Thou art all in all. Give to us, then, something of everything to-day; for all our nature waits for that which we ask, that we may have a cleansing sense of uplift, of patience and of sweet submission to thy will, as with a full knowledge of its goodness. Grant that we may have a sense of the beauty of things present by the light that is shining on them from things absent and far away. Grant that this life, with all its duties, may become precious to us by reason of the relation of those duties to our immortal blessedness. We pray, above all, that we may have that strong center of love which is refreshed and invigorated from thine heart. May our heart, in love, stand tri- umphant, sovereign over every other influence. And we pray that thou wilt sanctify to all thy dear servants thy dealings with them ; and if any are bowed down as the rush before the wind, Lord, lift them up. Thou wilt not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking wick until thou bringest forth judgment unto victory. Give the victory of sorrow to those who are in affliction. Give the victory of knowledge and trust to those who are in doubt and per- plexity. Give to all who are weary that victory which comes from rest in God. Grant, we pray thee, that all those who are perplexed with multi- plied cares, and who are so harnessed to human things that they are perpetually drawn downward toward the earth, may renew their strength. Grant that as their day is so their strength maybe also. Grant that they may be conscious that God pours upon them the balm and refreshment of his own everlasting strength. We pray that those who are under responsibilities that gird them, that those who are in captivity, being under the dominion of their tormenting consciences, may be able to break away from their jailot and know that they are not prisoners any more, but Christ's free men in the commonwealth of love. May they be able to stand up, and SUMMEn r.V THE SOUL. 113 defy, and put underneath their feet, that conscience which torments them. Let them ever be under the dominion of love in the realm of grace. Oh, teach us what is the liberty of the soul. Give us to under- stand what is that gift which thou didst come to bring to this world. Pour out thy love on hearts which are as a wilderness, that they may spring up and bud and blossom as the rose. Draw near, we beseech of tbee, to all who are in perplexing rela- tions, and enable them to maintain manliness in the Christian life. Help them. They need succor and daily support. Minister it unto them. We pray for those who are beginning to live with new thought of life, with higher intelligence, and with better purposes. Grant that they may not be discouraged nor become weary. May they, in this life that is full of imperfections, every time they fall, be lifted up again ; and may they go on from strength to strength, knowing that if they persevere they shall yet stand in Ziou and before God. We pray that thou wilt grant power to all those who are weak. Send light to all who are in darkness. Let the whispering of thy spirit come to those who seem solitary in desolate places. Grant, we pray thee, to all who are seeking thy presence and com- fort, the anointment of holy oil within. Visit those who are bereaved, not to stay their tears, but to sanctify them ; not to take away their sorrow, but to make that sorrow a ministering angel to them. We pray that those that are may be as though they were not; that those that are in families may be as though they were desolate. May we hold all things as in a shadow. May we more and more perceive that the things which are seen are not; and more and more may we be- lieve that the things which are invisible are. May we understand that our strength and life are beyond and above, in the great realm of the coming life; and may we prepare for it, and look at all things here as they stand related to that more glorious disclosure which shall be made to us when God shall come, and we shall be brought with him into his kingdom, and stand before the hosts of angels and rejoicing saints in heaven. We thank thee that the thought of heaven grows clearer and clearer, and that in our imagination the realm above is growing more and more populous, and that there are so many there who know us, that there are so many going continually who shall know us, and that we are not to be strangers in a strange land, but that heaven is _becoming more and more a home to us. Thus may our 601104$ linns, sanchtied, lift us up, and bring us very near to the gate from whose joy, before we enter it, shall roll forth some song; and grant that, perad venture, some leaves of the tree of life may fall, and that we may catch them for the healing of our sorrow. We pray that the word of truth, which gives us strength and light, may go forth to those who sit in darkness. May there be a Sabbath to those who seek no rest to-day. May there be a gospel to those who care not for truth. May they who are engaged in teaching those that are out of the way not be weary in well-doing. May they sow abun- dantly, and be strong in the faith that they shall rep an hundred- fold. 114 SUMMER IN THF SOUL. Bless thy ministers of every name. Clothe them to-d:iy with the power of God, that they may make known the counsel of God for the welfare of meu. We pray that thou wilt take away divisions between ehurehes. Remove all separating walls. Unite thy people by the af- finities of a Christlike love. May the power of the gospel go forth with godliness of life, with kindliness of disposition, and with right- eousness, throughout the length and breadth of this land. Grant that there may be justice and liberty everywhere. Therefore, errant intelligence, that ignorance may flee away, and superstition, and its weakness. May the power of man to oppress his fellow man be de- stroyed by the strength of human life in its sacredness. We pray that the kingdoms of this world may speedily become the kingdoms of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. May he take his power and reign a thousand years. And to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit shall be praises everlasting. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OTTK Father, we pray that thou wilt illumine our darkness, and give us, though we may not know what it means, that guidance which shall bring us surely to thee. What does the poor needle know, that points steadily northward? And though we do not know, grant that there may be that in us which shall turn our affections steadfastly toward thee. We thank thee for the revelation which thou bast made of Jesus Christ. We accept that conception of divine love-and power and ac- tivity and suffering and helpfulness which he gave to the world. We rejoice in it. It is just what we need. We want, O biessed Saviour, something that shall have compassion on us. We have enough to con- demn us, we condemn ourselves enough, we are enough discouraged and enough in the dark; we have struggles and battles enough with ourselves and with the world around about us; and since our father is gone and our mother is gone we need something that shall be more to us than they were. And thou, O blessed Saviour of love and sympathy and patience toward those who are out of the way, we come to thee for the forgiveness of our sins. We come to thee for encouragement. We come to thee that thou mayest be to us as a bridge on which we may pass over that great gulf which separates us from the realm above. We come to thee for the certitude of our faith. We come to thee that thou mayest be the Bread of life to our hunger, and the Water of life to our thirst. We come to thee that thon mayest be all in all to us. So may we live with our life hidden with Christ in God until thou dost appear; and then may we appear with thee, and rejoice with a joy which no man can take away from us. And to thy name shall be the praise. Father, and Son, and Spirit. Amen. HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. " But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gen rleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another." GAL. v., 22-26. From this passage I mean to ask and to answer the ques- tion, this morning, why it is that Christianity has made com- paratively so little progress in this world. It is a question worthy of our consideration. What was the power that Jesus himself manifested ? And first, what was the secret of it ? He belonged to the Jews, the most abhorred nation of antiquity. He never sepa- rated himself from the manners and customs of his people. He worshiped in their synagogues and in their temple just as they did. He never wrote a line nor a word, of theology or philosophy. He never was ordained. He never took upon himself any official relation to mankind, any more than to his own people. There is not a single thing in all his speech, as recorded by his disciples, that looks like organizing men. There is not in the thought or conception of man anything so absurd as the contrast ^between the teaching of Christ in respect to Christian life, and the enormous and pompous or- ganization of Christian churches which pretend to have de- rived their authority and their forms from him. The question, therefore, is one of very profound importance : What is the secret of the power of this Personage, who ap- SONIIAT MORNING, April 19. 1874. LESSON: Rom. zb. HYMNS (Pljrmoutl CollecUon) : NOB. 365, 668. 600. 118 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. peared so many hundred years ago, who was not the master of a system, who did not organize a party, or a sect, or a school, and who wrote nothing ? It was the simple power of a higher type of manhood than had ever been known in the world before. It was Divine manhood. It carried with it, also, by inference, the deduc- tion that there was more power in the simple disclosure of a divine life than in any other source whatsoever. The man- ifestation of meekness, and gentleness, and sympathy, and patience, and self-denial, and truthfulness, and lovableuess, and lovingness, and such manliness as lifts the personal char- acter of the Lord Jesus Christ above all that ever lived on the face of the earth, and the simple exhibition in his life and teachings, as they were recorded by others, of the truly Divine disposition these have been the secret of moral power, from that day to this. It was a new type and a higher type of a personal manhood. And that is not all. From this new and higher type of manhood, symmetrized and disclosed in him, is derived, or is derivable, a higher conception of God's character, since the only glass through which we can get a true view of God is the glass of human experience. Outside of possible human experience there is no such thing as knowing God in his moral attributes or dispositions. Whatever, therefore, exalts any single trait in human life to an excellence which it had not before makes it a lens through which new revela- tions of the divinity come to us ; and where all the qualities which belong to human nature are exalted in this way, where they are combined in symmetry, and where they harmoniously present a magnificent character such as the world never dreamed of nor thought possible, through that comes a mightier revelation of the true inward nature of God and of his personal dispositions. These two sources of power stand together in the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the goodness of God manifested in him by his personal character and life that constituted or raised up that moral influence which has existed in spite of revolu- tions, which has uplifted nations, which has been stronger than the sword, which has been more powerful than the HINDBRINO CHRISTIANITY. 119 temptations and lures of pleasure and money, which has ex- alted the race, and which is still exalting it. Where, however, to-day, is the real force of Christianity in the world ? It is in the living power of those men who have accepted this Christ-like life, and who are living as Christ lived. The foTce of Christianity is not in the cathe- dral, nor in the temple, nor in the synagogue, nor in the church, nor in organizations, nor in denominations : it lies in the. sum of men's individual excellences. I do not deny nor undervalue the various instruments which the Christian life employs. I would not be understood as setting aside the church, nor those various associations which cluster around about it ; but I regard all these as sim- ple machinery. They create nothing. Their function is to express that which can be developed only as a living force from the human heart. They have been made largely to take the place of personal spontaneous power. Individuals have been absorbed to make colorations ; and the great gospel idea of divine individuality in men has almost been lost sight of through many ages. It is again in our day developing in power ; but there yet remains in all Christian denominations and organizations a tendency, springing from the physical inclinations r f men, to build Christianity by the outside, to make the kingdom of God on earth to be in the aggregate organizations of Christianity, and not within the individual man. The church is but a body ; the living dispositions of men are the soul. A church in which love, joy, peace, long- suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, scarcely exist is a church without power, no matter how many are its members, how advanced its intelligence, how wide its sphere of practical labor, its charities and sensuous reformations ; for without love these all are but as sound- ing brass and tinkling cymbals. I admit that organized churches have been made instrumental of great good from time to time in ages past ; and yet, organized Christianity has been the poorest part of Christianity in this world. If there had been no other power in the world than that which has been exerted by organized churches, religion would have sunk long ago. It has not been the church that has 120 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. preserved religion : it has been religion that has preserved the church. It has not been the priesthood that have saved the laity or the people : it has been the humble and Christ- like lives of obscure persons among the laity that have saved the priesthood. As in the case of Christ the power lay, not in any outward organization, not in any systematic presenta- tion of doctrine, but in the living force of a holy nature, so the power of Christianity has been in the development of its sweet qualities in so many private persons, and not in mere church organizations. For, national churches and hierarchal churches have given to the world vast corporeities with feeble spiritual life. Churches have been like caves. In limestone realms, there are vast caves where everything is quiet, as people waiit them to be in the church ; where the temperature never varies much from 40, as people do not want it to vary in the church ; where everything is formulated, as people want things to be formulated in the church ; where from the roof there is the white stalactite, root up, always growing down ; and where at the bottom is the stalagmite, growing up, by petrifaction. Into one of these caves conies a man witli a torch, who walks through ; and instantly all that there is in the cave becomes bright and beautiful. In what ? In itself ? No ; in the light of that man's torch. And there are churches running down through the ages, with their Cardinals, and Archbishops, and Bishops ; with their different orders of priesthood ; with their eminent men ; with their saints. Great cavernous bodies they are, full of all manner of things dripping from the roof, and springing from the ground, hard and white as limestone stalactites and stalag- mites ; and now and then one holy woman or one great-souled man throws light over them all, and makes them resplendent. They are rendered romantic, attractive, beautiful, by some in- dividual, or some collection of individuals, who have been giving forth the light of a true Christian disposition. Why, then, has Christianity made, comparatively, so little advance in the world ? After nearly two thousand years, what is the condition of Africa ? What is the condition of Asia ? What is the condition of the continent of North and South HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 121 America ? What is the condition even of Christendom : [jook over the world, and take in a general view of the con- ditions of nations, after two thousand years of Christianity, and where are they to-day ? There has been a great deal ilone ; but compared with what was to be done, how very little 1 1 as been accomplished ; and how very slow has been its ac- complishment ! Why has it been so slow ? We must bear in mind that the development of Chris- tianity is not simply the diffusion of a knowledge of its his- tory, nor of its organizations, nor of its ordinances, worship, or ecclesiastical polity. These are mere implements. The spread of Christianity can mean nothing else than the devel- opment of the fruits of the spirit in the human soul. It is the lifting of mankind into the higher realm of moral experiences. It is the generation of spiritual forces in individual souls. We are to look, therefore, for the spread of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Where these exist in supreme power, there is Christianity. Where these are wanting, though all the pomp of ceremonial and of stringent ecclesiastical organization be present, there is but the outward form, and not the substance of Christianity. So that, in discussing the progress of Chris- tianity, it must be borne in mind that we mean the develop- ment and power of these Christian graces in the human soul. How far have they become dominant in the world ? Why have they been so slow in development, and of such limited scope, and almost unrecognized value ? Well, first, they who have set forward Christianity in this world adopted a coercive conscience, and assumed authority over men in God's name, attempting in religion what was at- tempted in politics namely, the government of men without their consent, and according to a rule. We have now learned that freedom is the safest in the state, and that despotism, however handy it may be, makes poor men. It may make easy government, but it makes inferior citizens. Liberty, on the other hand, however many leaks it may have, and how- ever many storms there may be in it, after all, in the long run, makes strong citizens and multiplies the resources and increases the strength of the state. 122 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. Now, liberty is just as necessary in the church as it is in the state and in civil affairs. No man, because he is ordained to preach, has any authority over anybody. No church has any right to usurp authority over men's consciences and judgments. A church that does this in the name of God is just as monstrous and detestable as any government upon earth that usurps absolute authority over its subjects. If re- ligion is to be anything, it is to be spontaneous ; it'is to be the free offering of free souls. The moment you permit the church to say, " We have the light ; our conscience being instructed is lord of your conscience," you interfere with men's religious freedom. It is thought to be a very grave offense when an individual man says to another, " You be damned ;" but put a black robe on a man, put a split cap on his head, and put a long staff with a quirl on the end of it in his hand, and let him say, " Believe in transubstantiation or be damned," and it is thought entirely correct. Now, I do not think cursing under such circumstances is any better than when a private man uses it in his own affairs. In either case, it is vulgar, and to be disallowed and all the more as you go up ; for an official curse is a great deal worse than a per- sonal one. You cannot develop the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy. peace, by coercive influences. I should like to see anybody go now with cannon and sword to my side-hill at Peekskill, where I have a good deal of grass which is reluctant to come up, and make it grow. I should like to see a fire- engine pump it up. I should like to see a magistrate with a search-warrant bring it up. Nobody can make it grow. It must grow itself if it grows at all. All that can be done is to make the temperature more favorable ; and that comes with the revolving sun. When the atmosphere is warm, then it will grow. You may help it ; you may nourish it ; by collateral in- fluences you may facilitate its growth, but you have no power to make it grow independent of the warmth of the sun. No man can go with a crowbar, and put it under a tree, and say, "Grow !" and make it obey. It will not grow because you command it to. Nobody can say to a tree, " Blossom 1 " and be obeyed. It will not blossom because you tell it to. HINDERING CHRISTIAN TY. 1JJ3 And if you cannot exercise authority over these physical qualities, or attributes, or elements, how much less can you exercise authority over the quality of love ! Can you cause love to spring forth at your will ? Can you go to another, and say, " Love me !" and secure obedience to that imperious com- mand ? No, not any more than you can be lovely and avoid being loved. If you say to a person, "Be joyful 1" will h be joyful because you have commanded him to be so? When men are bent down with sorrow like willows ; when they are clothed with tears, as after rains trees are, so that every mo- tion shakes them down, can they obey your command to be joyful ? Can you go forth and say to men, " Have peace !" and make them peaceful ? There was a Voice once that could hush the storms ; but has man that power ? Can man say to the stormy heart in the anguish of bereavement or fear 01 remorse, " Peace, be still," and be obeyed ? The qualities to be developed in the world are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance ; and how are you to develop them ? Not by ar- rogance of conscience. There must be spontaneity or there will be nothing. All arrogation, therefore, of authority over men is a wicked assumption, not derivable from the Word of God, and in its experience constantly showing itself to be of the earth, earthy. " To his own Master every man stands or falls," says the apostle. " Everyman shall give ac- count of himself to God. Who art thou, then, that judgest another man's servant ? " Take care of your own individual excellence, but never attempt to lay the law of your con- science authoritatively upon men, either in your individua 1 capacity, or in your associated or official relations. This going forth of Christianity, not as a sweet, wooing influence, shining on men like the sun of a May morning, but armed as a warrior, marching to the music of the fife and the beat of the drum, and " breathing out threatenings and slaughter, " is not going to spread the graces of the Spirit. Its effect is rather to tread them under foot. Any apparent spread of Christianity under such circumstances is nominal and superficial not real and vitaL We have had an immense diffusion of Christianity; and it has been like 124 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. gold-leaf, spread thin ; and it has grown thinner and thinner. What we need more than anything else, to-day, is vertical Christianity, which goes deeper, and takes hold more pro- foundly of affection, as a master-quality in each individual soul. Secondly, the introduction of the malign element as a moral force, by which it has been attempted to extend Chris- tianity, has been another capital offense and another reason why so little progress has been made in spreading the Gospel. When Paul in a reminiscence of his labor among the Corin- thians gives some account of himself, he speaks as if he had paused on going into Corinth. Naturally he must have done so; he must have said to himself, "Here am I, a wandering Jew, going to the most dissolute, the richest and the most elegant city of Greece; a city world-renowned for pleasure; a city full of sophists, full of philosophers; full of men of science and literature; and now, how shall I start this new religion there?" "Well, I determined," said he, "not to know anything among you as a source of moral power except Christ, and Him crucified. I determined to disclose to you a moral phenomenon namely, that the innate disposition of God is manifested in this: that he sent down into the world his Son, who took upon himself the human form, and sub- jected himself to human law, and was willing to suffer, and to suffer in the lowest and most ignominious way, for the sake of giving his life a ransom for many. I determined to rely, for the secret of my power, upon this fact and the moral qualities which grow out of it, as naturally related to human sensibility." Now, in the propagation of Christianity in the world since Paul's day, has that been continued as the secret of power ? Of course, in many cases, largely it has been ; but go back and read of the actions of the church. Follow the line of controversial theology. I knew a young man in Amherst College, when I was a student there, who read Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History. When he began he thought he was a Christian, but when he got through he was an infidel. There were in the history of the church, as it came down step by step, such monstrous discords, such bitter quarrels, such HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. ]25 dreadful conflicts, such outrageous cruelties, such evils, hide- ous, heinous, and immeasurable, that he did not believe there was any divine beneficent providence in it. He felt that if there was any such providence, it would certainly be one that would watch over a church instituted of God and bearing the name of Christ. If you examine the efforts that have been made to spread, to define, to defend and to exalt Christianity, you shall find that they have been largely directed to the construction of out- ward organizations, to the elucidation of dogmatic creeds, and to the establishment of spiritual despotisms. If the kingdom of God on earth is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, how can these be spread and intensified by the reason acting under the influence of selfishness, of pride, of vanity, and still less of fierce rivalries, suspicions and bitter hatreds ? For the sake of religion, for the sake of the church, for the honor of God among men, it has been thought excusable for zeal to become a fire. Men have advocated and propagated an external Christianity by the sacrifice of every one of its internal attri- butes. The church for ages has been its tomb. The spirit of Christ has been obliged to wander up and down in a desert place, like the worthies recounted in the eleventh of Hebrews. And although in every age since the ascension of our Saviour, and in every church, there have been found sweet and glori- ous natures that kept alive in the memory of the world the true nature of Christianity, many heroic tasks, many saintly endurances, yet it is undeniable that the Christianity of whole ages has been impelled by the malign forces of hu- man nature ; and that neither in the realm of Mammon, nor in the strife of camps, nor in the fevers of political ambition, have there been more carnal, self-seeking, arrogant and des- picable influences, than have been found in the propagation of Christianity. Now, how can you develop love by hatred ? How can you develop peace by controversy ? The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, etc. ; and how can you develop these by quarreling, misrepre- sentation, and annoying and vexatious criticism ? The IJiC HINDERING CHRISTIANITY gates of hell have often opened into this world out of ec- clesiastical judicatories. Under the name of Christianity missionaries have been sent to the heathen, among whom were known no such abominable cruelties as were practised by those who sent them ; and we have not yet got over the tendency which has so long existed, to enforce Chris- tianity by malign processes. There is still an attempt t( introduce into theology those fiery animal passions which come lurid from the lower realms. And this whole Roman, Tuscan disposition to fill Christianity with monarchic and basilar elements has been fatal, as overthrowing Christianity in its very type and genius. Christianity began by the dis- closure to the world of peace and good will to men ; have the persecutions, and torments, and exclusions, and wanderings of Christian men in the woods and in the deserts, and their hidings in caves, and their sorrows of soul, been the fit fol- lowing of such a prelude ? Has he who came on earth to die, and to tell men that God was such an one that he would not willingly let men perish, been properly preached, when Jeho- vah has been represented as a hideous, bloody-mouthed being who makes men to devour them ? The iron doctrines of sects ; the machines of faith and practice into which men have been thrown, and by which they have been ground to powder, in order to make the church greater than its mem- bers, and more important than the souls of mankind ; and the ambitions, the hatreds, the fears, the passions that are engendered in vast ecclesiastical organizations are these the instruments by which to introduce the kingdom of joy and love and peace ? 'Do you wonder that the Gospel has not spread more, under such circumstances ? Suppose I were to say, The spirit of the garden is roses and mignonette and violets ; and suppose, straightway, I should go among the northern icebergs, during the fiercest months of the year, and attempt to plant these flowers amidst frost and ice and snow, and should wonder why it was that roses, and mignonette, and violets, and all manner of flowers did not seem to thrive there ? But tell me how they can thrive under such circumstances, where there is a frost that hates, that pierces, that eats up and derours ? And suppose HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 127 I should make some little temporary structure over them in which every particle of heat was absorbed by the cold, would it be a marvel that they did not grow ? And is it any greater marvel that Christianity has not grown more in the organiza- tions which have been built over it ? WLy, the church dom- inant in the world has for whole ages been simply monstrous. There have been no excesses more criticisable, and no terrors more abominable, than have existed under the auspices of the church. If you take Christianity comprehensively, it has not been made known to the world as a personal moral quality. When Christianity is spoken of to men, that which they think of is the Church ; it is the Book ; it is the Ministry ; it is the Organization ; and these, through long periods, have been made use of by men frequently under the influence not only of carnal but of infernal passions ; so that under the name of Christianity the kingdom of the devil has been propa- gated through the world ; and from iron scepters has come corroding rust. Joy, peace, love, longsuffering, meekness, and gentleness these have not been the fruits that have been spread, nor the seeds that have been planted, for the most part, by what are called Christian organizations. Thirdly, the progress of Christianity has been delayed 01 prevented because it has aimed at knowledge and not charity. Paul says, "Knowledge puffeth up; charity edifieth." By "charity" of course he means that benign, central spirit of love which is mother and nurse to every other good quality in the soul. The exact meaning does not appear in our trans- lation, because "puffeth up" calls attention to the process rather than the result. Have you ever seen a boy blow up a bladder ? It has not grown it is puffed up. It has become big, but it is filled with wind, as a pin will demonstrate. Now, the apostle says, that knowledge blows a man up, and makes him look big, so that he seems to himself to be large. Love is the only thing that builds him up. The one swells him out so that he appears greater than he really is. The other developes him by actual increase. The one bloats, and the other builds. The apostle's declaration is, that the mere realm of ideas, the simple sphere of knowledge, tends 128 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. to produce among men immense inflation, and a sense ol importance ; while love, the essential spirit of Christ, is the thing which augments men, enlarges them, strengthens them, with foundations downward, and a superstructure up- ward. But consider what theology has attempted to do, as if it were a part of Christianity. It has attempted, in the most minute manner, to unfold the whole theory of the Divine na- ture. It was not in the possibility of past ages to do this. Neither is it in the possibility of the present age to do it. Our knowledge of God is simply human knowledge transformed, reconstructed by the imagination and the reason. You can- not have a conception, outside of your own personal con- sciousness, that constitutes anything like a rational view of the divine nature. When we take into consideration how little knowledge we have respecting ourselves, we begin to feel how vague must be the notions which we have of God. We take the history of those who have lived in the world ; the philosophies which have prevailed among men ; the types of governments, of courts, and of law, which have existed in the world, which are artificial, and which are of men's weakness and not of their strength ; and out of these we have constructed our conception of the divine moral government. And this has been built up with mag- nitude, a marvel of minuteness, and a marvel of skill ; but the larger it is, and the more it is specialized, the more it is a sign of artificiality, and not of true knowledge. Consider how little men have known about governing men, and how little they have known about transferring human experience or human ideas to the divine moral gov- ernment. We have had in theology methods of government taught as if instituted by God which now any rational civil- ized society would vomit out with abhorrence. We stand still in church creeds and symbols and beliefs. How little we know of the past, and of what is to come, and yet, how vast is the amount of that which is taught, as if we knew it I How little we know of what may be called human knowledge, and yet, how much less do we know of regu- lating men's lives of taking care of their experience ; of HINDEllING CHRISTIANITY. 129 enlightening their judgment ; of removing their doubts ; of inspiring their hope ; of doing all those things which are in- cluded in theology 1 And that is not the worst of it. It is not merely the great error which there has been by reason of this specializing of Christian truth that is to be condemned : the capital offense of churches has consisted in turning that which is an emo- tion into an idea, and then teaching the world that that idea is a sacred thing. They have eatirely carried out of its proper sphere the real Christianity, which is a living personal experience, and put it into a philosophical system ; and they have made that system an arbitrary and absolute judge and condemner of men. To-day the whole Christian world is up in arms. Wny ? Because members of the church live such worldly lives ? Oh no, not if they behave well in ecclesiastical matters ; not if they observe all the proper days, and pay their pew-rents, and take good care of their minister. What is it that the Chris- tian world is up in arms about ? About forms, and cere- monies and usages. It is, thank God, true that in the Eoman Church, in the Episcopal Church, in the Presbyterian Church, in all the sects of Christendom, there are multitudes of men who, by godly lives, sweet dispositions, and simple teaching, are laboring to promote the kingdom of God. It is true that vast efforts are made by each and by all of the sects to spread abroad the historical knowledge of Christianity ; but for the most part the sects are so cumbered with the machinery of the church that the strength of its servants is wasted in taking care of the external. The Roman Church is all astir ; but it is for the temponil possessions of the Pope ; it is for the doctrine of the immacu- late conception of Mary ; it is for its external relations an- 1 rights in the State ; for its articles, usages, traditions, creeds, jurisdiction, offices and officers. The energy of thousands of noble brains is expended in the control of the external ma- chinery. The Church of England is rent in twain, and each moiety is rent again ; but the strife is not for holiness. The concern 130 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. is not that men are carnal, that pride and selfishness are the mightiest motives in human life, that love languishes, that gentleness is rare and occasional, and that the beauty of holi- ness is almost unknown. The force of genius, the treasures of scholarship, organized zeal, and all the resources of acute and elaborate controversy, are occupied with things abso- lutely external, instrumental, subsidiary. They are quarrel- i ug as in Jerusalem the Greeks and Latins quarrel over the empty tomb of Christ. The High Church mourns that it is not worthy to touch the hem of the garment of Rome. The Evangelicals, intense, acerb, narrow, make orthodoxy un- lovely. The Broad Church, clinging to institutions whose absolute apostolic authority they deny, retain their place, in the hope of rationalizing Christianity, and promoting the graces of the spirit, by the force of purely intellectual ideas. Nor, if we look within the Episcopal Church in America are matters mended. The organization is divided against itself. It is doubtful whether more life-force is not expended in the maintenance of the external institutions of the church than in the development of Christian grace in the souls of men. It expends a vast amount of zeal in demarking itself from every other sect ; in ranging and ranking its ministry ; in binding them to minute and particular observances ; in establishing ecclesiastical uniformity. Routine it calls order, and repetition, uniformity. The most glorious of all gifts of God to men, the living force of heart liberty, the spontaneous overflow of personal experience, is little trusted, but much suspected and feared. How is it in the Presbyterian Church ? Ask Professor Swing, who is on trial for some petty variation in doctrir.e. Ask Mr. Craig of Chicago, who is on trial in California, I believe, where I think his Presbytery is, on account of some looseness of view about inspiration ? How is it in regard to our brother Hyatt Smith, who is on trial before his Baptist brethren on account of communion and the necessity of bap- tism by immersion to membership ? And on what ground are they arraigned ? On the ground of want of faibli ? of lack of love ? of being destitute of meekness and gentleness F No, no ! HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 131 People have ideas which are peculiar to themselves or to the class to which they belong ; and they organize themselves about these ideas as forces of Christianity, and convert them into a system, and make them despotic, and attempt to govern the world with them as with a rod of iron ; and is it at all strange that Christianity has lingered, that it has been perverted, and that it has been carried away into Babylon ? Christianity does not lie in philosophical speculation and subtle niceties. It was in the God-life in Jesus Christ that the power of Christianity lay, in former times; and it is in living human holiness that it still lies. This leads me, fourthly, to the next consideration namely, that the spread of the Gospel has been hindered because organic Christianity has been put in the place of personal Chris- tianity. It has been thought necessary, in order to save the life of Christianity in the world, that churches should be organized. Well, my dearly beloved Christian brethren, I too believe that churches should be organized. Not only that, I believe that they will be organized. If all the force that is now exerted to organize them were exerted against their being formed, they would be organized nevertheless ; not because Christ said they must be founded, but be- cause God made men as he did. Organization springs out of the inherent necessities of men. It is natural that those who are seeking a common end should seek it by common help through the social element. Art organizes itself ; education organizes itself; philosophy organizes itself; commerce organ- izes itself; industries of every kind mining, smelting, man- ufacturing, and what not organize themselves. We need no laws, we need no divine authority, we need no legislation of any sort, to make men unite in organizations for the pur- pose of accomplishing the various objects of life. They do it of themselves. It is necessary and inevitable. Since, then, all society is organized, and is developing its life and its resources through organizations, since the prin- oiple of organization is the necessary, indispensable element, by which the ordinary affairs of men are inevitably and al- ways carried on, why such a pother about the organization of the church, as though that were an exception, to everything 132 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY else in creation? It is inevitable in the nature of things that churches will organize themselves. The sunlight draws up trees into infinite branches, each one seeking the shape in- herent in itself. If Congress should interfere, and appoint the shapes proper, and send men forth to clip and prune, that all the various forests should come to uniformity, the pine, the spruce, the oak, the beech, the birch, the ash, all be forced into one shape and habit, it would be scarcely more wide of nature and truth than the efforts of men to derive from the apostles a definite system of church organization, and to attempt to persuade or coerce all Christians into pre- composed forms and governments. Moral Life Force will develop a body to suit itself I But what comes to pass ? What has come to pass ? This : that instead of the grandeur of the kingdom of God in the individual, instead of the power of sweetness and beauty which comes from the disclosure of a Christ-like life in each particular person, there has been an artificial organic body. And when Christianity is preached, people look at churches, and not at individuals ; or, they look at individuals as mem- bers of churches. The moment a man is taught that he should live a Christ-like life, he begins to think whether or not he is fit to join a church. Reverence for churches, for organizations,- has almost destroyed the living force of individualism. Individuals are grander than churches. Churches are only jewel-cases ; men are the jewels. My idea of a true church organization is this : that it is a union in which every man is joined to his fellow-men by elec- tive affinity, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and by the social influence of like souls. Every man is to bring forth the fruit of the Spirit love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gen- tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. These are the elements around about which the church is to be built up ; and where these are the center of the church, the out- ward form will take care of itself. Now, persons say to me, "If you hold more liberal views than those who belong to the old Puritan Congregational churches, why do not you go out of them ? " Because 1 have a right to stay in. It is more important that there HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 133 should be liberty in the churches than that men should seek liberty by abandoning their birth-right. A man is in the Presbyterian Church, and is preaching Christ, and love, and self-sacrifice, and industry, and purity, and heavenlike- ness ; but then, he is preaching them without an absolute belief in the endlessness of punishment ; and people say to him, " Why do you not join the Universalist Church ?" In other words, the power of the Spirit of God in the souls of men is not considered as enough to make one orthodox. The interior life of a man is regarded as inferior to organization, and to schedules of doctrine. But the true conception of a church organization is one in which men shall be like Christ, and in which, being like Christ, they shall be free free to think, free to speak, and free to act. It is a thousand times more important that young Mr. Tyng should stand in the pulpit of the Episcopal Church and preach the truths of Christ as he feels that he is divinely ordained to preach them, than that he should renounce his fellowship with that church because he does not feel called upon to submit to all of its restrictions. It is infinitely better that he should stand in that church until he has demon- strated that it permits the liberty which he claims, than that he should go out of it and found a new sect. It is better that men in the Presbyterian Church who hold a differ- ent and a larger view than is held by that church itself should stay where they are, and prove that the Gospel of Christ grants the freedom which they assert their right to ex- ercise, than that they should form a little pocket sect some where else. Sects are good in their place ; but what we need is not so much more sects as that the sects which we have should be more Christian, and that those who are in them should utter the truth, and stand up for it, and suffer for it, and earn the right to be ca\led Christians. "What we need is more sects in which a man shall have the right to think as God inspires him to think, and to speak as God moves him to speak. Such rights are things not to be bartered or thrown away. But they are withheld by the church. The church has superseded Christ. The Christ-spirit is sucked up in creeds ; and it is to be wrested back again. 134 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. The men, however, who seek to bring about the change are not to do it by leaving the organizations to which they belong. And I stay in the Congregational communion, not alone because it is the church of my fathers, and because I reverence it ; not alone because I think it is the simplest and the nearest Christian in its organization : I stay in it, among other reasons, because many men say that a minister in the Congregational Church shall not have liberty to do that which the spirit of God inspires him to do, and I say he shall! Envious or low-thoughted men may say that such things indicate policy. Yes, they do ; everything that is wise is politic ; and I assert for my kind the right to receive God's inspiration in living free souls. I assert in behalf of the lib- erty of Christ's people, that no church on earth has a right to coerce them, to domineer over them, or to cast them out because they will not speak shibboleth as that church speaks it. In Christ, men are free ; and I stand on the declaration of the apostle, who says, " The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance : against such there is no law." They stand in their own divinely inspired liberty, above law, not because they are without law, but because they are doing that which the law requires from a higher ground than that on which men ordinarily stand from spontaneity, and not from co- ercion. A church must be organized so as not only to permit the action of personal liberty, but even to inspire it. It has no inherent rights superior to the rights of the Fruits of the Spirit. The necessities of externality are not to domi- neer over the living force of men whom Christ has made free by the inspiration of love. Orthodox or heterodox, anger and bitterness and pride are wrong. The inspira- tion of love, heterodox or orthodox, is always right. Ex- pel the malign, the mechanical, the deadening routine, with orderly cant and decent stupidity. But let light shine. Give place to personal inspiration. Let the sweet graces have liberty. He whose orthodoxy inspires bitterness should be disciplined. He whose heterodoxy inspires love, meek- ness, goodness, faith, joy, longsuffering, should be exalted. HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 135 I have but one other view which I will now urge. Chris- tianity has failed to make as rapid progress as it should have made, because the character of the Lord Jesus Christ has been hidden, and because a corrupted theology has presented to us a God that will never subdue the world, and that never ought to subdue it If there be any truth in the mission of Jesus, who came to deliver us from our sins ; if there be any truth in the compassion and suffering of Christ ; if there be any truth in that whole wondrous history, in which, "being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon bim the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man ; and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and be- came obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," then, indeed, we have a description of God. He is a Being clothed with infinite power, who uses himself for the succor of the weak, of the ignorant, and of the sinful. He is that Principle of inspiration in the Universe that lifts men up from animal conditions, and waits patiently for them till they are brought into higher and divine relations. That is the conception of God in Christ Jesus. Christ has no meaning if that is not it. Now, if you present to me a God sitting back of eternal forces, creating millions of men for victims, and who is going on in endless succession creating them only that, as he turns the world over, they may roll into everlasting perdition, I am repelled from it by every quality which the Gospel inspires and develops. Go, with all necromantic arts, and cull your simples for conjuration in the shadowy realms below, where sin, and wrong, and hideous cruelties, and detestable iniqui- ties have swarmed, and bring them up from thenoe, and out of these form a conception of a regnant being fit to rule in hell ; now tell me, wherein does that portraiture differ from the portraiture which men have often made of Jehovah ? They have made an infernal portraiture, and they call it God ! I take every tear-drop that was shed in Gethsemane to rub out the infamous falsehood ! I take every drop of blood that flowed on Calvary, and with that I would make the heavens glow as clouds do when storms are pierced and driven by the con- 136 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. quering sun ; blood, not as the emblem of cruelty, but as the emblem of mercy. Do riot preach, to me a God who hates the world, and treads it under foot, and treats it as if he were a hideous tyrant, making his own pleasure and glory such that they can be augmented by the aim- less sufferings of myriads of men ; do not preach to me such an abominable devil, reveling in cruelty, and call it God : preach to me a Being that made himself of no reputa- tion, who suffered for men, and walked the earth with his arms about them, and with his heart beating against their hearts, in order that he might show them what God was, and how God felt. As, after a long day of storm, the sun in the west breaks forth, and all trees rejoice, hung with gems, while the storm itself, moaning and murmuring, dies away in the mountains ; so, when the night of heathenism and the storm which ascetic theology has caused shall have passed away, then bring forth the new vision of God that ought not to be new after two thousand years Jesus Christ, whose power was in love, and joy, and peace, and whose disciples are to be known by love, and joy, and peace, and longsuffering, and gentleness, and goodness, and faith, and meekaess, and temperance ; and let Him reign ! Then the sun shall stand in the firmament for a thousand years, and the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth shall be one, and he shall rule everywhere, from the rising of the sun until the going down of the same ! Depart, cruelty, and come, mercy! Go down, hideous despotism: rise up, sweet liberty and love in Jesus Christ! Come, Thou that once wert crowned with thorns; let the stars shine from around thy brow ; and all our hearts shall be joined to thee. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 137 PKAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON. AWAKEN in us, our Father, some sense of those mercies which, unasked, are descending upon us. It is not because of their supplica- tion that the flowers receive thy dews by night and thy sun fty day. They know not, and they come into being only after all these influ- ences. And thou art beforehand with us. It is thy grace that makes us think of grace. It is thy fore-running blessings that quicken in us a desire for blessings. If we long to escape from fault and sin it is thy work that hath in part been accomplished in us which breeds the desire. And so thou art evermore seeking us ; and when we lift up our voices to thee, they are but the echo, the response in us, to thy call. 80 we rejoice while we supplicate, believing that our prayers are answered in that they are made, and that the answer of prayer is often the very desire of prayer. We rejoice in thee. We rejoice in the consciousness of thy near- ness to us. We cannot understand thy greatness. We are at a loss in our understanding and in our imagination concerning thee. We can- not comprehend thy goodness, it so conflicts with the mixed pride and selfishness of our natures, struggling with generosity and with love. We are ourselves so poor in goodness that the royalty of thy nature, the sovereignty of thy love, we cannot fathom. We are more puzzled with this than we are with the inflniteness of thy nature with thy thought-power and thy hand-power. We rejoice, O Lord, that thou art interpreting thyself to us, little by little, out of ourselves, and that that goodness which is the fruit of the Spirit in us is, little by little, forming in us some type or con- ception of tbee. But how much greater art thou than our thought of theel How free is thy bountiful nature. How can we, as it were shut up and imprisoned in earthly shells, know of it? What do they who dwell in shells on the sea-coast, buried in the sand, know of the depth and the power of the ocean in which they live? and what do we who lie buried on the edge of the eternal and the infinite of thy realm know of the wealth and the commonwealth of God's heart? O grant that we may not be arrogant, as if we knew. May we be con- scious of our immense ignorance. May we not seek curiously to interpret those yearnings of our souls which seem prophecies, and which seem to touch something, we know not what. We see dimly, as through a glass. We see where the morning sun is to arise, and where the light is to come and gather brightness. We see the glori- ous clouds that receive the light of the sun, but the orb we do not discern. We pray that TO may therefore stand in our conscious ignorance, and seek to know more and more of the way in which thou art to be known, by filling ourselves with the graces and the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ with his patience; with his forbearance; with his sym- pathy for all men ; with the protection which he granteth, by his thoughts, by his enthusiasm and by his fervor, lifting men up and inspiring them with patience and courage, and godliness of life. So may we put on Christ, So may he dwell in us, that, being Inspired to do the things which he did, and to live in the realms of 138 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. thought and feeling in which he lived, we may come by his experi- ence to a better interpretation of his nature and requirements than we can gain from the letter. How poor is any outward representa- tion of him! How imperfect is any mere understanding! Our life continually rubs out what our thoughts indite. We are ourselves dull and unknowing, and in darkness, because we are so low in our life; because we are so unfertile in goodness; because we are so with- out ingenuity in things which make for spiritual excellence. We are strong in our temper; we are strong in our will ; we are strong in our physical reason; we are strong in the things which build up the visi- ble and the outward in human life; but in nil those things which belong to the great realm above, how weak we are and how imper- fect! We are children without their simplicity and innocence. We are like them only in ignorance. And now we pray, O pitying God that dost behold this great human realm where men blindly toil and strive, that thou wilt look down upon us in mercy. O thou that hast had compassion upon the world, and art having compassion upon it, lift us to that sphere of interpretation in which we may see the course of time and the fates of men with the feeling of God. We pray that we may have more of that compassion which brought thee from heaven to earth. We pray that more and more we may seek to help others rather than by our power to compel them to serve us. Grant to us something of the largeness and grandeur of that divine charity which is in Jesus Christ, but which hath been so little imitated among his followers. We pray that thou wilt spread the spirit of love and the all-heal- ing power of love among the people in all churches. Take away teihptations to bitterness. Take away the arrogance of pride, and the domination of selfishness. Take away everything which deprives thy people of that liberty wherewith Christ makes them free. We pray that we may live together as brethren, in cooperative zeal, seek- ing to surpass each other in bearing, in suffering, in expending our forces for the sake of others. May we have a holy emulation in things which are like unto thee. We pray that thou wilt raise up those to fill our places who are better able to interpret the truth of God and to exemplify the life of Christ than we have been. We look upon much of it as unworthy of thee and of ourselves. We are ashamed that our purposes have been so short-lived, and that they have been so poorly fulfilled. Having eyes we have seen not, and having earn we have not heard. We have interpreted the coarser things of nature, but the things which belong to the kingdom of God we have not known. We have followed thee afar off. We have sought thee for the loaves anoV fishes. We have been unworthy of the name of disciples, of pupils, or of children. Lord, thou hast had a slothful, self-indulgent houshold, hard to bear. We have been fractious, disobedient, unloving and unlovely. How few claspings and how many buffets hast thou had from our bauds! How little have we followed thee in the day of desolation and abandonment, and huw have we crowded about thee in the day of triumph ! We have co'ne in at the eastern gate, shouting Hosenna I and we have let tbet. gt> out at the western gate amid cries of, Crucify HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 139 him! abiding In our places aud refusing to bear with Christ, or to go with him. We pray that thou wilt temper our arrogance by our consciousness of our ill-desert, and of our relationships to thee. We pray that thou wilt grant that the measures which belong to immortality, to the other and endless life, may be substituted for those measures which spring from time and the realm of the world. We beseech of thee that thus we may be imbued with celestial wisdom, and walk with the spirit of the upper life. Grant, we pray thee, thy blessing to rest on the families of this congregation. Be with any one of them in which is sickness. If any of them are in troubles, bereavements, bitter sorrows, be with them to comfort, and, by the power of the Holy Ghost, to interpret the meaning of thine earthly dealings with thy people; and say to every one, " Whom I love I chasten." We pray that to those who are bearing the heat and burden of the day amidst cares and perplexities thou wilt grant patience and man- liness. May they feel themselves called to exhibit Christ in the way in which they live in human affairs. May they adorn the doctrine of the Saviour by their integrity, by their honor, by their fidelity, by their industry, and by their success. We pray that thou wilt grant, more and more, to all our house- holds, the spirit of heaven. More and more may the family become as the gate of heaven. We pray that thou wilt remember the little children, and all that are growing out of childhood into manhood. May there be such influences around about them that they shall come up unsoiled and unstained. May they consecrate the dew of their youth and the whole strength of their manhood alike to the cause of truth, and manliness, and honor. We pray that thou wilt pour out thy spirit upon this whole land. Bless the President of these United States, and those who are joined with him in authority. Bless the Congress assembled. We beseech of thee that the spirit of wisdom may be breathe*! upon them from on high. Bless the Governors of the different States. Bless all judg- es, all magistrates, all that are in authority. We pray that thou wilt make the people everywhere obedient unto the Lord. Take away the distemperature of passion, ot oon- flicts, of collisions; and grant that peace may abide everywhere. We pray that thou wilt spread abroad intelligence in all this land. Join it with virtue and true piety. Grant that the light may shine in dark places ; and that all men, from the greatest unto the least, may have the light of Christian civilization. And we pray that thou wilt bless not us alone, but all the nations of the earth. May we feel kinship more and more strongly. May we be united in the kingdom of faith as we are in the kingdom of suffer- ing, and in all the mischiefs that have sprung from ignorance aud superstition. So may all the nations be united in hope, and in striv- ing after a better day. And we beseech of thee that thou wilt take out of conflict the sting of bitterness, of selfishness, and of hatred ; and that a true sympathy may be felt throughout the world, and that the spirit of Christ, the gn-nt Civilizer, may come and reign among 140 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. men. Let t by kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth as it in In heaven. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. A men. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OUR Father, grant, we pray thee, that we may be drawn more and more away from the conflict of the Gospel, except that which is in ourselves. More and more may we be clothed with the sweetness and fragrance of the Gospel, so that we may win, by patience and gen- tleness, those who are opposed to thee and to thy truth. Give us more of that knowledge which comes from being like thee. Fill us with all the blessings of God. And we pray that so we may be joined to thee. And may we find others that are of the same mind; and associating ourselves with them, may we be assemblies, congregations, or churches bound together, not by outward bonds, not by man-made policies and laws, which are things of time and earth, gross and sens- uous, and full of quarrelings and contentions, leading to all manner of suffering, but by the sweet fellowship of the inward life, wherein joy sings to joy, and peace breathes upon peace. As in the garden are flowers which send forth sweet fragrance; so, as flowers in the garden of the Lord, may we shed sweetness on every side of us. May we bear the fruits of righteousness. May a fellowship of love and sym- pathy spring up among all thy people. And so may heaven be among men. Hear us, and answer us, through Christ our Redeemer. Amen. SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. * For ye are all the children of God by Faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, tbere is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Gal. iii., 26-29. "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God ; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord : in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit." Eph. ii., 19-22. in both of these passages stands out the same general thought namely, the highest measure of relationships which is employed in the divine Word. You will observe that one difficulty of interpreting the New Testament consists in this : that it has a subtle, constantly appearing and disappearing, evanescent relation to a higher stage of development ; that the manhood which either consciously or unconsciously lies in the mind of the speaker or writer is one which transcends immeasurably the manhood which actually exists here upon earth; and that therefore the teachings of the New Testa- ment are subject to exactly that difficulty which exists in the college, in the school, or in the household, where persons of preeminent culture are endeavoring to convey some idea of a higher stage of knowledge or development to persons of a lower stage. The study of that one single phenomenon would throw a MORNING, April 26, 1871. LESSON: Eph. i. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection) : NOB. 1296, 815. 1230. 144 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. great deal of light upon the general principles of interpreta- tion to be established in regard to the New Testament, and would throw a great deal of light, also, upon many of the unsettled passages or knotty questions which exist. Every parent knows, we all know, how hard it is to teach the child things which belong to a stage of growth that lies beyond childhood; we are "put to it" all the time by the child's questions ; and the attempt to render into the child's lan- guage, or rather into the child's idea, the things which we have come to by years and years of growth and knowledge, builds up a system, not of falsehood (that sounds vicious it carries the idea of bad motive), but a system of fables, or of things that are not true, put for things that are true. If, in regard to some of the representations which are made of God and of the Spirit-life in the earlier periods of the Book, we say, "They were relative to a past age; they were fables, they are not true;" many people are shocked: because they have an idea that revelation is absolute truth, and that in teaching the world God could not honorably or purely have done other than to tell the exact truth, always. But what if human language, through which, if through anything, revelation is to be made, was fashioned in the earlier and undeveloped period of man's existence, so that it had not the terms which belong to higher development as is the fact ? What if it were not even now in the power of words to convey ideas for which words have never been found? How are you going to get the higher truths down into lower forms ? Does a mother, when she has grown old, repent herself of the thousand little artifices by which she attempted to get truth into the mind of the child ? She reads a fairy story ; and the child is perfectly bewildered, delighted, dazzled with it; but, is it true ? No, it is not true ; and yet it is true: that is, it is not true in the lower realm of fact, but in the higher realm of imagination it is true. It never happened ; but then it conveys an idea of happenings of a certain sort You make up a little fable. that is to say, an untedious novel and rehearse it to your children; and they ask, "Is it true ?" You can say either way : you can say, " Well, no ; it SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 145 is not true"; or you can say. " Yes, it is true." Do you not know that sometimes an untruth is truer than a truth ? I do not mean in the thing itself, but in the impression which it produces on persons' minds. The history of the world shows that in the divine development of a system of instruction precisely those methods were employed for the purposes of unfolding and carrying up men's ideas, and elevating the standard of their inward manhood to a higher plane, which are employed in every rational family. " When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child." Very well, Paul, then your father and mother had to teach you as you could understand, or else you would not have understood as a child. You have to adapt things to each other. Although men have come to intelligence and refinement, and to a much higher stage of development than they had reached in the times of the apostles, yet all that is known in this world with regard to the after-life, the heavenly state of the human soul, is as nothing. Paul says in the thirteenth of first Corinthians that our knowledge of the future condition is like the knowledge of our childhood in regard to the condition of mature manhood. He declares that the whole after-scene is yet vague to him. He says, "We see through a glass, darkly." He says that now, in this life, we see only in part ; and that only then, in the future life, shall we see fully, as one sees when he comes face to face with another. All through the instruction of the Saviour, all through his discourses in the temple with the educated Jews, you see the tests which he brought to bear. It is evident that he had a consciousness of this higher knowledge, and was attempting to teach men who had not that consciousness, nor the conditions of it in their minds ; so that when he attempted to approve his divinity before them, he did not say, " I am God because I can do this or that;" he said, "I am divine, and I see divine truths in their essence. When you look at these truths, you have no moral interpreting sensibility, and therefore it is impossible for you to know what they are. You are of your father, and you understand the things which belong to him ; I am of my father, and 146 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. when I do works which have reference to the life beyond this world, you do not understand them, because the Spirit of God is not in you. You have no power by which to judge of these things." In the teaching of the apostle, when he is speaking of men and society, and their relationships, there is hovering above a higher vision or ideal. Now, in the passage which I have selected from Galatians, you will observe that we are represented as being " all chil- dren of God by faith in Christ Jesus." And it is declared that in a state of relationship which stands in God through Christ Jesus, or, to put it in more philosophical phraseology, in that state which shall be ours when we come to our ideal manhood, so that we shall possess the divine nature, not having it as we do here in germs, but in its higher devel- oped form all the lower distinctions are abolished. They are relative to a nascent, germinant condition in time, and in the flesh ; but in Jesus Christ " there is neither Jew nor Greek:" national relationships are all swept away on that higher plane. " There is neither bond nor free:" all arbi- trary conditions, relative and subordinate, are gone in that higher stage, however necessary they may be in these lower physical circumstances. " There is neither male nor female" however indispensable the one and the other may be to the relations of human life on earth. In the spirit- world all that which is relative to time and the body ceases. " You are all one [that is, alike] in Christ Jesus " the crowned head and the peasant ; the armed warrior and the feeblest child ; the mightiest philosopher and the boy at school ; men and women ; foreigners and they that are bred at home ; bond and free. In that higher manhood all those relation- ships which here necessarily and properly discriminate men, and set them apart from each other, are so changed that it is not right to conceive of the other life from the divisions which belong to this life. The relationships which we have there are higher and nobler than any that we have here. And so it is with the other passage which I read, " We are no more strangers and foreigners." That is to say, all those enclosures in which men live in this mortal state, all those household divisions which exist here, in the higher SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 147 state are unknown ; and we have a glimpse of this, as I shall show, even in this world. As we pass along by the magnificent houses in some street, we know that in them is living the father, and his brood of children that inherit his wealth, and have partici- pated in it. We know that in these houses are bands of people connected together by various ties, and that for the most part they live honorably and joyfully together. If we pass by them at night we see bright lights shining in them, and other evidences of conviviality ; and if we pass them by day we observe signs of comfort and happiness. Now, though I may be a very respectable man, I should not think it right for me to walk into one of these houses unbidden, and sit down in the parlor, and commence looking at the book, or the picture, or playing with the children. Suppose I did it, and the father came in and looked at me inquiringly, I should not think of saying, " I took the liberty, sir, to come in here. I am no stranger to you. I belong to just such men as you are. These little ones are my children, and these grown people are my brothers and sisters and friends. Do not trouble yourself about me. I will make myself at home here." I think he would stare at me, and would have a right to stare at me, if I did anything of that sort. But the apostle says, " We are no more strangers in the light of the higher development. There is a state, there is a condition, there is a place, in which men and women, wherever you find them, are like each other, and are equal to each other, in Christ Jesus." He means the higher, the heavenly realm of development. The time is coming when we shall be no more strangers and no more foreigners. Now we are divided in spiritual things as we could not be divided by the highest mountains through which tunnels cannot be pierced ; but there is coming a time when we shall not be foreigners in any land, and when we shall all speak the same tongue not literally, but in a sense of spiritual conception. We are now, in this nascent state of existence on earth, connected, in the first instance, by blood, by household con- tiguity ; and that is supposed to be the basis and test of all genuine relationship. 148 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. It is supposed that there may be metaphorical and imag- inary relationships, but that the real relationship is that of the flesh. There is a relationship between parent and child, and between brothers and sisters, in the household, which is noble, and which is justified by its necessities, and made honorable by its fruits ; but is it? the highest relationship ? Out of it does there not grow something higher yet ? What is it that by-and-by takes one away from both father and mother, to one with whom he has no blood-relationship and no kinship, to give to her a more absorbing love, and a more perfect life than he does to father and mother ? It is a new and a higher affection. It is an affection which is founded on elective affinities on spirit reasons. As we go out of the household, we find other mutual relations of men. And first, they are grouped together in neighborhoods, and common exigencies and common neces- sities make neighbors sustain relationships to each other. Sometimes these relationships are vexed by little frets, and bickerings, and envies, and jealousies, and passions. How often neighbors quarrel about a stone-wall that is two inches over the line ; or about some animal that has broken into this or that field ; or about some matter touching the treatment of one another's children ! And so men live in their canine na- ture, in their vulpine nature, all their lives disturbed and annoyed by their passions. And yet, in good neighborhoods, there are important and necessary relations which are fruitful of joy all through one's life. You cannot tell how much you think of a neighbor until you meet him abroad, in Paris, for instance, at the Grand Hotel. He may be a man that you scarcely thought of at home ; he may be a man that you looked upon as a milk-and- water sort of fellow ; as an indifferent kind of person ; as a punctuation point, so to speak, in society ; but seeing him there, you almost kiss him, you are so glad to see him ; and you say, "Why, neighbor, how do you do?" He is glad to see you, too, though he rather wonders at the affection which you display toward him, and which he hardly suspected before. There is a relationship in neighborhood, which is worth SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 149 making better, and which is indispensable to comfortable and kind living. Then we have relationships of a civil character. We are drawn together by our common duties ; by our obligations under the law ; by those things which we are bound to do in partnership for the maintenance of the commonwealth, and for the peace and safety of our own households in connection with the households of others. For so society is built that the interest of each one is the interest of the whole, and the interest of the whole is the interest of each one. Then come arbitrary commercial relationships, in things which may involve honor, rectitude, truth, honesty, pride, vanity and selfishness. They may be high or low just as we gauge them ; but they are real. The partner is next to the brother ; and those who are of the same guild or kind have a sort of connection together, and are related to each other both by antipathies and by sympathies. Now, when I am talking thus, and speaking as far as this, everybody says, "You are on good ground; you are doing very well ; what you say is sensible. Yes, people are related because they are born together, because they live in the same neighborhood, and because they perform the same offices. Yes, the relationships of men in common every day life are good, substantial, effectual relationships. Yes, and men are united together under the same government, in the same state, and in the same county. They are substantially joined together if they belong to the same party. I admit that these are all actual relationships. Yes, and if men are in business together, their interests are co-related. And the playing of partners into each others' hands brings them yet closer together." And I begin to say, "But there are more relationships than these ; there are relationships which are established by reason of taste." "Yes." "There are relationships which are established by reason of like affections." " Y-e-s yes yes ; but don't go too far. Now you are getting on rather misty ground." "There are relationships which are estab- lished by moral similarities and attractions." " Yes per- haps; but I believe in good substantial things. I cannot fly 150 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. quite so high as you can. You are metaphysical. You be- lieve in these invisible isms I do not know what they are ; I suppose they are right ; I think poetry is good in its place ; but I like facts. I like things that I can put my foot and hand on. I am sensible." Yes, and you are sensuous. You believe as far as your sight can go in the lower animal sphere ; you believe a little further as far as those things go which knit you together in business and politics ; but the moment you rise to that plane where those relationships exist which spring out of an ideal manhood which are not merely possi- ble, but certain, being developed partly in this life, and to be developed eminently in the life which is to come ; the moment we lift ourselves up into the realm of our true manhood that moment men's faith begins to fall off, and to say, " Ah ! that is poetry. It is very pretty to think of, but you cannot eat it, nor drink it, nor handle it, nor do much with it." Now, I affirm that the manhood which belongs to our coming state, and which is merely hinted at here by germ- spots, by intimations, are not only real, but are more real than the lower elements of our being. They are real because they have an immortal nature. They are things which do not perish with the using. When flesh and blood go down the soul goes up ; and these qualities which join men to each other are imperishable. They survive time and the grave, and the touch of God shall give them form and validity and endless power. It is this higher relationship that I wish to bring out clearly to your minds. When a man's soul is for the time disen- gaged from its lower relations, it lifts itself into commerce with the divine, it is stimulated, it is infused with the very spirit of heaven, and even here we sometimes get foregleams of that coming life of divine purity. And when, hereafter, the soul shall rise, under this divine loving influence, into its own normal self, into its fullest and realest self, then those divisions which separate us here (which are useful for education, which are necessary to our development), those demarcations and separating lines which divide us, will be done away ; and all ties of consanguinity and affinity will be superseded by the higher and tinier relationship of the soul, SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 151 which will be more real, more penetrating, and more plen- teous in blessing. The invisible and ideal, or, if you please, the romantic conception, is nearer to final truth than the visible and the substantial. AY <.' are, in God's universe, not foreigners to any, nor strangers anywhere. In Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile ; neither bond nor free : men are without such marks as divide one from another in this world. There is an altitude, there is an experience, there is a realm in which souls, coming together, shall all own each other ; all have liberty with each other ; all dwell upon a like plane, and under a like influence this is the apostolic conception of the spiritual future. If this be true, ought we not to seek, not to gratify that which stands immutable in our lower nature, but to gain that which we are to come to, if we come to it at all, by accept- ing Christ ? " As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God." This high relationship is evolved. It is the last and high- est stage of the evolution through which we are going. If we believe in this higher development, and in the nobleness and fruitfulness of it, ought we not to take into consideration revolutionary consideration the fact that a man who lives in these relationships of the body and of the physical globe, lives in the meagerest and poorest elements of his nature. It seems to me that men are paupers, not having devel- oped those elements with which they are endowed. I com- ]>lain of men, I find fault with them, because they build their families, their business, their whole commerce one with an- other, on an animal, visible, sensuous plane because they do not bring down these ideals and glorious possibilities of the future, and employ them to irradiate, refine, sweeten, and ennoble the relationships which do and must subsist between them here. There are some who would say, " Since we are no more strangers and pilgrims, and since we are workers together with God, we ought not to esteem any longer these outward relationships." Nay, because we are tending to a higher 152 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. state it seems to me that these relationships ought to be brighter and sweeter. We talk a great deal about the refinement of the family ; and there are a great many refinements in the family ; yet, when I look at the way in which men live at large, one with another, I am pained at the harshness and hardness of social life ; at its narrow scope of thought and feeling ; at its servitudes ; at its divisions ; at its envyings ; at its barbari- ties ; at its despotisms ; at its cruelties. When I look into the actual structure of life, I see, in one circle, a woman who, by her temper, is a flame of fire ; and I see that there is fever incessantly there ; nor can there be peace. In another circle I see a man, rude, coarse, cruel- mouthed, who rules with an iron hand everybody that comes within his reach. Everything has to yield to him. He treads on a score of people. Their business is to make him happier to fan him ; to pat him ; to feed him ; to take things out of his way ; to soften his path ; to do him good. He stands as a great absorbent of all the light and heat that belongs not only to him, but to all those by whom he is surrounded. He is as great a despot in the family as ever Nero was on the throne of Eome. When I look at the quarrelings in families : when I see how much men live to eat and drink and sleep ; when I ob- serve how low-thoughted they are, how little they manifest that sweetness of affection which serves, and how little there is that irradiates their lives in comparison with what there might be, my heart sickens. There are notable exceptions ; there are admirable types of something better and higher ; yet, looking at the community collectively, men are on a plane but one or two removes from the animal condition. They are purified a little, they are restrained a little, there is a germ of affection here and there, but there is not that which we might be justified in expecting to see in beings who are dignified with the title of sons of God. It is only when we remember that they are God's sons, and that they are under the divine care, that we can look upon them with much complacency. You hear many sermons that tell you that you ought to SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 153 be meek and humble and that is all very well ; but I am afraid that you do not hear many sermons that tell you that you live in your families to growl, and bite, and devour one another; and that the pride and selfishness and vanity oi your nature are more influential than the spiritual affinities than hope, and joy, and love, and peace, and generous sweetness. And I say that if you are sons of God, if you are lifted up by the spirit of God so that you understand the higher, the nobler, and the diviner relations of your natures to each other, you ought to have the benefit of them in your families. You ought to bring these relations down into the household, and to realize them there, to some extent ; you should make the outward and the visible elements of your life work for them. There can be nothing too graceful, or too truth- ful, or too generous, or too disinterested, or too gracious for the household. All that which a man expects to be in heaven he ought to try to be from day to day with his wife and children, and those who are members of his family. The spirit of heaven would diminish greatly the distance be- tween the parlor and the kitchen, between "the stranger that is within thy gates "and thine own self. The house- hold is the strongest institution in our land, and the one that is nearest divine. The Church is not to be compared in fruitfulness of spirit with the family. The Church is bleak and barren as compared with the household. But the house- hold has not begun to rise and shine in this world as it will when the full glory of the Lord shall have arisen upon it. Secondly, in the conditions of man's life, relationships are, and will long be, very low and unfruitful. If in the very family, where we have the advantage of all the helps which come from common loves and common rearing, the higher relationships of life be relatively undeveloped and imperfect, how much more must they be undeveloped and imperfect where the intercourse of men is low and physical, and of the selfish world. There is, in the first place, a spirit of indifference with which we meet men. We meet them not even with as much consideration as that with which ants meet each other. If 154 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. in summer you watch ants as they are running along on the bark of a tree in search of sweet juice's, you will observe that they never come together in streams without kissing. They touch and go, always. But in human life we meet throngs and throngs and throngs of men, and they are no more to us than the shadows which the leaves of trees cast down upon the ground. The sense of the greatness of manhood, the sense of being in a man, is comparatively small. To the great mass of men we are simply indifferent. And then, there are between us and those whom we should love, strivings, and rivalries, and matches of strength or skill. Our relations to them are such as lead to various conflicts and partisan affiliations and oppositions. We are thrown con- tinually into antagonism toward men. We are on the jar with them almost all the while. If you put on all the pres- sure of the bellows of this organ, and pull out all the stops, press all the keys and pedals together, and bring out that multitudinous groaning and screaming and roaring which would be produced by all the discordant and clashing notes of the instrument, that's New York. You have thought, perhaps, on seeing me go up Wall street, and look on one side and on the other, that I was thinking about stocks ; that I was wishing I knew how to get some of that gold which was stored there: I was not thinking of any such thing. I may have wished that I could plan a little more wisely about money matters, but that was not the burden of my thoughts.' When I have been over there, I have watched how men came together ; how insincere they were in their courtesies ; how they were actuated by self- interest ; how politic they were ; how they watched each other for an opportunity to get the advantage. There is a general superficial good nature, there is a certain amount of good fel- lowship, and men meet each other with kindly feelings, appar- ently ; but when you come to look in where the man is him- self in the plenitude of his power, how superficial are these relationships ! and how real are their collisions and strifes ! Men go armed, not with visible mail, but with mailed thoughts. Men sift what is said to them. They suspect the utterances of their fellow-men. They take every man as he SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 155 comes, and measure him, and sit in judgment on what he says and does. The spirit of peace is not in them. The intercourse of men in business is on a low plane. The animal part of it is in the preponderant. That which allies men with the great herd of lower animals, the self- defensory or aggressive element, the passion of life, gives tone character and color even to their manners. Society is very low down in the scale. If you measure it by the intelligence which prevails in Caffraria, if you com- pare its condition with that in which men live in Nootka Sound or Nova Zembla, if you take a standard that is low enough, we live very high ; but if you take a conception of manhood in Christ Jesus, that is full of sympathy and gentle- ness and genial influence and lovingness, and measure the way in which men live in society by that standard, then our relations are very coarse, and society is low-toned. What is called high-toned society is the lowest of all, half the time for T think that feigned good will, and insincere affections, or mere conventional kindness, that carries under it all the poison of envy and jealousy, is worse than the same thing in a less guileful, and so in a less harmful, form. Thirdly, men in this world have a right to each other in a far higher sense than they have to any considerable extent been accustomed to recognize. I suppose there is nobody who has not some little bit of liking to trace his ancestors. I have spent many hours in New Haven, where my great ancestors landed, in looking up the books, and ex- amining the name of Beech er, on one side, and that of Foote on the other. I like to know who these ancestors in my family were, and what they did ; (and it will undoubtedly be a great pleasure to you to know that I have traced up on both sides until I have found a Coat of Arms!) Now, that instinct is not to be despised. That is a low form of it which consists in tracing one's physical relation- ship. But I rejoice to think that on the higher plane, not by a figure of speech, and not metaphorically, but in the counsel of God, and in the eternal verity and reality of the spirit life, every noble man and every noble woman that ever lived on earth were my brother and my sister, or my ancestors. No 156 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. man ever thought nobly and lived nobly of whom our hearts should not say, He was one of my ancestors. I am right in the line of that man. No man ever wrought to make the world better, that he was not my brother. No man ever labored to exemplify the coming manhood, that he was not kindred to me. Whatever nation he belonged to, he belonged to my nation. Whatever language he spoke, he spoke my language. Whatever sphere he wrought in was my sphere. Whether he was crowned or uncrowned, he was of my lineage. I own him ; and if he is saved he owns me. And all over the world, there are no spirits bearing and enduring, with fortitude and with cheerfulness, in obscurity, that they are not my unknown relations. I have brothers and sisters, oh how many ! My father has an enormous family for my father is God. My eldest brother is named Jesus Christ. And the relationships which spring out of this fatherhood and this brotherhood how many they are ! Those sweet spirits who watch in sick rooms through months and through years living sacrifices for the sake of the poor and the suffering they are my sisters. Jesus said, "Who is my mother ? and who are my brethren ?" " Who- soever doeth the will of God, he is my mother, my brother and my sister." And so, wherever, all over the world, men are denying themselves for rectitude, and enduring for that which is just and true, and living courageously for the right, and exemplifying purity and sweetness, and diffusing happiness, let us be able to claim them and say, They are my brethren ! I have a great many friends in Rome, and the Pope is one of them. He would not come to see me, I suppose ; but I would as lief go to see him as not. He would hardly say that I was orthodox ; but I really believe that he is orthodox ; and I would ordain him if he wanted me to ; and I would let him preach here if he asked the privilege. I believe he is a good old man. As to the cobwebs which he has in his head, those will be brushed away before long, and he will laugh to think how many gewgaws and phantasies he has had. And you, yourself, in another place, have as many as he. We all have them some in one way, and some in another. But what- SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 157 ever in him is good and true and pare and right makes him my brother. The Catholic Church that great extended organization I consider, as a church, to be excessively operose, full of ac- cumulated rubbish ; like an old mansion in which a miser has lived, who would not allow anything to be sold, and who put everything in the garret cradles, truckle-beds, furniture, dishes, broom-handles and the like through ages, until it has become a vast museum of stuff miserable stuff. The Church of Rome is crowded full of fables and superstitions and dog- mas ; and it has a wonderful power of cataloguing ; and it puts them all in order, and makes an inventory of them, and tries to have a use for each one ; but yet, there are many good things in the Church of Rome. Everybody has his baby- house, his toys, his little artificial things ; and in that church there is a vast amount of rubbish ; but it has a great deal of feeling that is right and pure and heroic. It has a great deal that is of the spirit of the very sweetest and choicest spirit of Christ or of God. And there is not a true man or woman in that church to whom my heart does not say, " Brother, sister, you are mine." All good people in that church are mine, not oratorically, or rhetorically, nor by any figure of speech, but by a relationship which is higher than that of brother or sister, father or mother. The body cannot make such a relationship as the soul can. Soul-blood is more than body-blood. I bless God for the Catholic churches which are spread- ing in this country. I would not hinder them. Some think that a proper examination for a candidate for the church would be this : " Do you acknowledge yourself to be a sin- ner ?" "I do." " Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ ?" "I do." " Do you hate the Catholics ?" "I do." Step in, then you are all right." I believe in no such creed as that. I acknowledge every man to be a Christian brother who shows himself to be in the temperature of eternal summer, which is the temperature of love, whether he be Catholic, or Episcopalian, or Methodist, or Baptist, or Lutheran, or Congregationalist, oj- Swedenbor- gian, or Universalist, or Unitarian. I do not care what hat 158 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. a man wears. It is the man under the hat that I care for. I do not care what name you put on a gathering of men if they give evidence that the Spirit of God is in them. By my higher manhood I come into unity with them, though by my lower manhood I am incited to contend against them. I do not preach Calvinism ; I abhor the central idea of it ; but I think there is not a better service of God on earth than that of a great multitude of theologically Calvinistic preach- ers ; and do you think I feel oppugnation toward them ? No, I glory in them. I am glad, sometimes, that other persons can preach things which I cannot conscientiously preach, but which answer certain ends of society in its crude state. Do you think that I am opposed to the great Episcopal Church in its relations in England, in its past history, in the plenitude of its interior experiences, in its multitude of pious men and women, in its long procession of learned works that have spread the light and humanity of the Gospel on the globe ? Do you think I would put any obstacle in their way ? They might not let me preach in their pulpits ; but I do not care for that. They might not let me go to their communion ; but I do not care for that. Why should I care for the com- munion table so long as I can go to the bosom of the Saviour himself ? These are outward things. They are mere shadows. The weak need them ; but there may be a strength that does not need them. There are a great number of archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons, and holy men and women in that church who are mine in whatever there is of them that will last until after death, and stand in the other life, in the es- sential elements of humanity, and especially that part of humanity which is sanctified by the spirit of the living God. Do you think that the great outlying Methodists of this nation our Christian brethren that are carrying the truth of God into every remote part of this land are alien from me because they differ from me in certain ordinances and regulations ? I bless God for the existence of every one of them. So I have a sense, not that I stand strong in this church, or by reason of the number of Congregational churches in New England, and in the West and Northwest. For certain SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 159 reasons I am gratified by the gradual increase of Congre- gationalism and Congregational churches ; but this is no rea- son why I should not, and no reason why I do not, take pleas- ure in the increase of the other churches. If anybody thinks he can vex me by starting a Presbyterian church right in this neighborhood, iet him try it. I will rejoice in it. If anybody says, " You ought to go into that neighborhood and preach, for the Catholics are taking entire possession of it," I say, "Let them take possession of it." I would rather that they should have it all than that nobody should have it. Though it will be a good thing also to start some other church in their neighborhood ; for 1 think it better for all the sects that other sects should stand near to them. I think that the action of the sects upon each other is wholesome. At any rate, it keeps them in order and stirs them up. All emulations which are not grating and bitter, and which are confined within reasonable bounds, are perfectly right and wholesome ; and if churches filled with those that love God and their fellow-men are affiliated, you will notice that the moment they rise to a higher plane the spirit of rivalry will cease among them. When on an occasion of special interest, as during a revival of religion, you bring together in a great public meeting members of all the Christian churches, and let them sing and pray together, you will see that all their repulsions and divisions in an instant fade out. The heart- experiences of Christian men affiliate them, and bring them by elective affinity into a moral likeness. Those inspirations and relationships which belong to men's coarser and lower life become more influential when men are in a backslid- den state, and make them sectarian ; but the higher inspira- tions and relationships always make them free and large- minded. I remark, once more, that this sense of higher relation- ship, as found in the actual interplay of the higher faculties, or of the faculties in their higher conditions, is a kind of fore-token of the relationships in our future home, and casts upon the dreaded fact of dying a cheer which it much needs, and which it seldom has. The joy of the other life is not simply that we are saved. He is living on a very low plane 160 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. who thinks that salvation is all that is to be thought of, and who is satisfied with just escaping damnation. If I go to Europe on a steamship (as I shall not !), my idea of going on a pleasure voyage there, is to make a prosperous passage right straight across, and wake up some morning, and see the crew gathered together on deck, and see the blue line of the land stretched out before us. The sweetest sight that my eye ever rested on was the coast of old Ireland when 1 first went toward the shores of Europe. The sea was be- hind me, and the land was before me, and its breath came off to where I was, and I smelt the summer of the soil. I never knew how good it was before. And I went up the channel, clear round to Liverpool, rejoicing at every head-land and sail, and entered the harbor and cast anchor triumphantly. So one wants to make a voyage. But if, in making a voyage, one founders off the coast, and the ship goes down, and other passengers go down, and he swims for his life, and is caught up by a fisherman's boat, half spent and almost insensible, and is brought into some squalid fishing station, and is re- stored to life again, and wakes up to the consciousness that he has had a little bad brandy poured into his mouth, and in his bewilderment asks, " Where am I ?" and is told that he is in " la belle France," he says, " Well, it is better to have landed here under these circumstances than not to have landed at all; but it is not exactly as I expected that it would be." Now, a great many men come to feel about so in regard to getting to heaven. If at last they can be pulled in, so that when the gate is shut they are inside, that is all they care about. If they can get in somehow they will be satisfied. It is a base, selfish, animal desire, just to wish to be rid of pain. There is no inspiration in it. There is no nobleness in it. There is in it no sense of what it is to be a son of God. Now, I look forward to the other life, and to dying, not as to the putting a screen between me and every possible dan- ger. It is that, and I appreciate it in this lower sense ; but it is also that I am to be in the general assembly of the church of the first-bom' ; it is that I am to come into blessed SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 161 acquaintanceship and fellowship with the noblest men who have lived on the earth since it had an existence ; it is that I am to go where is Father, where is Jesus my elder Brother ; it is that I am to be in the presence of the nobility of the uni- verse ; it is that I am to stand in that glorious company where my children shall see me, and your children shall see you. My father and mother are there, and your father and mother are there. My brethren and companions are there, and so are yours. A great company from out of this church are there ; and how much purer and more worthy of being remembered with a burning memory of love and sympathy are they now than when they were in our midst ! Do you believe in the communion of the saints ? Do you believe that the saints above are in sympathy with the great multitude of saints that are on earth ? Do you believe that because they have gone out of sight they are lost ? Do you think, because they have risen to a spiritual realization of the eternal sphere, that they are no more yours ? The sound, the noise, the uproar, of this life is but the world's hand that beats time to us as we are moving on toward the real life, and the real heaven, where God brings together those who are fit to live in all the elective affinities of a true spiritual man- hood. Christian brethren, tear away the crape from your doors. Take the black off from your persons. Look cheerfully upon death. Make the tomb bright and beautiful. All the steps which lead to it are full of hope. When men know that they are coming to riches, the tokens of increasing abundance do not distress them ; and why are yon distressed because your hair is white ? Why do you mourn because your eyesight is failing? Why are you made unhappy because your hand begins to shake ? Why do you lament because old age is creeping upon you ? These signs of infirmity all betoken your approach to the blessed land above. How can the chestnut drop its fruit unless the burr ia some way is made to open ? And so the frcet bites the burr, and lets out the nut, that it may come to life again. And how shall we be liberated from the restrictions and hindrances 162 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. of this life if there is not something to open the burr and let out the spirit ? These tokens of decadence in us, if we read them in the light of the higher life, are but the approaching steps of deliverance. A man that for twenty years has been endungeoned, under the old government of Kome, to-morrow is to see the light of day. All night he cannot sleep, for thinking how the world will look to him. In the morning, afar off his ear detects the sound of tramping in the court-yard, and hears some gate creak and crash back, and the key turn in the rusty lock. Nearer, he hears the long unused bolt of some huge door, with much pains pulled back, and the iron clashing which is caused by opening and shutting it. Now he hears voices ; and they come nearer; and at last the key is put into the door of his own cell, and it turns in the lock, and the bolt falls back, and the jailor comes in with his companions, bringing a rescript of liberty, and all the implements by which his chains shall be taken off. And does a man sit and cower and cry and shrink because he is being liberated, as you do lest death shall set you free ? All these tokens of approaching dissolution are to be hailed with joy by those who believe that Christ, who rose from the dead, will bring us, by a glorious resurrection, from the dead, and that this resurrection is not a resur- rection of the body (flesh and blood cannot inherit the king- dom of God), but that it is a resurrection of the spirit, by which the soul shall be lifted out of these earthly training conditions, and brought into a state of freedom ; so that turning whichever way you may, in all the universe of God, you shall meet not one stranger, and shall hear voices sweeter than any music on earth, and the heart shall say, " I am no longer a stranger or a foreigner ; I am with God, and Christ, and the good men of every age, my parents and children, and companions all ;" and the thought wreathes itself as fragrance about me ; and I say, " Why did I fear and push from me the beatitude and blessedness of my real life ? " aged matron ! rejoice in your growing infirmities ; the jailor is drawing nearer and nearer to let you out. vencr- SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 163 able father ! tremble on, and rejoice that the way is almost passed over, and that every one of the infirmities of this life shall be left behind, and that your manhood shall be as en- during as the throne of God. child, fear not to go. Fear not, maiden, to depart. The joys that you leave behind you, compared to the joys to which you go, are as the poor flowers of the wilderness compared with the flowers that blossom in a garden. And when those have gone out of life who were dear to you, do not look upon death timidly, or as a man of unfaith looks upon it, with blank despair. Remember that you have sent your children and friends into the relationships and plenitude of love, where all shall be one in Christ Jesus, blessed and blessing forever. 164 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. PRAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON. THOTT dost not wait, our Father, for our petitions. It is not for thy Bake that we draw near and pray to thee, but for our own. We are glad that thou art patient to listen and willing that we should draw near to thee. That thou shouldst desire it is because thou art a Father; and we know how fathers feel toward their children. Even with their imperfections and faults, how does their love bathe them, and clothe them, and perfect them ! And in thy sight we can only stand approved in the atmosphere and prophecy of thy love in that which we are, and are to be, through thy grace. So we draw near in prayer, not in a meager, poverty-stricken way, as if we were beggars, and as though thou neededst to be persuaded and informed : we come knowing how generous thou art, how affluent thou art, and knowing that such a nature as thine, of sympathy and perfection, stands quick and ready to pour forth blessings. We rejoice that even in the asking we are supplied and over-supplied, not alone in the things which we ask, if they be possible, but in other things multitudinous. We rejoice, O Lord, that thy gifts are so plen- tiful and so wonderful in their variety. If, being sick, we sigh for the wind to blow that it may cool our cheek, blowing, it also lifts the leaves, wafts fragrance through the air, and cheers a thousand others; bringing a multitude of mercies that are not thought of; and so the breath which thou dost breathe upon our souls briugeth not alone what we ask, but innumerable other things. Sitting central as thou dost in the midst of all divine influences, and pouring forth life every- where, how canst thou turn thyself every whither, and bestow thy grace upon all! We rejoice in thy sovereignty. We rejoice in the creativeness of thy love. We rejoice that we are all called to thee not to be ranked among animals. We rejoice that there is that in us which reaches far above the flesh into the unknown, and touches God, and is touched by him, and is yet to be fashioned into the divine likeness perfectly, as now it is rudely and imperfectly. And in this hope we desire to live above the world while we are in it, and are using it, and are seeking another and a better land. We pray that we may live in ennobling thoughts of thee, and labor for the work- ing of thy Spirit, and thy divine love in every soul. Cleanse us, we pray thee, from pride and vanity, and all hindering passions ; from all outward faults; from temptations that overtake us; from easily besetting sins; from habits imperfectly controlled. Grant that we may become free in Christ Jesus, and turn sensitively toward things which are good, and with an irresistible attraction towards thee. and away from things that are dark and sluggish, and cold and hate- ful, sin-bred and filled with misery. We pray, O Lord, that thou wilt draw near, this morning, to those in thy presence who need thee by reason of any special dealings of thy providence with them. Are they children of joy by reason of the overflowing of thy goodness? Then may their joy lift them up, and not make them selfish. May the prosperity of those who, this morn- ing, rejoice in alertness of spirit and good cheer be consecrated in SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 165 thanksgiving and praise. May those who have, through thy good- ness, achieved the ends which they have long sought, rejoice because they can associate thy foresight and guardianship with all the stages through which they have come. May it be a thing to be rejoiced over, that by God's great help we live from day to day and achieve successfully the tasks of life. Be with those who are in the midst of not unwelcome trials and troubles ; be with those who are manfully bearing this world's bur- dens ; performing its duties ; venturing the things that are to be ven- tured. May all acquit themselves as men, gird up their loins, and never faint. Taught of thee, and day by day receiving fresh supplies from thy unwasting Spirit, may they go on courageously in the work which thou hast imposed upon them. May they this day have the divine blessing and impulse resting upon them. We pray that more and more they may be able to consecrate their powers and endeavors to the welfare of men, and to the honor and glory of God. We beseech of thee that thou wilt draw near to any who are weak ; to any who are sick; to any who are in the gloom of trouble. Wilt thou irradiate their room, if they be hindered from comine to the sanctuary. Wilt thou be with them wherever they watch, and wher- ever they wait. Grant that they may easily open their arms, forth from which are to go God's angels, lent to them for a little while. Draw near, our Father, to all who are poor and who are suffering from the mischiefs, and cares, and anxieties which befall them. Grant that though they are poor outwardly, they may be rich of heart, and that they may trust in the divine bounty, though they seem withheld from human bounty. May they be sustained, know- ing that they are pilgrims and strangers here, and that it will be but a little while ere they will go hence. May their faith not fail them. May they not suffer from double poverty without and within. We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing upon the young. We thank thee that there are so many who are being nurtured in the Lord. Grant that those that are in our midst may grow up to all manliness; to truth; to fidelity; to industry; to frugality; to tem- perance in all things; to purity of thought and feeling; to all noble ambitious ; to the lore of mankind ; to the love, and reverence, and obedience of God. Bless our schools. Bless those who superintend or minister there- in. Bless the teachers and officers of these schools. And we pray that it may not be the "knowledge of the letter alone, but also thnl knowledge that maketh wise unto salvation, that shall be imparted and received. We thank thee for so much success as has been grant- ed to these little assemblies. May thy Spirit, with its ever-quicken- ing power, abide in their midst. We pray for thy blessing upon all those who go forth to make known the unsearchable riches of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, in the waste places, in the by-ways, among the poor and sick, along our wharves, in jails, and prisons, and poor-houses. May those who have volunteered to cheer the unfortunate, and degraded, and desolate, be filled with the very Spirit and with the abundant blessings of the Lord their Master whom they imitate. 166 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. Bless, O Lord, the churches of this city, and of our whole land, that are working for thy cause. Be pleased to bless the President of these United States, and those who are joined with him in author- ity, and the Congress assembled. Grant that all their counselings may be wise, inspired and overruled for the furtherance of thine own purposes. Bless the Legislatures of the different States, the courts, the judges, the magistrates, and all rulers. Grant that the citizens may live obedient lives; that intelligence and morality may prevail; that the hearts of this people may more and more cleave together; and that there may be essential unity throughout the entire nation. Nor do we pray selfishly for ourselves alone. May thy bounties become universal. May those jealousies cease which have sepa- rated nations so long, and those angry passions which have dashed one upon another. May the day come when there shall be the true fellowship of a true brotherhood. May men rise to a higher plane of life. May men seek after the things which shall strengthen, and not for the things that shall weaken one another. May all ignorance and superstition disappear; may the lower feelings cease to rule; may the Spirit of God with all wisdom dwell with all mankind, and this world become as the kingdom of heaven. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen. PEAYEE APTEE THE SEEMOK OTTB Father, we pray that thou wilt take away from us the shadow which overhangs the bright and blessed valley through which we seek thee. Bring us at last, we pray thee, to some faith in thy truth. O how long shall the heavens drop down upon us promises! How long shall thy words be in our ears not understood ? How long to the dumb and to the deaf shall they call from off the walls of heaven, saying, Come? How long shall we believe in things which belong to the body, and not in things which belong to the soul ? Blessed Spirit, give to us something of our birthright ; something of the vision that belongs to us ; and grant that our sorrows, which have so surged about us in the past, may, at the coming of Christ, be assuaged. Grant that our disappointed hopes may seem to be grafted on a bet- ter and more enduring stalk in the other life. May we rise up and set our affection on things above, where Christ sitteth, on the right hand of God, and not on things upon the earth. Wilt thou bless us, now, for the rest of this day, and prepare us for its events, and for thy kingdom at last, through riches of grace in Christ Jesus. Amen. CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. ' Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation ; continuing instant in prayer." ROMANS xii. 12. This may be called a maxim of life, or a very brief, con- densed charter of happiness. Joy is not a faculty ; it is a quality of action, or a mood which may belong to any or to all of the faculties of the human soul. There is a double action, both of the physical organization and of the mental. The nerve that is in health, and is directed according to its own nature, responds pleas- antly and joyfully. If it be in unhealth, or if it be directed contrary to its nature, it has the inverse power that of the infliction of pain. Properly speaking, pain is a quality of the body; suffering is a term which designates pain of the mind. In respect to the faculties of the soul, in one way their action inspires enjoyment. If they be violated, or if they be wrongly coupled, or apportioned, or dealt with, then they have the power of producing suffering. Now, pain or suffering, whether it be of the body or of the mind, is not primary. It is not the end for which the body and the mind were created. It is cautionary, alterna- tive, remedial. Pain bears to the body, and suffering bears to the mind, the same relation which medicine bears to the physical system. It is not food. It is that which is taken for the purpose of restoring health where it ia impaired. And pain or suffering is either cautionary, indicating that we SUNDAY MORNING, May 3, 1374. I.ESSON : Eph. i. 11-23; 1L 1-7. HTITNS (Plymouth Collection): Nog. 217. 922. 170 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. are going wrong ; or remedial, to bring us back from wrong ways ; or educational, to inspire us to a higher development of life. Joy is normal, or it is that which best becomes every faculty. It is the response which we have a right to seek, and which we have a right to expect, from every faculty of the human soul. In us, as imperfect beings, working up- ward, suffering is needful ; but the needfulness of it is a sign of our inferiority, of our limitation, of our defects ; and all forms of discipline, all self-denials, all cross-bearings, all cares and burdens and griefs, are signs of relative imperfec- tion. And they are not to bo despised. Nor are we to suppose that any man in this life at any rate, until the later periods of it will escape suffering and pain. It is one thing to regard pain and suffering as secondary, and instrumental to a higher purpose ; it is another thing to think that they are legitimate things to be sought as if they were good in themselves. The ideal of perfectness is that of the mind acting in a mood so. high that there is pleasure in all its action. Pleas- ure is the testimony of any faculty that it is acting in health and aright. Now, is Christianity to be a pain or a pleasure ? I mean ideal Christianity. Is religion to be a paean, as of victory, or a requiem, as of defeat ? Is it set to the key of joy or to the key of sadness ? In reading the New Testament promiscu- ously, you will find that both things are continuously recog- nized namely, the certainty of suffering, and of exaltation by suffering. You will find also that the New Testament is full and overflowing with the idea of joy and rejoicing. It becomes a question, therefore, of rank or gradation : Which is characteristic joy or pain and suffering ? Suffering and pain are characteristic of an imperfect condition ; and all right enjoyments are characteristic of growing perfectness, or of a tendency toward perfection. Joy is a sign of health and virtue and holiness. Sorrow is a sign that we are taking medicine for the sake of health, but that we have not yet reached health. Keligion may therefore be a mere yoke, or it may be a CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. 171 freedom from bondage. It may be, like a tune, set either to the major or to the minor key. It may be played slow, and therefore it may be dull ; or it may be rendered with a spark- ling effect. The popular idea of religion is on the whole dolorous. It is very much a commercial transaction. "We pay a certain amount of sorrow here for the sake of getting a dividend of joy hereafter. We are willing to give up a great many things which are good and desirable now for the sake of receiving an equivalent, or more than an equivalent, by and by. People who are exhorted to become Christians feel that they are called from liberty to circumscription. From the great world, with all its ambitions and freedoms and pleni- tudes and excitements, to a strait and narrow way of the church in which they are to be children of hours, and days, and methods, and ordinances, and deprivations. To be a Christian seems to most people as my condition used to seem when I was forbidden the street, and the fields, and the forest, and the whole round of nature, and was told that I must not go out of the door-yard. " You may play in the door-yard, but you must not go outside of it," it was said to me ; and I remember how wistfully I used to look down the street and see the boys playing in their freedom. I recollect how crazily I heard the drum and fife on military training days, and caught glimpses of the red coats as they marched to and fro down town. How these things used to stir my imagination ! and how it grieved me that I, a poor little boy, was shut up there in the door-yard, and made to behave myself! There are many who think that being in the church is being in the Lord's door-yard, and not being allowed to go outside of the gate, and play with bad boys, nor to roam in the forests. I do not so regard it. To be a child of religion is to be like a bird taken out of its cage, let loose, and taught how to fly through all the air, and in the branches of every tree. It is to be a soul taken out of its prison-house, and given its liberty, and taught how to use it. There is no man so fit to live a religious life as he whose soul has derived free- dom from his God. Religion, as presented to the world, has gone through very many moods. There have been periods of the world in which 172 CHRISTIAN JOYFTTLNESS. religion was presented in its ascetic form. It is so presented in some quarters at the present day. In other words, because pain has been constantly an instrument and part of discipline, men have deified it. Self-denial, mortification of the flesh, and the crucifixion of lusts to these, undue emphasis has been given. Religion has been preached as though the more pain, the more virtue ; as though the more self-denial, the more Christian development. The ascetic school has dam- aged Christianity exceedingly. There is still, in the popular notions of religion, and in much of the teaching which pre- vails on the subject of religion, this vitiating element of asceticism, which makes pain and suffering a part of it : not an education toward it, but an element belonging to its very substance. Then, as a shade removed from that, after openly avowed asceticism had been measurably rejected, there came up a school that held what may be called the sober, solemn view ; and religion has been preached as a grand sobriety, as a mag- nificent solemnity ; and men have been taught to have such a sense of the dangers of the future, and of the awful respon- sibilities which are laid upon them in view of the risks of the future, that they have maintained to the utmost a sober and solemn aspect. Now there are hours for solemnity, there are hours for sobriety ; but to characterize religion by sobriety or solemnity is as if a man should characterize nature by comparing it with the night instead of the day ; or as if a man should point out caves, gorges, and the shadows of trees, and say, " These are the emphatic things." Which is the most, the tree or the shadow that it casts ? If you will read the New Testament, you will find that it constantly recognizes the reality of suffering, and that it gives a deep undertone of solemnity to it ; but after all, let one read the New Testament, and he will find joy the regnant quality. The word joy, if you take your Concordance and look for it, you will find to be as thick on its pages as the dandelions will be in a week in the meadows. The New Tes- tament fairly sparkles with a conception of joyfulness. Then there is a view of Christianity which continually CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. 173 makes conscience the vital point. So men are self-studious. They are all the time intently watching and judging them- selves. They are under an anxious fear lest they shall violate conscience. There is a tension of their mind which prevents much naturalness or freedom in their lives. It is compre- hended in the general phrase, a sense of responsibility. Now conscience is a foundation quality. There are a great many qualities which are indispensable, but which are not lovely when they are constantly projected into the fore- ground. Conscience is to a man's mind what bones are to his body. Bones are good things when they are well covered up ; but they are very ghastly things when they are bare. Many Christians are like skeletons that show nothing but bones ; and they talk much of conscience, and the awful duties and responsibilities which are imposed upon them. These are specimens of osteology which ought to be excluded from the sanctuary. Love is mightier than conscience, and joy is the result of both love and conscience. Conscience is the bones, love is the nerves, and joy is that which gives color to the whole. There are false views of life growing out of these imper- fect, erroneous presentations of Christianity. Look, for instance, at the tracts which are distributed on the subject of religion. I can understand how about one half of these tracts, if a man was only sick, in a morbid condition, dis- couraged, shut up in a comer, might lead him toward a religious life ; but if a man is in good health, in the full p?rformance of life's real duties, joyous and happy, I can hardly understand how he could have a greater damp thrown upon him than half the religious tracts which are thrown around among men. The best thing about them is that nobody reads them. Look at the pious books which are sent forth through communities. See how almost entirely they run upon the minor key. See how shadowy they are. See how little there is in them that cheers, inspires, and comforts the soul. Now, religion gives to us the largest manhood possible. By it we are brought out of lower conditions, and out of all manner of circumscriptions. The aim of true Christianity 174 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. is to double and quadruple the power of a man, his versatil- ity, his liberty, his scope of thought, his power of imagina- tion, his resources of emotion, and in general the magnitude, the soundness, and the joyfulness of his life. It does not simply promise this hereafter ; its object is to produce it here ; and the work, being begun here, is to be carried on and up. and is to be consummated hereafter. The New Testament never once propounds a theory of this or any kind ; but it never strikes a false or mistaken note in its practical directions. It is one of the noticeable things to those who look into this matter, that long before the science of the mind was studied, practical instruction was given as to the education and conduct of the human soul instruction which reached further forward than our senses can under- stand. And when mental philosophy shall be evolved, by the help of physiology ; when we shall have sought out and searched to the bottom the whole theory of the mind, the New Testament will be better understood and appreciated than it is now ; for its practical directions which imply men- tal philosophy, but which have never been fully disclosed to the world, will then be made known in all their bearings. If, then, joyfulness is the mood of life ; if suffering is but alternative and disciplinary ; and if joy, not in the form of ecstacy, but in its higher and more wholesome form, belongs to man's normal condition, then, in the first place, the ques- tion is not whether we shall not sometimes have pain, but whether, our souls coming into commerce with the soul of God, we shall not be able to overcome suffering by the power of true Christianity. It must be that we shall suffer. The Master was made perfect through suffering, as well as through joy. By the joys which were set before him he was enabled to rise through suffering into the amplitude of joy. I take it that in the earlier periods of his life, with some few exceptions, our Lord was supremely happy. He is called "The man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," in the prophecies ; but judging from his history as given in the New Testament, I take it that though there were instances in which he endured great suffering, yet, for the most part his life was one of transcendent enjoyment. I believe that CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. 175 he was one of the most genial and enjoyable men that ever walked in old Jewry. We are to have sorrow and suffering ; but we are not to wear them as garments. It is for us, if we be true Christians, to have such a constant tendency toward joyfulness that when sorrows come we shall be able to strike them through with the light and color of hope. We are commanded to rejoice in hope. Well, rejoice in substance where you have it. Under such circumstances, however, you need no command ; but where the substance is wanting, then rejoice in hope. When the first touches of solemnity or sorrow come, men are inclined to brood over them ; but the true way is to lift one's self higher, and look through all the region round about, and think that though it is dark to-day, better times are coming ; and if you can- not tell what they are, nor when they will come, then rejoice in hope. " But," it is asked, "can you rejoice in the hope of anything which you know nothing about ?" Yes. " I3ut it may not come to pass." Very well, then you will have go much joy for nothing. Try it, and it will seem so good that you will want to try it again, and every time you try it it will seem better and better. "But suppose troubles come so thick and so sharp that you cannot rejoice in hope ?" Then be patient. Do not magnify those troubles. Do not pick them. Do not make sores of pimples. A wholesome mind rises above sorrows ; and when they are gone it does not pluck them back, as if it were bound to be sorrowful, as if sorrow were a sacred thing, and as if you were better for being steeped in sorrow. You are better for having hope- fulness and joyfulness. It is not a question whether we shall have conscience and fear and reason ; for in all our life we are obliged to employ reason, and experience fear, and rest upon conscience ; but, in what atmosphere shall these qualities act ? I have said that joy is not a faculty, but a mood ; and I think it is the atmos- phere in which conscience and fear and reason should act. When I tell some persons that they should have great joy- fulness, they say, " Ah ! you set aside conscience." No, I do not set it aside : I say to it, " You are apt to keep bad com- 176 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. pany." There is no faculty which is so likely to keep com- pany with anger, with self-will, with combativeness, and with cruelty, as conscience. When a man wants to do things which are disallowed and mean and gross, he generally gets into his conscience. If a man is ugly and bitter and hard, you will in all probability find him intrenched behind his conscience. When Paul went to Damascus and persecuted God's people even unto death, he followed the dictates of his conscience. Now, I do not decry the conscience ; but I insist upon it that this, and every other one of the noblest faculties, shall work in the spiiit of joyfulness, and not in the spirit of fear ; that it shall work toward hope and light, and not toward de- spair and darkness. I hold that every man should come into the light of reason ; but reason should work in a cheerful, and not in an ascetic mood. All the normal faculties of men are to be brought into full play ; and the question is whether or not we shall have a reasonable religion a religion which leads to righteousness a religion which is cheerful and buoy- ant. " But suppose we are not of that turn of mind ? " Then that is what conversion will mean in your case. You are to become of that turn of mind. A boy who 'is sent to school is not of the turn of mind to write ; but by instruction and training and practice he will come to it. Few men are at first of an arithmetical turn of mind ; but they will come to it by study and drill. And if a man is not naturally cheerful and courageous, he is to cultivate the element of hope. He is to mount up out of a low and torpid condition to the realm of true manhood, which is one of victorious joy. It is not enough, then, that those who enter into the Christian life should simply avoid evil and seek good. To do these things is a prime constituent of a truly manly life ; but it is not sufficient. A man may avoid evil in a low and groveling way ; and a man may seek good in a poor and pen- urious way. You will take notice, in the New Testament particularly (not in that exclusively : the same thing is also true, in a less degree, of the Old Testament ; for the New Testament was born out of the Old), that it is taught that it is not enough that men should follow right courses, There is CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. 177 always an element of heroism enjoined and prescribed. We are not only to be holy, but we are to have the "beauty of holiness." The command is, " He that giveth let him do it with simplicity." A man may give in such a swelling way that everybody around about him shall know that he is giv- ing, thus imitating the barnyard, where, one poor egg being laid, the hen that lays it cackles, and then all the barnyard and all the neighborhood join in the chorus. And yet there is a modest way of giving, in imitation of the bird that lays its little egg and makes ua ado about it, but goes off flying and singing through the air. There is the barnyard vulgar- ity connected with the giving of many men, who cackle when they give, instead of obeying the injunction to give " witli simplicity." The act of giving should have a moral beauty about it. It is not enough that a man should do the right thing ; he must do it nobly, gracefully, resplendently. And it is not enough that the thing he does should be right and beautiful and noble and graceful and resplendent : it should be joyful. There is not an experience in any man's life that ought not, first or last, to sing. No experience of a man's life should be permitted to go free until it has sung its song. Sometimes when the mother trains the child it is sulky and obstinate, and she is obliged to compel it to do the right thing ; and it does it with a wry face and a crumpled mouth ; and she says, "Now you must be good-natured, dear; I want to see you smile ; I cannot let you go until you laugh ;" and by and by its face clears up, its naughtiness disappears, and she says, "Now you may go;" but the thing was not settled until all the malign feelings were put down, and the benign feelings were made regnant. It is not enough, then, to avoid evil, or even to do right ; the evil must be avoided, and the right must be done, in such a way that it shall be beautiful to men and pleasing to God. "Beauty of holiness" means something. The attempt to be joyful by direct meditation on truths is one of the mistakes which men fall into in undertaking to live Christian lives. That is to say, men know so little about the philosophy of joy that even in the instruction of the sanctuary where the right view is presented, it is often hin- 178 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. dered by its limitations and misconstructions and narrowness of teaching. There are very few men who have power to make themselves happy by meditation. Men say, " Chris- tians ought to be joyful when they think of the victory of faith and the glory of the world to come, and when they think of this or that great spiritual truth." Yes, that is certainly so ; but not one in a thousand has the generating power of brain by which to supply himself with thoughts of these things and keep them regnant in life. If a man were joyful only when he was thinking technically of relig- ious truths, he would not be joyful much of the time. There are not many men whose minds, for any considerable portion of the time, are or can be devoted to religious meditation. I need not tell you that many religious people are dis- agreeable. There are many people who are conscientious, and pure-minded, and right-hearted, and whom you have not the least doubt will, when they come to die, triumph and go to heaven ; and yet they are not agreeable. Children do not like them and that is a pretty good test ; naturally simple people do not like them and that is another pretty good test. They are rigid. There is a want of elasticity about them. They seem stiff. They are unattractive. Now, if a man believes that in order to be joyful he must always be thinking about Jerusalem ; that he must always be thinking about the doctrines of religion ; that he must always be thinking about those great spiritual truths which lie be- yond the realm of human experience, he makes a capital mistake. If a man thinks that what is required of him is simply to be joyful over the hymn-book, in the conference meeting, and in the church on Sunday, he is seriously mis- taken. The hymn-book, the conference meeting, and the Sunday services are to yield joy to those who can extract joy from them ; but for the most part the trees of life are so high that little hands cannot reach up and pluck down the blos- soms or the fruit; and if no joy was called Christian joy except that which comes from meditation on high themes, the great mass of humble souls would go without joyfulness. Now, you are to find Christian joy in your duties in the family, and in your duties outside of the family. You are to N' JOYFULNESS. 179 find it in your every-day life at home and in society. You are to find it in your intercourse one with another. The great truths of God's love, of the redeeming power of the Holy Ghost, of the watchfulness of God over men, and of his help- fulness toward them, are to hare such an effect on your mind that when you enter upon your daily tasks you shall have power of hope in you so that you can extract joy from com- mon things. There is where you must get your joy in nature ; in society ; in social intercourse ; in all things. Paul said he rejoiced even in infirmities. Nineteen-twentieth s of our life must be spent in thoughts of physical things, and not of spiritual subjects. A man who is at work in a cabinet shop will be thinking about how he shall provide for his family as well as about the labor which he is performing. A man who is in business will be thinking perpetually how he shall carry that business on successfully. A merchant has a multitude of things to occupy his atten- tion. And how shall these men think of hymns and utter prayers while the influences of outward affairs are pressing in upon them from every side ? Now and then there will be interjectional prayers uttered, and there will be snatches of hymns sung ; but during nineteen-twentieths of the time these men must be occupied in thoughts of their avocations ; and if there were no way to have joyfulness in the necessary occupations of men, we should be slenderly equipped, in the providence of God, for the experience of that joy whose ten- dency is to make life beautiful. Things have been going very badly with a man. It has been hard work for him to get up in the morning and re- sume the toils of the day. He has been running behind in every part of his work, and it has become drudgery to him. Care is beginning to plow deep furrows on his face. But by and by his old partner, who has been gone so long, and who has been supposed to be dead, comes home, and brings tidings of ample capital, and greets him over night, and says to him, " Well, it is all right now. Everything is arranged ; our affairs will be prosperous again. I am sorry to see you in such a drag ; but things will work smoothly after this." The next morning the man does the same things that he did before, but he does 180 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. them in a different mood. Before, he was discouraged and all collapsed ; but now that his partner has said to him, "I am behind you with sufficient means," see how the man goes out courageous and hopeful. One day he is depressed by sad- ness and fear, and the next day he is buoyed up by hope and courage ; and when be has got through his day's work he goes home at night cheerful, having been cheerful all day long. The moment the good news was brought to him a change came over him such that he extracted joy from all his duties and all his surroundings. Have you never gone to your business bearing the thought of some sick one at home ? How at every interval, under such circumstances, between the transactions of the day gloomy thoughts and fears shoot up into your mind ! How the day wears ! By-and-by a joyful reverse takes place, and health comes back ; and then, in the intervals there shoot up into your mind feelings of gladness and joy. With many men, yesterday it was all darkness, and to-day it is all light. Have you never come into an hour of great love ? Have you never come home in vacation with a realization of what you had in father and mother, brother and sister, and friends ? Do you not remember how you could hardly sleep the night before you started for your father's house ? Do you not re- member how you weaned yourself with ecstasy and expecta- tion on the coach during the early part of your journey homeward, and how as you came near your destination your heart became heavy and sad, having used yourself up, and, as it were, petrified your feelings by excess of excitement ; but how, after you became rested, for days and days home and friends seemed blessed to you ? Now, the function of divine truth is to fill the mind with blessed associations of God ; with a realization of the divine government ; with a sense of God's presence and love ; with such a perception of the power of the Holy Ghost in the soul that there shall be victory in business and care and labor. It is not trouble in this life that makes us unhappy : it is the low tone which we are in when we receive trouble. We receive it on such relaxed minds and with so little vitality and courage, that it harasses us when it ought not to, CHRISTIAN JOYFTTLNESS. 181 If a man's skin is abraded in any part, he is sensitive to the finest dust when it falls upon that part ; but if his skin is unbroken and healthy, not only dust but gravel may fall on it and he scarcely feel it ; and thorns will almost produce no impression upon it. Many persons carry minds with such an excoriated skin, so to speak, with so little manhood, so devoid of hope and faith, so wanting in a realization of the life to come, of the grandeur of liberty in God and of sympathy Li Christ Jesus, that when troubles come upon them they have no resource nowhere to fly. There are little birds that live in coarse and low-growing shrubs ; and they are subject to the power of the serpent, and to destruction by the hunter ; but there are other birds who have the liberty of the whole air, and fly to the summits of the tallest trees, and higher even, so that no fowler's arrow can reach them, and no snare can entangle them, and no power on earth can harm them. So there are men who live near the earth where they are subject to a thousand in- fluences which tend to degrade and destroy them ; and there are other men who live above this world, having listened to the call of God who loved them when they were dead in sin as the mother loves the child ; and they dwell in an atmos- phere where no trouble can reach to harm them. When a man is under the inspiration of these truths and a realization of large manhood in Christ Jesus, he has the power to escape from trouble, by the power of patience in trouble. Yes, there is such a thing as a man's being " patient in tribulr.- tion." The same thing means to-day an ounce, and to-mor- row a ton, according to the mood which a man is in. The dynamics of trouble is but little understood. A man goes over to New York. His great affairs are all toppling down. "Whoever speaks to him almost makes him cry. He is under the pressure of bankruptcy. Right before him he sees losses, ruin and poverty. A thousand imaginary wants stare him in the face. But reverse this state of things. Let men put into his possession all that he needs, for as long as he needs it. Now this same man, when he goes to his business, sees things very differently. That which annoyed him yesterday does not annoy him to-day. That which yes- 182 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. terday was almost unbearable to him he can now bear with the utmost composure. That which struck him yesterday strikes a very different man to-day or the same man in a different mood. A man who is happy can bear anything in creation. Courage, hope and joy these lift a man up with scarcely less than an omnipotent power. Your faith and your love are factors of your character and life. A man who brings to his business a sweet and singing soul, a man who brings to the affairs of life an enlightened and ransomed spirit, a man who brings to his avocation true spiritual manhood, will find joy in everything. Everything he looks upon he will turn, in one way or another, to such uses that it will work exhilaration. Now it is a good thing for a man to learn how to be happy in prayer-meetings, and on Sunday in church ; but I think that rational happiness is one of the most wholesome things in the world. That which men are dying for is rational hap- piness. There are those who are not half the men that they ought to be, because they are not impleted with that aerated blood which gives the impulse and the power to overcome circumstances, and turn even adversity to a good account. What Christianity needs is men who are happy, not alone when they go to the concert-room, or the lecture-room, or the church, but at all times men who have a capital of happi- ness which they can carry out into all the spheres of life, so as to be victorious over their cares and trials, and the ten thousand influences which surround them. Look a little at this matter. We have to mix and deal v/ith men more or less. Some of them are ugly ; others are stingy ; others are pompous and disagreeable ; others are imperious and despotic ; others are plausible, smooth and deceitful ; others are spiteful and nagging ; others are like flies, disgusting in their familiarity ; others are like wasps that never touch but to sting ; others go bumping and thump- ing through the world like summer beetles in a room at night; and the tendency of selfishness is to sort out these men and keep each class away from every other ; but the true Christ- like spirit is so large that it tends to incline a man to meet all these men, and have commerce with them, and manifest a CHRISTIAN JOYFtTLXESS. 183 disposition of kindness toward them. Yea, even if they assail you, and follow you up with determined evil, and fill your road with impediments, and beat you down, and perse- cute you, you are to have from Christ such a spirit of meek- ness and gentleness and hope and joy and love that they shall not disturb your happiness. In the tower of the old cathedral at Antwerp, there is a chime of thirty bells, some of which are not larger than a tumbler, and which at every hour ring out exquisite music, some magnificent chant, and every quarter of an hour make a lead out toward it, by way of getting ready. But suppose when the wind blew upon that tower those bells would not play ? Suppose they would not play when the storm raged above it ? Suppose they would not play during biting frosts or intense heat? But there they swing, and always at the appointed time they thrill the air with music, through summer and winter, with a power in themselves which is dependent neither on calms nor storms, neither on heat nor cold ; and though battle itself should rend the air with tumult, at the regular' periods out would gush wondrous melodies, filling all the upper region; and it would be just the same though not a single man was near to listen. And so ought men in the hubbub of life to carry about them a joyfulness which, at every hour and at every quarter hour should sound out, no matter what might be going on above them or below them or around them. There ought to be joy in a man which should at all times make him inde- pendent of his circumstances. There are some things which are necessary, but which are not agreeable. I suppose that if I were to say to my chisel, " Do you like to be put on the hone ?" It would say, " No ; it is a great trial to me that I am ever honed." And I sup- pose if I should say to my saw, "Do you like to be filed ?" It would say, " No ; I wish that I might never be filed again; I hate the sound, and I don't enjoy the feeling." And yet, to be of use, a chisel needs to be honed, and a saw needs to be filed. And the cares and troubles of life are the emery or strop by which men are sharpened and brought to a cutting edge. The trials which men are 184 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. called to undergo are the means by which they are educated. But they take their education hard. They do not under- stand it. They are ignorant of the opportunities which are offered them for development and training in the school of God. What they need is that their experiences should be struck through with the light of Christian faith and joy. I like to hear persons sing. I think I would pay several dollars extra a month to a servant girl who would sing as she worked. A captain on shipboard is sometimes willing to pay for a man that fiddles that he may go along and entertain the crew with music. But what if they could all fiddle ? How much more they would enjoy it ! It is a good thing to have a person in the house who knows how to sing ; but why should not everybody in the house sing ? Why are you snubbed by care you who are the emblem of power in the universe ; you who represent nerve-power, brain-power, soul-power, God-power ? Why is it that you are carried away by little attritions ? Why is it that you knuckle down to things that worry you, and talk about your burdens and responsibilities ? It is a shame. It is a denial of religion. It is bearing false witness against Christ. Ev- ery true Christian should live in the midst of necessary cares and troubles with a joyful spirit, so that those who look shall wonder, and ask, "Where did you get the power to do it ?" A man goes into a shop, and does not drink, nor swear, nor ride on Sunday, nor squander his money. He is a sober, steady man. He is a Christian. And his fellow workmen, observing his life, say, "That may suit him, but it would not agree with my temperament." On the other hand, let a man become a Christian, and go into a shop, and not only avoid evil and follow good, in a general way, but be cheerful under all circumstances : let him be genial though he is balked of his wages ; let him be kind to those who attempt to wrong him ; let him do good to those who persecute him, and everybody will like him better than they did before he became a Christian. A man is sweet-tempered when everybody else is soured in tem- per : when everybody else is tired, and gloomy, and de- pressed, he is full of song and cheerfulness and elasticity ; CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. 185 and men say to him, " You seem to enjoy life all the time," "Yes," he says, "enjoying life is what I mean by being a Christian." " Well," they say, " If I could get into his state of mind, I would like to be a Christian. I always supposed that if I became a Christian I should have to go to church, and quit tobacco, and knock off swearing." No, not a bit of it ; for if after becoming a Christian, you want to swear, you can. I say to every man who has that idea of what it is to be a Christian, " When you love the Lord with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, then you may swear if you want to. I go to Nootka Sound, and take a blubber-eating boy, and propose to bring him home and civilize him. He says, " I don't want to be civilized. If I go with you, you won't let me eat rotten blubber." I say, " Certainly I will ; go to New York and live with me four or five years, and learn to eat such food as civilized people do ; and if at the end of that time you want to eat rotten blubber you may." No man wants to eat rotten blubber after he is civilized, and no man wants to wear after he has become a Christian. Suppose I should say to John Zundel," " You may have discords if you want them." That would be safe, for he never wants them, his ear having been trained to harmony. And I would say to men, " Right is inherently sweeter and better than wrong ; " and when a man once comes into such a condition of life that wrong hurts him, and when he comes to have such a sense of right that he prefers it, there can be no law to him. He is a law to himself. He has that in him which is his guide. Now, if we had fewer of the mechanical processes of reli- gion, fewer of its technical doctrines, and more of the love and sweetness and light and joy and undying inspiration which belongs to Christianity, what a proclamation we should be to everybody ! One true Christia^ in a house is like an organ in that house. It takes only one Ponce de Leon rose to fill a room with fragrance. If there is one in the parlor, the instant I come in I know that it is there, though I do not see it. And what if I had a whole garden full of them ? It is a shame that Christianity has so little power among 186 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. men. It is a shame that the influence of Christian men in the world is so feeble. The reflected light of Christianity in a man who is a Christian ought to be so beautiful to the imagination, to the reason, to all the higher faculties, as to lift men out of vulgarisms and animalisms into spirituality. A man who is a Christian ought to stand in such contrast with men who are not Christians that every one who beholds him shall not only wish to be like him, but shall glorify God on his account. And. what a criticism this is on popular Christianity ! It gives light also on the subject of living high or low Christian lives. The older I grow, the less I am disposed to put men under yokes and burdens, the less im- portant do I regard it that men should become nominal and technical Christian people, and the more essential do I feel it to be that they should become inwardly Christians. And in receiving into the church so large a number as we have on the present occasion, I have felt moved to celebrate this day of their public espousal of their connection with God by presenting Christianity in its aspects of hope and liberty and elasticity and sweetness and gladness. I do not want any more poor, maimed Christians. Well, I will take them in if they were poor and maimed before, in order that their condition may be made better in order that the halt may leap, and that the leper may be cleansed ; but I am not willing that they should come into this church to see less than they saw before ; to be more restricted than they were before. I am not willing that they should come in feeling, " I must do such and such things so that I may have my reward in the life to come." I am not willing that they should come in saying, "I wonder how much freedom I can have ; I wonder how far I can go in the enjoyments of worldly things ; I wonder whether I can go to the opera, whether I can dance, and whether I can play cards at home. Of course, I do not want to violate (Christian rules ; but I would like to know how far I can safely go in these directions. I am going to take just as much secular enjoyment as I can and not lose my soul." I do not want any such Christians. All things are yours, if you only are Christ's. "Hence- forth I call you not servants," saith the master to his CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. 187 disciples, " but friends ; for the servant knoweth not what the master doeth." The servant is not admitted to intimacy and to counsel ; but you, if you are Christ's and are lifted above the lower environments of this world into the realm of love and purity and holiness, become judges, severally, of what is right and wrong in your sphere. I long to see men brought into the church more noble, more manly, larger, carrying themselves in trouble and in trials with a heroism and courage which shall give others to know that they are con- verted. I long to see men come into the church in order that they may blossom outside of the church. I would have men come into the church that they may become more fragrant, freer and more joyful. In Christian life, under such circum- stances, there is increase of joy. Joy that becomes peace is the highest joy in the world. Turbulent joys are the lowest forms of joy, always. Ecstacy is not as good as peace- fulness. As men grow riper and richer in their spiritual nature they tend more and more to come into " that peace which passeth all understanding " the peace of God which is an equalization of joy. If you lift up a peak on a plain, it stands noticeable in its solitariness ; but if you lift up another by the side of it, and another by the side of that, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, then the surface of these various peaks itself be- comes a plain. A dozen hills put together make a level sur- face. And one joy, when it lifts itself up alone, stands solitary ; but if you put a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth along with it, by-and-by you have a level plain of peace. Men say that it lacks excitement ; but I say that it is the highest form of excitement. Enjoyment in its most blessed form is that perfect tranquility which is deep as the ocean, peaceful as the ocean in a calm, and grand as the ocean in a storm. Christian life should be sweet and peaceful, founded in love and in righteousness, and flying by hope and faith all around in the atmosphere of joy. " Rejoice ID the Lord alway, and again I say, Rejoice." After the blessing is pronounced we shall sit together and Dartake of the emblems of the broken body of Christ, 188 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. and of his blood shed. To me this is a very joyful service ; because, although here is defeat, we also have the rebound of victory. I invite every one in this congregation who has spiritual fitness to join with us. I do not limit the invitation of the Lord's table by any ecclesiastical or theological lines. I put it on the ground of human need. Whoever needs the Lord Jesus Christ to comfort him, to inspire him, and is willing to accept him in his inward thought, and feeling him I invite to participate in these emblems of Christ's sacri- fice for us. CHRISTIAN JOY FULNESS. 189 PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.* OUR heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou hast permitted us to live and behold these blessed scenes ; that thou hast created suun joy within the sanctuary ; making so many hearts glad. We thank thee that thou hast set the day in so much brightness without; that thou hast commanded the sun and the season, and that all things are springing up and breaking forth into life, and beginning to grow. Now, O Lord, thou hast brought spring hither also; and in thy garden thou art causing many and many a one to begin to show forth the power of the new life. We pray that thou wilt accept the wishes and purpose.} of thy dear children who have this morn- ing been united to us; and grant that yet more significantly they may be united to thee; that the channel of intercourse between their souls and thy soul may be open and large; that continually thy Spirit may descend upon them, and inspire in them the noblest thoughts and motives; and that they may bo cleansed from the imperfections of the world and the flesh, and bo imbued with every- thing which partakes of the divine influence. We pray that thou wilt fill them with all joy, not only in believing, but in living. May they become the children of light and of joy; and may they be known everywhere by their righteousness. If troubles shall come upon them, may they have that spirit of illumination from above which shall enable them to pierce through trouble with the bright light of faith and hope. If thou shalt bring bereavements upon them, may thy grace be sufficient for them. Thou that hast in every age upheld thy servants in the dungeon, in the flame, in the wilderness, living or dying thou canst still animate thy servants, and give them strength for their day. Grant that these dear souls now gathered into communion with us, through us may be strength- ened for the emergencies of their lives, that they may be happier in themselves, and that they may better bring the voice of gladness and of cheer into the dwellings where they are, and show forth in the gen- tleness, and meekness, and humility, and love which they shall bear to all who are around them, the true working of the divine Spirit in them. We beseech of thee that they may not count themselves unworthy of suffering, since thou wert crowned with thorns thou that dost now wear the stars for thy diadem. May they not shrink from enduring pain in such measure as is needful either to cleanse them, or to enable them to bear witness and testimony for Christ. May they, from day to day, find their hearts more and more fed with hope and gladness. May thy Word, an ever open and exhaustless treasure, be their delight, wherein they may find the way of life pointed out. May they find in it those communications of God which are needed by their souls. And so may they be made rich. Grant, we pray thee, that thy servants who have looked upon this ingathering may rejoice and have faith for the future. Behold, this is the result of seed sown in tears. Behold, here is the fruit of years of watching and care. We rejoice that there are some who see their * Immediately following the reception of members into the church. 190 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. children, that there are some who see those long dearer to them than their own selves, now recalled from wandering ways to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls. We rejoice, O Lord, that there are many who look down from the heavenly sphere, and whose hearts are made glad by sights like these on earth. We rejoice in the sense that those who have gona out from among us into glory are yet with us in sympathy. We con- gratulate those who have lived and labored for the elevation of this people those who have beheld in the consecration of these souls the fruit of their prayers, and watching, and fidelity. And wo beseech of thee that none may be discouraged. In these bright testi- monies of the power of truth and God's faithfulness, may those who are discouraged be reassured. May those who have backslidden and are wandering, return to the fold of Christ. And may this house be filled with gladness to-day. We cannot, O Lord, thank thee enough for thine illumining Spirit and grace by which thou hast comforted the hearts of thy people. How much occasion have we all to bear witness to the goodness of God and the sustaining grace of God ; and together, as a church and congregation, we make mention of thy goodness, and rejoice in thee, and praise thy holy name. And now, we pray that thou wilt make this a day of delight to every one of us. We rejoice in our liberty. We rejoice in the liberty of the spirit which makes us free, and which gives us all things. The range of the universe is ours. Thou wilt yet give us power by which to rise and fly. We shall cast off these bodies, this weight, the infir- mities of the flesh, and shall go home to the general assembly of the first born in heaven, and to the spirits of just men madt perfect. May we take hold, to-day, somewhat of the largeness of the life which is coming to us, and learn less and less to look with care and anxiety upon the fleeting things of the present life. Grant, we pray thee, that in our homes, in our avocations, in our walking by the way, wherever we may be, we may evermore rejoice in the Lord, so that men beholding our brightness and gladness shall seek to come into the same blessed experience. And now, we pray that thou wilt grant to all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and in truth, grace, mercy and peace. Grant to all thy churches plenitude of power and wisdom by which thy servants may speak the truth efficaciously. May they rejoice in their labor; and though they may sow their seed in tears, may they speedily come again, their bosoms filled with sheaves. We pray for the spread of knowledge throughout our land, and for the establishment of this great people, not in outward strength, but in the strength of God. And may all thy promises which respect the islands of the sea and the dark continents of the earth, and the whole realm of the world, be speedily fulfilled, and the glory of the Lord rest upon all mankind. And to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit shall be praises ever- lasting. Amen. LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. "But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way." 1 COB. xii. 31. What were the gifts which they were to covet ? What was that which was better than even those gifts ? We are left in no doubt whatsoever. By turning back to the fore part of this chapter, it will be found that what may be called the whole ecclesiastical framework of the Christian church its ordinances, its creeds, its officers, its polity, its methods were undoubtedly included under this general term, gifts ; and not only are they spoken of with respect, but there is the implication of a relative and graded excellence in them ; and men are commanded to desire the best of them ; yet there is something that is better than all of them. What is that ? It is the contents of the 13th of First Corinthians which I read and comment on so often in this church that I am afraid you will think I do not read any other part of the Bible much. " Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." I shall not read it. I merely announce what it is. It is the living force of Christianity. Paul says, " Covet earnestly the best gifts ;" but there is something better than they are, and that is the living power of God in the human soul. That, I take it, would be Paul's interpretation of this passage, if he were here, and should interpret it in the light of the present state of facts and of feeling in the Christian church. SUNDAY MORNING, May 10, 1874. LESSON: Rom. xiv. 1-19; HYMNS (Plymouth Collection) : NOB. 108, 970. 949. 194 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. By looking back you will see, in the fourth verse of the 12th chapter, this declaration : "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. There are differences of administration [governments, and so on], but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations [the phenomena attending the whole work of God in the human soul is infinitely various], but it is the same God which worketh all in all [all these things iu all men]. But the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit withal. [There is no inherent sanctity in these things ; they are not worth anything in themselves. Their end and object is the profit which they work out in men. Their value is to be graded and decided by the profit which is in them. If they do no good, then they are not good ; and if they do a great deal of good, then they are good. They are to be measured by the profit which they are capable of bestowing.] For to one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom [that is, the instruction of the real old logician, preaching truth according to high philosophical forms, wisdom sig- nifying philosophy, substantially]." Now, you have no right to ridicule those old dry doctrin- aires the men who preach solid doctrine. There is a place and a use for them. You may say that they look like great knots, and hard, twisted roots of forest trees. Well, very likely they do ; but I notice that the veneers for the most beautiful furniture are sawed out of these very knots, and twisted roots, and what not. Therefore they serve a pur- pose. " To another the word of knowledge [experience, practical life, things ethical], by the same spirit; to another faith by the same spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophec-y [not merely fore- telling, but teaching]; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh that one and the self-same spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." The unity of the Church is in Jesus Christ, and not in sects, nor in any feeble earthly churches. They are all members or parts. The unity is in Christ, in the Spirit. Some of these churches and sects are eyes ; some of them are ears ; some of them are hands ; some of them are feet ; some of them are nails, apparently, and they scratch. They have different functions. " For [and this is a most radical and revoluttonaiy passage, when you consider that it was spoken in the eyes and face of the Jews a LIBERTY IN TUB C1IVRC1IES. 195 bigoted and angry nation who would not listen and that it -was oon- siilered to be almost as .Tuu:h as a man's life was worth to say to them that a Gentile had any considerable rights] by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free ; and have been made to drink into one spirit." The essential unity of all men who are endeavoring to de- velop in themselves the life of Christ is here declared. Now, having asserted the reality of all these externalities, !iese gifts, these instruments, the apostle says, "Seek the best of them." You may have a preference ; you may take the best ; " And yet," he says, "there is something which i3 better than they are ; which ranks higher than they do ; which has dominion over them." What is that ? The essential free spirit of a living soul the life of God made manifest by love in men. That is superior to all these other things. The doctrine, then, is this : that the mood to which lore brings men is freer, is safer, is better than the external forms of the Church. I think these Pauline chapters are not studied half enough ia our day, when so many events are taking place which cannot be rightly judged of except by the free, lofty principles that are laid down by that apostle. First, there is ample recognition in the New Testament o'f the need and wisdom of church institutions. It is time that our Master did not command his disciples to form a church. It is time that there is not on record one single line or word from him which prescribes a new church as distinct from the Jewish church. He lived in the J wish church himself. He died a member and communicant tf that church. Nor did his disciples understand that they were to step out of it and fashion another one. They, all of them, for more than twenty -five years, lived in communion with the Jewish Church. Forty years after the ascension of their Master they still sacrificed in the temple and were a Christian brotherhood only as a party in tn<> original Jewish Church. It would seem to be the height of Iristorical phantasy, there- fore, to declare that the Christian Church was outlined and prescribed by the Lord Jesus Ohrist, understood to be so by his apostles, and taught by them to be so. A greater mis- take can scarcely be imagined. 196 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. Nevertheless, there was a church. There weie religious institutions. They were accepted. They were implied. And the moment the apostles began to preach outside of Judaea where there was no temple, and where there were no synagogues, they were organized, chey were officered, and there came to be laws and methods and usages; and tko apostles commanded them, interpreted them, and ranked them. Therefore, if any man say that there is no warrant in the word of God for any church organization, I think he misses .the mark on one extreme, as much as the hierarch misses it on the other when he declares that there was a specific form of organization prescribed for the Christian Church. These are the extremists on the one side and on the other. Secondly, it is recognized that there is perfect freedom in taking up and laying down the ordinances, the usages, the laws, the customs, and the instructing methods of the New Testament. You can make your election among them. You can avail yourselves of them, not according to any prescribed divinely appointed scheme, but according to the exigencies and necessities of the work which you yourselves have in hand ; for the liberty of man, by virtue of his adhesion to the Lord Jesus Christ, is the axis of the teaching of the New Testament. We are individually free on account of our being joined to Christ. So we have liberty of judgment, liberty of interpretation, and liberty of action, within the sphere of Christ-likeness or of the Christ-spirit ; and no man has a right to judge another in regard to his usages, his ordinances, his forms of church organization, and his meth- ods of instruction. To his own master he stands or falls. There are methods, there is ecclesiastical organization, there are doctrines and ceremonies, there is polity, and there are governments ; these are recognized in the New Testament ; and the teachers and members of Christ's body are declared to be at liberty to select among them, taking those which are best adapted to themselves, to the exigencies of their age, and to the service which a special providence may demand from them. The personal freedom of man sacrificed to ordinances LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 9 197 or to churches that is one extreme ; an intense individ- ualism which refuses all laws, all ordinances, and all polity, under the name of personal liberty, is another extreme ; and the history of religion has been a history of vibration between these two extremes. One age, or one clan, has insisted upon it that men should all be gathered into one church, under regular officers who should prescribe for them their thoughts, their feelings, their ethical duties, almost fixing the hour and the minute, so that all individual- ism should be sucked up into organization : and men were considered as good for little else than to make churches. They lost their individual power. Then came a brief reaction from that. Men threw off all the restrictions which had been laid upon them by laws and regulations, and rebounded to the other extreme, and asserted and cultivated their personal rights and liberties, and were jealous of ministers and usages and ordinances, and said, "I am a free man in Christ Jesus, and I shall speak as I choose, and do as I like : no man shall lay any authority on me." This spirit of individualism, logically carried out, is one which makes it impossible for Christians to work together. Now, both of these principles are right, and both of them are in endless operation in society. First there is that spirit which tends to produce individual liberty and independency of thought and feeling. That spirit makes sturdy men ; but men who cannot work together peaceably and efficiently. There is nothing in them which leads them to give up their own rights for the sake of promoting the cause which they are endeavoring to serve. Excessive individuality breaks men up into minims, so that they are like isolated particles of sand, and are but little better than those particles, compared to the aggregated power of the great body of the church. And then there is that spirit which would take away all individual liberty and independency of thought and feeling and that kills the individual. So there is to be a medium. Both elements are to be continually studied. There is to be the power of the church as a whole, and there ij to bo the power of individuals as separate members. The power of the whole church, like 198 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. that of the State, is made greater by the strength of each individual. The government must be strong enough for the common welfare ; but if it be too strong, it is apt to beat down the citizens ; and when the citizens are weakened, their weakness reflects itself upon the government. There must be a cooperation of these opposite elements so that they shall work together. There is to be a large liberty given to the power of the individual, for the sake of giving to the whole commonwealth liberty and power. And as it is in the State, so is it in the church. Hence, the right of men to associate themselves together for the sake of teaching certain doctrinal systems is not to be gainsaid. There has been a spirit of doctrinal despotism established, largely ; though men ridicule creeds and dogmas to-day. If I have seemed to have a share in this untoward spirit in my speaking, it has been from the over-action of intensity rather than from any deliberate purpose ; because I recognize the fact that no man thinks to any purpose who does not think dogmatically. Any man who thinks consecu- tively must think systematically ; and systematic thinking leads to the formation of systems ; and truths stated posi- tively in the form of a system are always dogmatic. Never- theless, when dogmas become imperious ; when men's personal liberty is interfered with by the imposition upon them of creeds, then creeds become oppressive and are wrong wrong not in and of themselves, necessarily, but in their use. Now, I advocate the right of men to associate together for the purpose of making known any line of thought, whether it be in the department of science or in any part or sphere of human knowledge. Men have a right to associate together for the purpose of promoting right notions of art, of architecture, of medicine, of mechanics, of civil govern- ment, of church polity, or of religious doctrines. It is one of the great rights springing out of the individual liberty of a man, that he may call to himself as many as are in agreement with him, in order that they, by common counsel and effort, may make known and enforce, as far as they can, any particular line of thought or practice. I maintain the right of men to Arminianism, if they believe in Arminiankni ; LIBERTY IN Till-: CHURCHES. 199 to Pelagianism, if they believe in Pelagianism ; to semi-Pela- gianism, if they believe in semi-Pelagianism ; and to demi- semi-Pelagianism, if they believe in demi-semi-Pelagianism. I declare the freest liberty of a man, being responsible to his God and not to men or magistrates, to the right of associa- tion, with the object of promoting any view of Calvinism, whether it be high-church, low-church, middle-church, broad-church, or no-church. The liberty of association is universal, and is not to be disputed, but is to be guaranteed as one of the inevitable results of the higher doctrine of the liberty of the individual. For purposes of enforcing ordinances men also have a right to association. There is nothing in the genius of Christianity, there certainly is nothing in its precepts, which forbids men. to separate themselves into bodies, or to make others understand the advantages of particular ordinances. Now, so Jong as Mr. Faraday's name lives, we shall speak with great respect of the Sandemanians, who taught the practice of washing the feet of disciples. They felt that there was in that ordinance a great truth. I think that there was a great truth in it. I do not see why the washing of the disciples' feet did not carry with it a truth as sublime as that of the Lord's Supper, which was a part of that ordinance, and which was not separated from it by any line of demarkation. The Sandemanians held it to be an ordinance of perpetual validity in the church. I do not believe any ordinance to be author- itative. When I form a sect (and that will be in a future state of existence), it will be a sect that uses all ordinances that it wants to, and that does not use any ordinance that it does not want to. It will be a sect that exercises liberty in the matter of ordinances. I think that ordinances are like ti black-board in a school. It is good to put things on, but you do not want to put one thing on it every time. It is a thing to demonstrate by. I do not think that infant baptism is insisted upon in the New Testament. I do not see a vestige of it there. At any rate, the nearest approach to it is a far-fetched inference. Acd yet, I practice infant baptism. Why do I do it ? Be- 200 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. cause I think it very beautiful and helpful. "Hem!" you say, "is that the only foundation you have for it?" That is foundation enough. " To profit withal," says the apostle, meaning that these gifts of the spirit are to be profitable ; and when any ordinance shows that it is profitable, that is all the warrant that you want for it. That it does' good, is voason enough for any thing. But you claim to practice it because Christ taught it. Where did he teach it ? Now, men may associate together for ordinances provided they will not quarrel ; provided they will not use their liberty to break down other men ; provided they will work in the spirit of Christ. We find that the various churches have their different ordinances, and that they are characterized by them. We find that the Baptist churches are set apart from our Congre- gational churches by nothing greater than a peculiar mode of baptizing. Now, excuse me ; for I love those brethren, and I honor their sturdy independence ; and yet, the older I grow the more I feel amazed that a great body of intelligent, educated Christian men should make the spirit of the church in Christ Jesus to turn, not only on an external action, but even on a mode of performing that external action ; and that they do not perceive that the essential element of Chris- tianity is not represented by such minute particularities as that. Some of them believe in keeping the seventh day of the week instead of the first; and so we have the "Seventh-day Baptists." Others have their own notion respecting man's free will. The principle of free will not having found any lodgment in the old Baptist denomination, a new one has been formed to show that there is such a will. So three sects have grown out of one ; and I assert the liberty of every one of them to organize and to make known their doctrines by organization, and to bring as many to their way of thinking as they can. And this liberty of theirs is not to be derided, certainly it is not to be over slaughed, though you may not agree with them. But when any band of Christians, having associated them- selves together for ordinances, say, not, " My conscience de- LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 201 mands this," but, " Your conscience shall demand it, or I will punish you," then I am up in arms, and I say, " Who art thou that judgeth another man's servant ? Am I your servant ? I am Jesus Christ's servant. To my own Master I stand or fall. Who art thou that judgest me, another man's servant?" You may argue with a man in kindness and in love, but you have not a right even to argue with him until you tire him out. You have not a right to put him to any inconvenience, or to place any pain or penalty upon him, be- cause he differs from you. Men say that the time of persecution is past ; bu c I do not think it is. The forms of persecution are changed ; men are not subjected to physical violence for not believing in this, that or the other thing; but they are punished in other ways. They are punished morally ; and I declare that moral penalties in a community are more severe than physical ones. You can punish a man by thought-power and by emo- tional power as you cannot by thongs or by the sword. And I say that it is contrary to the spirit of Christianity for any man to be incommoded because he does not hold to ordi- nances. You have a right to hold them, and to promul- gate them ; but you have no right to make them despotic, and compel men to conform to them, and chastise them for not taking them. We have a right to associate for the sake of certain forms of worship. If men feel that a gradually accumulated lit- urgy, through the ages, has power to excite their imagination, their emotion, their reverence, their wisdom and their love, who shall say to them, " You shall not have it"? Who shall interfere with their liberty? I hold it to be not alone the .iberty of the individual, but the liberty also of the sect. I hear brethren in sister churches reviled because they have introduced the responsive reading of the Psalms. They have a right to It if they like it. More than that, they have a right to precomposed forms of prayer if they like them. They have not thereby vacated their claims to Congregation- alism. Episcopacy does not mean forms of worship : it means radical ideas of government. The form;; cf vrcrrhip urc r.c- 202 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. cidental or incidental. That which is radical lies in the es- sential administrative element. I defend for sister churches their right to organize their worship in the way in which they can administer it most to the edification of their people ; and I defend the right of their people to go with them in such or- ganization. On the other hand, I defend the right of good and Chris- tian men to go to church without a book, without a liturgy, without a minister, without a sermon, and to sit for two mor- tal hours still as flowers at midnight. It is their right. It is not their right to make me sit there ; but it is their right to organize and to maintain such worship as profits them. And without a doubt they have a right to propagate it, if they can, by fair reasoning; but they have not a right to point to it and say, " This represents universal Christianity." I say that all these forms of worship are "diversities of gifts" parts of one body which is larger, incalculably, than any of them ; and that one of them is a hand, that another is a foot, that another is an eye, and that another is an ear. The liberty I advocate : the despotism I denounce. That which is true in regard to ordinances or methods of worship is just as true in regard to government. What a pother the world has had as to who should govern. Gener- ally, the man who can, does it; and then comes the reason for it. The causes are, " I am strong and you are weak," and the reasons are sometimes, " God ordained me to reign," and sometimes, " The people appointed me to be their ruler." The cause of government lies in the sense of power in the governor, and in his conscious capacity to make men mind. Now, I advocate the right of bodies of men to govern themselves ; and if a large and respectable body of intelligent men say, " We prefer to be governed by priests, and to have them governed by bishops, and to have them governed by archbishops, and to have them governed by cardinals, and to have the whole of them governed by a pope, an elder brother, or a father ;" and if they say, " We like this, and we claim it as our right," they have a perfect right to it, and I have not a word to say against it. You may have your priests, your bishops, your archbishops, your cardinals, your pope, and LIBERTY IN THE CHUKCHES. 203 your runon-law ; but you shall not turn round and any, " This i- ( 'hristianity, and unless you take it you shall be dp.mned." I won't be damned ; and I won't take it, either ! I affirm their right to do that which they think best ; and I affirm their right to think that that is the pattern of the New Testa- ment ; but I deny their right to impose it upon others. I affirm the right of a man to say to me, " Why don't you eat vinegar?" and I affirm his right to say to me, "Sit down and let me show you why you ought to eat it;" but if he puts vinegar on my plate, and insists upon my eating it, that I object to. I do not object to Episcopacy. I honor the Episcopal Church. I revere multitudes of its members. Modern Christianity owes an unpayable debt to the heroic scholars and ministers of that church who lived in the past a great and noble band ; but if they come to me, and say, " We are Christ's body on earth, and you owe to us the alle- giance which is due to Christ," I scoff at them, and say, " I do not owe my allegiance to Jesus through that round-about and humanly invented system." My allegiance goes straighter than an arrow to its mark. It is a matter between me and Jesus Christ. There stands my liberty, in the plenary power of my own manhood. Therefore I defend their auto- nomy, and their liberty in it ; and I defend against them our liberty, and say that they have no right to incommode us for not taking that which they want, because we see differently from them, and do not want it. If these views are correct, then there are some sequences, some questions and answers, that arise out of them, and that are of practical import in our time. First, I hold that no man has a right to enter into any Christian church or communion for the sake of changing the economy, the doctrines and the usages of that church. It is bad faith to do it. No man has a right to come into this church for the sake of turning it into a Presbyterian church. That would be underhanded. If a man stands over the other side, not coming in here as a member and, with- out disguise, openly says, " I am going to spread Presby- terian ism, if I can, through your church," that I consider 304 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. to be right. On that ground there is ample liberty. A man has a right to talk with you in the street, or to go with you to your house and reason with you decorously and prop- erly, and, if he can, turn you into a Presbyterian ; but no man has a right to come in here as a Congregationalist with this feeling: " I like Presbyterianism better than I do Con- gregationalism ; and I am going to work, little by little, using the organic power of this church, to undermine it and change it." That would not be manly. It would be dishonorable. It would not be fair-play. No man has a right to go into a Congregational church to Presbyterize it ; or into a Baptist church to blow up its Baptisteries; or into a Presbyterian church to break down its Session, and bring in the brother- hood form of government. That would not be acting fairly, nor in a manly and honorable way. Secondly, no man has a right to employ a sectarian organ > ization for any other purpose than the promotion of spiritual ends. I have defended the right of church organization and equipment, but I declare that under their allegiance to God all church organizations are responsible for the use of their every opportunity to the great end that is prescribed in the New Testament, namely, " profit withal;" and the "profit withal" is in the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, where a higher and better way is developed by divine love in the hearts and dispositions of mankind. All churches, while they are not responsible to each other, and while they cannot be responsible to any public sentiment, are responsible to God for the use of their whole equipment and organization in promoting, not a narrow, jealous, combative, pugnacious, irritable spirit among men, but a spirit which shall liberalize men, and bring them nearer to each other, and make them feel more the ties of common brotherhood, instead of setting a man against his neighbor. There is an obligation resting on the Christian church which has not been enough brought to bear upon the consciences of good and faithful men the obligation of using all the external forms of Christian insti- tutions to promote the great end of Christianity, which is the development of the v Spirit of God in the souls of men. Thirdly, no man has a right to impugn the motives of LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 205 those who choose excessive organizations. That is to say, if a man is very rigorous for church government, high or low, no one has a right to impugn his motives, or to refuse him the liberty of teaching his views. Out of these facts have grown many questions, in every age ; and they exist plentifully, and are likely to exist much more largely, in our own day. May a man enter or leave a church when he dissents from the doctrines which are held, and which he knows to be held by that church ? May a man, for example, go into an ortho- dox church knowing that he does not hold to the doctrine of the eternity of future punishment ? May a man go into an orthodox church when he knows he does not hold to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ as it is held by the high Calvinistic preachers ? I affirm that no man has the right to go into any church for the sake of making trouble ; for the sake of consciously selfish ends ; but if for special reasons a man feels that any particular church is more sure than another to help him, and to promote in him humility, meekness, gentleness, lovingness and lovableness, he has a right to go into it. A man has a right to go into any Christian church on the ground of "profit withal." Need is a sufficient reason for a man's going into any Christian church. Well, should he go without making known his dissent ? If the church chooses to inquire with regard to his belief, and scrutinizes it, he is bound to state it, but not otherwise. The enabling you to live a better Christian life is ample reason for you to go into a church ; and if the church docs not choose to defend itself from persons holding doctrines different from its own, it is not jour business to make known your peculiar views. All you have to do is to go there sincerely and earnestly for the purpose of living a godly life, knowing that you will hear articles of creed pro- mulgated which you do not agree with, and compromising with yourself, and saying, " I will listen to these things which I do not believe for the sake of the general beneficial influences which I shall derive." You have a right to take that stand ; and there is no unfairness in it. 206 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. One of the admirable things about the high Episcopal churches is that a man may go into them and commune, and not be disturbed by having his doctrines inquired into. The views of the ministry are examined and taken care of, but the members are received on the ground that they are attempt- ing to live a Christian life ; and the liberty which these churches accord in this respect is truly Christian. The liberty which is given to the membership in the Roman Church, and the Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church in its higher forms, where persons are accepted, not on the ground of adherence to particular beliefs, but on the ground that they come to be instructed, and are willing to receive instruction, is true Christian liberty. The position which they take in that particular is one which might well prevail throughout all our churches. Churches are good for nothing in and of themselves, any more than any other organizations ; but men have come to worship churches. If they do not think them to be gods, they regard them as in such a sense sacred that they really have a feeling of idolatry toward them. Therefore, when a man thinks of going into the church a feeling of awe comes over him. Now, what is a church ? It is an instructing body which undertakes to help men toward heaven ; and it has sanctity in it just as far as it has the power of producing results in that direction. A church that has the power of producing nothing is like a garden that is a sand-heap. Calling a sand-heap a gar- den does not make it one ; and calling a useless body of a hundred or five hundred men a church does not make them worth anything. If a church is of any value, it is because of the amount of power which it exerts. What is the test of fire-engines ? An old rattletrap that is a hundred years old, and that cannot squirt water twenty feet high, is not worthy to be called a fire-engine. The ma- chine that will throw the biggest stream, and throw it the longest, is the best machine, is the one that is to be most ad- mired, and is the most worthy of having men take off their hats to it when they go past it ; but an engine that cannot LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 207 put out a fire, or do anything else, is not worth your taking off your hat. It is good for nothing. It is worse than that, because it makes an appearance as though it were good for something. And I say that a church which has no power, which is dead, which is dry, and which has the habit of desiccating those that come into it ; a church which is like the old Jewish tombs that were cut out of a rock, with shelves, into each of which a man was shoved, there to lie until the judgment came ; a church which is merely furnished with cushioned seats in which men are to sit and be respectable and stupid at the proper hours on Sunday morning I say that such a church is unworthy of venera- tion. It is only the love of God among men that has a claim to our reverence. The real thing in religion is the ex- istence and exertion of moral power in the living soul. Not the outward enginery that the soul employs, but the spirit it- self the spirit of God, or the spirit of man awakened by God's spirit that is the real thing. Where it exists under the mitre, it is venerable ; and where it exists under the ma- tron's cap it is just as venerable. It takes its value, not from external instruments and circumstances, but from the fact that it springs from God, and has in it something of the glory and grandeur of divine nature. We are now regaled with the fidelities and infidelities of the High, the Low, the Broad, and the Evangelical divisions of the Church of England. I read their papers with some diligence, and I perceive that "a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city." I see that the High church- man dislikes the Low churchman worse than he does men who are no churchmen at all ; and I perceive that the Low churchman dislikes the High churchman immensely that he likes the Presbyterian a great deal better. I can see that Evangelicals are very bitter against those that are heterodox, and that those that are heterodox are very bitter against the Evangelicals, for the sake of exhibiting their zeal for love ! Now, the question that is asked, is, "Why do men stay where principles are held with which they are not in accord?" Each party says, " We are the church, and these men who dissent from our doctrines should go out. We represent true 208 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. churchism ; and why do those who do not want it stay here to vex us ? Why do they not leave the church ?" I hold that they have a right to stay in it. I plead the liberty of a man to remain in the church of his fathers. I assert the right of a man to stay there as a teacher, so that he does not transcend the fundamental organization which he has sworn to support. I claim for him the right to a wide liberty of conscience in interpreting his own duty, and a wide liberty of judgment in the use which he shall make of the ritual and the ceremonies of the church. I aver that those who are High, if they are doing good, are not to be molested by those who are Low ; and that those who are Low, if they are doing good, are not to be molested by those who are High. It is contrary to the essential spirit of Christianity for men in the same sect to persecute each other on grounds where persons may rightfully have a broad margin of differ- ence. I am sorry to see these things in the Episcopal Church, it was the church of my mother ; and if there were no other reasons that would be reason enough why, as long as I live, I should pray for its peace. The fact, that in every large body of men there are two inherent elements, ought never to be forgotten. We do not enough take into account that there are certain great princi- ples of human nature which are shaping the doctrines and policies of Christianity in any given age. We are apt to forget that there are fundamental influences at work, and that men are continually hindering or fighting against each other. For you may depend upon it that in every large body of men there are two sorts, one of which represents the element of personal liberty or democracy, and the other of which represents the element of aristocracy or monarchy. Society breaks up into these two divisions naturally, the ob- ject of their separation being that both may have some form of enginery. For instance, in Europe the civil and political institutions for the most part represent the aristocratic and monarchic element ; and through them the want of mankind for this element is satisfied. The churches of Europe, for the most LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 209 part, represent the democratic element. All classes stand nearer together in church fellowship in Europe than they do here. For in America political institutions represent democ- racy. The want of the democratic element is satisfied in the framework of our government. Our churches undertake to satisfy the other element that of aristocracy. The churches in America are more aristocratic than the churches in Europe, and they tend to be, from the fact that here the democratic element is supplied in our political institutions, and that the aristocratic element there is supplied by their political institutions. There is everywhere a want of the democratic element, and a want of the aristocratic element ; and in this country one finds itself relieved through our political institutions, while the other finds itself relieved through our church institutions. In a community of two or three thousand people a church is built that will hold perhaps five hundred people ; and that will be all that will want to go to it ; because, in the main, churches fall into the habit of taking in those that are the most respectable people that are at the top of society. The poor and needy, by and large, do not go to church. They do not feel that it is their home. Take the average churches in New York and Brooklyn, from Murray Hill downward, and I think it will be found that the aristocratic and prosperous elements have possession of them, and that if the great under-class, the poor and needy, go to them at all, they go sparsely, and not as to a home. Men of all classes do not stand in our churches upon so nearly a level, on so democratic a footing, as they do in Europe. Our churches are largely for the mutual insur- ance of prosperous families, and not for the upbuilding of the great under-class of humanity. I have illustrated this at large in order to bring it to bear especially upon the great conflicts which are going on in the Episcopal Church. There are men who by nature and cult- ure tend toward the aristocratic element; and we see that made a prominent element in their church history and in their church books. They adhere to it from elective affinity ; their nature inclines toward it j and they conscientiously say, 210 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. " This is the genius of the church, and the church is to be administered accordingly." Then there is another body which as sincerely represents the democratic element. They are in the same church. They were born there, or they came there at an early period ; they feel at home there ; and that is their house as much as it is the house of the others ; and they say, " This church is to be administered liberally, democratically." These two elements stand and charge each other with insincerity. The Low churchman says, " You are going off to Rome ;" and the High churchman says, " You are going off to Independency ;" and each of them is attempting to administer the same house- hold in accordance with his own great psychological tendencies. It is said often (I see it in the newspapers, and I read it with great respect for when newspapers undertake to teach Christianity I always feel disposed to listen), " If a man does not run with the ruling spirits of his church, what is the use of his staying in it ? If he wants something more Congrega- tional, why does he not go into a Congregational church ?" Now, this has good sound ; but it is miserable chaff. Do you suppose that a man who is in the church is there just as a man is in a hotel ? I go over and stop at some crowded down- town hotel, and am put into a seventh-story room, in August ; and I sleep no, I stay there one night. The next morning I go down and pay my bill, and say, "I am going to the Fifth Avenue Hotel." But I have not abandoned my colors. I was not well accommodated where I was. I was not com- fortable and happy there. I had no root of association there. But suppose a man was in the homestead where he was born and brought up, and where he hoped to live all the days of his life, and suppose it should be said to him, " There are dif- ferences in your family ; why don't you clear out and leave the old house altogether?" What! leave the graves of my father and mother ? Leave the playground of my boyhood ? Leave the scenes about which are twined recollections of everything that is most sacred to me ? Am I to tear up the most precious associations of my life, and do violence to all that is dear in my memory, and transplant myself to a strange soil ? LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 211 When a man is bom in a church, it is not simply like going into a hotel; it is like the planting of a tree in a garden, where its roots strike deep, and where its branches spread wide ; and it is no small thing for him to go out of that church and seek religious associations elsewhere. You cannot transplant an oak that is a hundred years old and have it live and thrive. I believe that young people can sometimes safely change their faith ; but I do not believe that old people ever can. Changing one's faith is so hazard- ous that I would not advise persons of one faith to abandon it for another. I would never try to convert a veteran Roman Catholic from his faith to the Protestant belief. My effort would be, rather, to make him a better Christian where he was. I would not do anything to lead him to change his church associations. If a man says, " My father, and mother, and brothers, and sisters were baptized by immersion, and I should prefer to be baptized in that way, but I am willing to be baptized by sprinkling ; I say " Don't ; be baptized by the mode which will be most in accordance with your feelings. Baptism is nothing, in and of itself, whether it be immersion or sprink- ling ; but if you have been all your life in association with ideas which lead you to prefer to be immersed, then be immersed." And if it is argued, " "Why does not this man or that man go out of the Episcopal Church ?" my answer is, that a man cannot transplant himself from one church to another with perfect ease. And it is a burning shame to any church, >r bishop, or bishopric, when a truly holy and godly man is .villing to seek the welfare of those who are under his charge, i that church or bishop or Disnopric is not tolerant enough h> let him work on, although there are special and minute differences between his belief and theirs. It is a disgrace where in a church there is so arrogant, so hard, so cold, so unelastic a spirit that a true man cannot breathe unless he goes out of it. It is a slander on Christianity. And I say to men in the Episcopal church, who work toward the lower side, stand where you are. Do not be cast out of your father's house. You have a right to the heritage of all the 212 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. honored names which belong to the history of that church, and to all its sacraments and revered associations, which are as sweet to you as they are to your mitred bishop. You have a right to preach baptism ; and you have a right to say "Baptism" instead of (< Kegeneration." Stand for your liberties, for your God, and for the spirit of Christianity which is at stake in the conduct of the church ! If tbere is a principle on one side which should send a man out, there is a squadron of principles on the other side which should make a man stay in, under such circumstances. The same question may be argued on doctrinal grounds. Just at the present time the trial of Prof. David Swing, at Chicago, by the Presbyterian church, is exciting great inter- est ; and though I detest puns, yet I will say that when this trial is over, his name should be changed to David Sling. May he take other smooth stones from the brook Kidron, and emite another Goliath the Goliath of religious despotism between the eyes, and overthrow him, and leave him lying dead upon the ground. It is said, "He does not believe in the doctrines of that church." I honor him if he does not. I can conceive that a man, in this age, with a sweet and tender heart and dis- position, may believe in the Presbyterian confession of faith ; I know it is possible, because I was once in that church, and I am acquainted with the experience of others who have been in it ; but I do not think that one in ten of the men who go into the Presbyterian church ever propounds to himself the fullness of the doctrinal statements which are contained in that confession of faith, or believes them, as they were origi- nally understood by the men who framed them. This trial of Prof. Swing takes me back to the time when I began my ministry, in 1834 ; when I went from Cin- cinnati, to study theology under my father, in Lane Sem- inary. Dr. "Wilson, then setttled over the church in which now preaches my nephew, whose ordination sermon I de- livered, set the battle in array against Lyman Beecher. My father was tried for heresy in not believing in the doc- trines of the confession of faith of the Presbyterian church in the United States ; and I think that trial exhibited as LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. -%l$ magnificent an instance as ever was on record, of the ingen- uity of an honest man making it appear that he believed in things which he not only did not believe in, but revolted against, from the hair on top of his head to the soles of his feet! Do you ask, "How do you explain it consistently with honesty?" I do it in this way: These statements are susceptible of what may be called a High interpretation, and a Low interpretation. From the earliest history of the Presbyterian Church, it was understood that in bringing together its conflicting elements there should be a certain elasticity of interpretation, so that men should not be mo- lested in that church any more than they were in the Church of England, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who shaped its policy in such a way as to bring the extreme and the moder- ate Protestants together, and give the one a chance to take a little pap from the old mother without being interfered with by the other. The discordant elements of the Presbyterian Church being thus brought together, the framework of doctrine was not so rigorous but that men might accept it for substance, and yet not accept it in all its parts. Now, when the Westminster confession of faith and cate- chism came over from England, and went through the minds of New England divines, such as Hopkins, and Bellamy, and the elder Jonathan Edwards, and the younger, and Dwight, and when the Calvinism of New England had undergone an essential modification, it was called Low Calvinism, as dis- tinguished from that in England and Scotland, where perhaps men were more sturdy, and better able to deal with such terrible doctrines as those of the system of Calvinism. In the Presbyterian Church \f 3re men who held the New En- land view, and interpreted theology accordingly ; and they constituted the New School. There were also, in that church, men who represented the Scotch and English element, which prevailed in the Middle and Western States ; and they constituted the Old School. These two Schools were pitted against each other ; and it should be recognized that from the beginning there was an 214 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. agreement that the one should hold the lax and the other the rigorous view. But in connection with slavery these differ- ences split the church asunder, the Old School going by itself, and the New School by itself. After the war, how- ever, the two sections came together again ; and I hoped that the understanding that on the one side the Low Calvinistic party should hold the Low Calvinistic doctrine, and that on the other side the High Calvinistic party should hold the High Calvinistic doctrine, would continue, and that each would be judged by the good that it did ; but, no ; almost in the early years of that understanding Prof. Swing is called before the Presbytery of Chicago for taking the ground assumed by the New School. Professor Patton is an honorable man, no doubt ; but he is a man who believes in machine theology ; who insists on doctrine of just such a kind ; who wants the crank to turn just so, and grind out regularly creeds and dogmas of just such a pattern. He thinks he is doing his duty. His con- science is up. He feels bound to bring these matters to the test. I hope Professor Swing will be acquitted. But the point of special interest to me is this : Great efforts are being made to bring together the Presbyterian churches of every name the Old and New Schools, the Dutch Reformed, the Associate Eeformed, and other smaller bodies, South as well as North : but are the various elements of this vast Presbyterian system coming together on the ground that there is to be no elasticity of belief ; that there is to be no liberty of instruction ; that the men who hold the hardest doctrines in the hardest way are to be permitted to take the knout and flog everybody who holds other doc- trines in other ways ? We are interested in the future career and usefulness of so august and noble a body as the Presby- terian Church of the United States. My love for her will never die. She was my foster-mother. Under the cope of that church I began my labor in the ministry. I never loved and never shall love brethren as I loved those men in the wilderness with whom I wrought in desolate places, going from log-cabin to log-cabin, preaching in the forest, and holding camp-meetings. They were men doing God's work LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 215 together ; and as good a body of men as ever had heart-beats under human ribs were they. The associations of that church are very dear to me ; I love it ; I honor it ; I never shall forget its usefulness ; and it is a matter of moment to me which spirit is going to pervade it the spirit of monarchy, which is despotism ; or the spirit of Christ, which is liberty. Therefore, I want you to join me not alone in sympathy, but in prayers that God would overrule these first efforts which are being made to persecute a man who exercises his right of thought and expression in that venerable church, for liberty of thinking, for liberty of teaching, and for lib- erty of administration. Although I have talked longer than I ought to have done on this subject, I must add one single word to what I have said ; and it is this : Far be it from you, and far be it from me, to look upon these dissensions in the different churches with ill-concealed gladness. I am sorry for their divisions. I would do the things that make for peace, if peace could only be made with liberty of conscience and liberty of administration. I am sorry for their turbulence. I would not put a straw's impediment in their way. I do not rejoice to see these conflicts in the Presbyterian Church. I never could go into that church again ; I do not believe that in some respects it maintains the spirit or the letter of Christianity ; nevertheless the great body of its teaching is good, and its effect in the community is, beyond all controversy, beneficial. It is an admirable and noble church, built when blows had to be struck thick and fast, in dangerous places, for the liberty of man's consciences, and for the liberty of the church itself. I honor this old church ; and having been so many years in her bosom I sympathize with everything that is for her prosperity, and regret everything that is against her welfare. I desire her peace ; and therefore I pray that her ministers may not be bound in thought, but may feel that they have a right to preach and administer "to profit withal;" and that the spirit of her pulpit may be this: "How shall we present the truth of Christ Jesus so that selfishness shall be slain, so that pride shall be humbled, or that purity shall be estab- 216 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. lished, and so that men shall be lifted into the manhood and glory of the sons of God ? " Blessed be every man, whether he be heretic or orthodox, who so preaches that men's lives are amended, and that their dispositions are transformed ; and woe be to every man or church, which preaches doctrines, and loses mankind ! LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 217 PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.* WE thank thee, our heavenly Father, that thou hast caused the sun to know his journey and his duty; and that there are now com- ing forth children of light in all the earth flowers of beauty. We thank thee that thou art again lifting thy banners upon the trees, and tilling the air with warmth; and that summer is drawing near with all its blessedness, its fruits, its sights of beauty, and its sounds. We thank thee that not alone without, but within also, come the spring and the summer; and that we hear the voice of birds, and behold the flowers that are born not such as shall perish again, but flowers im- mortal to grow here, and to be transplanted for better growing here- after. Will the Lord bless the dear children that have been brought in their helplessness hither; and grant that it may be unto them even as their parents desire in their best hours and in their best thoughts re- specting them. May they teach them the industries of life. May they train them in habits which shall make them good and prosper- ous men. Grant that they may evermore feel that the life of their children is not in the things which pertain to this world, and that they are rearing them for immortality and for glory. May they have strength and wisdom given them to be patient and to be hopeful in spite of all difficulties, and to persevere unto the end. And grant that the lives of these thy servants may be a perpetual gospeJ to their children. May the children know the truth of Christ by beholding it in those who are rearing them. We pray that their life and health may be precious ; that they may be spared to grow up into manhood, and take part and lot in the great works of life. Or, if thou wilt call them by a speedier way, and with not so long an exile from heaven upon earth, prepare thy servants to yield up to God these most prec- ious gifts which they now take from his hand. And we pray that all those who are bearing in their bosoms and upon their hearts heavily the care and the anxiety of their children may know how to cast these burdens upon the Lord. May they know how to bring their little children to Jesus, and rejoice to behold them sitting on his knee, and him blessing them, with his arms about them, and his hands upon their heads. We pray, O God, that thou wilt comfort any to whom the sight of these children brings pain, reminding them of their own dear ones that have gone to be with thee, and quickening their sadness and their sorrow. May they still have that comfort which is in the gos- pel of Jesus Christ for their mourning hearts. May they know that there is divine compassion for every one that hath been called to bear affliction and drink the bitter cup. May they know that there is in the bosom of Christ that sympathy and consideration evermore for all who suffer. Grant that all those who come up hither to-day from troubles and * Immediately folio winy the baptism of children. 218 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. afflictions of various kinds may find in thy presence, in thy truth, in thy sympathy, arid in the scenes, and prayers, and gladness of thine house, cheer and consolation ; that they may rest from their labor, that they may be healed of their sorrow, and that they may, by faith, by hope, by forelookiug and by upward looking, leave behind them the drudging burdens of this life, and stand in their own apprehension as sons of God and heirs of immortality. We pray for thy blessing to rest upon every one in thy presence upon those who are burdened with the cares of life ; upon those who do not know what duty is; upon those who find duty difficult when it hath been interpreted to them ; upon all that are endeavoring, in rough, rude places, still to maintain consistently the walk and con- versation of true disciples of Christ. Give thy Spirit to every one according to his need and infirmity. Deal with us, we beseech of thee, not according to our desert, but according to thy generosity. We pray for thy blessing to rest upon us, to-day, not only in the services of this great assembly, but in our school-rooms ; and in the labors of thy servants, in the streets, in hospitals, in jails, among the sick everywhere. Wherever thy will is done, wherever the name of Christ is spoken, and wherever the truth of Christ is made known there may thy presence be felt, and there may thy blessing be enjoyed. We pray that thou wilt grant more and more as we go forward in life, that we may behold the blessed termination of it, bright, and growing brighter ; and that we may never be weary in well-doing, knowing that in due season we shall reap if we faint not, and that he that endureth unto the end shall be saved. Grant that we may have unfaltering patience and fidelity in the lot to which thou hast ap- pointed us. Bless thy cause everywhere. Give strength to those who seek the purification of morals. Remember those who go forth to make known the truths of Christ in destitute or waste places. Be with those who sacrifice pleasure and comfort that they may teach the poor and hum- ble and unfortunate among us. Grant, we pray thee, that our whole land may become Imman- uel's. May it be evangelized. May the public conscience be intoned to a higher nobility and a better manhood. We pray for our rulers; for our magistrates and judges; for all who are in authority. Will the Lord guide them to equity, to purity of morals, to rectitude of administration ! We beseech of thee that thou wilt bless the army and navy, and the officers that are in them. Grant that they may, in their perilous duties, whether by land or by sea, know thy protecting care. May those who govern men themselves obey God, the Supreme Governor, implicitly. We pray not for our own land alone, but for all lands. Grant that thy cause may be furthered in them. And bless all those with whom we are in more immediate sympathy, that we may stand together for the right, for the spread of liberty, and for those things which con- spire to make nations strong, and intelligent, and free. Overthrow superstition, and drive away injii'iraiu'c; and at last advance the LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 219 whole race to the light and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Let thy king- dom uome, let thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Sou, and Spirit. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OUR Father, wilt thou bless the word spoken. May it enlarge our charity, and yet make us love the truth. May it increase our tolera- tion for one another, and yet deb'ver us from indifference. May we know what things to value; what things to emphasize; and yet may ail that we do be done in the large spirit of catholicity and forbear- ance. May we bear with each other. May we love one another more and more. More than every other instrument may we employ the spirit of true divine love. Let thy kingdom come. Let thy will be done upon earth as it is done in heaven. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen. THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. "What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own ? For ye are bought with a price : therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."! COB. vi. 19, 20. The Christian obligations which lie upon us in the direc- tion of physical health and strength and beauty are almost unknown to ascetic theology. We have come down bearing yet in us the effect of the false theology which taught men to despise this world, and to call it all manner of names; to despise the man in the body, and to inculcate the duty of destroying a large part of man's nature. By a perversion of the figurative language of Scripture, men have been taught that it was their duty to sacrifice the affections and appetites and passions, in order that the spiritual life might have power which is as if one should teach shipmasters making voyages in steamers to put out the furnace, and to keep all grease from the engine-room, in order that the cabin might be kept sweeter and pleasanter. You might roll forever in an eternal storm or calm if you destroyed propul- sion. Power in the hull is necessary to the well-being of the cabin ; and power in the human body is essential to the well- being of the mind. It has not anything that needs to be ex- tinguished. There is not an appetite too many. There are no passions which are not needful. We are compactly and symmetrically organized. Harmonization, regularity, sub- ordination these are needed; our rampant affections need to be tamed ; they need to be brought under some intelligent EVENING, April 12, 1874, LESSON : Psalm xlx., HYMNS (Plymouth Col. lection) : FOB. 1006, 1001, 1020, 224 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. plan ; they need to maintain their position as servants, and should never be allowed arrogantly to assume the port and mien of masters ; but they are not to be put out. On the other hand, we are to honor^the^bpd^ It is a part of our Christian duty~to lionor it, by vigor, by health, by all that fruitfulness in worldly ways which springs from buoyancy of spirit and soundness of body; and he sins against himself who, by appetite and passion, or in any other way, perverts the uses of his body. I purpose, to-night, not so much to discuss directly the subject of Temperance, as to present the subject at large as it lies in my mind ; and this with reference to a general view, suggesting some considerations which ought to enter into our daily life, and into all the exertions which are being made in our time to stay the evils of intemperance. There are naturally two departments of this subject. The one is the traffic in intoxicating drinks or injurious sub- stance? ; and the other is the use of them. Both of these themes are now brought before the minds of our citizens ; and we are called, and must be called, inevitably, to act in regard to them both. I shall speak first as to the traffic in intoxicating drinks. This depends, not on anything that is inherent in it, but on that it supplies the strongest and most impetuous crav- ing which human nature can know. I suppose that there is no other demand so strong as the morbid taste for stimu- lants ; and just as long as men crave them with all the im- petus of their being, just so long that craving will be sup- plied. You may make up your minds to that. If men have to dig a thousand fathoms deep, and build walls in the very center of the earth, they will build them ; and as long as the demand for intoxicating drinks remains, so long it will be supplied, clandestinely or openly. Therefore this traffic, either illicit or permitted, will exist so long as those morbid conditions and cravings exist which create a demand for it in society. The knowledge of this fact does not touch the theory of right or wrong, but it touches the question of prudence in procedure. In regard to the right of the community to ex- THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 225 tirpate this traffic if it can, there is in my mind no doubt ) whatsoever. If we have a right to regulate every part of ^ business for the public weal, to forbid the sale of poisonous elements except under certain regulations and conditions, to forbid that men shall carry concealed weapons, to maintain t!ie peace of the whole community by one and another restric- tion, then, certainly, we have the same right, in a more imper- ative form, to defend the community against an evil which sums up in itself almost every other evil which is known to human society. To say that you have no right to suppress the traffic in intoxicating drinks is to indulge in an unwar- rantable license of speech. It is one thing to say that you have no right ; it is another thing to say that it is not expe- dient. In regard to what is called the " Maine Law," which absolutely forbids this traffic, that law is right. It is con- formable to all the analogies of civil society. There is but one single fault to be found with it you cannot make it work. If you could, I think there would be an end of the argument. You may enforce it in neighborhoods, in partic- ular communities ; but, looking upon this nation, I anticipate that a hundred years will not see such an educated public sentiment, nor such conditions of general living and health, as will make it possible to maintain such a law. I was, from the earliest day, an advocate of that law. I believe it still, as much as ever I did, to stand in just princi- ples, and to be a thing much to be desired ; but I have given up the expectation of seeing it exist with any considerable working force in our time. Then it was supposed that if you could not enforce a law absolutely excluding drink, perhaps you might indirectly gain the end sought by making the men who traffic in intoxicating drinks responsible for all the mischiefs which they do. Well, that did look feasible ; but it does not work, either. Men will not prosecute nor serve as witnesses in such cases; magistrates drink ; and the desired results are not produced, to say nothing of the fact that the consequences of inordinate drinking are dubious, and that the worst mischiefs are of a kind which you cannot meet with law. It may be that if a 226 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. man goes home and brutally beats his wife and children, and sets fire to his house, and burns it down, you may catch him, and have him punished ; but the thousand irregularities, the want of attention to business, the ill-temper, the sourness of disposition, and the disgrace and misery and wretchedness of the household, which grow out of this traffic how are you going to prefer charges and collect damages for having pro- duced these ? Although, when this plan was first adopted, men felt that at last the great principle had been struck, the devil was not caught nor bridled nor saddled that time. Well, it is thought that local option may be a modified form of the Maine Law. It seems to me more reasonable than any other of the expedients which have been devised ; for there are many neighborhoods where I think the vote of a large majority can be obtained to prevent the promiscuous manufacture and exposure for sale of intoxicating drinks. In so far as that has been tried, I believe it has been to a very large extent with benefit ; and I am inclined to think that we may expect good results from local option, or the determining of each town for itself whether license shall be granted within its limits or not. It is very certain that regulation of the traffic may be effected by that means, and that, a right public sentiment being formed, we may hope, even in our large cities, to shear off much of its mischief. Drinking-bouses may be shut up on the Lord's day ; they may be shut up on days of election ; they may be shut up except where they are licensed; they may be brought under police inspection or surveillance ; many restrictions may be laid upon them. If this result is not attained, it will be the fault of the great body of citizens who do not demand it, and do not support those whose business it is to secure it. Mag- istrates and executive officers will always enforce those laws which the great body of citizens demand that they shall enforce. That which you want, and will have, you can khave ; but never can you find magistrates and officers who will do for you disagreeable work which you do not want to do, nor have anything to do with. If you suppose that you can appoint legal scullions, and have them do all the disa- greeable work of the community, while you stay at home and THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 22? rejoice that society is being scoured and washed and made clean, you do not understand human nature. You cannot do it. Under such circumstances the work will not be done. Police regulation and restriction will go just as the public sentiment goes. It will be strict when public sentiment is stringent, and lax when public sentiment relaxes. It is in vain for men to call for new laws when they do not secure the execution of the wholesome laws which they al- ready have. It is in vain for them to inveigh against the police for not enforcing laws which they do not demand the enforcement of. If some interpreting policeman, with an eloquent tongue, were to stand in my place, and tell what he sees good citizens do, and what he sees them shirk doing ; if such a policeman were to tell you how he looks at human society and good citizenship, I think we should have a more wholesome all-round knowledge than now we have. It is very easy for you, in the morning, while drinking your coffee, to utter a little curse upon the delinquency of the police force ; Jnit thcv are as you are^ If you hide yourself, if no moral in- fluence goes out from you, you might as well expect that your water-mill would run without any river to turn the wheel, or that your wind-mill would grind without wind, as that your laws will be executed. Magistrates will not do their duty un- less you are a moving force, compelling them to do it. So far, then, as regulation is concerned, it seems to me that very much more may be done to shear off the grossness and ubiquity of the traffic in intoxicating drinks than has been done ; but as far as its suppression is concerned, that largely awaits the time when men shall imperiously de- mand it. Let us look, then, at the other department of this sub- ject, and consider the fact that our reformatory exertions must be directed largely upon those who use, or may be taught to use, intoxicating drinks. When the temperance reformation first began, we had to take such light as we could get ; and it is not strange that there were very many reasons given for courses which were not as wise in practice as they were sound in principle. The reform principle which men first found was that the use of 1 228 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. intoxicating drinks was to men in health needless, and so dangerous ; and that therefore it was both politic and a moral duty to abstain from it absolutely. I think nothing has been taken from that principle, and that nothing has been added to it. It is just as sound to-day as it was in the beginning. It was a kind of divine providence that led men to this very simple ground, which every man understands, and which ad- dresses itself, first or last, to the reason of the great bulk of the community. Intoxicating drinks are not needful to men in health, and men in health had better let them absolutely alone. It is easier to let them alone than to tamper with them, or to tell how much or how little they may be in- dulged in. But in undertaking to persuade men to banish intoxicat- ing drinks if they had used them, or not to touch them if they had never learned to use them, men fell upon reasons which would not bear proof ; and it is not strange. Physi- ology is every year disclosing newer and newer views; and it is not surprising that it is found that the old doctrines were in many respects false. For example, there springs up a school in the community which teaches that all stimulants of every kind are bad : not alcoholic stimulants alone, but tea and coffee, pepper and salt, and everything else that tastes good. When I come to consider what things have been, by one school and another, shown to be mischievous, I marvel that the race exists yet on earth ! If I were to follow physiological doctrines as I see them laid down in journals of health and hygiene, and as they are taught by the frantic schools that are endeavoring to reform the community, I should not dare to take meat, and I should not dare to take anything with which to qualify my vegetables. Salt is declared to be bad. I am told in one quarter that pepper is extremely bad. I am told in another quarter that I must give up vinegar except in the disposi- tion ! Everything, first or last, is condemned. You must not eat raised bread. Yeast in bread is bad. If saleratus is put into it, it is worse yet. Fat in your food is bad. Almost everything that belongs to cooking has had its blow. And there are those in the community who expect that they are THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 339 going to draw men into their school on the general doctrine that stimulants are bad. Now, there is nothing that you call food which is not stimulating ; and a doctrine which generally sweeps away stimulants will never prevail. It will have some adherents here and there ; but this is a matter in which everybody has liberty in nature a liberty with which grace will not inter- fere. If common sense does not interfere with it, nothing will. Every man has a right to regulate his own diet ; and any attempt to reform the community must proceed on a ground which will meet the sober sense and the experience of men. Therefore, those schools that are carrying a crude and incorrect physiology to the extreme I regard as standing in the way of temperance reform not as helping it. Take the theory of reaction. I remember myself to have made very strong appeals for this theory, saying to men, " Every particle that you drink, every degree that you raise the tone of your system by stimulants, will cause you to rebound to the other extreme, and you will go down just as far as you go up." I thought it was true ; but there never was a falsity greater than that. The reaction is not accord- ing to the action. Under certain circumstances, in excep- tional cases, it may be ; but if you take minute quantities of alcoholic stimulants you produce one class of effects, and produce them without reaction. It was my lot to live in the western country where men were subject to congestive fevers which were more dangerous and deadly than any yellow fever ; and the most prodigous stimulants were administered to patients. Ammonia, brandy, and a variety of other stimulants of the most intensive char- acter were given to them every ten minutes. According to this theory, after taking such stimulants they should have been dashed down into a bottomless pit of reaction ; but there was no reaction whatever. On the contrary, they were carried on and over the gulf of congestion, and were cured. This fact opened my eyes to the untruth which inhered in the primitive argument that the system could be carried up by stimulants only to undergo a corresponding waste of 230 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. its stock. I saw that it was wrong physiologically. And the mischief of such an argument is, that when men, having heard it stated, find out that it is not true, they lose faith in all other arguments on the subject of temperance, and say, " I know they are all false." The same objection holds good against the poison-theory on which Mr. Greeley used to found his whole temperance doctrine. He took the ground that alcoholic stimulants were absolutely poisonous. If that could be proved, all the rest would be very easy ; but, though I do not consider alco- holic stimulants food, and although I do consider many of them, by reason of their adulterations, as poisonous ; yet I do not regard them as poisonous in every case. For instance, I do not think that wine and cider, or even brandy and whisky, are in and of themselves poisonous, though they may be made poisonous under certain circumstances. How absurd it is to tell a young man whose grandfather never, morning or noon, forgot to take his dram, and lived to be eighty-six years old, and, when he was seventy-five could lift a barrel of cider and drink from the bung how absurd it is to tell such a young man that alcoholic stimulus is a slow poison ! He laughs at you. It is a poison under cer- tain circumstances ; but to undertake to base an argument which shall meet the experience and the convictions of the whole community on such a theory as this is to take away from yourself the sympathy of the common-sense of the great bulk of the community if they observe and think. It is said that alcoholic stimulus is not a food, that it builds nothing, and that the system does not need it. I suppose that is in accordance with the facts of physiology. But is it right to assume that nothing is needed by the body except that which is a part of its constructive force ? Does it follow that there are no other wants besides constructive wants ? There are many eminent physiologists who say that tobacco, in very moderate quantities, and that even opium and alcohol, in very small doses, are nerve-preservers. They assert that there are two effects which are produced by these stimulants, the first of which is conservation. They take the ground that any given amount of action of the brain or THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 231 the nervous system wastes that brain or- nervous system less where very minute quantities of alcohol or other stimulants are employed. They say that the second effect of stimulants is a narcotizing one, and that if you augment the dose you go on to this second and entirely different stage, and come to a condition of incipient intemperance or intoxication. Now, to teach that men should avoid alcoholic stimulants because they are not food, and from that to infer that they have no function at all under any circumstances, is not to blind intelligent men, but is to repel them. In other words, it seems to me that we must make our physiology consistent with our observation and experience. I would rather say to the young men under my charge, " Do not drink alcohol ; _because you do not need it and because you run many risks in drinking it. You do not know what is in your blood hereditarily. You do not know what are those conditions of your nervous system which may break out under stimulants into morbid states which will sweep you away. You do not know, if the habit of indulgence in intoxicating drinks should be formed in you, what trouble and anguish would be the result. You do not know what work would be done upon you and in you. And observation should teach you that this habit is so perilous, even aside from physiological considerations, that every man should say to himself, ' Let me be healthy on good food, letting alone artificial stimulants of every kind." 1 On this ground I can urge, with a clear conscience, on my parishioners and friends, abstinence from indulgence in the use of alcohol namely, on the practical observational ground that it is not needed for health, and that it is full of risks and perils. On this not only practical, but, as it seems to me, common- sense ground, it is in vain to expect that we shall carry the community with us immediately, and generally, and finally. I make this remark because I feel that to a very large extent temperance movements have been organized on the idea less of "A long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together," than on the idea that the work is one which can be done up at once and got rid of ; but you never will have done with it. The restraining of men from intemperate stimulants 232 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. must be a part of the staple work of each generation. As long as men live in physical bodies you never can .cleanse the community from intemperance. Every age must attend to it for itself, arid follow it up. If intemperance were like the measles or varioloid, which you can have but once ; if having fallen into it, you could get rid of it once for all, that would be another thing ; but the desire for basilar excitements is a part of the animal nature. The reasons that are acting upon men in this regard are in their nature continuous. They will go on to your children, and to their children. And all the paroxysmal efforts of men to give extraordinary attention to this subject for a little while in order to destroy intemperance, and then have a rest, or opportunity to attend to something else, are ill-timed. They may do some good, but they will not destroy the force of this great evil. We must consider that the liability of men to super-stimulation is one of those elements which belong not alone to savage life, in which it takes on a brutal form, but preeminently to civilized life. Savages drink in order to experience what may be called mental pleasure. Having no thought power, no imaginative power, no joy from intellectual forces, they attempt to pro- duce a glowing enthusiasm by the use of stimulants. As society becomes more civilized and more mentally active, men drink in order to produce, not the lower forms of excitement, but that state of mind and body by which they shall be enabled to work more efficiently and continuously by which, in other words, they shall be enabled to put the work of twenty hours into the space of ten ; or by which they shall be enabled to do four times the usual amount of work in any given period. These are the general influences which are tempting men to use intoxicating drinks. And we are to take this cause of temperance and make it a labor of human- ity, of patriotism, of morality, and of religion, in the school, in the newspaper, everywhere, continually, every generation for itself, working, working, working. One of the first elements, then, in this reformatory work, should be the diffusion of knowledge. It should go on at all times. I am bold enough to say that if you cannot secure THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 233 entire abstinence from drink, it is a great deal better that you should teach men, if they will drink, how to drink with the least harm. I know that one reason which men give lor not drinking liquor is that it is adulterated, and so is poisonous and dan- gerous. That depends very much upon what it is adulterated with. If it be adulterated with water, I do not think it is any more poisonous than it was before. A little burnt sugar in brandy to give it a color I think does not hurt it. The trouble of drinking, it seems to me, is in the license of it, and in the excess with which men drink ; and when it is said, "Get light wines, and ale, and cider, and beer, and metheglin, and what not, in the place of intoxicating drinks," I say, " Well, if I were to have my choice between brandy and gin and whiskey and rum, and these lighter stimulants, and if I could drive the one out by the other, I do not know but I should be willing to make the exchange, and introduce the era of light wines ;" but in America men do not drink wire, nor ale, nor beer for the sake of congeniality, and they are not going to slide off from the stronger onto the lighter and weaker stimulants. Men drink light wines as the first step towards drinking heavy wines ; and they drink heavy wines as the next step towards drinking whiskey ; and they drink for the same reason that they put coal in the furnace and wood in the stove because they want fire. Therefore, to attempt to bribe men who want super-stimulation to drop rum and brandy and whiskey, and go back to ale and beer and cider and light wines, is in vain. They will not do it unless you permit them to swell the amount, and make up in quantity what they lack in quality. We are a practical people, and we drink on purpose, for an object ; and I do not think you will cure the conflagration by persuading men to take embers instead of great fires. It seems to me that ' good food, properly prepared, is a great deal more likely to stay the progress of the use of intoxicating drinks than wines, or ciders, or ale, or beer. There is another thing which I want to say, and which I do not wish to be misunderstood in saying. While I strongly the disuse of intoxicating drinks on the part of men 234 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. in health and vigor, yet I repeat again, that it is better that they should understand the real physiology of things, and the ways in which liquors act on the human system, so that they may determine the times and conditions under which it is least harmful, rather than that they should blunder on without any knowledge on the subject whatsoever. You will see a French gentleman who has been instructed from his childhood how to drink wine, looking with amaze- ment on the raw and awkward way in which our American people gulp it. They who use it continuously, and in using it guide themselves by experience, know how to use it so that its effects are less injurious than they otherwise would be ; but we, having been taught not to touch it at all, yet being determined that we will have it, break through all restraints, and do not know how to use it, and take it on empty stomachs, at untimely hours, and in inordinate quantities, and so are more harmed by it than we would be if we had been enlightened as to how it operates. We drink without reason, because we drink blindly and wildly ; and I wish there might be instruction on this subject. I would say to young men, first, " Do not drink at all ;" but second, " If you will drink, drink so and so ; " because I hold it to be better for men, if they do not accept advice to abstain wholly, that they should know how to skillfully avoid the worst evils, the extremest forms of mischief, arising from intemper- ance. This would seem to weaken the temperance movement. Many men fear that such a docti ine as this would appear to admit the principle that drinking under certain circumstances might be allowable. It is thought to be unwise in a preacher or temperance advocate to admit even that it is better that men should drink a little wine with their food, or that they should take a thimbleful of brandy under certain circum- stances. It is easier and cheaper to say, " Take no stimu- lants at any time." There is nothing so easy and cheap as radicalism as taking a simple principle, and shutting your eyes, and rushing with it like a bull. It is so easy and so cheap that many persons are carried away by it ; but a great many others are left behind. THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 235 Now, for one, my first exhortation would be, " If you are in health and strength and vigor, steer clear of all intox- icating drinks, everywhere, and always ; hut if you will not take that advice, then do not go blindly on in their use. There are more injurious ways and there are less injurious ways of indulging in stimulants take the least injurious ways." There are many efforts besides those which are directly brought to bear upon men that must be organized and made into active forces before we shall gain a great deal of bead- way in the matter of doing away with intemperance. In the first place, I do not think we are going to bring about perfect temperance by merely attempting to shut off intoxicating drinks. You must civilize the kitchen. You must apply physiological wisdom and knowledge to the department of cookery. I consider good cooking to be almost as beneficial as a pledge. Bad cooking is a perpetual temptation to drink. In other words, let men eat, as they do, detestable bread sour, half-baked ; let them eat food swimming in fat, and saturated with it ; let them eat dried salt meats, not only reeking with rancid and unwholesome fat, but cooked to a crust, hard as a horn ; let them eat what they will find if they take a journey through the West, in all the restaurants and hotels, and they will very speedily be in a condition in which they want "bitters." Many men, under such circumstances, say, " In health I am a temper- ance man ; but really, the water so disagrees with me in this neighborhood, that I must have something to help myself out!" We have gone on advocating entire abstinence ; we have gone on urging men to let liquor alone ; but we must add something to that ; there must be more knowledge in respect to wholesome food, and in respect to the best mode of pre- paring it. There is a great deal of prejudice against luxurious tables. The devil is supposed to reside and preside where luxury spreads its dainties; fine food, delicately served, is considered to belong to the last stages of effeminacy ; but t!i3re are more devils in inihrostible food than in all the lux- r 236 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. uries on earth. The evils arising from eating improper food exist very widely among our people. Take for instance, the article of butter. Where there is one pound of butter that any Christian man ought to eat, there is a ton that ought to be thrown overboard into per- dition. One of the total depravities in diet consists in the eating of bad butter. When Spring comes, redolent of pastures, we enjoy butter. In the Summer we go on eating butter, but it is not so good as it was in the Spring. In the Autumn butter becomes more and more detestable ; but still we eat it. No- body seems to know enough to stop eating it when it does not taste good ; so we go on damaging continually the condi- tions of health. But no man can be healthy who does not have some regard for the stomach, and avoid eating those things which clog the liver and destroy the purity of the blood. One of the greatest causes of unhealth is injudicious eating. The great majority of blue-devils with which men \ to contend come from the morbid appetites and desires which spring from a want of regulation in their tables. One of the greatest blessings that could be bestowed upon men would be a knowledge of how to cook food so that it should be healthful. A woman may pray at home and abroad, and read as many tracts as she pleases: but a diet of apple-dumplings, and unleavened short-cake, and a thousand other things which are supposed to be simple, and harmless, uncooked or badly cooked, will be a match for all her tracts and prayers. gfjorm_thftiable, and give pure health, so that men shall feel sweet and buoyant and songful when they wake up in the morning, and they will scarcely be tempted to drink ; but give them a heavy stomach after every meal, and let them go gulping and flatulent, and suffering from heartburn, and de- pressed, not knowing what ails them, and you may be sure that they will be tempted more from that cause than from any other. There is great temptation to drink, in wrong dietetic habits. Much of the intemperance in communities has its rise in such habits. The oven as well as the shop needs to be looked after. ^^L THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 237 Then, there must be, also, more provision made for the enjoyment of the common people. I think we Americans know how to work better than any other people on earth, and how to enjoy ourselves less. We come of a stock that is not of a holiday temper. I think a Yankee never seems so awkward as when he has a whole day in which he is trying to amuse himself. " If I only had something to do," he says, " I should know how to go at that ; " but how to be happy with nothing to do is the very thing which he does not know. Men in this country are happy when they are working ; but when they have amassed a fortune, and have retired, and are trying to be happy, they are bunglers. In democratic communities like our own, where men are on an equality, every man is inspired with zeal and ambition, and is striving to build up his fortune. The principle of equality being the great stimulus, inciting men to industry, the tendency is to shut out innocent amusements. But, for my part, I believe there is an element of the Gospel in recreation in those things which entertain without damaging ; and that in- stead of attempting to prevent men from indulging in amuse- ment, it is a thousand times better that they should be en- couraged to do so. I thank God for the prevalence of athletic games. The gambling which sometimes accompanies them is no reason why they should not maintain their place. What you should do is to purge them of all that is bad. I do not believe in young men's going to gambling saloons for the purpose of playing billiards ; but I do believe in their having billiard tables at home. I do not believe it is well for men to play cards in public places ; I do not believe it is ever well for them to play for stakes ; but if father, and mother, and brothers, and sisters, will stay at home, and make a happy circle, and play cards, I will not discounte- nance it. I do not say that I think it wise for persons to leave their work and join in frolics for whole days and weeks and mouths at a time ; but I believe that there should be a part of every man's time from day to day in which he can simply enjoy himself and have liberty of amusement. I do not believe that while men are unhappy you can save 238 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. them from drinking. Everybody longs for sentient happi- ness ; and if he cannot have it in his surroundings, if it is not to be found in his family, if it does not come to him in business, if his prospects are darkened, and his stomach and liver are in revolt in all these circumstances it is expecting more from human nature than it will ever answer, to suppose that he will not attempt to alleviate his distress by stimulus. Therefore you must attend to the whole condition of the com- mon people, as an auxiliary influence, if you would success- fully carry on the temperance reform. More than that, I think there must be imparted by Chris- tianity a view of the future which shall give more hope and more cheer, and develop more sweetness in men. We have had a conscience-culture. 1 define Calvinism to ^j be the doctrine of the omnipotence of the divine Will ; I de- f fine Christianity to be the doctrine of the omnipotence of the ^. divine Love ; and from Calvinism, which is the religion of na- >* ture unenlightened, springs our intense pressure upon the consciences of men. It makes some grand men. It makes grand men, because if they survive they must needs have been very grand men to bear up under it ; but it passes by and leaves untouched, or crushes, a hundred, where it builds one. Now, we have, very largely, in Protestant communities, the intensive forms of belief which come from more rigorous doctrines that were timely when men were breaking away from the seduction of old superstitions, and which had rela- tions to certain works in special ages ; but we are living in times when we need to mould the whole community by more cheer, more sweetness, more hope and more vitality in relig- ion than those forms can give. Under such circumstances, I should expect that the prevalence of the milder type of ex- perience, with less intensiveness, and with more trust and rest and confidence, would be a powerful auxiliary to temperance to the restraining of men from over-stimulations of every kind. ^ Everything, then, that tends to make the household happy, rf to bring a man home to his family, to lead him to take his wife and children with him when he goes abroad every such thing will be a help in staying the tide of intemperance. It THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 239 is very difficult for a whole household to drink. It is very easy for a man to drink when he goes away from home alone. In Germany, I went to the gardens where people go for music and beer, and I was told that if we could only intro- duce such gardens into America we should have much less intemperance that beer would be an immense auxiliary to the temperance reformation. My own impression is this : that we have cut the thing in two. We have introduced the beer, but we have notintroduced the^aiDil^^temBnt for I noticed that a man would^owi^nmsgooa/mw^na sixteen or less children ; and that, big and little, they would swarm around a table. The household all went together, and the going to- _ gether was the best thing about it. It was that which exer- cised moderation and restraint upon each and all. One of the criticisms which I make upon the habits of "^v our people is that our young men do not want to go out with J their sisters. There is nothing less reputable, I think, in our social customs, than the habits of a young man who is not proud to wait upon his mother. No young man ought to live who does not feel himself to be more a man because he is permitted to walk in the street and be seen with his mother leaning on his arm. Woe to that young man who does not want to wait upon his sister who says, " What fun is there in going with one's sister r" He who wants the stimulus of a stranger, or he who has not home loves so strong but that the presence of another is better to him than that of one who was born of the same mother, and who has been reared under the same roof, is in a bad way. One of the most sacred in- fluences is that which grows up in the affections which are bred from the same cradle. It is not so bad that a young >. man should go forth from his family for pleasure if he will 2_ __ take his sister or his mother with him alone and seek his pleasure away from tneinfluences 6 family renders him subject to the lower temptations of hu- man nature. I think that if we would make our homes hap- pier, the great bulk of our people would not seek happiness outside of the household, but would abide at home, or, when they went forth, would all go together ; and I believe that the result of this would be a great auxiliary to temperance. 40 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. But in order to this, we must come down in prices. Many a man cannot go to the Academy of Music and take his wife and all his children. At a dollar a head he could not indulge in that luxury more than once or twice a year. What we very much want is recreations concerts, lectures, public instructive entertainments to which men can go with their whole households, and which, when they return to their homes, they can make a theme of conversation and criticism. A good lecture one that pleases men when they listen to it will stir them up, and will lead them to read and discuss, sides being taken, and comments being made. Such facilities would be an efficient means of educating the masses; but it is impossible, with the steep prices which are maintained, for the great bulk of our citizens to go largely to public entertainments. There needs to be a funda- mental change in the direction of cheap, social, demo- cratic amusements among our common people ; and when you make men happy in their work, happy in their homes, happy when they are at the table, and happy afterwards, the temptations to intemperance will be greatly lessened. Al- though wholesome food and pleasing associations will not make them necessarily temperate, it will draw them away from many of those temptations to intemperance under which multitudes now fall. Allow me to say, in regard to the prosecution of temper- ance by those who are its advocates, that we seem to be in the same danger which exists everywhere in human society the danger of bigotry. Men in the church are reviled as being bigoted ; and with propriety. They are so ; but they are not any more so than men out of the church. You shall hear men say,-*' They won't exchange, eh? Mr. Beecher won't exchange with Dr. Hall, of the Holy Trinity, and Doctor Hall won't exchange with Mr. Beecher. Mr. Beecher won't exchange with Dr. Putnam because Dr. Putnam is a Unita- rian ; and Dr. Putnam won't exchange with a Swedenborgian. So it goes around ; and that is what you call religion 1 " Well, how is it in medicine ? Not only will not homeo- pathic and allopathic doctors consult together, but if a man is known to be liberal, many a medical society kicks him out. THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 24:1 Physicians are as bigoted about medicine as ministers are about theology. There is, in the realm of art, what is called " low art," and what is called "high art ;" and there are intermediate stages; and each is distinct from every other. So human nature runs in grooves, and men are divided into classes, and every class is apt to have more regard for itself than for any others ; and pride and selfishness, whether in religion, or philosophy, or science, or any other department, is part and parcel of universal human nature. So, every time you cet on foot any wholesome reformation which tends to run against these propensities, they are aroused ; and, as .an instance, they are distinctively brought into action by the temperance movement. There has been an interference with men's liberties. It has been thought that even if a man conscientiously believed it to be right to use wine on his table he must be bombarded until lie receded from that position ; and so, unmannerly in- vectives and epithets have been heaped upon those who per- sisted in exercising what they considered to be their just freedom. Now, I stand for the liberty of such men ; and I say to them, "If a man says, 'You shall not drink wine,' that is the very ground on which I would drink it." I stand as Calvin stood in respect to the Sabbath day, who, after ex- horting his students to observe that day because of its moral benefits, said to them, " But if any man says to you, 'You must keep the Sabbath,' then break it, as a token of your Christian liberty." I hold the individual rights of a man to be priceless ; and I declare that no reformation of any kind is justified in beginning by breaking down those rights. I may persuade a man as much as I please ; but after I have reasoned with him, and brought to bear upon him the strongest arguments, if he still, in the exercise of his own calm judgment, takes a course different from that which I hold to ba the best, I have no right to damage his influence, to tarnish his good name, or to make society uncomfortable for him. There are, then, different views as to the extent to which it is proper for the advocates of temperance to go in urging 242 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. these claims upon men ; so that some who work for the cause only to a certain degree are considered as non-temperance men, because they do not go so far as others would have them. But the bigotry of one side among those who are laboring for the suppression of intemperance againsb another side is mischievous to the last degree. I believe in temper- ance, but I believe in personal liberty too. I believe in working to reform men from intemperance, but I believe in doing it by persuasion and by reasoning. I do not think you will gain anything by bigotry, or sourness, or invective. Those men who employ these means undoubtedly do it under the influence of their conscience. So did Paul act in accord- ance with the dictates of his conscience in going to Damas- cus to persecute the Christians. Men, since the world began, have been led by their consciences, in alliance with selfishness and combativeness and destructiveness, to do things that were wrong. Here let me say a word respecting that great movement which is taking place in the West, and which is trying to take place in the East the aggressive movement of women against intemperance. I need not say, after what I have already said, that I do not expect that this wonderful move- ment is going to sweep intemperance from Ohio, or any- where else ; and yet I hail it. I am glad of it. It has been a most extraordinary development, considered merely as a matter of phenomenology. A great deal of benefit has come from it in some regions ; but I never supposed that it would banish this gigantic evil from the earth. It has not seemed to me that anything permanent could be effected by a paroxysm of prayer and faith. I do not think you can get "as many answers to prayer when you are praying at liquor dealers as when you are praying to God. If prayer is any- thing, it ought to be addressed to the Supreme Being ; and I think that, in this case, it ought to be offered, according to the command of Christ, in your closet. You may sing on the sidewalk, and you may exhort on the sidewalk, but I would not advise women to pray on the sidewalk with the idea that they are praying to God. You may pray at the liquor dealers if you please ; but it should be understood that THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 243 vou are praying at them, and not that you are praying to God. But these are mere superficial elements. The rousing of the mothers and wives and sisters in our land to the con- sciousness that it is intemperance which strikes most pain- fully upon them, and that they have something to do with the destroying of it this I consider to be beyond all valua- tion. And it is not going to stop with temperance. The day is passed when a woman will think that her face must be veiled. The day is passed when a woman will be taught that her only business is to rock the cradle, and not, when the cradle has been rocked, to go out with her son, and be his companion and helper in everything he does which is lawful and right. The day of the estrangement of women from the works of Christianity in our time is passed, and you will never see again any great movement going on in this land in which women will not more and more be participants. You may not like it; but God does not ask men what they like. You may not approve of it ; but your children will. There will come a time, within a hundred years, and a great deal sooner than that, when men will scarcely believe the truth in respect to our present doctrines in regard to a woman's function in life when they will look upon it as to-day you look upon the veiled wives in the harem. They will not believe that it was possible for the sons of the Pilgrims, who were so enlightened in respect to the liberty of men, to have been in such obscurity in regard to the power and liberty of women. Therefore I am glad to see this great outbreak, though there is much in it which I do not think will have any particular effect on the temperance cause, since evident to me that it will have a powerful effect on the can of woman. I hail it ; for now, if a woman may go out, a a Presbyterian minister may go with her, and sing and pray and exhort in front of a grog-shop by the hour, day in and day out ; if she is ordained by him, quo ad hoc (this is an ecclesiastical phrase, which I do not interpret), then she may do other things also ; such as praying in a conference-room and exhorting in a meeting, if she has anything to say. Was there ever such a piece of Pharisaism as has been cxhib- 244 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. ited on account of a woman's speaking in meeting ? They set her to teaching in the school, but when she presumes to teach in the conference meeting, they quote Paul as forbid- ding a woman to speak ! They make her a missionary, and send her, under a Board of Direction, to teach the heathen ; but she must not speak in a Presbyterian -church at home, because Paul forbade it ! They give her the amplest educa- tion, they give her the ability and capacity to do things which men can do ; and then they stop up her mouth with a text, as if it were contrary to the Spirit of God for her to employ her talents. Now, I hold that a woman has a right to do anything that she can do well, and that it is proper to do at all. I do not say that every woman is bound to speak every man, thank God, is not bound to speak but when by her birth- right she is capacitated to speak, it is right that she should speak. I hold that in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female ; that men and women stand alike ; and that it is right for a woman under given circumstances to do what it is right for a man to do under the same circumstances. Looking upon the movement which is taking place in regard to temperance, as I do with great interest, while I do not think that in any form in which it has developed itself it is going to have much influence, I can see that, in a form which has not been contemplated, it is going to have a great deal of influence ; and I trust that from this time forth the women in every Christian Church will feel that they are per- sonally responsible for the progress of the temperance work ; and that by prayer, at home and in meetings by themselves, and by forth-puttings in various ways, they will help us to roll on the blessed car of reformation. Give us this woman-element. We do not want women ~lo become men ; we want them to remain women, and to furnish that love, that disinterestedness, that benevolence, that zeal and enthusiasm, which, we lack, but which they never lack. So I hope we shall make headway, in our day and genera- tion, against the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks, and all those influences of social bias and fashion whic h are THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 345 leading so many men into ways which at first are simply con- vivial, but which afterwards become ways of dissipation, and of final degradation and utter destruction. In closing these remarks on this general subject, let me say a single word to those who are already in the indulgence of drinking habits, not as your censor, not as your master or lord, but as your friend, as your brother, as your pastor if you be of this flock. Let me put it to every man in this pres- ence to-night : Would it not be better for you, for your health, for your peace of mind, and for the comfort of those that are around about you, if you abstained entirely from drinking habits ? If you take comfort in drinking you ought to leave it off, because you are in danger ; and if you do not take comfort in it, you ought to give it up on the ground of man- liness and of kindness to those who are around about you. You ought to do it on the general ground of prudence. And on the grounds of manliness and kindness and prudence, as a matter of duty, may I not exhort you to take a step in ad- vance ? Will not my years now justify me in addressing the young as a father ? and may I not exhort those who have never yet touched the intoxicating cup to come up with unpolluted lips ? May I not exhort you to turn your back upon vulgar pleas- ure, and live in manly habits of virtue, of self-restraint, and of that which God gives to every man by which to keep these temples of the Holy Ghost pure ? There are no joys that come from convival and dissipating habits which are to be compared with those which come from the throb of absolute health. Seek health. Seek it by the way of virtue and manli- ness. Put far from you the cup. Do not allow your pleas- ures to run in directions which separate you from your kindred and companions. Cling to your household. Love your father and mother, and brothers and sisters. Love your wife, if you stand in the marital connection. Stand strong at home. Bring your pleasures there ; or, take your household with you if you go out for pleasure. Stand together, and stand by one another's light and strength. May God keep away from you the blight in yourselves , 246 TH % TEMPERANCE QUESTION. and as you grow up to be parents, may he, in his infinite mercy, deliver you from the anguish of seeing those whom you have borne and reared through years of anxiety smitten down and swept away by the fiery scourge. And as you see those who are struggling with temptations around about you, be generous toward them ; give them a helping hand ; be full of sympathy for them ; do what in you lies to save them ; bear with them if they stumble after reformation, and lift them up. jgpvftrgivp i^p a, n^,n. As long as there is life in him, help him ; even if your helping him does not do him any good, it will do you good. And may God, at last, bring us all into his kingdom. May he purify our hearts, and justify our lives, so that at length we may stand in the blessedness of the life to come, without fear, without temptation, and without sin. THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 247 PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE beseech of thee, our Father, to grant us that inspiration by which ail that is li ke thee iu us may rise iuto power, that we may dis- cern thy presence. By our inward sensibility, by all those affections in us which rise at thy call, by a heart that is itself disposed to cry out, Abba Father, by trust, by love, by hope, by peace, may we dis- cern thy presence, .uiay we not seek the soul's companionship according to the thoughts and the ways of the body, as if only they were near us whom we can see, and as if the best part of our life and nature could be discerned by the senses. Grant, we pray thee, that our souls may learn to recognize the invisible world, and the helps which belong to our lower life. May we rise into the confidence of thine existence, and into full trust and absorbing love. Forgive those things which are faulty and sinful in our dispositions. Have compas- sion upon those things which come from our infirmities, from our weakness and from our inexperience. Whether they be sinful or not, grant that deliverance from on high by which we may be borne safely through. From day to day may we gain in strength, in knowl- edge, in virtue, in patience, in fidelity, in all that makes us Christ-like. We pray that thou wilt help those who are discouraged, and cause them, though they go slowly, to feel that they are in the right way so long as they are serving thee. Have compassion upon those who are as men traveling in a darkened night, and whose doubts and fears are more than their joys. Have compassion upon those who meet with stormy times ; who are often overwhelmed and carried away, though they fain would pursue the right way. We beseech of thee that thou wilt be near all the children of night, and all that are captives. Unbind them, and open their prison doors, and bring them forth. May those who have consecrated their youth to thee, and who stand in primal strength, unperverted, not be vain and proud, nor glory in their own power, nor in their own goodness. May they know that it is the grace of God, diffused through their parents, and through their households, and through all their edu- cation and circumstances, that has upheld and is upholding them. And we beseech of thee that they may feel themselves to be account- able for nobler fruit and larger exertion than those who combat with evil in themselves, and exhaust their forces in restraining their tendencies toward evil, lest they be utterly overthrown. We pray that thou wilt grant to all those who have had the true ideal of life administered to them, to those who have risen to the Mount of Vision, to those who have discerned the great world beyond, and felt its inspiration and help, by which they may bring hither, by a blessed impartation to their souls, the truths of that upper realm. Are there not many that are ordained to be comforters who do not exercise their gifts? Are there not many that are sent to be light- bearers who let men walk in darkness because they will not let their light shine? Are there not those who sit to be fed who should feed others? Are there not many that are forever asking and seldom giving? 248 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. We pray, O Lord, that thou wilt disclose the duties of life to every one. May all lay aside false shame, aiid indolence, and self-seeking, and whatever hinders them from disclosing the powers that are in them. We pray that thou wilt fill this church with men and women who shall be workers together in the blessed cause of God. Spread the truth throughout all our land. Help those who are seeking better ways for men. May our whole nation be reformed, that it may be held back from violence, from avarice, from evil passions, from inor- dinate affections. We pray that thou wilt harmonize the counsels of this great people. May we be more and more intense in our desires for universal intelligence. And grant that liberty may not degenerate into licentiousness. May this Christian people, raised up and protected by the providence of God, become a light to guide other nations, and to convince them of their need of knowledge, in order that they purge away the blackness of ignorance, and all imps of superstition, and all temptations to tyranny by reason of men's weakness. So, in the strength which comes from virtue, and intelligence, and piety, may thy people everywhere stand strong in that liberty where- with Christ makes them free. Have compassion upon the world. Hasten, we beseech of thee, the day when all men shall know thee from th greatest unto the least, when thy kingdom shall come, and when thy will shall be done in earth as it is done in heaven. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Sou, and Spirit, evermore. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OTTR 'Father, we pray that thy blessing may rest upon the truth spoken to-night. Grant that it may do good, exciting thought, and inciting men to considerateness who are careless. Grant, we pray thee, that those who are in peril may be withdrawn from their danger. Grant that those who are safe may be maintained in their safety. We pray for the whole community. We pray that the power of Christian truth may elevate it on every side. We pray that labor iray become sweeter, and its remunerations surer. We pray that contentment may follow acquisition. We pray that men may learn bow to be happy without becoming frivolous. We pray that men pw>y use this world as a means of preparing for the world to come. Mv they learn to use all the the things which God has created with- out abusing them. And bring us all, by and by, to our Father's Louse, through riches of grace la Christ Jesus. Amen. " For by grace are ye saved through faith ; and that not of your- *elves: it is the gift of God." EPH. U., 8. The salvation of men is the result of the divine nature. It is the effluence and the effect of the disposition of God. Whatever governmental theories may have hitherto been entertained, whatever philosophical explanations may have been made, the fact will become more and more apparent that the reason of men's salvation, in the end, is that the tendency of the divine government which is but another word for the effect of the divine disposition is to communi- cate everlasting life to men. No exposition of Christianity will be abiding and effective which does not take into account the whole of man, man- kind, and all the circumstances which act upon men. It is easy for us to form theories in the study, using those men about us who are the best descended, the best educated, and the most favorably situated, as our specimens ; but no theory springing from Christianity will be valid and permanent which does not to take into account the whole race, under all their circumstances, and under all the influences that have acted, and are acting, and will continue, according to the constitution of things, to act upon them. What does ideal perfectness require a man to be ? or, in other words, what does the law of God require of mankind ? for the law of God can be nothing other than the law of ideal perfectness. There is a law spoken of in the Word of God the ceremonial law of the Jews; and, for the most SUNDAY MORNING, May 24, 1874. T.ESSON : Isaiah lv., HYMNS (Plymouth Collec- tion) : Nos. 130, 180, 660. 252 GOD'S GRACE. part, that is the meaning of the term as employed in the epistles ; because the apostles who wrote were writing to their countrymen, and were seeking to enlarge them and set them free from the old Mosaic economy. Then there is society law, such as men find all around them. But divine law that on which we are to reason in determining right and wrong respecting life and the great events of the future that law cannot be regarded as synonymous with the Mosaic law, or society law, or any other law than that of ideal per- fectness in every part of man's nature. Such a law as this demands perfect conditions of body; for the mind can no more act rightly without its connections in this world, than a steam-engine can go to sea without a ship's hull under it. We all know that the mind grows sick with the body, and grows well with the body, to a certain degree ; and though we may not be able to mark the limitations exactly, yet the general truth is universally admitted that the body and mind in our present circumstances so work together that one affects the other, that one is dependent upon the other, and that for the highest mental action there must be the highest bodily conditions. The ideal perfectness which God requires demands the right use, under proper limitations, provisions and govern- ment, of all the appetites and all the passions which are put into man's economy. There is not one of them that is not in its central nature and purpose divine, wise and necessary, as a constituent element of humanity ; and it is the right use of them, limiting them simply to their normal functions and proper government, that is demanded by the ideal law of God. That law also requires that men should develop their right functions in right lines, and in right associations or company. And the education and predominance of the moral senti- ments and spiritual elements which are in men is to be secured. The control of the passions, the development of the social affections, and the unfolding of the moral nature of man these things are to take place in the light of reason, of the imagination, and of the highest forms of intelligence. Now, consider that these things are to be accomplished in some sense against nature. Consider, in other words, that it GOD'S G&ACE. 353 is not the tendency of a man's physical being to develop itself toward spirituality. The flesh tends toward coarseness, and not toward that spirituality which is the result of will, effort, and continuous influence. All this various develop- ment of the ideal man in perfect harmony and symmetry is to be brought about within itself. What that perfect bar- mon}i and symmetry is we do not know. It differs in different men, as will appear more clearly in the sequel. Every man is to be developed by that which is within him into a per- sonal harmony; and what that personal harmony is, is to be found out by each one separately. It also is to be continuous, perpetual. That is to say, we are to seek, not a mood, but a character ; not a flash of feel- ing, but an abiding disposition ; not some happy hour of inspiration merely, but a life. Through dark and through light, through calm and through storm, through battle and through peace, we are to seek abidingly a higher form of character which shall put all that is in us into harmonious relations with itself, and ourselves into harmonious relations with God and the invisible world. Such is the law of God, such is the ideal manhood which we are to aspire to, and such is the substantial law by which men are judged, and are to be judged. Now, let us observe the facts of men's creation, and of their condition in this world. If we take the old reasoning, and say that men were created holy, that they fell from their first estate, and that since the race has fallen it is to be treated as a race that has fallen by its own fault in some ivay if we take that reasoning we despatch the question \ T 3ry briefly, but most unsatisfactorily. No such reasoning, however, can possibly continue. It is not true in respect to each individual, as that reasoning would lead us to sup- pose, that he ever fell in our great forefather, Adam, in any such sense as that. The facts of the individual expe- rience of a person, or of the race, are to be accounted for on the grounds of divine arrangement, as much as the nature of the earth, or the laws of light and gravity. The theory that they depend upon the creative care of God is absolute and inevitable. 254 GOD'S GRACE. Men are born into the world empty. There is nothing of them in the beginning. There are germinant tendencies in them, there are undeveloped forces in them, carrying certain potential qualities; but those tendencies and qualities are at first chaotic. Helpless man, when he is born, is like a city sketched on paper but not built. Men come into the world nothings, though they come with the capacity of being somethings. The human being is an apprentice to all tilings that are manly to all things whose nature is moral. He comes into life lower than an apprentice. He learns every- thing by the slowest and by the hardest. The eye learns to see. It was adapted to learn ; but it has to learn. The ear learns, the tongue learns, the hand learns, the foot learns, the very body itself learns, everything. It is not so with the animal creation underneath us. They at birth know all that they are ever to know, for the most part. Certainly, as you go down lower everything is created more nearly perfect. No long period is required for the non- intelligent animals to learn to walk or to gambol and enjoy themselves. Their apprenticeship is very short. And when you go below them to the insects, these are born perfect. But men are bom at nothing at zero ; and they have to come up, learning everything which pertains to their body slowly, by experimental steps, by tentative efforts. When you rise higher than the body, the apprenticeship is still more apparent, and men are obliged to learn every- thing that is wise, or good, or gentle, or discreet, or excellent in any form, by a still longer schooling. This is in ac- cordance with the divine constitution. It is not a mere accident of men. It might as well be said that men are responsible for the shape of their head, for its size, or for the character of their features, as to say that they are responsible for those conditions which bring them into life at zero, and which make it impossible for any creature that ever lives on earth to reach anything excellent except through certain stages of evolution. The most complex thing, the subtlest thing, the most difficult thing to be conceived of, is the devel- opment of a truly divine character in man. There is no other problem which is so intricate and so un reachable as the GOD'S GRACE. 255 harmonious development of a man's faculties to an ideal symmetry. When you consider the intricacy of a construction like Babbage's calculating machine, it tires your brain and you give up attempting to form a conception of it. When you consider the problems which are involved in a great astro- nomical calculation, they are so many and so intricate that unless one has rare genius and long practice they are insol- uble to him. But no physical problems such as these are comparable to the difficulty which there is in the develop- ment of absolute power and co-operative harmony in the ideal perfect man. Consider the rawness of men, their rudeness, their weak- ness in moral elements, and their strength in basilar forces. Consider the circumstances under which men come into the world, and under which they have to play their part in the development of their character and in the fulfillment of the behests of God's ideal law, or law of ideal perfection. What is the preparation with which a man starts in life ? Not only does he inherit from his parents, from his ancestors, all con- ceivable combinations of normal qualities, in all degrees of proportion, but he inherits these qualities in an endless, vary- ing series ; so that the first child that is born into a family is not the type of the second. In other words, the alphabet which spells out each man is found in father and mother, in grandfather and grandmother ; and the lines which come doAvn to the formation of each individual one, select, from long reaches backward, qualities in different degrees, in differ- ent proportions, and with different susceptibilities. Every man, differently, for himself, inherits, in varying degrees, that which comes down to him through his ancestors. So that one man has a large intellect, with small feeling ; and another has a small intellect with large feeling. One man has radiancy of imagination and no practicalness, while another man is stone blind in imagination und has excessive practicalness. In the same household one sings as a poet, and all the rest are mute ; one is an eminent mathematician, and none of the others has any gifts in that direction. In the same brood of children, representing the same father and 256 GOD'S GRACE. mother, by various combinations of qualities, in accordance with God's law of heredity, there is infinite variation. So every man stands for himself. In mankind the individual is a thousand times more char- acteristic than anywhere else in creation. Although the genus among men is well marked, the species under that genus are so distinct one from another that they would constitute, in any other department of knowledge, distinct genera. It is true, also, that we inherit, at the start, morbid condi- tions. Some men are born with perfect health. Their brain is healthy. All the nerves that run out from it are healthy. Their heart is healthy. Their lungs are healthy. Their stomach is healthy. Their bone-system is good, and their muscular system is good. Each part is in proportion to every other, and all the parts work harmoniously. But right by the side of such a one, and born of the same father and mother, is one whose head is in great disproportion to all the rest of his body. Another is born with a good head and a good heart, but poor lungs. Still another is born with poor digestion. Not only so, but some men are born with morbid appe- tites and with tendencies toward lust. They inherit evil propensities from their parents for which they are no more responsible than they would be for a club-foot, or for a deformed arm. In some the appetite for drink is heredi- tary. Insanity is born in some. There is every conceivable variety of conditions in which men are born. And they who study men most closely, those who are the best physiologists, are the most assured of the fact that we are born with infinitely different and varying proportions, not only of phys- ical organs, but of moral qualities. And yet, no man has a bill of items when he is born. No invoice comes with a man when he enters this world, saying, " Brain so much ; heart so much," and so on. The father does not know what is in the child ; the mother does not know it ; the child itself does not know it ; nobody knows it until the person finds it out himself, when he is shoved into life, and the school-master runs against it, and it is restrained ; or until the minister discovers it ; or until the man, stum- GOD'S GRACE. 257 bling this way or that way, driven by forces which he has not calculated, comes to a knowledge of it. There are generic public laws ; and there are also special laws which apply to individual men, and which are required by each one for himself ; but where is there, in any revela- tion, or in any book of accumulated human experience, anything that tells a man what he is when he starts in this world blindly on the race of the ideal perfection of man- hood ? I am not exaggerating this ; it is worse than I can possi- bly draw it ; but the looking in the face the facts of the condition in which men actually exist i3 indispensable to the right understanding of divine grace. Consider, also, the surroundings into which men are born. How blessed are they who are half-way in heaven when they sit in their mother's lap ! How many there are who have no such benign and sacred place ! How many there are whose parents are their perverters ! How many there are who are made selfish by their instruction, as well as by the hereditary tendencies which are in themselves ! How many are rendered base, frivolous, coarse, animal, and sensuous, by parents who are worse than no teachers, perverting their children ! Here are men who are born into life with nothing but capacities. They are ignorant as to what these capacities are ; and they exist in different men in such endlessly different proportions that no one man is a model for another. Then, men are frequently tainted with morbid conditions which are hereditary. And with these disabilities they are born into households where very little light or help is given to them. And not once nor twice, but many times, and in varying degrees, these facts characterize the condition of the human family. In the very highest points of Christian culture and attain- ment things have been gradually growing better; but in looking over the past, consider as you go back, and as the light grows dimmer and dimmer, what must be the condition, not of the comparatively few favored families, not of here and there a small circle who have been blessed in overmeas* 258 GOD'S GRACE. ure, but of all mankind, if the law of perfectness is enforced. What kind of a Christianity is that which takes no account of mankind ? If there is any truth in Christianity, it must be a truth that covers the condition of the human family ; it must be a truth that is able to solve all physical and social and moral phenomena; it must be a truth that shall meet, fjr instance, all physiological facts squarely in the face. There are men who will bow down with reverence before a text, but who will jump a fact. There are men who are profoundly reverential toward the revelation of God in the Bible, but who are most fractious and most presumptuous in treading under foot God's other revelation the revelation of nature, and of actual human life. And when I look out on the condition of the race ; when I see how they are born, how they are made up, how little they know about helping themselves, how little anybody knows about helping them, how ignorant they are, and how helpless they are ; when I look at life as it undeniably is, I say that the theories which have accounted for these things are insufficient. We must have other ones ; and other ones are dawning. Consider what it is, in the best conditions, to come into life unformed and unbuilt, and to go on all the way through one's career with a law continually over one's head demanding perfectness perfectness of body, with all its unknown con- ditions ; perfectness of the basilar disposition, with all its fiery passions and appetites, untamed and and untamable ; perfectness everywhere, always, and under all circumstances. To put a child that has never seen a horse, on some Western prairie, or on the Southern pampas, behind a team of wild horses first harnessed, and to put the lines in his hands, and say to this little five-year-old, " Drive them, or be damned !" how cruel it would be ! And yet, how have men harnessed human life, and taken creatures born of the fieriest passions, of the intensest natures, about which they know so little ; how have they taken such beings that are ignorant of themselves, and put them behind themselves, and said, " Be perfect, or be damned" ! Suppose you were to take a grown man, who knew the ship-building trade, and send him on a raft to sea, saying, GOD'S GRACE 259 "Build your ship while you are making the voyage"! What sort of a voyage would a man make on a raft which he was compelled to convert into a ship while making his trip on the ocean ? And yet, is it not so with you and me ? Are we not very much equipped with lumber, but not at all with a good hull? Are we not to develop ourselves, and make our character, while all the time there is above our heads yours, and mine, and everybody's the imperious command, " Be thou perfect"? Thanks be to God that there is such a requirement. Thanks be to God that so high a standard is held up before us. When I see how men come into life, and how they would destroy and obliterate all traces of divinity in them, I am glad that there is a law in the heavens which quietly says to them, " Be thou perfect, as I am perfect." Consider what forces society generates. Consider what massive institutions men find already in society, which they cannot go around, which they cannot dig under, which they cannot pass through, and which throw lights and shadows upon them, and influence them for good or for evil, as the case may be. Consider what currents there are, which are like gulf-streams, with channels already cut, that are irre- sistible to the strongest men. Consider how impossible it is for a man to throw himself out from under the influence of those who are around him. Consider the conflicts of society. Consider its rivalries, and envies, and jealousies, and deceits, and cruelties, and oppressions. Consider the wrongs that are perpetrated everywhere. And then consider that a man is put into society where these great forces are at work, without any sociological knowledge, without any chart, with only functional and educational equipment. "When I consider what the conditions are under which human life is to develop itself ; when I look simply at the facts of man's actual existence ; when I think of the influ- ences which are brought to bear upon the formation of men's characters, I not only do not marvel that civilization has progressed so little, but I marvel that it has progressed at all ; and on the theory that there are no forces operating upon mankind except the forces of nature, I cannot under" 260 GOD'S GRACE. stand how there could have been any such progress. The strongest argument to me of the divine government is the upward tendency, on the whole, of human nature. When I see what it is made up of, what its pull-backs are, and how few attractions and soliciting influences there are to lift men higher and higher ; when I see how low its condition is, how void it is of holiness, how weak it is in its inspiration ; when I see how little there is in it that looks toward right education and right development ; and when I look at the destiny of the human family in the light of these things, it seems to me it is enough to drive to distraction one who has no other ideas than, those which are gathered from men themselves. Now, on the other hand, consider what the effect must be if men are to be judged rigorously by the law of ideal perfectness. Suppose there is, at the end of life, and above life, acting down silently through the spheres, a gover- nor, who holds before himself, evermore, the conception of perfectness of character in man, and administers under that law, rigorously demanding perfection, being content with nothing less than commercial exactitude, and saying, " Pay every penny, or I will take thee by the throat, and throw thee into prison." Consider where men come from ; consider how they come ; consider how rude they are ; consider how weak they are in that which is good, and how strong they are in that which is bad ; consider what their circumstances are, and what their surroundings are ; then consider what it would be to administer an ideal law of perfectness over them. I say that if God himself were to impose such a law upon the race in their present condition, it would be an act of tyranny so transcendent that the human mind is not able to conceive of it. All the unreasonableness that we have ever thought of, all the injustice that we have ever dreamed of, all the infer- nal cruelty that Dante in his gloomiest mood of imagination ever conceived of, could not equal nor approach the immen- sity, the infinity, or the awfulness, of the conception of a divine government of Perfectness over such beings as men are, in the creative conditions of mankind. The more you GOD'S GRACE. 261 think of a law of absolute perfectness being held over this race, spawned on the earth, and apparently neglected, almost as the shad's eggs are in the river the more you think of such a law being held over such a race, by one who says, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die;" the more you bring your moral sentiments to bear upon it, the more revolting it becomes to you. The more your moral sentiments are edu- cated in the school of Christ, the more sensitive you are to piety and holiness, the more you feel the importance of moral goodness the more is there raised up in your bosom a court of justice that condemns such a theory, the effect of which is to crush out the hope of the universe. Upon this state of facts, what is indispensable to an equitable administration ? It is such a compassionate and considerate Head as shall take into account what man is, what is the way along which he is to travel, what are all the dif- ficulties which he will encounter, and how impossible it is for him to obey a perfect law, or to reach the ideal perfectness of manhood. In other words, it is indispensable that we should believe according to the representation which is made in the 4th chapter of Hebrews : " The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight ; but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." What an awful knowledge ! and what an awful field ! But what is the inference ? " Seeing then that we have a great high-priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not a high-priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." That is the New Testament presentation of God. It represents him as standing over against the limitations, and enfeeblements, and wants, and necessities of the human race. Man being what he is, if there is a revelation of a stern, exact God over against the condition of things which exists 262 GOD'S GRACE. in the world, which he himself has permitted, which has heen going on from, generation to generation by more than permission, oy direct fiat if there is a revelation of such a God, then we are all ruined. There is no light, no hope for us, and there can be none, under such a presentation of God. But the Bible does not present any such view of God. Says God, in the Old Testament : "My thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. For, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.'' Christ, in the New Testament, says, "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your chil- dren, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him ? " In another place he spoke a parable to this end : "That men ought always to pray, and not to faint; saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man ; and there was a widow in that city ; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while ; but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man ; yet because this widow troubleth me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?" The unjust judge was at last persuaded to do justice by the importunate widow ; and shall a man, and one of the worst of men, have a point in his nature where he can be made to do good, and shall not God who is infin- itely just, equitable, loving and merciful, avenge his elect ones ? The presentation of God in the Bible is such as makes him to be precisely adapted to the condition which I have represented man to be in. Man is weak and sinful and neces- sitous ; and God is represented as a Being who sits in heaven, adapting his administration to the human condition, because he is infinite in patience, all the time requiring perfectness, but continually bearing with men on their way up to per- fection. A man who is fit to teach art is a man who is himself sen- sitive to art, and who has patience with rude hands and clumsy drawing. His business, as a schoolmaster, is to wait QO&S GRACE. 263 for those who do not know how to do fine things finely, brooding over them, and helping them. And if it is that to be a schoolmaster, what is it to be a parent, but to take rude, unlicked cubs in the shape of children, and bring them up out of vices, through all manner of rudenesses and crude- nesses, by patience, by forbearance, by suffering, and by love, waiting till they become something by training ? And how do we learn to bear with nascent beings, giving our thoughts for theirs, and our feelings for theirs, but by acting under the inspiration of the Spirit of God ? It is said that some birds pluck feathers from their breasts to make nests for their young. Some fathers and mothers, as it were, pluck feathers from inside of their breasts to soften the beds of their children. They bring them up little by little, from childhood to manhood and womanhood, making sacrifices for them all the while. Now, when we are taught to say, ' Our Father," to God, do we mean any less than when we speak of an earthly father ? Shall a father on earth be described as venerable and lovely, and shall the Father in heaven be depicted as a Nero ? Shall motherhood on earth be employed to represent all that is beatific and gentle and beautiful, and shall we adopt a theology that points to the omnipotent God as one that is harsh, cruel and repugnant, turning the universe like a vast mill-wheel that, as it revolves, crushes all that comes in its way ? God is a God of love. Nature shows it, we are told ; and tha best part of nature is human life, unfolded not onlj under the laws of matter, but by the Spirit of God. It i$ from laws organized into humanity, through intelligence, that we are to derive our conceptions of divinity. And 1 fini In the Bible that while there are terrible denunciations for voluntary transgressions when mankind are spoken of comprehensively as existing in weakness, and as stumbling through the world, it is the mercy of God, it is the gentle- ness of God, that are held up to view. God so loved the world that he gave his Sou to die for it; and there was opened through Jesus Christ a way into the bosom of God. The patient God ; the just God ; the waiting God ; the long-suf- 264 GOD'S GRACE. fering God ; the God that will not suffer men to degenerate into animalism ; the God that is not willing that mankind should go down to brutalism and to matter again, but that ever quickens them, and vitalizes them, and raises creation up to its higher forms; the God that will not clear the guilty, and that means to round out the world to beatific states ; the God that is full of love, and gentleness, and sweetness, and forbearance, and that is competent to brocd the race till they shall come out into their true estate as his sons that is the God who is represented in the Bible. Now we come to our text. Some ministers take their text, and forsake it, and never see it again ; but this time I put my text at the other end, and preach toward it. "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of your- selves : it is the gift of God." What is grace? It is that divine compassion which is infinitely higher than the sweetest affection that ever bloomed in mortal soul. That great kindness, that wonderful gener- osity, that unending mercy, that goodness, which is eternal and infinite in the soul of God that is grace. Grace means divine disposition, divine beneficence. It is no trafficking quality. It is not a quid quo pro. What is it that the daisy gives the sun as a price for being allowed to blossom ? What is it that now purples the orchard, and perfumes the field ? Is there a bargaining transaction between the sun and the blossoms by which they are permitted to have light and heat ? No. They are what they are by reason of the sun's free bounty. Bring the sweetest and most brilliant flower, rich with fragrance, and its testimony will be that it is what it is by the brooding influence of the sun, by which it in ieveloped and perfected. And it is by the grace of God that ire are enabled to be anything good. It is by his nature and disposition. It is by what he is inherently, and not by what Hie is hired to be, or coaxed to be. It is not by any fixed ar- rangement. It is by what he was from eternity. It is by his patience and forbearance and long-suffering. He does not reign for the sake of pushing men down. Neither does he reign in such a way as to let them go down uncared for. GOD'S OR ACE. 265 His is not a weak love that will allow men to ruin them- selves ; it is a love which is determined to prevent their ruining themselves. Such is God's grace. " By grace ye are saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves." No, no ! not of yourselves. If by depravity you mean that the whole human race are voluntarily as low as they are, I do not believe in it ; but if by depravity you mean merely this, that the whole human race, by the very genius of their creation, by all their sur- rounding circumstances, fall short, every one of them, and all the time, of the ideal of perfectness, then there is no other truth more eminent or more melancholy. Nothing is more certain than man's low estate, than the degraded condition of mankind in the flesh ; and it is by the work that is being carried on under the divine influence to lift men up out of their animalhood into the spiritual realm it is by this that we becom3 men in Christ Jesus. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We know that we are going toward the stature of the sons of God, but what that stature is, what its lineaments are, we do not know. We are unable to under- stand what our disposition and traits will be when we arrive at the state of perfectness. We have no conception of what that condition will be when all those qualities which we are unfolding here shall be not only perfect, but united in a true spiritua 1 manhood. I remember very well when this organ was built. We gave up the lecture-room to it. The materials of which it was constructed were scattered about in that room. In one corner was one stop, and in another corner was another stop ; in one corner was one huge pipe, and in another corner was another huge pipe. These things lay in great confusion up and down through the room, in the midst of all manner of dust and litter. And if you had taken one who had never seen an organ, and shown him the various parts of this one, lying inchoate through the whole adjoining room, how little conception would he have formed of the instrument as it now stands, brought to order and regularity, tuned, and under a master hand ! Now, we are dispersed. We are full of crook- edness. We are stops and pipes not yet brought to order anower, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto ( ,!ie Lamb, for ever and ever." GOD'S GRACE. 369 PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE draw near to thee, our Father, not as to a fearful and avenging God, but as to a merciful High Priest, touched with a feeling of our infirmities, in all points tempted as we are, and yet without sin, and in full sympathy with those who are by reason of sin brought into sorrow and trouble. We rejoice, O God, to believe that thou art such an One as that, in thee, at last, the whole universe shall find rest. All the sorrows which we behold, receiving them upon hearts chas- tened and educated in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, do fill us with won- der and sorrow again. We look around, and we look forward, and there is no help for man but in God. We rejoice though thou seemest to hide thyself from us. It is we that are hidden, and not thou. Thou dwellest in the largeness and in the liberty of the Spirit land. Thou dost dwell with those that are perfect. We are yet undisclosed, hidden by our opaque bodies. We cannot discern thee with these rude senses, nor come into communion in full with thee even by that which hath been developed in us by the power of faith. We are draw- ing nearer to that land where we shall know as we are known, where we shall see even as we are seen, and shall ourselves be perfect in thine image. Grant us on the road some such glimpses of light, some such foretokens, that we shall be patient with the greatness of the way, and confirmed in trust as against our fears, and in love as against all our passions. Forgive us our infirmities and our sins. Cleanse us from the power of easily besetting sins, and of inbred sins. Help us to cast them out, and manfully to contend against all that is within us. Grant that we may feel the inward power of the Divine nature working hi us might- ily, so that, Jay by day, we shall be conscious that we grow stronger in the truth and in things that are right and godlike. We pray that thou wilt prepare us this day by its knowledge, by its devotion, and by its sweet influences upon the soul, for all the con- flicts of the week upon which we have entered. May we learn patience and gentleness. May we learn to be strong without rude- ness. May we learn to confide in ourselves with full faith, yet without conceit. May we learn without presumption to trust the providence of God, and the revelation of every-day life. May we seek, under all circumstances, to be thy children, bearing about with u- the mind of Christ, the Spirit of the Saviour, under all provoca- lons, and enduring steadfastly, knowing that the trial of our faith is more precious than the trial of gold. Grant, O Lord, we pray thee, thy blessing to rest upon our house- holds ; upon the members of our families ; upon any who are sick or weak. Grant that we may be restored to health and to comfort. Dweil. we pray thee, in every bouse where sorrow is. Be thou the Saviour of sorrowing souls. Bring them out of their tribulation, or sanctify to them their distresses. If there be those upon whom have come sudden and amazing afflictions which were unforeseen ; if there b those who are overthrown and quite desolate from the suddenness of their great trouble, wilt thou be their Saviour and Deliverer. Wilt thou send thy Spirit to be their abiding Comforter. 270 GOD'S GRACE. Let thy blessing rest, we beseech of thee, upon all those who are perplexed; upon all those who are borne down by cares; upon all those on whom fall burdens which are heavier than they can bear. We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant to every one grace according to his need. May those who are seeking their way alone in this world, without God and without hope, be drawn to thee. We pray that they may have peace and help in their time of need. May they not fear him who is their Saviour and Deliverer. We pray for those who are wandering ; for those who are outcast ; for those who have made themselves willingly the slaves of sin; for those who have formed evil habits which despotize over them, and will not let them rest. Be around about all those who need a Saviour to seek and to save them. We pray that thou wilt bless all the churches of this city. Strengthen thy servants therein, that they may do their work heart- ily as unto the Lord, and not as unto men. Look upon this nation, and upon its churches, and upon the institutions of beneficence which have sprung up under their ministration. Bless all schools, all acade- mies, all colleges, all instruments of education. May the light be dif- fused throughout our whole population ; and may they have it soon- est who need it most. Wilt thou irradiate those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. And we pray, not for ourselves alone, but for all the nations of the earth. Grant, O Lord, that the great brotherhood of nations at last may learn their happiness, their peace, their best good. We pray that war may die out; that all those passions from which war bath sprung may be curbed and restrained. May ignorance be driven away as the night before the coming of the sun. May superstitions and all cruel religions cease. May the whole earth come at last to the knowledge of God; to the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ; to a knowledge of all the revelations of truth as it is in Jesus. And so may there be peace and gladness, and may the whole earth be filled with thy consolation. And to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit shall be praise ever- more. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OTTB Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt draw us to thyself with fresh confidence. May we not deceive ourselves, nor seek to hide our nakedness, though thou walkest in the garden. Grant that we may come naked and open before him with whom we have to do, knowing that he is full of grace, full of help, and full of endless mer- cies. Deliver us from fear. Deliver us from disobedience. Deliver us from iniquity. May we serve thee; and be thou to us One whom it shall be joyful to us to serve. Cleanse our minds from prejudice. Take away that ignorance which separates between thee and us, and bring us cear that we may have the feeling of sons, and rejoice in thee as our Father. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father. Son, and Spirit. Amen. IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. I propose to speak to you, this evening, from the passage which I read as the opening service, contained in the first chapter of the second Epistle general of Peter ; and to derive from this the apostolic conception of the Christian character, and so of the nature of Christianity itself, about which there is in our time so much discussion and so much uncertainty. " Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus, our Lord, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises ; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." When you think of the way in which men are often preached to ; how they are pressed to go through a certain line of narrow experience ; to come under conviction, and then to experience conversion, and then to join the church, and then to get along the best way they can ; when you look at the exhortations which are made, and the cautions which are given, and the fears which are excited, and the guards which are set up, and the restrictions which are laid down, how poor and mean a tiling is religion ! If one be born with a goodly organization, with excellent health and with great strength, I do not wonder that oftentimes he looks upon the represen- tations which are made by feeble men to feeble men almost with scorn, and certainly with a contemptuous rejection. Men are bound, restriction upon restriction being put upon them, one indulgence after another indulgence being denied them, and one pleasant thing after another pleasant thing being stripped off and taken away from them. It would seem SUNDAY EVENING, May 31, 1874. LESSON : 2 Peter, 1-11. HYMNS (Plymouth Col- lection) : NDS. 898, 865, 1251. 274: IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. as though, instead of the free exercise of thought, or the un- restrained following of the inspiration of the nohler feelings, men were called to keep Sundays, and every day to read their Bibles, every day to say their prayers, and every day not to do this, and not to do that, and not to do the other thing, until, like the Ten Commandments, th jy were all nots and nots and nots and this, with the expectation that if they maintained under priestly direction all these various negatives through to the end of life, hard as the undertaking is, and barren as it is of any considerable enjoyment to most people, they would be paid up for it at last by being permitted to go to heaven, and get there, in over-measure, what they did not ge fc upon earth. A pretty dreary time men have, being in the church, and try- ing not to do wrong, and denying themselves a thousand pleasant things which other people have but then, when they die, they expect to go to heaven, and be happy, and get their pay in over-measure for what they lose here. Now, hear the Apostle Peter that bold and noble apostle calling men to glory and to virtue, and setting before them no instrumentalities, no routine whatsoever of church life or church conduct, but this : " That ye might be partakers of the divine nature." It is as if he had said, " I call you all into divine freedom and fullness ; I call you to a complete enjoyment of being ; to plenary will ; to more glorious inspi- rations ; to more thought and feeling ; to a larger life ; to a fuller liberty ; I call you from barrenness to abundance ; from bondage to freedom ; from self, which is narrowing and con- fining and cheating in its ultimate remunerations, to a pattern of life, to a conception of manhood, which shall have in it the fullness of joy in the present, and hope for the future faith and fruition united." The conception of the aim of life as making a church- man of a man, and the apostolic conception as making a man out of a man, are very different. The churchman is made up of obedience to rules and regulations and conven- tions and instrumentalities. There are so many things to be done on so many days; there are so many things to be avoided on such and such occasions ; and these things consti- tute a retinue, a reticulation of minor, subordinate, material IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. 275 observances. But the apostolic conception of becoming a Christian is a transcend en tly larger way of living than you have been accustomed to a redemption from the power of those lusts which are the torment of men's lives, and which are the reason of so much unhappiness, so much fear, so much complication, so much waste, so much acute sorrowing mem- ory, so much remorse. By the power of the Holy Ghost, by the transcendent influence of the Divine Spirit, resting upon the souls of men, they receive power to be set free from lusts, which are the foundations of the evils which are in the world. And by this same divine inspiration or knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, they are to aspire to a partnership in the divine nature. The words of the apostle are these : " Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious prom- ises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." Such is the apostolic conception. Now the apostle proceeds to a general and most significant exposition of this idea of Christian manhood. He gives some substantial elements of it. And I beg you to take notice that, when he is writing to the Christian believers to those who are through him to receive their knowledge he does not say a single word as to when they shall pray, how they shall pray, whether they shall write their prayers, whether somebody shall pray for them, whether they shall go to meet- ing, or whether they shall attend church. He says not one word about the external harness. He strikes at the central element that which is the constituent of essential man- hood leaving the form to take care of itself ; leaving men to frame it to suit themselves ; leaving the whole apparatus, all educatory instrumentalities, untouched. He strikes at that which goes to make up the foundation element of a true manly life. Our version says : "And besides this [which does not convey the true meaning: especially this, would be a better translation], giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue." To faith, which is pre-supposed as a condition of recip- iency, the mind being open to the divine existence, to the spiritual character, and to the realities of the invisible and 276 IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. the eternal to this, is to be added virtue the whole round of things which are esteemed excellent, whether they be higher or lower; moralities; whatsoever is justly esteemed among men. Whatsoever is beautiful and dignified and right this is to be added to your virtue, and to your faith. "And to virtue, knowledge." "What is meant is not that knowledge which is obtained through books, but that knowledge which comes from prac- tical life ; which springs from the absolute exercise of one's moral sense ; which is gathered in the conflicts of life ; which proceeds from the intercourse of man with man; which arises from those processes which we designate in a larger way as "experiences;" which the soul acquires by campaigning; by which a man becomes a veteran; and for which there is almost no word. It does not exclude the more modern forms of knowledge ; neither does it exclude ideas ; nor does it exclude facts ; but it significantly points to that kind of knowledge which is vital and personal, and which belongs to a man as his own achievement. "And to knowledge, temperance." So says our version. The original word might be more properly translated self-control. Temperance has become nar- rowed and specialized, particularly in our land. We mean by it, not exactly temperance, but abstinence. At any rate, the word does not convey at all the full force of the original. That signifies, rather, the right handling of one's soul that kind of self-control by which every part of a man's nature has a chance to act normally. For self-control is not, in the main, suppression. Self-government does not necessarily mean putting down. It implies such an ordering of one's self that each element of a man's nature shall have a fail- opportunity for suitable development and exercise. If there be any tumultuous passion that rises in undue strength, and would take possession of the whole economy, it is to be put down enough to let the other faculties unfold as they were by nature designed to unfold. It would be unfair for a man to take a thirty-two-foot pipe, with all thunder in it, and play it here, and make it drown every other part of this instrument. The art of play- IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. 27? ing the organ consists in securing such a combination of stops, and such a tempering of the strong, intermediate, soft and weak tones, that every part shall have justice done to it. Self-government does not mean slaughter, except meta- phorically. We are not to crucify anything that has been created in us. There is no one appetite or passion or faculty or power of the whole make-up of a man that is not necessary to his being. What we want, therefore, is to temper together the various elements of our constitution so that they shall stand in their ranks, affiliations, and co-operations, those which are very strong being kept down, and those which are yet weak being stimulated and brought up. We are to add temperance or self-government that is, the right manage- ment of everything that is in us to knowledge. Well, when you have added that to knowledge and virtue and faith, you have added a great deal. It is said that if a man governs his tongue he is a perfect man. It used to be so hard to do it that a man who could do it was thought to be capable of doing anything. A man who is naturally dumb, and governs his tongue, is no better for it ; a man who does not want to talk may govern his tongue, and it will be no great sign of virtue in him ; but for a person who is alive with curiosity, who is intensely desirous of hearing everything that is said or can be said ; who, by reason of various inflam- matory emotions, is excessively garrulous for such a person to govern his tongue is to govern a great deal that is back of it. Now, if a man can govern his temper, his passions of every kind, all his emotions ; if he can add this temperance, or self-control, to knowledge, as that is added to virtue, and as that is added to faith, then certainly he is a great distance on the way toward a Christian education. " And to temperance [or self-control], patience." Ah ! it is getting harder and harder. A man may, per- haps, for a little while, by a good deal of effort, hold on, keep down, push up ; but to continue to do it day by day and not get weary, to undergo perpetual provocation and not give out, is not an easy thing. One can bear pain of body for a little while, but continuous pain exhausts patience and 278 IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. overreaches courage. And so in regard to a man's emotion, or in regard to that discipline of Providence in which he is placed, to hold one's self calmly balanced, well-ordered, rightly governed, even for a day, is no small matter. On so balmy a day as this glorious Sunday has been, with the heavens propitious, with the earth beautiful, with God inter- mingled with all things that the eye delights to look upon . or that the ear delights to listen to on such a day as this, one might walk in peace ; but who shall hold the man in the same mood to-morrow, and the next day, and the next, patient, so as that the provocations, and agitations, and swellings, and surgings, and oscillations which come from men busy in life shall not be able to shake him from the steadfast purpose of self-government ? "And to patience [when you have it] godliness." Do not be content to maintain yourself in a beggarly equilibrium, partly by the support of your household, partly by the support of those around you, bolstering yourself up, as it were, by your own affairs, so that men shall see that you are living a quiet, upright, temperate, self-governed life, and look upon it as a beautiful morality : nay, let there be prayer, devotion, spirituality, godliness, so that this shall not be a mere secular experience, but an experience manifestly reaching up to and taking hold of the sublimest realities of the other life. Well, is not adding godliness enough ? If a man is godly is not that sufficient ? No. I have seen a great many godly men who lacked many things that are desirable. I have seen very godly men who did not take any notice of children. I have seen men who were so godly that they had very little sympathy with men: they sympathized with God pretty much altogether. I have seen men who were so godly that they lived in the thought of the divine government, and the divine justice, and the divine nature, and were forever talk- ing of God, and of his kingdom and of his realm, and were forever praying to him, and had no thought for their fellow- creatures. So, then, we are to add to our patience godliness, and to godliness what do you think ? IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. 279 " And to godliness, brotherly kindness [sympathy of man v. ith man]." Come out of your closet as Moses came down from the mountain with his face shining, though he did not know it himself. Come with all your inward control, your aspira- tion, your devoutness, your fervor, your knowledge, your faith. Come with all the Christian elements which we have thus far enumerated. Do not act as if you were better than other people, or lifted above them. You may be one of God's aristocrats ; but that is no reason why you should hold your head up among men and walk superior to them. Add to your other virtues that sweet brotherly sympathy which shall unite you to all those who are around about you. Well, is not that enough ? No ; because men may say, " I thank God that I was converted in the Methodist church ; I do love the Methodist brethren;" or men may say, "I never hear the name of Plymouth church that my love does not go out toward the brethren of that church." There is sympathy between you and those of your own church, and that is all right. Churchmen like churchmen ; Eoman Catholics like Eoman Catholics that is, under certain cir- cumstances. So men have friendliness and fellowship toward their own kind. And as if they were in danger of narrow- ing their intercourse and regard, and leaving it in this form, the apostle adds a larger designation which you cannot escape which takes in everybody : " And to brotherly kindness, love." Love is the crowning virtue. It embraces every human being not only, but every sentient or sensitive thing ; it is the essential element of God. It is in love that we become partakers of the divine nature, if anywhere ; for no man can become a partaker of the divine nature in this world in the matter of infinite power, nor of intuitive and certain wisdom, nor of those profound and mysterious depths of excellence which are unrevealed and unrevealable. God is love ; he that loveth dwelleth in God, and God in him ; and it is at this point that we fail. It is at this point that virtue, self- control, godliness, sweet fellowship, all the various roots of Christian character, finally come together. It is at this point 280 IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. of universal love that the apostle terminates the descrip- tion. We are not called to church membership ; we are not called to the renunciation of this, that, or the other thing ; we are called to the nobility of a transcendent character ; we are called to strength and manliness ; we are called to what- ever is large and grand in human nature. Therefore, let me say, in regard to what Christianity is, that it is the ideal of a certain condition of mankind. It is God's purpose, made manifest through the Lord Jesus Christ, to evolve from the human race a divine character. There are certain externalities of Christianity ; there is a historical line of antecedents ; but the essential thing in Christianity is that it is the divine plan by which men are to be lifted from the lowest animalism, and unfolded into the grandeur of spiritual beings, and to become partakers of the divine nature. Therefore, Christianity is not simply a schedule of doc- trines, any more than plows and harrows and rakes and spades are harvests. They are not grain nor corn, though they may be precedent to grain and corn. They are indis- pensable to the production of these things ; but they are not the things themselves : they are the mere instruments by which, in one way or another, such results are worked out and elaborated. Now, the essential element of Christianity is the elevation of the human nature into the divine, or the lapse, the de- scent, of the divine nature into the human, for the purpose of the exaltation of the human. Whatsoever things come up in this age, that are of moment to men, are, whether they were known by men eighteen hundred years ago or not, part and parcel of Christianity. Christianity is a thing which cannot be written in a book. It cannot be put into language nor inventoried. No man can write the history of a single human soul. We have histories, but what are they? Do you suppose that any man by saying "love" expresses love ? Does a guide-board which stands at the forks of a road, and says, " Forty miles," contain the forty miles ? Is not the guide-board a mere symbol, or hint, of a fact? And when IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. 281 God speaks by the words of the Bible, the things of which he speaks are not in that Bible ; they are not on paper. When he utters facts concerning men, those facts exist, not in the record, but in the actual lives of individuals. Hence, Christianity cannot be compressed into a little creed. A creed may point to things which are extremely useful ; but the things themselves cannot be put into a creed. The Bible the Old Testament and the New is a combination of indices. Its words are but symbols ; it is a history ; it is a collection of commands ; it is an indication of certain traits *. but the divine, glorious, loving spirit, kindling in the human soul a corresponding loving spirit ; the subjugation of the whole interior man to the lines and limitations of the divine ; the awakening in the human soul of aspiration, enthusiasm, courage, faith, hope ; the leading that soul to renounce all lust ; the producing therein friend- liness and sympathy and love can printer's ink do more than hint at these things ? They are made up of throbbing souls. They spring in vital forms out of the very spirit of man. So, not only is Christianity a spiritual condition of living souls, but it is increscent. It cannot be expressed once for all. Many people say, "Will there never be anything like stability of doctrine ?" I hope not. I should be sorry if the world should come to a pause in such a sense as that you could express now all that man is ever to be, or that experi- ence ever is to unfold either in the individual or in the race. As I understand the divine economy, there are to be great riches of knowledge yet. There are to be better social combi- nations. There is to be a better beginning given to every generation of men. By-and-by, when God's laws are better understood, men will be better born that is, they will be born in better households and in better communities, and will be inspired by nobler knowledges and educating influ- ences ; and there will be experiences such as are not possible now. We see that we stand better than our fathers did, and that they stood Letter than their fathers did. We see that there are influences working toward a glorious millennial day, no matter what falls out between. 282 IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. If a man evolves a new science in society, and claims that it is better than anything that has preceded it, and it proves to be better, he is apt to turn and say, "Where are your priests now ? Where are your churches ? Where is your theology ? Here is something that your religion never brought out." No, our religion never brought it out ; but it belongs to our religion, notwithstanding ; because Christian- ity means, not just so much as is in a book, not just so much as has been unfolded, but all possibilities. Whatever com- binations can take place under better conditions, under no- bler inspirations all these belong to the idea of Christianity, according to the declaration of the apostle Paul in an almost parallel passage : " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, what- soever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Christianity is universal. It is illimitable. It is not sim- ply what has been gained in the past ; it is not simply the excogitations of the present ; it is not simply that which be- longs to the churches ; it is inclusive of all that is to come. It is not a close corporation. It is not confined to Christian organizations. It is not confined to the narrow limits of human creeds. Books cannot contain it. It belongs to the great realm of ever-changing experience. It is a living state. Therefore it is to take in the ends of the earth, the full- ness of time, and the grandeur of the race. It is not nar- rowed down to mere technicalities, or instrumentalities, or philosophies, or any of the arrangements which belong to the lower forms of spiritual development. Consider, now, further, the view of the apostle. " Brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure : for if ye do these things [if you pursue this line, seeking after and at- taining the amplitude and the combination of these qualities], ye shall never fall [neither now nor hereafter]; for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." That is a verse as bold as it very well can be in our trans- lation, and as magnificent as poet can imagine in the original, where the verb which is translated an abundant entrance shall [DEAL CHRISTIANITT. 283 be ministered unto you is a word derived from the practice of receiving conquerors by pouring out processions with banded music from the cities, to meet them as they approach to enter in. If you pursue this high perception of life in Jesus Christ, seeking for the divine nature in the respects which are enu- merated here, and in other respects which are not here men- tioned, it will not be in vain ; for at death you shall not go out like a bubble. It shall not be in vain when you pass from this material realm, and approach the other life, if you have with patience and perseverance pursued these things. When you draw near to the other side, not having been bar- ren nor unfruitful in these things, but having given energy and enthusiasm and power to this exalted sense of character, this conception of Christ in you the hope of glory, transform- ing reason, and moral sense, and the social affections, and over-ruling the lusts and appetites if thus you have been abundant and fruitful, then, when you die, no matter what the circumstances of your death may be, you will die glori- ously. As from the weary war, with torn and tattered clothes the conqueror comes back bearing on his person and habiliments something of every soil which he has traversed ; as worn and tanned and wrinkled, he marches out from some forest, and all the thoroughfare is thronged, and he sees banners flying in the distance, and hears sounds rising, and growing nearer and more distinct ; as at length couriers rush forth to meet him, and the magistrates come out, and then his own friends and household and neighbors, and then all the chief citizens and dignitaries, and finally he is caught up in a whirl of enthusiasm, and swept in, while banners are waving, and bands are playing, and crowds are shouting ; so, the apostle says they who give their souls to the exemplification of this conception of Christian manhood shall have ministered unto them an exceeding abundant entrance into the kingdom of God. It will make a great deal of difference in heaven how you live here. If you live penuriously here, you may limp into heaven like a pauper and that will be a great deal better 284 IDEAL CHRISTIANITY than going to hell. You may escape so as by fire. As men lush out from a burning house, not able even to seize their raiment, or take any property with them, so some men may go out of this world unclad, and get into heaven. But if you live according to the spirit, the genius, the intent, of Christ and his apostles ; if you have a sense of the grandeur and manliness which there is in a Christian life, and give force and enthusiasm to it, and fill it out ; then when you come to the other life you shall have no doubtful, no single-handed, no mean entrance : you shall come in crowned with triumphs, and met and greeted by long processions of those who have known you, and those whom you have known ; those who have helped you, and those whom you have helped ; those who carried you in their arms, and those whom you have carried in your arms ; those over whose graves you have wept. All that blessed company those that have dwelt long in heaven, and those that have lately gone there; those of high estate ; thrones, principalities, dominions, powers ; those of every reverend and sacred name ; prophets, apostles, and martyrs ; all holy men ; all men that loved their kind ; all patriots, philanthropists, good men shall joyously throng to behold the new comers, and you among them, crowned, not with gold, but with that which, is better, royalty of heart ; and then you shall enter in to be forever with the Lord, the strife at last being over, and the blossoming time having come. I shall this week plant seeds that I shall not see blossom this summer. They must go over, and lie still through the winter. Next summer they will come to themselves, and blossom. We are in this life biennials. The first summer we spend in this world, and the second in the other. And when we shall rise into that other life, and come to the fullness of our- selves, to the beauty and power and glory of holiness, to the transcendent wealth, and amplitude of love, to the grandeur and dignity that lie in the possibilities of human nature oh, then, with what triumph shall we look upon all the danger of the way ! With what pity shall we smile at ourselves, to think at what things we cried, and what things we called burdens and self-denials ! IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. 285 A man takes down from the garret a cradle, and says to himself, "In that you once lay;" and he laughs, and im- agines himself crying because he is hungry, and being taken up by the nurse, and fed. He cannot realize that he was ever in a state of infancy, and that he has unfolded so much. So, when, from the other life, in its power and glory, you look back to the conditions of this life, you will pity your- selves that you were ever in such a low estate ; but the grandeur of the outcome will a thousand times repay you for all the strife and struggle that you have gone through. I call you, young men and young women, to a Christian life. I call you not to join a church a church is a mere school-house, whose educating influences may help you or not, according as you use it ; but I call you to something grander than joining a church : I call you to join God ; to become partakers of the divine nature ; to unite yourselves to all that is glorious in universal being. I call you to the utmost stretch of development, to largeness, to liberty, to strength, to all that is magnificent in the possible conception of manhood. I call you to take it easily if you can take it easily ; or, I call you to take it with tears if you can take it only so. If the way is strait and narrow to you, neverthe- less tread it : it is worth your while. If it be difficult, nevertheless tread it, and come to that which is true, that which is pure, that which is courageous, full of faith, full of self-government, and full of joy, springing out of right living. I call you to an inward life. I call you to virtue. I call you to glory and immortality. 280 IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. THOU hast drawn near to us, our Father, and thou hast called us by endearing names that our heart knows right well ; or els why should we desire thee and yearn for thee? When we lift tur thoughts and our affections to thee we know that thou hast 1 een calling us, and we rejoice to think that we are needed by thee not needed by thy power, not needed by thy glory, but needed by thy love. Having loved thine own, thou dost love them unto the end. Thou hast not forgotten, and never dost forget, those toward whom thou hast expended thy thoughts of mercy and grace. And now, O Lord our Saviour, we desire, looking upon thee, to discern what we should be. We would take no ignoble conception of life, and character, and duty. We desire to be conformed to thy glorious image. We desire to walk in the possession of those virtues which make thee illustrious in time, and glorious through eternity. Teach us the way of humility, of self-abasement, of self-denial, and of joy in suffering. Teach us how to partake of thy nature, and so become thy children, not by name, but in very spirit. Forgive us the long delays which have prevented the work of grace in our hearts; forgive our dullness, our constantly turning back, our discouragement and our weariness by the way. Forgive our imperfection, and whatever has grieved thee; and give not up the work which thou hast begun in us, and which shall be more glorious inasmuch as it is difficult. If thou shalt perfect in us the image of holiness and of God, and make us like unto thyself, and present us before the throne of thy Father, pure and spotless, how great shall be the glory of this achievement of thy grace! For thine own sake we beseech of thee forsake us not, nor give us over to doubt, or to backsliding, or to apostacy. May we have a faith that shall not fail, a virtue that shall abound mere and more, and all patience, all self-denial, and self-government; and grant that we may be steadfast therein. Grant, we beseech of thee, that by the power which we derive from thee of joy, of peace, of hope and of courage, we may not only make our own lives more radiant, but may make the lives of those around us more cheerful. Since men are bearing heavy burdens, and are goaded with cares and many troubles from day to day, may it be ours to be messengers of peaco to them. Teach us how to comfort; how to illumine; how to make men happy ; how to fill the world around us with rejoic- ing. May we please, not ourselves, but others, for edification. We pray, O Lord, that thou wilt grant that those who are engaged in good works, in labors among men in imitation of thee, may be strengthened with all patience and with all hopefulness. Wilt thou be pleased to grant, very speedily, to them that sow the seed, the sheaf garnered. We thank tbee that there is so much encouragement to labor. We thank thee that there is between the asking and the answer so brief a space. We thank thee that those who go forth come again rejoicing so soon. Bless all those who are engaged in making known the word of IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. 287 life in bearing the fruit of the Gospel to those who are less favored than themselves. We beseech of thee that all the members of this church, of its schools and of its missions, may dwell in thy remembrance, and be quickened day by day. not only bearing out blessings to others, but receiving blessings themselves. May they be built up in thy faith, and established in those virtues which they seek to inculcate. We pray for all the churches in this city, and all who labor in Miem. May they be united more and more perfectly in love. May 'all evils that offend and divide be taken away. May thy people of every name see eye to eye. May heart beat responsive to heart. And through this land take away all causes of offense. Unite thy people that there may be a power for intell'gence and right-living that shall be felt throughout this great nation. We beseech of thee that thou wilt bless all colleges and universi- ties and schools, and that thou wilt bless those that teach, that intel- ligence may prevail everywhere, and be the forerunner of virtue and of true piety. Let thy kingdom come in all the world. May men who have lived to destroy learn to protect and build up. May nations be dashed against each other no more. May peace and prosperity pre- vail the world around, that thy name may be honored and glorified on earth as it is in heaven. Hear us in these our petitions, and answer us through the great grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Spirit, shall be praises evermore. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OUR Father, wilt thou add thy blessing to the word of exhortation and exposition. Make thy truth to shine into the inward heart of every one. Let us not stumble upon the letter nor upon the instru- ment. May we have the Holy Ghost thy divine inshining to teach our inner man, that we may have experimental knowledge of thee, and of our life in thee. May we feel that the channels between thee and our souls are not stopped. May there be an influx, a constant flow of thy life into ours. So may we live patient under trials, strong under burdens, full of faith under clouds, and ready to live, ready to die, dying in life continually to all that is evil, and living to all that is good. Grant that the Spirit of God may thus be with us. We thank tbee for the hope of those who have gone before. How many dear little children of ours are with their Saviour and with God Our parents rest from their labors, and rejoice in their saintly habitations. How many companions of ours walk no more weeping, no more sick, no more suffering! How full has heaven become of those who are precious to us! And, Lord, we are coming, sometimes 288 IDEAL CHRISTIANITY. lingering, sometimes losing our way, but drawn by a thousand mem- ories of love, drawn by the inspiration of God, drawn by the power which controls the universe; and grant that we may so come that thou shalt not be ashamed of us. So may we come that there shall be many flocking to witness our entrance, to rejoice in us and with us, and to lift us into the presence of the Divine. Then, in the very hour of our attainment and triumph, what crowns and laurels we have we will cast at thy feet, O blessed Jesus Christ, Master, Model, Saviour, Lord, saying, Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name be the praise and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifleth himself, even as he is pure." 1 JOHN iii. 2, 3. "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifest- ation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." ROM. viii. 18-21. Man's imperfection, the universal sinfulness ot man, the corruption of man's conduct, and, in one sense, of his nature, has been admitted in all ages, and by all schools of Christian theology, and just as much in other religions as in the Chris- tian. It is a fact about which there can be no disputation. The whole world lies in wickedness. The theory or philosophy of the fact of universal sinful ness has varied. Without regarding for a moment the con- ceptions given by those of other religions, there are two Scriptural germs from which two very different views of the condition of the human race may be evolved. One is the historic, or supposed historic, view regarding the origin ot man ; and the other is what might be called the prospective, the prophetic view, as regards the development or termina- tion of man one acting from the past, and laying founda- tions in supposed history, and the other taking its forms SUNDAY MORNING, June 7, 1874. LESSON : Matt., xx. 17-34. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection) : NOB. 255, 1,235, 1,263. 292 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. from the future ideal, and arguing from that what must be the condition antecedent or preceding such a prophetic development. The parable of the Garden of Eden, of the fall of man, and the universal sinfulness of men as derived from their involuntary connection with the great unknown Head, strangely enough has formed the basis of the most enduring and the most universal theory, a theory, however, which is also the most oppressive, and the most inconsistent with every one of those feelings which spring up under a rigorous edu- cation in the ethical principles of the Gospel. It is not possible to develop in the human mind that character which made Christ what he was ; it is impossible to develop any human being according to the ethical princi- ples which Jesus taught, and then, in the light of the text and of the reason and the humanity of any Christian period, to go back and assume the facts and the philosophy which have lain at the basis of the theology of ages, without the violation of every moral instinct, of the sense of truth, of the sense of justice, and of the sense of honor. Truth, justice, and honor are in such a sense fundamental that if you violate them there is no foundation on which any system can stand, and all systems must go to the dust ; and that religion which has come down to us teaching that we are condemned not on account of what we have ourselves done, but on account of that which was done for us thousands of years ago ; that religion which teaches us that we are held amenable to eternal penalty on account of the sins of others, is so violative of every educated instinct of right and justice that no man can contemplate it with any degree of moral emotion and not repudiate it in his nature as the foundation of a theology. This view when compared with the views of human experience under a divine providence grows more repugnant to the educated moral sense of mankind under Gospel influ- ences. It contorts the truth, and distorts our view of the divine government. It puts the divine government on grounds which in any human government would be scandal- ous. It attributes to God elements of character and of THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 293 administration which would cover any earthly ruler or parent with infamy. The difficulty is not alleviated by saying that God is greater than man, that he is infinitely powerful, that there- fore that which is right in man would not necessarily be right in God, and that that which is right in God may be wrong in man. Such a line of reasoning as this confounds the radical elements of right and wrong, and destroys the moral sense of the rules of judgment ; for that which is right in God must be right in man, relative to his condition, and in due proportion and measure. The essential quality of right must be the same as regards the ruler and the ruled, at one end of the law or the other ; for if I am wicked in such a way as to subject me to eternal penalty, with what kind of reasoning or conscience can I turn around and confess my guiltiness and my desert of everlasting punishment, and then worship the same act which I condemn in myself, springing from the same attribute in God ? It stultifies human nature to do it. That which is wicked in man would be wicked in God ; and it would be as much worse in God than in man as it is more pernicious in an infinite being at the head of government than it can be in an insignificant being at the bottom of government. There must be the same truth, the same justice, the same rectitude, the same benevolence, the same morality, in the one case as in the other. There must be one platform both for him that rules upon the circle of the heavens and for them that are ruled in the lower parts of the earth. In the New Testament there appears a new germ, which, although it is not developed, is, both by John and by the Apostle Paul, opened in such a degree as to make its develop- ment quite possible, indeed almost inevitable, with us. It is derived, not from the past, but from the future. I have just read in your hearing Paul's latent theory: " The creature was made subject to vanity." By vanity is understood the transient, the evanescent, the secular. " The creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected tho same in hope." 294 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. The creature was made subject to the laws and conditions of this mortal life it fell out that men were created as they were under the present laws of the discipline of this world by reason of the great and joyous hope, that lay along the line of promised development. While the old theory declares that men are in this world, in the condition in which they are, in consequence of Adam's sin, Paul, looking the other way, says that, while men in this world are subjected unwill- ingly to laws of limitation and weakness, it is for the sake of gradually unfolding and developing them ; ''because," as he further says, "the creature itself also shall ~be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." That is to say, looking in the light of the Gospel upon the fact of the world lying in wickedness, Paul says, " I behold the great race in that condition, not on account of their own willingness, but being subjected thereto by God, because it is a scheme which promises, through the very experiences of this condition, to open them more and more gloriously, until at last they shall break out of their nascent state, and come into a later stage of glorious liberty, and be the children of God." We are bora, not of Adam, but of Christ. Our roots take hold, not of the old soil of Eden, but of the soil of the New Jerusalem. Our theory of life is not to be evolved from the poems or the parabolic teachings that are but shadows and intimations and hints and dark sayings, ac- cording to the line of the instruction of antiquity. We are to take the clearer light which shines from the face of Jesus Christ ; the light of God's providence ; the light of the inter- pretation of that system of things under which we live. Now under this mode of teaching the imperfection of the race and its urgent necessities are recognized just as clearly as they are in the old view. Ministers and others are afraid, and very justly, of any system of teaching which lightens the sense of responsibility. They say that men are prone to sink back to animal and worldly condi- tions, and that if you preach nattering doctrines to them, giving them to understand that they are good, and that THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 295 they only need to be a little more good ; that if you com- fort them and soothe them thus, the tendency of your preach- ing will be to carry them back again in contentment toward the germ and the seed. The fear is a valid one ; and if there were no other way in which to prevent so serious a result, we might look with a great deal more allowance upon this method of declaring that men inherited from Adam a corrupt nature, that they all fell in bim, and sinned in him, and so were brought under liability to the penalty and curse of God, the sin which was committed by their federal head being dis- tributed by natural generation through the whole race if that were the only way in which to keep men from the dirt and the clay, and to inspire in them some aspiration toward higher things, then there would be more justification for it ; but it is not the only way : it is of all ways the lowest and the poorest. For mankind is developing, or easily may be developed, in such a way that while fear is not dispensed with, as it were, from behind, yet the motive power in ad- vance is an attraction toward things that are good. It is not the fear of poverty that to-day makes men work ; it is the ambition to rise higher. It is the development of a more manly quality in them which leads them on to desire better conditions of life. And in regard to the whole race, if they be so low that they cannot be stirred except by fear in its coarsest forms, then that may be used ; but to say that that view is so essential that any change of it will work toward deterioration is false in fact, and still more false in phil- osophy. On the other hand, the doctrine that the creature was made subject to this mortal and mutable state in order that out of it, by education and evolution, under the influence and guidance of the divine Spirit, he might come into the larger liberty, not of animal life, nor of man's life, as we understand it here, but of the life of the sons of God that doctrine is full of inspiration, of attraction and of hope. All that is sweet in purity, all that is winning in affection, all that is fascinating in qualities addressed to the imagination, lies in such a theory as this : that men are born in seminal forms in this world ; that the race comes in at the lowest 296 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. point ; and that it is the divine plan that by laws, by educa- tions, by industries, by instructions, under the supervision of God's providence, and under the stimulation of the Holy Spirit, they may be unfolded, and that by successional developments they may be brought out, by-and-by, into a larger sphere, into the spiritual sphere, into the sonshiji sphere, where they are to be like God. That theory has in it all the stimulus that comes from the fear of the other system, and it has in it the additional attractions and inspirations which belong to a higher moral plane of instruction. More than that, it falls in with a man's reason. It quadrates with a man's moral sense. It is in accordance with facts. It may not be with some men any further confirmation, though it will be with others, that it lies in the line in which modem philosophy seems likely to travel. The unfolding of the most materialistic school lies in the same direction. It lies in the same line as the science of our day, which is strangely co-inci- dent with the line of thought of Paul, of John, of Peter, and of the whole of the New Testament writers ; and when it shall be completed, I believe it will be the best commentary on the New Testament that was ever written. The New Testament is a very good commentary on the Old, but the Old Testament is a very poor commentary on the New. Secondly, this view of man, as created at a low estate on purpose, as brought into this life at the bottom, rising higher and higher through a series of educational develop- ments, and promising a final future manhood most glorious, does not do away with the doctrine of the divine and efficacious influence of God's Spirit. To teach, as every man in the scientific world does teach, that the floral king- dom has been developed from lower forms by growth through successive stages of evolution up to its present condition of variation is not absurd, as many have thought that it was ; there is not a botanist forty years old on the globe who does not accept the doctrine of evolution in respect to the vegetable kingdom ; but suppose a man fifty or sixty years old should say, " To teach that vegetation develops in this way is to teach that plants can get along without the sun; and we know that the sun is indispensable to the develop- THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 297 ment of plants" ? You may not see any logical connection here, and there is none ; but the objection is precisely paral- lel to the fears of many men who say, " If a man is born into this sphere on a lower plane, and if the divine problem is the evolution of men up through social, intellectual, moral and spiritual conditions to the higher state, then where is the uee of the Holy Spirit?" Just as if the plan of evolution did not make a guiding supernal light, warmth and stimulation more necessary ! The function of the Divine Spirit, accord- ing to the old theory, is to work in special lines of election. The whole world lies in wickedness ; and the vast majority of men in accordance with that scheme are to be damned. A handful, here and there, are elected to be saved ; and these elect, these glass-house plants, as it were, these conservatory vegetables under a glass church, the Divine Spirit is sup- posed to be working upon. That is the view which goes with the old system and the old theology. In the New Testament theology the teaching is that man " was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope," because the creature looks forward to the glorious evolution and dis- closure of itself in the sonship of God ; but under such a system the revelation of the Divine Spirit is universal. It belongs to all ages and to every creature on the globe. It is infinite in its extent, as well as necessary more necessary a thousand fold than in the artificial function which has been given to the Divine Spirit by the old theology. For what the sun is doing on this terraqueous globe, through ages vivi- fying it, and unfolding it toward ideal excellence, that same thing is the Sun of Righteousness doing upon the higher organizations in this world. The intelligent thought and soul of God, poured forth and stimulating the whole uni- verse, is the operation of the Divine Spirit, according to the New Testament view of the origin of man, of his nature and of his destiny. It does not do away with that doctrine. It enlarges it and glorifies it, and exalts its sphere. It makes the functions of the Divine Spirit wonderful in the eyes of men who look upon the infinite necessities of this great outlying infantile race, that waits for its disclosure and development. 298 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. The reality, the intelligibility, and the necessity of the new birth are even more apparent under this New Testament view of the origin and the destiny of the race. It is held under the old theology that there is to be an absolute change that all whom God elects he calls with an effectual calling, and that those who are called with an effectual calling are transformed, through the divine Spirit, by a renewing of their minds, and brought into a higher or Christian state. This is a view which, with the exception of the limitations of the present, is not to be contested. It is a view which ought to fill the mind with undying gladness. But it is even larger than we have been accustomed to teach it or understand it. If you understand that men begin low down in their animal natures, and that there is forever a yivific influence everywhere of the divine Spirit, by which what- ever is reasonable and moral and spiritual in man shall come to a point where it dominates over the physical and animal, so that the forces of a man's inward life and out- ward life become rational and religious, then that point at which the spiritual comes into dominancy over the physical is the transition between death and life, between animalism and spiritualism, between the natural man and the spiritual man, between the flesh and the spirit, which Paul so much discusses. In other words, when, in the process of divine providence, men come to that point in which there is a clear ascendency in them of that which is high, and pure, and moral and religious, they are born into the spiritual life ; it is a new birth. When men who live by the appetites, by the passions, by the will, by pride, by vanity, by selfishness, begin to live by rectitude, by love, by mercy, by justice, by truth, by goodness, there is a transition from the animal to the spiritual and the rational; and the transition is actual and noble. Now, if this be a peculiarity of the development of the race instead of a few favored individuals, and if it be understood, and avowed, and taught, it gives to the doc- trine of regeneration and the new birth a grandeur and dignity which it has not had in times gone by, when, ac- cording to the ecclesiastical system, it was a special act, be- THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 299 longing to a limited view. This race-doctrine, proclaimed as a part of God's great system, coordinate and coinci- dent with nature, and as a part of nature looked at, not from a theologic standard, but from the divine standpoint, in which time, and the world's history, and the evolution of the races, by all influences as being elements of God's vast economy, by the influx of the divine Spirit lifting men higher and higher, through the moral state, through commerce, through industries, through everything, from heaven to earth all things, working together for good this doctrine of race-development by a new birth into a new life is grander than the special doctrine taught by the old theology. The special doctrine is true even in its specialty ; and it is more true than it has been taught to be hitherto. Its limits are wider, its operation is more universal, than men have been wont to suppose. This view shows why it is that a larger revelation of the future is not given to men ; why so much is yet vague. We are constantly met with difficulties about the world to come. Things have been exaggerated and over-estimated. The Bible has been taught as containing something of everything that a man could ever want ; and men have used it as though it were an encyclopedia of human knowledge, as well as a book of hints and general sailing directions. It was sup- posed, in the earlier ages of the church, that it taught astronomy. There was a grand fight on that subject, and then the church turned round and said, " Well, it is a reve- lation ; and revelation does not undertake to teach science : it only undertakes to teach morality ;" and gradually they gave up that the astronomy of Galileo need not be squared with the astronomy of Genesis. The modern school of astronomers do not admit that there were simply six literal days of creation. When the geologists of England first began to develop the fact of the ages of creation as indicated in that other book, that rev- elation which men had tramped on and had not read, an- other theory was set on foot ; and by and by the force of facts as developed in scientific schools compelled men of reason to admit that time and the world were right in the 300 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. way of the theory of the absolute creation in six days of twenty-four hours each. Here and there you will find a man yet who holds that the world was created in six days by a direct fiat of the divine will. Such a man is twin brother of the oldest mummy in the tombs of Egypt ; and I think the mummy is the better of the two ! But, then, it was said that the Scriptures taught it ; rn.' the difficulty was evaded by saying, again, that the Scri] - tures were designed to teach, not how the world came into existence, but how men were to get out of it and be saved. In the same way, the whole Levitical system was neces- sarily dropped out of Christian ecclesiasticism, because it was not adapted to modern times and ways. Then, more lately, have come the psychological and eth- nological investigations, inquiries into the history of the race, by which is to be determined how men came into this world ; and it looks as though it were going to be shown that men did not come according to the literal statements concerning the Garden of Eden, that they did not come from the loins of the one man, Adam : all the facts disclosed by scien- tific investigation point to the development of men from the lowest form of savage life, by continuous gradations, running through all ages. " But," say men, "if you take that view, you will destroy the Bible ;" and they have said that at every single step in which science has set forth the facts of God as they are revealed, in the immutable testimony of nature. First the priest has run his head against it and the fact has not been destroyed in any case. Now, if it be determined, by the analogy of nature, by the study of customs and of governments, by tracing the peculiarities of judicial systems, by examining into ethnic ideas, the history of law being studied, the history of schools being studied, the history of the moral sense of mankind being studied if it be determined as a fact that these things all converge toward one central teaching of the past, the time is coming when you will do in this case what you did iii the cases of geology and astronomy and the Levitical system admit the fact as incontrovertible ; and you must see to it, if the fact is universal and belongs to the divine economy, and THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 301 is a part of the structure of God's creation, and is a revela- tion of God, that it is reconciled with the other divine revelation. It is assumed that the revelation of the letter, on paper, is superior to the revelation of fact in nature. I shall not discuss that question. I only say this : that the revelation of fact exterior to the Bible invariably carries the day, and will ; must ; ought to. God has spoken by the heavens, by the earth, and by the experience of the race. His revelation is em- bodied in laws, in customs, in religions, in histories. It is set forth by the industries of the world, and by the whole earthly conception of life. These have been gathered up in various ways ; and all of them are part and parcel of a grander and wider scheme than has hitherto been embraced in the inter- pretation of the religion of the New Testament. Paul saw it, and John felt it. Paul almost stated it in philosophical terms. He looked out upon the world, and he saw that the problem of life was the problem of a race striving on one side against the animal, and seeking on the other side for the highest manhood elements ; and he says, " These are irrecon- cilable. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. " And he tell us too that this conflict did not come in in consequence of the fall of man. We have nothing to do with it. It was the divine decree, or the problem of creation, that men, born in a lower state, should escape, by development and education under the divine Spirit, out of the lower forms of life into the higher forms. And conver- sion, translation, is the successive evolution of men toward that higher development in the life that is to come. This brings me back to the opening sentence of this head namely, Why are we not put in better information with regard to these ultimate conditions? Why does not the Word of God teach us more than it has on such subjects ? The only explanation that we have is, that the lower stage cannot understand the higher stage. o o If my beans that are just above the ground two great fat leaves could talk, they would say to me, "Explain to us, if you please, what we are going to be ; " and I should say to these two fatties that stand there, " Well, you are both of 302 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. you going to be sucked dry, you are going to quirl up, and you are going to fall off." "But what is meant by our career of summer? We were promised that if we would be good beans we should have a whole summer of splendid development ; and if we are going to be sucked dry, and quirl up, and fall off, how can that be ? We are only leaves, and cannot understand all that belongs to our destiny ; ; o explain to us the rest." I say, " There is going to be a stem, a vine, and it is going to twine about a dry stalk that is called by the dignified name of bean-pole ; and there is to be a blos- som at every axil ; and from each blossom is to come a long pod." " What do you mean by a vine ? We cannot under- stand anything except leaves. Being leaves, anything outside of leaves transcends our knowledge." Well, leaves that do not understand anything but leaves, how can they understand a vine, or an axil, or blossoms, or pods, or future beans ? The lower does not understand the higher. I have a four-legged heathen on my place "Tommy." He is a most intelligent and a most discriminating little dog ; he is a gentleman in disguise ; and I am really sorry for him that he cannot talk. If ever there was a dog that was dis- tressed to think that he could not talk, that dog is. I sit by him on the bank, of a summer evening, and I say, " Tommy, I am sorry for you ;" and he whines, as much as to say, " So am I." I say, "Tommy, I should like to tell you a great many things that you are worthy of knowing ;" and I do not know which is the most puzzled, he or I I to get any idea into his head, or he to get any out of mine ; but there it is : I know what he thinks, and he knows not what I think. He knows that there is something above a dog ; and he manifests his canine uneasiness by whining, and in other ways. H's aspiration shows itself from his ears to his tail. He longs to be something more and better ; he yearns to occupy a larger sphere ; but, after all, he does not, and he cannot. I think you will find a much more dignified, and certainly a more philosophical, explanation of that very state of facts, in the first of Corinthians and the second chapter, from the twelfth to the sixteenth verses : THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 303 " Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God : that we might know the things that are freely given us of God. Which tliiugs also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teachetb ; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man [the man of nature the man of the body the man of flesh] receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually dis- cerned. [They are to be recognized by the spiritual or moral facul- ties, and not by the flesh, not by the passions and appetites.] But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. [The higher understands the lower, but the lower cannot understand the higher. You cannot reach up to things of which you have had no experience.] For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him ? But we have the mind of Christ." By just so much as men hare the mind of Christ they have entered into the higher life, they are in the experience of it, and they are able experimentally, and so spiritually, to understand the things which belong to it. Therefore there is a psychological impossibility of developing in this lower sphere the plenitude of the truths which belong to the higher sphere. We cany civilization <|own to the lowest races ; but there is much in civilization that every missionary and phi- lanthropist knows cannot be at first accepted by the converted heathen, and that they do not accept until after two or three generations, when they have risen to the higher forms of civilization. These advanced conditions have to be grown into. They are the product of evolution. So when it i^ asked that we should understand the whole economy of the other life, how is it possible to do it ? How can I understand what that life is in which there is no flesh and blood I, that was born and am nurtured by flesh and blood except by fables, by poems, or by fictitious repre- sentations which disclose something to the imagination, but nothing to the philosophic and fact-loving powers ? You cannot make heaven apparent to the earth until the heaven is like the earth, or the earth is like the heaven. Therefore it is impossible, in the nature of things, to bring down more than the shadow of divine realities to the minds of men. In the night, weary, worn with watching and anxiety, I say, "Show me the morning and the morning's sun." " Nay," 304 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. says the watcher by my side, " I cannot show you the .sun ; but look ! there is where the sun is coming from, and there are the signs of his coming !" I behold : the dark is turning to gray, the gray is turning to pearl, the pearl is turning to white, and the white is turning to rose-color ; and though I see not that which is called morning, though I ECO not the form of the sun, yet I see where it is coming from and the evidences of its coming. I look into the other life ; and men say, ' ' Tell me, shall I fly when I get there ? Shall I move without feet ? Shall I work without hands ?" I know not. That has not been re- vealed to me. Probably we shall not work tbere with such organs as we work with here, and probably we shall not move there in the same way that we do here, but these things have not been revealed, or if they have I cannot understand them. How can I understand spirit motion and life, which I have not made a matter of experience, and which cannot come except through experimental means ? I have experiences which interpret some things to me. In the highest moods of inspiration, when I stand on this platform I see things which I am utterly unable to see in my study or in the street. I see logical connections, running far, and com- prehending great truths. I have intuitions of character and of the necessities of character. T have, if I may so say, cer- tain ideas of what is needful for the reconciliation and harmonization of human affairs. But they are flights ; I can- not reduce them to language ; and yet they fill me with won- der and delight, so that, sometimes, my head seems like a globe of fire. I cannot even bring them to my own thought ; they elude all after-analysis ; I cannot put them in any book ; I cannot expound them by words ; but I have them ; and they give me a sense of what the freedom of the soul is, and of what the after-life may be, though I cannot put them in any tangible form. I sleep Saturday nights for Sundays ; and my best ser- mons^ are always slept out to relieve you of that necessity I Often and often I wake at four o'clock in the morning on Sunday, and lie in just so much somnolency that I am un- conscious of it. It seems as though the body slept while the THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 305 reason and the moral sense were awake. It is frequently when lying in that state that I fashion out sermons ; and if you could only hear them, you never would want to hear the ones that you do hear, they are so much larger, and so much more symmetrical. There is an element in them that I can- not describe ; and I often spring from my bed, and say, "God help me, I will have a sermon to-day;" but the moment I try to imprison it into words, it is gone ; and I say to myself, " I have an experience of the higher mind, educated above the appetites and passions, and brought into an elevated condition in which I have a discernment, a moral sense, of the possibilities of the human faculties." I have a faint, a feeble analogue of the disclosures of the other life ; but I cannot define it to myself, and I certainly cannot ex- pound it to you. I can say that I have it that is all. Now, extend this to the whole realm. Suppose it to be the divine problem to begin man in the seminal form, and to carry him up, stage by stage, working by nature, by society, by organizations, by all instrumentalities, to a certain point of education in this life where he shall break out into a higher one, where he shall say, "I am a son of God, I have felt my sonship, but what it shall be I do not know." And sup- pose he now says, "0 God, reveal it to me;" God answers back to him, " You understand, and can understand, only what you have experienced." The only way in which a man can be taught anything that he wants to know is through his experience. Revelation teaches us eternity. That is a thing which is not necessarily a matter of experience. It teaches us certain reneralities, the understanding of which does not depend .ipon experience. It teaches us that heaven is a place where there is no sorrow, and where there are joys unutterable, which go on in gradations and ranks and cycles forever. These things we can understand in general ; but it is not about these that we want to know. I want to know how I shall stand by the friend that I loved better than myself ; and the heaven is mute. I want to know if she who was the companion of my toil and trouble and sin through life, whom I at last laid in the grave, and whom I wait for and think of, will seem to me 306 TRE PROBLEM OF LIFE. as she was, or as only one of a million drops that go to consti- tute that rainbow of glory which overhangs the throne of God ; and there is not a word. Where is that most precious band of children that I have sent forward without nurse, without convoy, without teacher and without guide ? I gave them to the airy arms of the unseen God, and he took them one by one from me. Are they children yet ? Not one of them will answer me. Are they growing ? Nobody will tell me. What is the condition of childhood in heaven ? Children just quickened, dying in the mother's womb, do they live again ? Children born crying and dying in one breath, have they a place there ? These questions, which come nearer and become tenderer as men come under the auspices of the Gospel of Christ, are things of which there is not a word said in revelation ; and we stand saying, " Why have not these things been revealed? " The only reply that I can give is that the higher can un- derstand the lower, but the lower cannot understand the higher. In the words of our text, it is said, " Beloved, now are we the sons of God 1" We have got as high as that ; but what that means, what our condition shall be, what is to be the full disclosure of sonship, we do not know ; Paul did not know ; he whose head rested on the Saviour's bosom did not know. These apostles, who were forerunners of the truth, who lived looking into the heavenly land, and who were the receptacles of divine inspiration by which light was made to come forth, said that they did not know what this after con- dition was ; and how shall we know ? It doth not yet ap- pear. This we know: that we shall see him then as he is. Now we do not see him as he is. Why do we not ? For the same reason that you do not see a thing as it is when you look through an imperfect medium. I go into a little summer- house, and on one side there is blue glass, on another side there is red glass, on another side there is green glass, and on the other side there is yellow glass. When I look through one, all creation is blue ; when I look through another, it is red; when I look through another, it is green ; and when 1 look through the other, it is yellow. I do not see creation as it is, but as these several glasses color it. THE PROBLEM OP LIFE. 30? So men see things in the spirit land checkered and deformed by the imperfections of the medium through which they look. The glass of their experience is colored, or is full Of wrinkles and warts. One interprets God from the intel- lectual side, and leaves out the domestic element. .Another interprets him from the domestic side, and leaves out the intellectual element. Our conception of him, by reason of his magnitude and our minitude, is split up. Therefore we see him, not as he is, but in fragments. The apostle says that now we see things in part, but that when that which is perfect is come we shall see things in whole. He says that we are sons of God, but that it does not yet appear what that means. He says, however, that -we know this: that when we shall see him as he is, we shall be like him. Yes ; and the reason why we shall see him will be because we are like him. It is through identity, through likeness, that we shall behold him. They, then, who beat their wings against such cold and everlasting questions, should stay their curiosity, their doubts and their scepticisms. Men should not go from the sanc- tuary or from the tomb, saying, " What kind of a reve- lation is this, which tells me the things that I do not need to know, and that I have outlived, or that society has, anyhow, and that does not tell me those things which my soul is in travail about ? Where are my sons ? Where are my daugh- ters ? Where are my companions ? Where are my instruc- tors? Where are those who were more to me than life itself ? Tell me, thou Heaven ! The only answer to these questions that comes back to us is, " It doth not yet appear, but it shall." And we must take all these ultimate inquiries to the tribunal of the great hereafter. It is ours to crucify the flesh, to keep down lower animal man, and to exalt the spiritual man, the moral man, and the reasoning man. It is ours to bring into more and more ascendancy that part of our nature which is like God. " Blessed' are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." The eye by which to investigate the divine nature is that by which you are like the divine. I know not how it is with you, but as I grow older, and 308 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. see more of men, and study in detail the experiences, the possibilities and necessities that are upon the race, I do not diminish my sense of the sinfulness of mankind. On the contrary, it augments. I have a more profound sense of the sins of the world. And this view of the development theory as it is applied to the problems of life does not diminish my sense of the Divine Spirit : it augments it. I should as soon expect that plants would grow without the summer's sun as that the human race would be developed without the quickening light and power of the spirit of God. It does not take away from me, either, a sense of the necessity of a new birth. If we could but read it, "Ye must be born again" is written more plainly in nature than it is in the "Word of God. It is the universal experience. Neither does it take away my faith in the future. It bridges the chasm between this world and the other. It takes away from the vagueness which exists in respect to the world to come. It gives me a philosophical reason why I cannot understand more of God, and of the conditions of the heav- enly land. It awakens in my soul an inexpressible gladness of hope, because it enables me to see that I am living toward a better state in spite of sin, and fault, and backslidings and stumblings. I as certainly know the way in which my life is tending, as the mariner knows what port he is making for. That port he means to reach if it takes him months and years, no matter what storms he may encounter ; and I mean to reach a home of rest beyond the grave ; and looking through sorrow, through temptation, through trial, through discipline, through mistake, through sin, through guilt, I behold my Pilot, restorative Love Jesus is his name ; and by faith of him I live in hope, knowing the work which he has begun and the attraction which he has set on foot, and that he will never abandon that work nor diminish that attraction, so that at last I shall conquer, and more than conquer, through him who loved me, and who is forever giving him- self for me. In this hope I do not ask you to abandon anything of the past and the old, but I urge you t^ ta c hold of the future THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 309 and the new. Be Christians after the teachings of the New Testament : not after the convictions of men, nor necessarily after the doctrines of the church. Be guided hy the inspira- tion of the Holy Ghost in your souls, and by the instructions of God through the letter. Look through the eyes of the New Testament into the New Jerusalem, the new life, the new gladness, the sonship, the victory, the eternity of bless- edness. 310 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. PRAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON. THOU art unapproachable even by our thoughts, O thou Almighty arid everlasting God. By searching we cannot find thee out, nor understand the Almighty to perfection. We approach towards the light, but the compass thereof, the going forth, the source and glory, no man can measure. We are not less sure that thou art because thou art in such superabundance above our conception. We rather rejoice that thou art lifted up above the apprehension of men; that thou art more just and more gentle than men know; that thou art more loving and more lovable; that thou art more powerful by thy heart than by thy hand ; that thou dost infinitely transcend the best things which we can bring to the conception of a God. And we shall not be disappointed when we see thee as thou art, and not as by the imperfect hand of man thou hast been delineated. When we behold thee in the proportion, and glory, and grandeur of thy whole being, and we are transformed into thine image and likeness, we shall be more than satisfied ; we shall have more than peace ; we shall break forth into ecstacy; and we, too, shall join the choral throng of the universe that shall ascribe honor, and glory, and power, and domin- ion unto Him who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever. Let not, we beseech of thee, the brightness of the heaven where thou dwellest die out from our sight. Because we cannot take thee by the hand, because we may not, as did thy servant of old, lay our head upon thy breast, let us not forsake the thought of thee; and die not out of our mind because thou art not visible to us. Grant that we may conceive of thee as a companionable, an overhanging and a universal presence, though thou art transcendent above all we know or think, of being. Draw near to us, this morning, with the quickening of thy brood- ing Spirit. Draw near to us to cleanse our hearts from fear, from doubt, from guilt, from all thoughts which are unworthy of the sons of God. Drew near to inspire in us all confidence, all hope, all joy, and all peace. Grant that in thee we may abide surely, strongly, beyond the reach of trouble unreachable by temptation even. Grant that the fiery darts of the adversary may be quenched long before they strike the shield of our salvation. We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest, this morning, upon every one that hath drawn near to thee, and es- pecially and first to those who seek thee, ready to perish. Draw near to all upon whom have come sudden and surprising griefs ; to all whose life is overcast as by storms falling upon the noon-day sun. Grant that in their desolation, in their surprise, and in the anguish of their great distress, they may still discern thee. Come thou to them, in the night, upon the stormy sea, walking on the waves, to calm their fear, and speak to them that they may find in thee deliverance from night, and darkness, and all trouble. Draw near to those who are wounded and bruised and know not how to bind up their wounds. Thou everlasting Comforter, reveal thyself over against the world's groanings and pains. Hast thou forgotten thy skill ? Shall THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 311 the desolate ones go uncared for? Visit those, we beseech of thee, who sit in the region and shadow of death. Bring light and salvation to every heart that needs thee to-day. We pray for those who are tempted more than they are able to bear- for those whose better hours continually point to the higher way 'but whose hours of weakness draw them down, and who vacil- late between poor performance and good endeavor; and those who from dav to day are drawn this way and that, and are growing uis- coura-ed because they are inconstant. O Lord, wilt thou strengthen them" Thou that dost heal the maimed, thou that dost carry those who are crippled, canst thou not still do for the soul, in the plenitude of thy divine and heavenly power, what thou didst for the body in thiue earthly life and weakness? We pray that thou wilt succor all those who are in great peril. Break the snare for those who are about to be caught thereby. May those who have digged pits for others themselves fall therein, and may the innocent go free. We pray that thou wilt deliver the poor from hard-hearted and hard-handed men. Give guidance and direction to those who are perishing for lack of vision. Help those to put their care upon thee, the great Bearer of burdens, who are oppressed by multitudinous cares. We pray that those who are resting in their own wisdom which is from beneath may find better guidance in faith of rectitude, faith of truth, faith of the divine providence, and in the watch and care of God for all who put their trust in him. We beseech of thee that thou wilt make it easy for those who have gone astray from thee to come back again. Grant that they may hear thy voice, which is full of encouragement, saying to them. This is the way : walk ye in it. And if there be any prodigals that are wandering, or that have wandered, and that are seeking to return, go thou to meet them nd find them ere they shall come back. We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to all the families that are represented in this congregation. May the blessing of Almighty God, that is full of peace, full of wisdom, and full of goodness, dwell in every household, that it may become a pate of heaven. We pray for all who go forth into the conflicts of life, contesting it? InttltM, and doing valiantly for themselves and for their fellow?, th vt they may ba stre-i^thenel of God with the wisdom that is from ab >ve, and that they miv be able to acquit themselves like men. We pray that thou wilt prrant a blessing upon our whole land. Be pleased in remember and to bless the President of these United States, and those who are joined with him in authority. Bless the Congress assembled, that it may have inspired wisdom, and that it may deliberate upon the things that are for the welfare of this nation. Bless all judges, and courts, and magistrates, and rulers, and the whole people, that they may be obedient unto the Lord, and wise and temperate. May their prosperity stand not in outward things, but in a truer manhood ; in a better, and wiser, and more benevolent patriotism. And we beseech of thee that thou wilt not bless this nation at the expense of any other: rather bless it that it may be the guide of the 312 THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. weak, and their defender. And grant that all may partake of thy blessing. We ask for ourselves that knowledge may prevail, and that in the light of truth superstitions may flee away, that ignorance and its hideous brood may disappear, and that the things which distract and torment mankind may perish. We pray that thou wilt speed forward that great and glorious day of prediction when the Lord shall shine forth, and there shall be no night, but the glory of God shall reign upon the earth as the sun in the heavens. O Lord, let the day be cut short, and let the time hasten, when thou shalt, by thine appealing, drive away all doubt and all evil, and when thy will shall be done on earth as in heaven. Hear us in these our petitions, and grant unto us not according to the wisdom of our asking, but according to the greatness of thy love and thy wisdom. And to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit shall be praise evermore. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OUR Father, wilt thou add thy blessing to the word that has been spoken. Confirm and establish our faith in our need, in its supply, in thy providence, and in the mighty power with which thou art work- ing in all things that pertain to life and glory. Grant that we may come into more blessed confidence with Ihee. May we not be afraid of thee. Thou art the God of love. Through ages men have not known it, and they have made thee a tyrant; they have drawn scowls on thy face; and they have made thee hate where thou didst but serve. Thou hast through ages been Father and Mother of the race. Thou hast been man's helper from the foundation of the world. Take away the barbaric, and give us the Christian view of thy nature, that we may walk and triumph in hope, in aspiration and in attainment, as much as through groans, through tears, through strifes, through defeats, yea, through victories and gladness. And thus may we come to our coronation, so that, at last, when our name shall be spoken in heaven, it shall be with shouts of gratulation from those who have known us, and felt our power, and worked with us, and for us, and for whom we have worked; and then may we enter in. having an exceeding abundant entrance ministered unto us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. UNJUST JUDGMENTS. " Judge not, that ye be not judged." MATT, vii., L Both the text and various other passages show that this is not the prohibition of the formation of reasonable judg- ment, whether of human action, of human conduct, or of human character. The individual action is judgeable ; con- tinuance of action upon action, or conduct, is judgeable ; and the resultant product of conduct namely, character, as formed by continuous action is judgeable. These are all of them severally proper subject matters of judgment. Elsewhere, a test is given by which we may come to a judgment " By their fruits ye shall know them ;" and in John it is commanded, " Judge not according to the appear- ance, but judge righteous judgment." So, then, it is evident that it is not the full, honest and sincere formation of a judgment with grounds and reasons, and in a right frame of mind, that is proscribed: it is unjust, partial and uncharitable judgment. In other words, that which is aimed at here is a disposition ; and unfortunately it is a disposition with which we are too familiar to mistake it. It is that habit of mind by which we are perpetually criticis- ing men, and forming and expressing opinions which repre- sent very largely our moods, favorable when they please us, and unfavorable when they displease us. It is the habit of seeing in men their faults, rather than a conclusive and com- prehensive estimate of faults and excellencies. It is the con- sideration of men's stumblings and wrong-doings, without MORNING, June 14, 1874, LESSON : James HI. HYMNS (Plymouth Col- lection) : Nus. 104, 1,023, 1,053. 316 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. any consideration of their circumstances, or of the influences that are brought to bear upon them. In short, it is treating men as if they were our antagonists and we were their enemies. It is untrue, partial, unjust, unloving criticism upon our fellow-men. And this it is that is forbidden in the command, "Judge not, that ye be not judged;" for he who out of such a state of mind as that is perpetually finding fault with men, and setting them out in dis-esteein so as to lower them in their own sight and in their neigh- bor's, is under condemnation already. He lives in an un- charitable state of mind, which alienates him from truth- fulness, and keeps him out of the communion of the Saints, and out of the kingdom of God. This command, then, points not to a formal regulated process, which oftentimes is indispensable to the affairs of men. We are ourselves called to discriminate between pal- pable good and palpable evil ; between right and wrong ; between truth and falsehood, not vaguely and extremely, but as they appear in the conduct of men. It would be a spurious charity indeed that should confound men's moral qualities. If a man assails me with vituperation and with the lan- guage of bitterness, it is not charity in me to say that that man is praising me. If a man is in my cherry tree stealing cherries, it is false charity for me to say, " I think he is only borrowing." Things are what they are, and we have a right to look at them as they are. In dealing with men you must judge of moral quality ; and to a certain extent, also, you must judge of antecedent dispositions. In the case of those with whom you have no dealings, and on whom you look as a spectator merely, it may not be necessary for you to go further than to form general judgments, calm and dispassionate ; but where you are called to deal with a man you must go further than that. The safety of your affairs and of the affairs of others that are committed to your administration ; the interests of the community ; its households and its institutions these may depend upon your forming just judgments of men, so that you may not commit trusts to unworthy persons. It UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 317 would not be safe, as we have learned, to put thieves into treasure rships. It would not be safe to put upon the bench, where impartial decisions are required, notoriously bribable and partial men. You must discriminate. In the administration of affairs there are those who are appointed to judge of actions under law ; and they of course are not included in this forbiddal. They judge, but their judgment is not of that kind which is involved in this passage. So there may be critics whose business it is, in history, in psychology, or in scientific research, to form measured judgments of men, of their actions, and of the products of their actions. The spirit of our text does not forbid any of these things f but it includes in it all social under-valuing ; all ridiculing ; all endless and aimless criticising ; all informal condemning j all social dissections ; the whole process of that uncharitable underplay which goes on in society, and whose practical re-* suit is far worse upon the general condition of mankind than would be heresy or even infidelity : for of all heresy, want of love is the worst ; there is no infidelity like that which b false to mankind, and to that universal kindness and chari- tableness which one man owes to another. "It is in vain," says John, "for a man to say, 'I love God,' if he hate his brother." It is in vain for a man to offer service in the sanctuary, and sing and pray, and rise on cherub's wings of experience, if afterwards, and in spite -of that experience, his mind is in such an attitude that he looks on the unfavorable sides of human life, and always sees the weakness, the fault, fchs evil that is in men, and never the goodness, the excel- lence and the strength that is in them. This disposition of criticism or uncharitable judgment, whether expressed or only carried in the silence of our own souls, springs not from the divine, but from the malign, elements of our nature. We are brethren ; we are children of God ; we are allied to each other by common weakness, by common temptableness, by common sinfulness, by common dependence on God's forgiveness, for life and for liberty to think and feel ; and it is not for us, united together by these things, to occupy ourselves in looking up, on every hand and 318 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. wherever an opportunity presents itself, those things which are common to us and to others, for condemnation. If there should spring up in a hospital a disposition of criticism ; and men with fevers should jibe at men with dropsies; and men with dropsies should avenge themselves by pointing over to men with ulcers and sores ; and men with broken arms should rail at men whose legs instead of their arms were broken ; if men who were outwardly bruised and contused should speak contemptuously of men who were internally diseased ; if men with cerebral difficulties should denounce men with cardiac difficulties under such circum- stances a state of things would exist which would represent the church of Christ, in which persons are perpetually find- ing fault on moral grounds : some because men are erratic in judgment ; some because men are faulty in ethics, or ordinances, or this, that or the other thing. A Christian criticises others for failings which are in them but which are, perhaps, not in him, while all of them together are in a hospital, and each has his special ailment. This whole tendency springs, not from the divine that is in man, but from the remnants that are in him of that which is animal ; and you will take notice that many things which are indispensable, and are virtues in the lower forms of exist- ence, become in the higher forms of existence positive vices. Thus, when there is in a community no common protec- tion, no law, the animal existence stands upon suspicion and fear ; and readiness to suspect and to strike is the law and condition on which the lower animals live : but as men de- velop out of animal states into society that necessity is taken away ; and as society becomes more and more purified by reli- gion, and ascends, the critical spirit, the seeing of things that are evil, remains, while the necessity for it is gone ; and it is out of this remnant, as it were, of animalism in men that this con- stant tendency to judge springs. It is from this that hasty and uncharitable judgments usually come. It is a very deceitful spirit. It mistakes one's own motives, and gives activity to evil dispositions in ourselves under various names. There are a great many who feel called by their consciences to play the devil's part, accusing, criticising and weighing all manner of UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 319 evil against men, not because they have any particular good in view, but for low and unjustifiable reasons. You have no right to speak of a man's fault or wrong unless you have some benevolent object in view. The fact that a thing is true does not make it right for you to publish it. You have no right to speak of men at their worst unless there be a reason for it which will stand the scrutiny of the judgment- seat of charity. It is Dot enough that a man is wrong, or is bad. It is not enough that a man has a fault, and that he exercises that fault. All men have these things ; but why should they be dragged out, unless there be some hope, by warning, to prevent mischief, or to rectify and cure it? Charity, or true divine love, forbids us to disclose the imper- fections and faults of others, and excuse ourselves by say- ing, " These things are true, and I think it is necessary that they should be known. It is my duty to fight wickedness wherever I find it." Then stay at home, and you will find enough to keep you fighting all your life ! This conscience of which I have spoken leads men to seek out and set their seal of disapprobation and condemnation on every aberration, on every fault that springs from a morbid state of mind, and on every wrong. It is simply the hypoc- risy of conscience. Conscience gives no such liberty as this. Some men exercise the same spirit under the form of a blunt, plain-speaking honesty. They blurt out disagreeable things because they are "so blunt." But suppose a man should go into society, and spit right and left because he was such a blunt sort of man ? He would soon be ushered out of any decent society or house. Yet how much worse than spittle is venom ! and when a man goes about among his fellow-men who are burdened and tried, and, because he is a " plain, honest speaker," decries everything that is weak, everything that is morbid, everything that he can find that is evil, and throws out his denunciations right and left, up and down, and when remonstrated with, says, "Oh, well, you cannot expect me, a plain-dealing man, to do otherwise ; I am not going to say anything that I do not believe" when a man does this, he violates the law of charity. There is nothing so blunt as a bull ; but a bull is not usually considered to be a 320 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. good thing to have in orphan asylums or in society ! Men, however, who have come up along that line of development, go bellowing and horning their way through life, and justify their action bgcause they are blunt, honest, plain-spoken men. Such persons are either hypocrites, or else they are working under a mistake which they cannot themselves understand. Then there are men who "hate hypocrisy," and who are always and everywhere looking around and suspecting people. If a man is spoken of as good, they say, " Well, let me know him long enough and I will show you that he is not as good as he seems to be. " If a man does a generous deed, they say, " H'm ! you will find that he will make on that." If a man says a kindly thing, they say, " Oh ! yes, his tongue runs in oil at one end." So there are a great many men who lie lurking and watching their fellow-men. They hate insincer- ity, and anything that is not high-minded. Like leeches, they suck the blood of every man that they come in contact with. There is nobody within reach of their tongue who does not feel it, all because they dislike men who are not good. But there is nobody that is good. Everybody is sick everybody is lame everybody comes short. Symmetry and continued perfectness do not belong to this life. We are all in a warfare, working and struggling ; and the chief diffi- culty between one side of life and the other is that there is a large body of men, blessed be God, who are striving for an ideal which is set before them who are not perfect men, but who are men seeking after perfection ; and another large body of men who do not even seek after perfection. They may be accidentally good, accidentally virtuous ; but their own will is not embarked in any career which is de- signed to make their life pure. While some men are striving for goodness, others are leaving themselves to the fluctuations of chance. And there is no man, high or low, rich or poor, wise or foolish, who, if you apply to him high tests of judg- ment, can stand for a moment. There is another thing to be considered namely, that as men go up the tests become more critical, and more difficult to be made. If you measure men that are low, charitableness requires that your tests shall be low ; and if you measure men UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 321 that are high, justice demands that your tests shall corre- spond to their condition ; but no man can abide the measure of God's thought. There is no man who would not wither if God were to men as men are to each other. There is another form of uncharitableness which in some respects is harder to bear than any other. That is where criticism is put into the form of wit. Gold and silver are gold and silver whether they be in the shape of coin or not ; but when they are in the shape of coin, and are in circulation, they have a power which otherwise they would not have. So our judgment is the same whether it is joined to wit and humor or not ; but when it is joined to wit which makes it attractive, and which excites a smile, it has a currency and a power that renders it a great deal more dangerous than it would be if it were not winged with this quality. Humor is, however, nearer right than any emotion that we have. "Wit may be very dangerous, but humor usually tends toward good-nature ; and everything that tends toward good-nature in this world tends toward grace. You may find kindly criticism leagued with humor, but not unjust and uncharita- ble judgments they seek wit as their ally. Humor is the at- mosphere in which grace most nourishes. It does not follow if it is Summer, that there are going to be flowers ; but if there are going to be flowers, there must be Summer : and it does not follow, if there is humor, that there are going to be charitable tendencies ; but if there are charitable tendencies there must be good-nature among men. Good-nature I value much more highly than I do many of the so-called Christian graces ; and in that I follow my Master. " If thou bringest thy gift to the altar [if thou dost go into the temple and perform the critical and characteristic! work of worship- ing God, which is the test of all temple service], and there remember- est that thy brother hath aught against thee [that he is left unhappy when you can make him happy], leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way ; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." God can wait ; man cannot. God dwells in eternity ; man is the creature of an hour. Not that symbols which typify worship are bad ; but when it comes to questions of high religious experience, it is more important for a man to 322 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. take care of his brother's feelings, than that he should attend to these symbols. In other words, kindness, good-nature and social amenity precede outward observances. Many men are seeking God so assiduously that they have quite forgotten their fellow-oreatures. They are so high above them that they do not see them nor remember them. To be so near to God that your feet just touch the heads of men, and you walk on their heads, is not a good way to be devout. This disposition of uncharitable judgment is a fountain from which flows continual misconduct. You cannot do your duty to men when you are filled with this as a prelim- inary disposition. There are certain positive commands, one of which is, " Honor all men." You may say that this transcends human power ; there are cases in which it does seem as though we could not honor men; but it is not exactly this that is meant. The spirit, the inward disposition and intent, should be such as to lead us to desire to honor all men. You are to treat every man as if you were conscious that he was made of God ; as if you felt that for him there was a kingdom prepared ; as if you beheld in every man, as through a lens, the vast expansion of his nature as it is to be. There are no small men. Acorns are small in what they are, and not in what they promise to be when they shall become acre-covering century oaks. To be sure, a long time must elapse before the acorn becomes the oak ; but you can see the one in looking upon the other. " Honor all men." The poorest and the lowest are not what they seem. There is in the essential nature of every single human creature that which, when it is unfolded, shall shine as the stars in the firmament. All exterior buildings ; all temples filled with statues ; all works of mens' hands ; all palaces ; all paint- ings ; all resplendent works of art these things are not to be compared with those hidden and invisible powers in the human soul from which they spring ; and outward king- doms, visible grandeurs of men, the multitudes in their external existences, bear no comparison with that reach of being which inheres in the humblest of God's creatures. There is not a pauper that is driven alone to his grave whose UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 323 soul is not transcendently more important in the sight of God than the dignity of the crowned monarch, or the ruler and magistrate of the vastest republic. There is an inherent grandeur in the divinity that is in man because God is behind him ; and he is what he is by virtue of the things of which he is possible, and not by virtue of just so many of them as he has attained to. The wealth of the mines of California is not to be counted by what has been dug out of them, but by the undisclosed treasures which lie within them. A man is not to be merely what he has made himself to be battered, hedged in, cabined, beaten, chiseled, variously abused. Men are like seeds. To-day the seeds ripen, and to-morrow the winds take them, and some fall behind dark walls, and are buried and rot there ; others fall in half-lighted places, and there sprout and wither ; still others fall in some favorable spot, and strike down the root, and thrust up the stem, and gain strength and nutriment for another summer, and so save themselves. Men are born, and are swept through the world as seeds are ; but not they that have good soil are always the ones that are the best or that come to the most. There is that in every human soul which you cannot measure, and which you cannot afford to, by any human standard. In going forth into the community we are to observe this law of God which demands that we shall honor his creatures that we shall " honor all men," high or low ; and it is not possible for any man to do this and at the same time carry out an uncharitable spirit by which he is all the time probing to see if there is matter here and foulness there ; something for ridicule here, and something for unfavorable criticism and roport there ; something to fill the chalice whose very incense is from beneath and not from above. I may say more than that : there is never one who forms uncharitable judgments and carries them to and fro unless there is a market for them. Ships never sail unless there are ports into which they can run. If your ears are harbors of tale-bearers' tales, then you and they are joined in a bad partnership and commerce. If, in society, one come into a little circle with uncult- ured and rude discourse, discord is felt in that whole circle. 324 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. Every one is pained if there is an atrocious sentiment uttered, or a rude spirit made manifest. Men rebound from these things. They create disgust in society. But how very sel- dom hare I seen a circle in which the most atrocious violation of the fundamental law of happiness in the universe that law which binds God and all his creatures alike to common obedience the great law of sympathy and love was received with reproof and distate ! How very seldom have I seen that law observed in a gathering even of half a dozen persons ! How seldom have I seen a circle of people, however small, in whose ears tale-bearings and criticisms were discordant ! How little are we trained in this matter so that these things jar upon our feelings, are as gravel in our mouth, and are disallowed by us not only on principle, but because they are so absolutely hateful to us that we cannot endure them ! We call ourselves civilized ; and yet there is scarcely a house where there is not a slaughter-pen in which characters are slain. Christians of the same sect may not slaughter each other ; but they will slaughter Christians of another sect. If you gather together men who are patriotic, they will not slaughter their own party, but they will slaughter those of another party. So justice is almost forgotten, truth is scarcely thought of, and men rush upon men as wild beasts rush upon their prey. It is apt to be the case that those who please us are thought to be excellent persons ; and it is thought that if they do not please us, we have abundant excuse for making known all their faults. Those are condemned by us whose example and necessity puts us to disadvantage. In other words, it turns out, upon such an analysis, that after all it is ourselves that we seek to please, that it is selfishness that leads to charity where we are pleased, and selfishness that leads to condemnation where we are displeased. This spirit of uncharitableness adds to the irritations and quarrelings and sufferings of life. It lays upon men burdens heavy to be borne. It fills communities with poisonous ele- ments, and destroys that sympathy and cordiality and social enthusiasm which is absolutely necessary to the welfare of society. Men do not extract the real happiness which exists in UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 325 peace by the exercise of that love which binds them one to another. We move among men guardedly, restrainedly, cautiously, upon calculation. We abandon men when they cease to contribute to our interest or enjoyment. We do not seek to cultivate that genial sympathy which, if it were gen- eral, would raise up in the community the power to make its masses happy. How little is this sympathy really felt ! Men, as they run, throw out ichor, not sweetness. And religion itself, by raising the ideal of conscience, by giving the standard of life a higher intellectual development, by making men fastidious, becomes itself a matter of unchar- ifcableness, an author of unkindness ; and instead of binding up men's wounds and healing them, and bringing them to- gether in love, it separates and disintegrates them, and arrays them one against another. Therefore it is that you find in the writings of the apos- tles so much spoken about peace ; as in the passage which I read to you from James, where the wisdom from above is described as pure, gentle, easy to be entreated, and full of good fruits. ; .... Again, men are not qualified to form just judgments of^ the great mass of their fellow-men. Indeed, it is one of the most difficult of things to form an accurate judgment of men. The judgments which parents form of their children come more nearly, I suppose, to the right kinds of judgment than any others ; for usually these are formed in the right spirit namely, the spirit of helpfulness. The desire to develop men, the identification of one's self with others, a longing to see in them the things which shall make them more beautiful, more noble, more strong how seldom does this parental feeling exist outside the household ! How seldom does it exist even in friendships ! In friendships how much there yet remains of the secular and the sordid ! He is my friend, too often, who plays agreeably on me, as if I were an instrument of music ; and if I play agreeably upon him, the equilibrium is maintained, our relation being one which is full of pleasure-producing power on each side : but how seldom is friendship founded on disinterested love ! How seldom does it exist except on the basis of selfishness ! 326 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. How seldom does it lift a man above sordid things, and broaden his life, and inspire in him that fidelity which con- tinually exalts him and makes him more noble ! To form judgments of men, so far as their superficial qualities are concerned, requires but little ; but to form judg- ments of their character and disposition is one of the most elaborate and difficult things possible. And if true judg- ment of character and disposition is very difficult, to form a judgment of the desert of character and disposition in men is still more difficult ; for we leave out, usually, the considera- tion of circumstances which largely determine conduct and which should qualify praise or blame. One may be unjustly praised; another may be unjustly condemned. The one that is condemned may have put forth ten fold more effort to be good than has the one that is praised. A man may be so happily born, so equilibrated in every organ, so healthy in the head, and in the heart, and in the lungs, and in the stomach, and in the liver (which is the devil's den) ; a man may be so balanced, and may be reared in a way so perfectly admirable, that it is not possible for him to be other than good-natured ; and so his good-nature flows prattling along as a brook on a gentle inclination through a flowery meadow, always pleasantly murmuring, and never much disturbed. Such persons are praised, and praised, and praised. They are beautiful ; but they deserve very little praise, because they put forth no effort. It does not require a great strain to run down hill. On the other hand, a man may be born so that every nerve in his body is continually tempting him to irritation ; and he may be thrown under circumstances in life in which his hereditary tendencies, wherein he has the sins of his fathers visited upon him, are all quickened and fired ; and under such circumstances, he may bring to bear great caution, and self-restraint, with tears, and prayers, and a thousand resolutions, and attempt to control the fiery steeds that are in him ; and night and day, as God is his witness, he may be putting forth a thousand times more effort than the natural good-natured man ; but who except God knows this struggle, and metes out just consideration ? Who says UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 327 of the man that is blamed for going wrong, and mourns over his faults, and strives to correct them, "After all, he deserves more credit than I do" ? For, if there be anything that measures praise and blame, it ought to be the amount of moral purpose that a man exhibits, the amount of pain that he undergoes, and the amount of effort that he puts forth. Many a man whom we call bad, and who is bad as looked at from a human point of view ; many a man who is unbal- anced, who is unlovely, and who is forever stumbling into wrong ways, will verify as between himself and you and me, the declaration that "the last shall be first." My mother helped me to be good-natured. The hands of twenty ancestors are let down to lift me up above the storm ; and twenty ancestors are, with fiery fingers, pulling down some other men, who, although they strive and struggle all the while manfully, do not attain half the quietude that I have. And they are better men than I am, though I may be honored, and they blamed ; and they will stand higher than I in the other world, when a better measure and a better esti- mate shall be given. Men judge each other by qualities in themselves. This, although it is very natural, leads to very imperfect and very injurious results. As I have already intimated, persons in perfect health are very unjust to persons who are not healthy. This goes a great ways. There are two things that increase with me as I grow older. One is a profound sense of the wickedness and sinful- ness of men, and the other is a profound sense that charity and pity are better grounds of criticism than blame. There are hundreds of men who are called lazy. Well, if not doing anything is laziness, they are lazy ; and if that which is called laziness be the product of dissipation, if it be the result of addiction to violent passions, if it be activity toward animalism, then they are subjects of blame ; but there are thousands of men who, though they never seem to work, are not idlers. I saw a mill, and heard it talk a little. There were two streams running to a confluence, and on each stood a mill. One was deep and abundant, springing from the mountain. 328 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. Another was from a neighboring hill, running with exiguous stream. A mere rill it was. From it the water trickled, trickled, trickled, upon the wheel, which waited for the bucket to get full before it turned, slowly and with reluctance. The other, broad and full, poured its waters abundantly under the other wheel, which went whirling round and round and round, night and day, and grinding, grinding, grinding the grists that were brought to the mill. And this energetic, busy mill looked out gayly from its dusty window down at the feeble mill on the sickly stream, and cried out, "You see how I work : if you would do as I do you would have grists enough ! " Yes, if that mill had the river which this mill has. Now, a man who has a flood making from him ; a man who has a temperament and constitution that generates vitality in the brain and stimulation in the blood such a man cannot help being industrious. Work is in him. He relieves himself by work. But a man who has a cold stomach, and cold nerves, and but very little blood, and not much in him he uses up all that he has. You cannot make a fire with a handful of shavings such as you can make with a ton of coal ; and if a man is made so that the forces in him are small, and are not long continued, he may not be in one sense a worker, but he is not lazy. Thousands of men are blamed because they do not work. People say to them, " "Why do you not work ? You would be prosperous if you would only work." " What ! have you come again ? I told you that if you did not take care of your affairs and organize them aright, I would never help you again, and I won't." As if the capacity of organizing his affairs was in every man ! As if the power of generating thoughts and arranging them and using them so as to carry one through the competitions of life, was the gift of every man! As if hundreds and thousands of men were not born without the ability to hold their own in the world! The worst place for one to live, I think, is among Yankees, where versatility of talent and method and system are required, and where he is considered to be a man who knows how to get up before he goes to bed, and to work forever and forever, and where no man is looked upon as so low as a poor shiftless " shack." I had almost UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 329 rather be in an Italian dungeon than in a New England poor- house. That which is true in this matter is also true in the higher range. We often judge men's right and wrong, their intel- ligence and ignorance, their virtues and vices, yea, and their crimes, by the standard which applies to us ; but this is not fair. If a man be a savage Indian it will not do to judge him by the same standard of peace which we apply to our- selves in our own neighborhood, and under the circum- stances in which we were brought up. If you are by' nature (that is, by birth), well-balanced, inwardly ; if you have had a good parentage ; if your habits have been well looked after ; if you have been properly educated and trained ; if you are surrounded by Conservative influences; if you have a busi- ness that draws out all the mischievous steam that would otherwise inhere in you, then you are a monster if you take your standard of morality and by that judge of those who have been poorly born, wrongly educated, brought up under bad influences. For you to judge them by the privileges and immunities which you have had, and none of which they have had, is tyrannical and unchristian. Men of energetic moral temperaments sit in judgment upon men of totally different temperaments for there is a moral temperament as there is a mathematical temperament, a poetical temperament, an artistic temperament, and so on. There are men who easily do good, according to our low pat- tern, and invent ten thousand fancies by which to develop the goodness that is in them. There is a genius of moral ideas. And on the other hand there are men who never develop such ideas, and to whom goodness is almost as hard as to me are the higher branches of mathematics, and as to you is oratory or painting. So it is that men, as they grow better themselves, fre- quently grow worse. That is, they take that in themselves which is the gift of God, and which certainly furnishes an ideal and ought to be a great help to them, and adminis- ter it as a rigid canon of criticism, and by their goodness they condemn thousands who have not the same temperament, nor the same aptitudes which they have. 330 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. More and more, I think, men have yet to learn a new doc- trine in respect to the power of will. How differently men are endowed with intellectual fruitfulness ; with susceptibility or unsusceptibility ; with hope and courage, or fear and de- spondency. One takes his peculiarity and sets himself up in some sense as a model ; or, he takes that ideal for which he is striving and turns and makes it a measure of those who are other than himself. Thus that which is good in him becomes evil in its effects upon others. The very things that in him are the best become the authors of things that are the worst. I need not go further in the illustration of the difficulty which there is in forming an absolute conception of men all around of their merit or demerit of their blame- or praise- worthiness. I have, I think, already shown that it is not an easy thing if a man undertakes to do it. It requires very great forbearance and very great accuracy in the laying down of canons of judgment a forbearance and an accuracy which few men possess. The thing is so inherently difficult, and is so fraught with mischiefs, that no man has a right, except he be a parent or a teacher, to judge persons as worthy of praise or blame unless he is under the influence of unques- tionable charity. If a man is mad it is absolutely impossible for him to rightly judge of another. If a man is actuated by pride or envy he is not fit to judge of his fellow-men. Judi- cial power over men is given to nothing in a man except the law of love. It is only under the administration of God's love that a man's conscience can take the humblest place in the direction of judging men. I will make a few applications which I have not made as I have gone along. First, there is a great field for applying this to the rela- tions of different churches with each other. There is no church that cannot find endless fault with another if it sets about it ; for there are endless, boundless faults to be found. There is probably no denomination that has stood through many generations, in which some truth is not held better than in any other denomination. There is o denomination that has the power of continued existence, which does not UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 331 carry some pure gold in it. There is something in all sects, ancient, mediaeval and modern, which gives them the" right of continued existence. Now, if sects set themselves over against each other as critical judges, there is no end to the faults that they may find ; but the doing this destroys that Christian charity which will draw men together. It separates them. There was a time when wickedness was well nigh universal ; and at that time, when men drew themselves out from wick- edness, they separated themselves into classes of the good ; and it has come to pass that those who have separated them- selves into classes of the good have ever since been separat- ing themselves from each other, until the church on earth represents a checker-board for there are almost as many de- nominations as there are squares on a checker-board. Now, there is no harm in this, provided people act in relig- ion as they do in the household. There are, we will say, one hundred families on Brooklyn Heights ; and if these families severally take care of themselves, and agree to act kindly toward one another, the fact of such a population in so many houses is not mischievous. Not only is it not a mischief, but it is a positive benefit, that Christianity has taken the names of many denominations, provided they do not arrogate authority over one another, and sit in judgment upon each other, and provided each one minds its own affairs. But the times tell us how much the old spirit that was in men still lives in sects, where men arrogate the right to judge, to condemn and to cast out. They have taken the attributes of God, and they are exercising, under a thousand plausible names, that which God never gave man a right to exercise vengeance. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." There is no partnership throughout the universe in that attribute. So all church folks are apt to be very censorious upon all the world folks ; and I observe that very much the same thing exists in churches nowadays that existed in the time of the Saviour among the Jews. It was almost im- possible for a man to speak of the gentiles without being answered with a stone, because the orthodox Jews felt that Jews were the final end of creation, and that God had con- 332 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. ducted the universe down to that age for the sake of the cream the Jews. It was considered a very great virtue to be a Jew. Those outside of the Jews were " dogs ;" those outside of the Greeks were "barbarians," and those outside of the church to-day are "sinners." There are no sinners inside of the church, thank God ! The spirit that exists in organized Christianity, looking out upon the world, is not far different from that spirit which was in organized pharisaism during the time of the Master namely, such a sense of the peculiar favor of God toward a select class as rendered men substantially unsympathetic with the outside classes, making distinctions, founded, not on real excellence, but simply on the feeling that they are nearest to God, and that the others are furthest from him. This is a most dangerous position for one class of men to take in re- spect to another class of men. "When a man says, " I am not dishonest," he does not arrogate anything to himself, and he does no violence to charity, as also he does not when he says " I am not a liar ;" but it is certainly a dangerous thing for any body of men as large and various and imperfect as the visible church, to assume that they are perfect. Filled as the denominations are with men who are very low in the scale of ethics, and who are filled with arrogance and ambition ; split up as they are with intestine jealousies and envyings and quarrelings and contentions which are at work in themselves and among themselves, the whole church visible on earth to-day is like a great camp-ground in insurrection, all the Protestant bodies righting against Rome, as well as against each other ; and the national churches being divided up among themselves into provincial sects, intellectual sects, esthetic sects, imag- inative sects, etc. Now is that a state of humanity out of which we can look with contempt upon the great outside world lying around about us? And yet how much is justified on the ground that we are members of churches, and that others are not ; that they are in the " gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity" and that we are not ? You say that you are better than cer- tain other men because they do not say their prayers right. UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 333 It does not matter, if they say them with as little profit as you do yours. "But they do ijot believe in the Trinity," you say. It is better that they should not than that, belie'ving in it, they should trample it under foot. " But they do not contribute to religious institutions." Well, they are free before God. You are not their master. In other words, we are not in the slightest degree author- ized to look upon men who are outside of this or that church organization, and sit in judgment upon them. We are com- manded to "judge not." The elements of character, the habits of living, the ethical rules of conduct, the amenities of life these are not so preeminently superior in church folks that they can afford to sit, by the wholesale, in con- demnation upon those who are not church folks. The same kind of severe judgment has been improperly exercised in reference to magistrates, rulers and public men. I hardly ever heard a sermon, and I hardly ever read an arti- cle, outside of the New Testament, advocating respect for men because they were magistrates, or because they were rulers. In the New Testament the command is that we shall regard all those who are in authority as servants of God, standing not for what they are themselves, but for the great ideal which God had in appointing them. In our land, in all free lands where men have the right of discussion, the currents run against men who are in responsi- ble trusts ; and there are a thousand reasons for it. There are many reasons why those who are on the bench, for in- stance, should be looked after. But the discussion of the characters of public men in our newspapers may largely be considered to have proceeded not upon a just ground, except now and then. It may be said that there has been a continual and iterated tendency to find fault, and find fault, and find fault with them. It is desirable that those who are entrusted with power should be watched, and that their fear of criticism should never cease ; it is desirable that such men should be held to a proper accountability ; but these ends are defeated where constant fault-finding at length destroys all discrimi- nation, and the impression is produced that of course a public man will be found fault with. Thus the barriers to good 334 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. conduct are broken down ; and whether it be in churches, in reformatory conventions, in party gatherings, or in news- papers, there is n evil to be exposed and corrected namely, uncharitable severity in the judgment which is pronounced upon public rulers. There is but one other point that I shall make, and that is the putting of the sins of the whole community on a single individual as their scapegoat. It was an easy thing for the Israelites, when they had gone on sinning and sinning and sinning in a thousand different forms, to have their priest bring up, finally, a goat, and after proper services, lay his hands on him, and give him a kick, and start him for the wilderness, and say, "Go, goat, and take the sins of the people off with you;" it was a cheap deliverance; and although the Levitical enactments are done, that particular custom remains yet. We go on in indulgent habits in society, tempting the young, making the road to the gratification of their passions and appetites more and more attractive, and conniving at evils here and there ; and under our influence the young man goes down step after step, until at last he falls so low that he is taken home drunk, and his place is vacated in the bank, and he is thrown out of his class in the Sunday-school where he has taught ; and then all good parents hold up their hands, and say, " My child, take warn- ing ! take warning !" Who destroyed him? The men that damn him. It was their lowness of custom, their example, their persuasions to things corrupting. These guileful influences led him to destruction ; and the indignation of the community breaks out, and is visited upon him. There is one goat running for the wilderness ! Everybody winks at falsehoods. Everybody reports little things, saying, "Well I do not vouch for the truth of this; I tell it just as it was told to me ;" and so he becomes the devil's mail-bag for lies. Everybody prepares the way for wickedness by rewarding it, or praising it, or helping it in some other way, looking upon it without rebuke ; and by and by there comes a flagrant falsehood, born out of the state of things which they themselves have produced, and UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 335 then the man who happens to be the special guilty object takes, in a concentrated form, the blame that should dis- tributively have gone through the whole community. Now, New York has been, to my personal knowledge, for at least twenty-seven years conducting its affairs in a re- markable manner or, it would have been remarkable if it had not been so common. It was understood that places of trust were to be used as powers and influences ; and it ceased to be, in both parties or in either party, regarded as a matter of blame worthiness that men employed their offices for their personal interests. Men had been, from generation to gen- eration, acting on this principle; they had been "on the make," as it is said ; they had been accustomed to distribute among themselves profits and gains which belonged to the people. Things being in this condition, one man, whose abilities enabled him to do it on a larger scale than his pred- ecessors had done it, administered things as 1 ; found them, in a new direction; and being caught, and tried, and con- victed, he walks on Blackwell's Island ; and all New York, that prepared the road which he trod, dug the channel in which he moved, and nourished the influences which led him on, is now, oh how happy, to think that at last justice has had its way ! No ; if justice had had its way there would have been five hundred thousand men there, instead of one ! A man goes to Congress in the interest of a gre at public improvement. He finds there a certain morality established in regard to railroad managements. He finds them affiliated with legislative management. These things exist. He has not created them. They have long been growing. Nobody looks on them with disapproval. So men avail themselves of the opportunity which is presented for self-aggrandizement. This man has a little pinch, and that man has a little pinch. Every man has his cup or bucket which he fills. So matters go on, until by-and-by a man comes along who has a larger brain than those had who had gone before him, and he administers in a larger way, and is caught, and vomited out of Congress ; and by the artillery of committees he is shot to pieces, and all through the land everybody is astonished that 336 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. such a thing could have happened ! Nobody ever heard of such a miscreant ! Now, you are the alphabet, and he was the word spelled ! So it is that every once in ten or twenty years the commu- nity wakes up to an extraordinary sense of purity and virtue ; and the victim who has been struck by their lightnings is considered from that time out to be like Judas or Arnold ; and he goes carrying the accumulated iniquity of generations to the day of his death. Is this in accordance with a just, righteous judgment ? Are such things admirable in a high state of Christian civil- ization ? I do not say that bad men are not bad, because they are made so by a large number of bad men behind them they are bad ; but this I do say : think ye that they upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all those who dwelt in Jerusalem ? I tell you, Nay. Except you repent, you shall likewise perish. If you condemn the re- presentative criminals, remember whom they represent. If men are ministers of falsehood and of peculation, bear in mind that a stream goes no higher than its fountain. In no community is any man a great deal better or a great deal worse than that community. It is laxity of conscience and principle among the thousands and tens of thousands that makes it possible, here and there, for a man to become an eminent sinner in the ways in which I have described ; and while he should be punished, it is not for you and me, with unveiled faces, radiant with an indignant triumph, to stand up and say, ' ' How God hates sinners ! " It is for us to cover our faces, and to say, " I have laid a stumbling block in my brother's way." It is for us to repent and to reform in our own places, that there may be none found to do so any more. UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 33? PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMOfr. WE draw near to thee with humble confidence, with the boldness of love, thou that hast taught us all things: thou that hast in all things sustained us; thou that hast inspired the fathers and the mothers, and then hast taught us out of thy experience to call thee Father. We draw near to thee with confidence inspired by thine own self; by every word which thou hast uttered; and yet more by all those dealings by which we have been surrounded of thee. For thy ways toward us, though they are often dark and inscrutable, have been, as we look back upon them, ways of mercy. The storms come upon us come with bolts and purifying lightnings ; and as they go away from us we see the bow of promise; and looking back through the past, we see that thou hast never dealt unjustly nor unkindly with us. Thy chastisements have been merciful. We are witnesses that it is good for us that we have been afflicted. Thou hast taught ua a thousand things which no school nor teacher other than thyself could have taught us not the knowledge of outward life, not the knowledge of the framework of the universe, but unut- terable things of the Spirit, and inward experiences which live, and prophesy, and reach forth into a higher and better life. As the out- ward man perishes, the inward man is renewed day by day ; so that we have this token that we are the sons of God not that thou dost speak to us from Sinai ; not that thou dost from the cleft of the rock make known thy power even with the still small voice; but that all which is like thee is growing perpetually In the silence of our own consciousness. We know that we are coming nearer to thee; and though we are not able to discern, though we cannot bring down into human thought and human words the conception of God, or that brightness which vaguely appears to our vision of thee, yet we who look toward the East know that the morning is coming, that the light is advancing, and that ere long the sun shall pour out its fullness. We know, O Sun of righteousness, that thou art drawing nearer to us. Already we feel the light, we perceive the quenching of the night and the coming of the day, and we yearn with unutter- able desire to be the children of the morning, and to look more and more into that light which when once it hath come shall nevei depart. What to us is exaltation which carries up only the perish- able? What to us is humiliation that only casts down that which ero long must go to dust again ? What ars mercies that leave us pooi within? and what are troubles that enrich us within, though they beat upon us outwardly ? Grant that we may awake to a full realization of our sonshlp and of the blessedness of our inheritance in Christ Jesus. Teach us to put emphasis upon these inward and nobler things, that we may judge of life with a better judgment, and live higher than men around about us are able to live. May we come into that state in which we shall be able to judge from higher things though we are not judged by things below us. Grant, O Lord, that we may walk humbly with God, and patiently 338 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. among men, and be filled with the gentleness that is of Jesus Christ. For who of us is not better provided for than He was? He had not where to lay his head. All that dwelt in the air, and on the earth, and in the sea, were better equipped than he ; and yet, how patiently, how cheerfully, he accepted his lot! and how he diffused happiness all around about him ! And as he came where there were sorrows and tears and exchanged them for shouts of gladness, grant that we may know that the servant is not better than his Lord. Upon such an one as he came judgment and condemnation ; and how much less do they come upon us I We wear his yoke, but not as he wore it. We bear a cross, but not such an one as he bore for our sake. What to us are the troubles of the household, troubles in business, troubles in the con- cernments of society ? What to us are the harrowing vexations that belong to life, and that are troubles only to those who do not know how to subdue them ? What to us is that way which is so royal, so full of hope, and so full of testimonies which enkindle courage in us? We walk no strange way. We make no experiments in the darkness. It is the way which the prophets trod. It is the way which the apostles trod. It is the way which thrice ten thousand martyrs trod. The whole church of God through years has walked therein, until that which was strait, and narrow, and difficult, is now widened by the footsteps of those who have beaten it down, bleeding thereon, so that we walk secure. We are helped forward by the drawings, and sympathies, and experiences, and knowledges which have come from those pioneers who are now in glory, having gone before to destroy the wilderness and make it fruitful. The way of the Lord is cast up, and the ransomed of the Lord are returning and coming tp Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. We walk among them, and are in sympathy with thrm, and are ashamed when we think of complaints, and repinings, and sorrowings, and all that morbid vanity with which we look upon men, measuring them by ourselves, and ourselves by them. Grant, we beseech of thee, that we may look unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith ; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of G od, there to intercede for us, sending forth love from his heart, even as the sun sends forth the summer. Grant that, looking unto him, we may, in his Spirit, walk and wait patiently for that manhood that shall be in us when we shall see thee and be like thee. Grant to every one who is fighting a battle against his natural dis- positions, and is seeking to humble his pride, and direct his feelings aright grant unto every such one thine encouragement. May all who strive against easily besetting sins know that it is the Spirit that strives in them. May they know as they set up a noly war in their own souls, though they achieve imperfect results, that Jesus is their salvation not an unfeeling and critical judge, but he that for them suffered and suffers, now bearing their burdens and carrying their sins he who is to them as the father to tne child. Grant, we beseech of thee, that they may take courage and inspiration. May none seek in the outer courts, and in the wilderness, to-day, the things that are needful. Why should any one attempt to build up aione in himself UNJUST JUDGMENTS. 339 that which he lacks, since God is his Helper, from whom come all the tides of sweet influences by which he shall be helped ? May there be given every one such faith of God, and faith so enlarged and so per- sonal to himself, that he shall have God to help him in every time of need. We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon all the households, and upon all the souls that are represented here to-day. May those who have come in hither bearing burdens find themselves relieved, that they shall seem light though they do not fall off. Grant that we may desire to overcome our troubles rather than to have them moved out of the way. Give us that manliness, that sturdy courage, that faith of God and of the character which we are fashion- ing for the eternal life, which shall make us superior to our external circumstances. So may we evermore measure with these larger measures which have been handed down to us from above the golden reed of the sanctuary. Grant to those who have come in with thank-offerings an open vision of God; and may they bear before thee the gift of holy thoughts and of pure affections for all thy kindnesses toward them. To such as have feared great evils, and have been spared ; to such as have been delivered from great afflictions; to such as have had brought to them unexpectedly tidings of great mercies ; to such as have been joined together after long separations ; to those to whom the door of the past is open with ten thousand memories that come thronging upon them to all such wilt thou give grateful hearts. We beseech of thee if there are those who are in affliction and there are many that they may know how to smile in the midst of tears, and how to be strong in weakness; and though their hearts still ache, may they know how to bear pain for Christ's sake, and for their own ; and may they rejoice that they are identified with Christ, so that no trouble overtakes them that it does not come to his knowl- edge. And in the house, at the table, beside the cradle, in all familiar associations, wherever they walk, may they find walking by their side the Saviour of sympathy and of consolation. May those who have been surprised and cast down as trees by the overwhelming tempest be even as the trees that, though they be uprooted, know how still to cling to the soil, and how to go on bearing some leaves and some fruit as best they may. And grant that those who are utterly cast down may be able to say, Cast down but not destroyed ! Lift thou upon them, we beseech of thee, the light of thy counte- nance ; and above everything else, may they have a sense that this world is but for an hour, and that life itself is only a dremn ; and may they wait for their awaking. We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon parents. May they more and more value the wisdom which comes from above in the rearing of their children ; and may their children be blessed. Grant that they may grow up fearing God and serving him better than we have done. May all the efforts which are made to educate the y>>ung in our midst be blessed. Bless abundantly all the efforts in our scnools and in our classes for imparting a knowledge of God through the Scriptures. And may those who go forth to teach be 340 UNJUST JUDGMENTS. themselves more and more taught of God. May they find the divine life growing in them as they imitate the divine action. We pray that thy blessing may rest upon all the churches of this city, and upon all the churches of our land. May they be more and more strengthened. May their foundations be more and more estab- lished in truth, in justice, in love, in purity, and in fidelity. We beseech of thee that they may no longer vex each other. May every one pursue its own work, and seek the things which make for peace, and not the things which make for division. May the light that has come to us of the truth of God, and that is struggling with the darkness of other lands, have given to it power and victory. May ignorance flee away, may superstition disappear, and may all nations come to their liberty by coming to intelligence and true fidelity. And so may the earth be regene- rated. So may the day of prediction come when Christ shall reign a thousand years. And to thy name, Father, Son, and Spirit, shall be the praise for ever and ever. Amen. THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. " And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Bless- ed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; and their works do follow them." REV. xiv. 13. This is a benediction : it is a benediction, too, falling where we are accustomed to look for anything else but felicitation. Waste, decay, death, are words which usually bring only the most gloomy associations; but in the New Testament, more and more as it goes on toward its consum- mation, the brightest words, the strongest tokens of joy and of triumph, overhang these desolate places ; and where men have been accustomed to set Fear as a sentinel, to wet the place with tears, there, in Christianity, we see banners set up for victory ; and we see all cheer and all comfort pred- icated of that which has been the world's dread and the world's curse. This is a kind of parallel to the passage which I read in the opening service namely, the Beatitudes, 'he benedictions that Christ pronounced ; for when he taught his disciples the blessings of poverty and meekness, of persecution and trouble, he falsified all th< prejudices, and ran counter to almost all the sympathies and antipathies, of mankind. But the New Testament teachers are always working in two worlds the visible and the invisible ; and their standpoint is always in the great invisible spirit world. Their thought rests upon the ripe man, the consummated character, the life that is without death. And so, while they are perpetually STTNDAY MORNING, June 21, 1874. LESSON*: Matt. v. '-16. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection) : Nus. 190, 604. 907. 344 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. recognizing things that are present to the senses, they are forever judging of them, of their courses, of their issues or results, by standards that lie above and beyond the senses ; and that which is contradictory when it is only construed by the laws of time and the world will have a new meaning and a new relation when it is construed according to the higher tests and facts of the spiritual and eternal world. It is declared that those who die in the Lord, in the spirit of Christ and in the hope of Christ, rest from their labors. And yet, activity is very pleasant. There is much that irra- diates life in enterprise, in planning, in energetic execution ; and when one is in health and strength, even endurance becomes a manly pleasure, and men look back upon the things which they have suffered, frequently, with a conscious gratulation. But in all work, in this world, there is the friction, there are the perplexities, there are the emery par- ticles of care, there is the imperfect result, there is the mistake, there is the sin, there are a thousand hindrances. We are working with men who are imperfectly sanctified, and we are ourselves their unsanctified companions. We are in every way working in such a manner that the braver and more aspiring a man is, the more does he feel the checks, the hindrances, and the imperfections of his labor. Now, " blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;" for they rest from that part of their labor which is time-worn, and which is imperfect from want of knowledge, or from stress of temptation or of passion. It would be blessed if men could work all their lives long toward right ends, in harmonious relations, having nothing but the natural outplay of spirit which requires sleep and waking again. That which makes life burdensome in its labors is not labor, in one particular acceptation of the term. The incidental elements of labor, its imperfections, are what make life burdensome. Often, what a man does not do is heavier than what he does do. Often, the things which are but incidental to us are much more influential upon our spirits than the main things on which our life is spent. And we shall rest from all this part of life in dying, or in the great transition. It is blessed to live j but it will be yet THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 345 more blessed, having lived well, to die and for this reason : that our works follow us. We regard it as strange when energetic and useful men are cut off. Men cling to their work by that very force which enables them to be useful. We could not be what we are appointed to be in this life if we were so indifferent to our tasks and responsibilities that we could let go easily ; and this very tenacity, this very life-adhesion, becomes at last a hin- drance. So long as we are bound to this life, we are bound to be interested in the things of this life ; and men cling to their work as if that were nature, when it is nature in tran- situ, or when it is nature partial, or relative to one particular period of our age ; and when persons are taken out of life in the midst of strength and function, men marvel. They cannot understand why those who are useful should be re- moved. They look upon such as have gone in the prime of life, in mid-age, or young in years, with a kind of strange- ness ; and they wonder and talk of a mysterious provi- dence, and ask, "What will become of their work? Who shall stand up in that household ? What captain shall lead that band ?" But do you forget that dying makes but very little void in this world ? Indeed, after Christ died he lived more effi- caciously than when he was alive. The death of the apostle stopped nothing, but sped much. No age was ever left without men. We are poor in our conception, but God is rich. He that could raise up seed to Abraham from the very stones need not look about much, nor mourn that men, one and another, drop out from the functions of life ; yet it is natural that we should think so. They who have the respon- sibility, they who supervise the labor, they who must replace the men that are gone, think it strange that those who are well-equipped, and of the right spirit, should be taken out of life. But the consideration of triumph is that men do not cease their work. They never die. The irksome part of their labor they rest from ; but their works go after, go on with, or have gone before them. A man's life is not simply what you see. The effects of a man's life are not simply tho* 34G THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. fchiugs which you can count, measure, or describe. He who lives in earnest, striving to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, or in the spirit of Christ, throws into life elements which never die out even here elements that are not witnesses; that have no report; that come not with observation; that are immeasurable ; but that are more real, a thousand times, than the things which are visible. A man may build his mansion ; he may be able and will- ing to expend uncounted sums in rearing up its walls of marble, and in storing it with every element of beauty within ; and yet, dying, he may have done but very little ; while over the way was a man who never built a house, except the airy house of character. The invisible precious-stones that are laid in the walls of the New Jerusalem he laid around about his own character. He left little save influence ; but that influence, day by day exerted, fell into sensitive souls, and shaped this disposition, moulded that one, directed the course of life in another one, and revealed the truth to still another one. A good man's heart is a seed-sower ; and his disposition, not according to his own intent and purpose, but simply according to that nature which God has given to goodness in men the power of goodness is perpetually throwing itself out, and out, and out. The air, as botanists now know, is full of invisible seeds. Fungous plants those minute mildews which settle on vege- tation are as well organized as if they were dahlias or tulips. They are small, almost inconspicuous, frequently mischievous, in one sense the economic ; nevertheless, they are beautiful and perfect organizations; and how fruitful they are ! "We cannot even see the spores in which they carry their seeds ; but they are filling the air with myriads and myriads and myriads of invisible germs. And that which is true of the vegetable kingdom in its lower form is true also of men's souls, that are carrying seeds innumerable, of thoughts, suggestions, and feelings and qualities, which fill the air ; and because we cannot see them, nor tell where they rise, nor trace their effects back to their causes, men ignore them, or are unconscious of them ; but THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 347 the simple being good is itself a power to which there is no physical or revelatory power that cau be compared. Uncon- scious quality is far more influential than voluntary inven- tions and organizations. What is it that children remember in the parent in the devoted mother ? To be sure they remember the twilight hour of inspiration ; to be sure they remember the reading of the book ; to be sure they remember the restraints of the Sab- bath day ; to be sure they remember the special care and the great kindness : nevertheless, the main thing which hovers in our memory of our parents is their mind-quality, not that which specifies and analyses truth in this and that realm of knowledge, but that which hangs in our memory as clouds in the sky. The air seems to be filled with their patience, and gentleness, and goodness, and self-sacrifice for others. It is not by single actions that they impressed us so much as by the diffused influence of their inward life and nature. This rests in the memory as nothing else does. And that which we recognize as time of the parent in the family is true of men everywhere. The humblest man, the man who is poked away in the corner of a shop, and who does not see twenty men in a week, but who is all the time producing on those whom he does see the impression of fidelity and patience and gentleness, is not a public instructor, but is a public actor ; and he is not to be limited in the power of his life to the things which his hands are doing, nor even to the things which he wills to do, but to the unconscious power that streams out from fidelity, and patience, and gen- tleness in him. The unconscious influence of those qualities in him transcends in volume almost all the force of these physical things. Your patience in your conditions of life, your yearnings and longings after something better, your very deficiencies, in the way that you treat them, are so many powers in you ; and they do not stop when you stop. They sow themselves. As the vegetable kingdom perpetuates itself, by this summer ripening seeds for the next summer, so men have a kind of transfused existence in the generation that follows them ; and we live in our children, and in their children, and in their 348 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. children. We live in ot^ 4 Neighbors, and in their neighbors, and in their neighbors, As when you thro'tf pebbles into water, the lines which they make go ^D widening, and following each other in end- less succession, Vj in life the circles of things are diffused and widened; and though you die, your works follow on, and keep working. Your nature is not gone : it is transplanted into others. When the first Ehode Island Greening was found to be so rare and beautiful an apple, men took grafts from the tree, and now there are Rhode Island Greenings in almost every well-ordered orchard on the continent ; and they all came from this original tree, little slips being taken from it and grafted into one tree of another kind, and another, and an- other, until this variety, after many generations, has become one of the most widespread that is known in this land. And who can tell what baskets and bins of luscious apples shall be gathered in the years and years which are to come as the fruit of that one seedling tree ? One noble man, one noble woman, one person who has the quality of fruit, may graft it, by unconscious influence, upon some other person, and that other person upon others, and so on. Thus your courage may be reverberating for years, and your aspiration may be gleaming and glancing again in endless continued reflections, after you are gone. Blessed are the dead who die in Christ (if they have lived in Christ before they died), for their works follow them. This quality of unconsciousness has often very affecting instances in it. When the then reigning king of Germany was overthrown by Napoleon, and his kingdom was trodden under foot by that behemoth, and the people were almost exter- minated, his queen Louisa so bore the sorrows of her people that her own life broke down under it ; and she rested. And the great Rauch carved her in marble ; and in the environs of Berlin you may pass through a twilight grove, and enter a lit- tle sequestered temple, and through an ante-chamber with windows of glass that sheds down a blue light and gives an unworldly atmosphere, you shall pass into a recess where pure light comes through an unstained window, and where THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 349 you seem almost to have entered the other life ; and there lying is the monument of marble in which she is represented as at last having found rest. There is such an indescribable sweetness in her face, there is such a triumph of peace on it, that no man who ever looked upon it could have done it, I think, without wet eyes ; and no man that ever saw it will forget it. I brought home an engraving which has happily trans- ferred the spirit of the original to paper, and have it hanging in my study ; and through troubles and sorrows that dead queen's marble has sent out such cheer and such sweetness of peace that I can scarcely think of her or hear her name with- out reverence and adoration. She never spoke a word nor sent a message ; she did not even make her own statue ; but the sculptor cut it from her life and gave to it the expression of peace ; and that peace, through night and darkness, through storms and battles, through revolutions and wars, has come down to us ; and I am a witness, for one, as hundreds of others might be also, that it has been a strength to my life, and the joy of many a turbid hour. Now, that which marble can do, how much more can the living soul or the living face do ? The peace of God that passeth all understanding does not alone come to us directly from the bosom of God : it comes to us by reflection from many a venerable father's face ; from the face of many a mother, serene, just, and all-loving ; from the face of many a faithful friend. They who live sequestered, and do nothing but shine, may think themselves useless ; but, dying, they sow more seeds than twenty generations can reap and not the less because those seeds are invisible. But, also, the formative work, aside from the uncon- scious that which we plan, purpose, and execute remains, or may remain after we are gone. All that which men put forth in the work of education, the repression that parents exercise, the self-denial which they teach their children, the ideas and habits which they graft into them, the whole sphere of the household work, deliberate and intentional this abides. The father and the mother die ; but the of children go forth ; and the first instinct of those 350 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. who are grown up, and have themselves "become parents, is to reproduce upon their children that which they remem- ber gratefully of their own parents' discipline. And so, wise parents transmit their habits of training by their children down through many generations. They may be for- gotten in the succession, but their work is going on. And we are ourselves what we are by reason of those who were our ancestors in Europe or on this continent. Many and many a sturdy old Puritan father or mother is forgotten, from whose loins we sprung ; and we are, to-day, what we are, in that which is good and noble, through their influence. We cannot tell what our children inherit from us. Some- thing of bad, doubtless, and much of good, doubtless ; but how much we are doing we shall not know until we see it in the other life. Our direct influence upon souls around about us is of a kind which we cannot measure now. We often think that those who respond to our suggestions, and are visibly modified by us, show efficient work ; but many and many a tough nature does not respond easily, and yet the work is none the less real. The seed does not always come up when you sow it. Some seed does not grow the same season that it is planted. Some seed needs to be cracked by the winter's cold and frost. Some seeds lie in the ground two or more years before they come up. Seeds may be buried a thousand years, and then come up. There are many na- tures that do not take on influence easily. It lies in them until, by and by, storms or troubles bring it forth. There are now before me, I do not doubt, multitudes of men and women who can testify that God has blessed to them the labor of some parent, some pastor, some class- leader, some obscure and humble friend, working by their side, on the farm, or in the shop, long after the benefactor had gone. You can look back and say, " I see the tenden- cies that he planted in me, and that now have brought forth fruit in me to the honor of God, and to my soul's regenera- tion. I can see that this work was begun by him in such and such a manner ; and he died and knew not what he had done ; but I am to-day what I am, in part, through the blessing of God, by that person's fidelity." I can trace not a THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 351 few in the long past who left their impression upon me. They never knew it until they rose to heaven. It may be given to us there to see what we have really been about in life. Somewhere, at some time, all good work will avail. It is not lost. This after-work is signally" manifest in those who have founded and conducted institutions, which are artificial per- sons, as it were, raised up to perpetuate certain influences or certain functions. Schools, academies, universities these are organizations of beneficence ; and one man may, by wise method, arrangement and benefaction, mix himself in such a way with all the noblest of generations which are yet to come, that his heart-beat will be felt in the world for a thou- sand years. When the early fathers got together in their poverty to found Yale and Harvard and Princeton, do you think they knew what a band of men what lawyers, what judges, what min- isters, what civilians of every kind, what noble citizens and patriots they were standing, if not fathers, yet godfathers to ? And all that comes from these fountains which they opened is part and parcel of their life. So they are not dead. There was a time when Wolsey controlled the great kingdom of Great Britain, and substantially managed the king and his courtiers ; and his influence was felt far and wide ; and in the height of his power, almost as a recreation, he founded Cardinal College, after his fall named Christ College, in Oxford ; and now all his control of England during the time that he lived is as a grain of mustard seed compared with the work that has been and is done by this single institution, which is a fountain from which has flowed his munificence for hundreds and hundreds of years in the past, and from which it will flow for hundreds and hundreds of years in the future. And we are ourselves beneficiaries of this historic man, who abused himself and who has been much abused. As the winds, no matter where they come from, wave every tree and leaf on their passage, so, no matter where knowledge springs from, it goes bearing bene- faction to every living soul to whom it comes ; and the noble fruits of noble natures that spring from this great work of 352 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. Wolsey are yet in the world. We are ourselves a part of the great band of those who have been blessed by him. Peter Cooper will soon die, but his Cooper Union is immortal ; for when its foundations crumble, or are toppled down by war or by the earthquake, there will be influences that it has sent forth into the world which cannot be sepa- rated from the world's history. They who build libraries, such as the Lenox Library or the Astor Library of New York, are among the most benefi- cent of citizens. No other labor of their hands is to be compared with that by which they have established these great fountains of knowledge which are free to all. He who opens in a village a free reading-room, and gives it to his fellow-citizens, has made himself imr rtal, because he has become one of the men who have set on foot influences which shall go on working for hundreds and hundreds of years after he is dead. His work follows him. He who establishes a church that goes down through generations opens a fountain that shall bring daylight to thousands of men ; and he himself will never be lost out of the world. He who builds a hospital for the sick, he who makes a refuge for the incurable, for the poor, or for those who have no home, where they may bring forth their children, dying or living; he who, seeing misery, provides a remedy for it he becomes a benefactor and a philanthropist ; and his work, being established, will go on from generation to generation. He who establishes a savings bank, and teaches the gospel of economy to thrice ten thousand poor ; or he who estab- lishes an insurance company, and teaches men to insure their lives or their property, and leads them to form habits of foresight, is working beneficently upon his race. There is nothing so humble but that it has its effect upon men. There is nothing that makes men more careful, more frugal, more prudent, more sympathetic, more co-operative, more courageous, or more enterprising, than these things ; and there are none of them, no matter how humble, and no matter how little regard is paid to them, that are not admira- ble. And men, working wherever they may be, even for the THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 353 secular and domestic welfare of their fellows, or for their intellectual enfranchisement, are working in ways that will be felt far down in the future. But still more are they working thus who are working for men's moral development. The body dies, but the invisible influence does not die. Nothing can destroy those qualities which belong to the soul ; they are forever fresh, and they in whom they dwell partake beforehand of something of the vigor of their own after-im- mortality. Those who give to the world thoughts which enrich and cheer and comfort men never cease to work. What they do is not to be seen in their own generation, but it will be seen in the generations that follow. Architects who build cathedrals and temples and palaces which inspire veneration or worship are men who in their own way embody thoughts which impress themselves upon the world long after they are gone. There were various architects who at different periods built the cathedral at Winchester, which, though it may not be the most stately and the most magnificent cathedral in the world, is the one from which I extracted more comfort than from any other that I ever saw. Beginning with the earliest Saxon period, it represents every step of architecture in England down to the present day ; and every one of the architects who were employed in the erection of that cathe- dral sleeps under its roof. There lie the old English kings for that was the capital of England in the Saxon days of old. There are bodies of numerous martyrs. I walked up and down between those gleaming walls of Caen stone, almost white, and it seemed to me as though the historic roof shed luminousness down on me ; and I was impressed, more than by anything else, by the fact that those unknown and almost forgotten men who reared that building to God, there rested ; and thousands of sensitive natures who wander there, like me a pilgrim from afar, will be affected by what they have done. They did their work, and they did not know what a comfort it would be to those who lived after them men not yet born, and from a continent that was cot yet discovered. 354 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. Artists who are worthy of their name, and who give to the affection, the thought, and the higher life of the soul expo- sitions of truth on canvas, are silent teachers ; and from age to age who shall measure their influence ? So it is with singers with poets. Is Shakspeare dead ? Is Milton dead ? Is Wordsworth dead ? Is Watts dead ? Is Wesley dead ? Is Dante, or Goethe, or Homer, or Virgil dead ? They were never on earth as much alive as they are now, going up and down, to and fro, through the times and ages, still chanting their joyful strains, and imparting in- struction. The world was never so full of them as it has been since they ceased from their external work. They rest from their toil, and their works do follow them. The same is true of teachers of every name and in every place. Of course teachers that are in honor and affluence (if there be any such) are content with their work ; but all who are teaching in the far-away colored schools of the South ; all who are teaching in the log-cabin schools on the pioneer lines of our new States and districts ; obscure, feeble women, who are not apt for housework, or are not able to endure its fatigues, pining, with a tendency to consumption, but never- theless teaching in summer schools, with hardly strength enough to bear the burden and heat of each single day ; all who are teaching in Sunday-schools and mission schools ; all teachers who are working directly on the conscience, the un- derstanding, and the affections of the young do they die ? There came to Litchfield, when I was about eight years old, a tall and slender creature. Her name I have forgotten, if I ever knew it. So delicate and attenuated was she that the sun seemed to shine through her. She moved so quietly about the school-room, that it was as if a bird were flying in the midst of a tree from branch to branch. Whereas, before, in that hateful old stinking school -house, I had been cabined, and cribbed, and curbed, and pinched, and whipped for not learning what was not taught me ; there came this spectre of a human being, whose eyes were lustrous of another world, and whose heart was full of gentleness and richness. Nor can I remember that she ever opened a book to me. I can only remember her as a dream ; but I feel to this hour, and THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 355 distinctly, that many of the things which I say to you were born in me out of the influence of that woman, who, if I mistake not, taught in that school but a single summer. I have long been preaching, and it may be said that many preachers who have gone forth from this church have derived influences from me ; and they, in their preaching, are uncon- sciously and unknowingly indebted to her. She lives in a strength that never dies, born again in each generation of men who carry forward the influences that she brought to bear upon my heart. These are illustrations that might be indefinitely multi- plied, and from every side of human life your observation and experience will increase the list endlessly. Not only do our works follow us on earth, but I believe that they follow us into the other life. What we do here so acts upon us that it determines largely what we shall do there. We are throwing ourselves forward continually ; and not only are we acting thus in the formation of dispositions and characters in ourselves which are to last in the other life, but we are acting upon others, and sending them forward. Multitudes go from among us before we die. They pass on in advance of us children, scholars, friends, neighbors, parishioners. We are like men that are upon a wrecked ship. The ship is driven upon the shore ; lines are extended ; we stay on the wreck until the last soul is landed, helping one and another and another ; and then, at last, when every living creature, including the very dog itself, is off and safe, we follow and reach the land, where we are welcomed by all that we have helped, who are rejoicing with thanksgiving for what we did in their behalf, and are gathering about us, even though they be tattered and torn and in their night vest- ments, as their benefactor and saviour. How much more, when we go up from this shipwrecked world to that shore where there is no poverty and no weak- ness, but everlasting joy upon the head of every one how much more shall we then be met and greeted by those whom we have rescued and sent forward ! It is better to have saved one soul than to have built a kingdom. It is from such considerations as these, in the first place, 356 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. that I would encourage persons who are under circumstances of discouragement, whose ambition is not met, whose ideality is not satisfied, and who seem to themselves to be working in a small sphere. It is not for you to determine your sphere, or what fidelity may do in a humble place. The greatest victories of the world are those which are snatched out of the most desperate emergencies. If Napoleon, with a hundred thousand men, had routed an army of ten thousand, it would not have been evidence of valor; but when, with twenty thousand men, he met and routed Austria's hundred thousand, the disparity of the numbers and the desperation of the case made his fame and his glory. So in this world, not the things which are easy, not the things which come fastest and most naturally, are always the best or the most praiseworthy. That which we do because it is duty, that which we do because of faith in an all-seeing Saviour, that which we do in small places and under obscure circumstances that, heaven knows, and God knows, is the thing that by and by will prove to be the gold, and not the dross, as sometimes it does here. If you have no gift of speech, no matter. Have you the gift of rearing your children to honesty, to fidelity, to indus- try ? Go on. There is eternity in your work. Do not look wistfully out from your place. If you are not called to go forth into any larger sphere, be content where you are, and say, "It is not given me to be what some others are." A smith in a Spanish province draws a piece of steel out of his small store, and works by day and by night in his little stithy, and forges a bright blade, and makes it such that it can neither be dented nor broken ; and it is sent out of his sight; and it goes from one hand to another, convoyed by Jews and peddlers ; and at last it falls into a patriot's hands ; and, wielded by him, it rescues a nation. It flashes above the battle ; it leads devoted men ; and when they return in triumph and peace, and this patriot sheathes his sword, it is the sword which that poor obscure smith made. He has wrought a great work, but he knows it not. Every mother is a smith. Her child is a blade for vie- THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 357 tory, if it is well forged, well taught. You may not know what its after history will be, but God knows. He takes care of that. Men say, " You tell us that it is more blessed to die than to live ; you quote to us the text, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord : they shall rest from their labors ; but do you say that it is blessed for me to die in the midst of my house- hold ?" No, not in any such sense as that you should seek it ; but God brings it to you. thou of a faithful heart ; .0 thou that hast given to husband and child all that soul can give ; thou that hast the witness in thyself that all the aims of thy life are for others for thee it is blessed. Do you say, "What will become of them if God takes me?" Look up, and let the light of hope shine in thy face ; for if it be God that calls thee, be sure that it is God who will take care of those who are dear to you. He who enables you to take care of them can give to them the power which he has given to you. " My companions what shall become of them ?" They are not separated from you. We are never so near to those whom we love as when they have dropped the body, and have come again by the spirit. Do you not believe in the com- munion of the saints ? Do you not believe that those who are faithful here in the midst of tears and sorrows and groans and labors, and have wrought out in themselves the likeness of God, will be rewarded in the life to come ? Do you believe that the ineffable qualities of fidelity, of love, of truth, of simplicity and of nobleness are less because the body is stripped away from them, and because they cannot be disce ned by the senses ? Are they annihilated or swept away or gone from us ? Believe it who will ; not I, who believe in the communion of the saints, and in the divine influences that are sent to us from the battlements of heaven, by those who continually cry, " Come, come, come," to the loved ones that they have left behind. God will take care of them. But if, looking forward through the scenes that are opening before you, you tremble with fear lest suffering shall come to one, or another, or another, thou of little faith, be not afraid to die ! Be not unwilling to live, either. Stand 358 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. in thy place, and believe that, living or dying, God, who loves thee better than thou dost love thyself, will do exceed- ing abundantly more for you than you can ask or think. If it be God's will that you should go, and if he calls you to go, then it is better that you should go ; and blessed are you if you can go willingly and joyfully. " But shall I, when the call comes to me, go thus ? It is a sweet and triumphant thought ; but shall I, of human desires, when death shall come, be blessed I that tremble, and have so poor a hope, and a worse life shall I be pre- pared when I am called to go hence ?" God, who sows, shall also ripen. He that has begun in you a work of grace will finish that work. He that is preparing you for your experi- ences now will see that you are prepared, by-and-by, for the emergencies of sorrow, and for the exit of death. Do not try yourself, nor test your preparation for dying, by the way you feel to-day. No man can imagine, in the hour of strength and vigor, how he will feel in the hour of death. There hangs the green pippin, which all the winds cannot now shake off from the boughs. "This is my mother-tree," it says, "and 'here will I remain, sucking juices and growing large and sweet from day to day." But something whispers to it, and says, "The time is coming when thou shalt be plucked from that bough, and gathered into some garner." And it says to itself, "How can I ever endure being plucked off?" In its sour juices it tries to think how it will feel when its juices are sweet. In early summer, clinging to the parent tree with all its thongs so tenaciously that no shaking of the stem will bring it down, it tries to think what it will do in the mild autumn days when apples drop without the movement of a breath, because they are ripe. Thou that art green, and art tied to life by many thongs ; thou whose duty it is yet to stand in thy place, try not to think how thou wilt feel when it is thy duty to leave thy place and go forth. That God who takes care of us to-day will take care of us in the years that are to come. He who prepares you to live will prepare you to die. It will be easier for you to die than to live, when it is your duty to die. Looking forward, be not sorry because, beholding your brood THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 359 of dear little children, you feel that you could not willingly leave them if God should call you to depart. He never will call you until he has prepared you to depart. As thy day is, so shall thy strength be also. Work, then, in courage ; work in faith ; work in hope ; and work under all discouragements with contentment, know- ing that you are doing more than you can see or measure ; knowing that you are sowing seeds in the air, and that God's winds are wafting them hither and thither, and that they are springing up you know not where ; knowing that you are serv- ing a bountiful Master ; knowing that though you are doing but little to the sight you are doing much to the faith, and much to the invisible thought ; knowing that your life will go on in others, as others' lives have gone on in you, and that when the time shall come for you to depart, angels will come for you, and it shall be whispered above you by angelic voices, among which shall be the voices of those whom you have known and loved, " Blessed are the dying: come up hither." And as the vision of angels departs from our imagination, methinks I hear afar off, and growing less and less as they are farther and farther removed, till they sweep into the celestial city, the joyous shout, " Blessed are the dead ; they rest from care and sorrow, and their work goes on and follows them." 360 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE have no need to come to thee to quicken thy thought, or to inspire thee to remembrance, O our Father; for thine unsluiubering watchfulness, aud thine ever-living love are forever in advance of us. We know not what to pray for as we ought. We know not what are the best things for us. We know not the proportions of thine administra- tion. We know not the way, though thou art the way. Thy providence is full of beautifulness, of light, of darkness, and of uncertainty to us. Naked and open are all things before thee with whom we have to do; but with us things are partial, and obscure, and uncertain; and we know not what is best, though thou knowest altogether. And we do not beseech thee that we may instruct thee, or remind thee, or persuade thee: we beseech thee for the things which we shall re- ceive, asking or not asking, because thou hast made it blessed to ask; because the gifts that come through our solicitation are doubly bless- ed; because thou dost join thyself to our wants; and our wants are never so royally supplied as when they are supplied by thy hand, consciously made known to us. And now, we beseech of thee, O thou best of all, thou most thoughtful and careful of all, that thou wouldst grant to us to-day thine own self, brought very near to our consciousness, that our thoughts may rest in thee; that our hearts may be refreshed in thee; that we may rise up from that which is low in us, from the flesh in all its ways, its duties, its burdens, its besetments; and that we may have this day a spiritual life, and dwell in the Lord's Spirit ; that we may rejoice in the visions of the blessed, in things invisible ; that we may forsake the enchantments of this lower life, its sorceries, and all its evil ; and that we may, at last, in purity of thought and of antici- pation, take something of victory before it is achieved, knowing who is the Captain of our salvation, and that he who has been the Author shall be the Finisher of our faith. May we beforehand rejoice in victories, and in a consummation which doth so bring to us thoughts of thy mercy and of thy wonderful way of dealing with us in life. We beseech of thee, if there be those in thy presence who are sad by reason of the things of this world, that they may this day be cheered by the presence of their God. If there be those who are bur- dened, and know not how to carry the load which is put upon them, graciously may they be sustained by thee. May they lean upon God, and find that his promises are sure. If there be those who are sad at heart, and who look upon the world as vain, and who look upon the things of the world as dropping from beneath them, and as passing beyond their reach, may they rejoice in the thought that as this world goes, the higher, the better, the true world of the soul comes. May they have faith to look and discern it, not as afar off, but as near at hand perhaps nearer than they believe. Grant, we pray thee, to all those who are tried by sickness, by care, by bereavements, by sorrows of any kind, courage and patience, and THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. 361 a disposition to improve the dealings of God with them for their spir- itual and everlasting good. We pray that thou wilt be with the young, and grant that they may grow up in a true courage, willing to know and to do the things which are right, and to withstand whatsoever is unmanly and wrong. May they grow to a stature of virtue and piety such as we have not ourselves reached. Grant, we pray thee, that all those who are taught in our schools, and all those who are instructed in our various households, may come up in remembrance before thee. May the blessing of Almighty God rest upon them abundantly. We pray for those who are laboring in word or in deed in our midst. If thou hast inspired them to charity and to largeness of sym- pathy with men, we pray that thou wilt clothe them also with the power of truth, and with that wisdom which is from on high, that they may go forth to their several spheres of labor and work in faith, rejoicing to see the fruit of their labor ; and may they work even if they see it not. We pray that thou wilt grant a blessing to rest upon those in the midst of life who are enduring cares and feeling the winds of temp- tation's piercing currents; and may they be sustained in rectitude. May they maintain a Christian manhood, and be able to overturn their adversaries, and put aside the snares that environ them. We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to the aged, whose years on earth are taking hold of the eternal years ; and may every infirm- ity which speaks to them of age speak to them of renewed youth ; may they rejoice that the journey is almost past, and that the new Jerusalem is almost in sight. We pray that thy blessing may rest upon all the churches, every- where, that worship in thy name. Purify thy people. Give them more and more the Spirit of Christ. More and more give them sym- pathy with all that labor for the common cause of God among men. And we pray that thou wilt overrule all divisions and dissensions and temptations to bitterness which prevail. We pray that thou wilt lead thy church universal through all its besetmente in such a way that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ may not be disowned in his own house, and that gentleness and purity and meekness and divine love may vindicate the claims of thy people. We pray for the nations of the earth. How many are yet unvisit- ed by thy gospel 1 How many know not the truth of God! How many are ignorant of his Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ! We pray that thou wilt send abroad those who shall make known the unsearch- able riches of Christ. May those who in distant lands dwell in the darkness of heathenism be strengthened in all patience, and be fruit- ful in abundant wortcs, and rejoice, inasmuch as they know that their labor is not in vain in the Lord. And so we pray that thou wilt press forward the promised day, and f ullill all those great and glorious predictions which so long have hovered in the twilight of prophecy. Grant that they may begin to fulfill themselves, and that all nations may be redeemed to the knowledge of God, to purity, to patience, to gentleness, to love, to 362 THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD WORK. the whole circle of Christian graces. And may thy name on earth be everywhere honored, thy kingdom everywhere come, and the whole earth be filled with thy glory. And to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, shall be praises ever- more. Amen. PEAYEE AFTEE THE SEEMON. Our Father, grant, we beseech of thee, that we may live in the full hope of the gospel, and in the full fruition of faith. May we not measure ourselves by the narrow and sensuous rules of time. May we rise to more of the divine conception, and judge of ourselves as God judges of us. May we so be able to put ourselves into thine hands, and our souls into thy care, that we shall be content in the al- lotments of thy providence, to go or to stay ; to rise or to fall ; to do whatever is best. Upon those who have feeblo faith; upon those of downcast minds; upon those who are weary and are waiting and wishing for their departure; and upon those who are anxious to re- main upon all these may the divine influence rest down. May they have light while they are in darkness. May they everywhere be re- leased from the coarseness of this world, and be able to lift them- selves up into the serene and transparent faith of the life that is to come. And at last, bring us, gathered from everywhere, into the companionship of the blessed in heaven ; and we will give the praise of our salvation to the Father, the Sou and the Holy Ghost. Amen. " For thy Maker is thine husband ; the Lord of Hosts is his name; and tby Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called." ISA. liv. 5. You \rill take notice that in this passage the sense of the divine presence is brought near to men by those symbols which have in themselves the most precious associations, and which touch human experience in its tenderest points. It is a very striking thing for one to call himself father; but you will observe that here the relationships are carried out. "Thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of Hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel." Now, what two elements could have produced a magnifi- cent consciousness of the glory of an overruling God so strongly as this appeal to the tenderest love of the human soul family love, and to patriotism, or the love of country? It is as if God had said, " I am to yon as the husband is to the wife and to the household ; I am to you the Holy One of Israel your fathers' God, and your nation's God." Thus having brought to their consciousness all these ex- tremely powerful suggestions and tender relationships and it is on this ground of the particularity of nationality that it has significance he adds: "The God of the whole earth shall he be called." Not of any single household or select circle of households, was he the God ; not of any single elect nation. Although he may show himself to any single nation as more precious, and clearer than to another, yet, the God SUNDAY MORN-ING. Jane 38, 1871. LESSON : Isa. liv. HYMNS (Plymouth Col. lection) : Nos. 662, 655, 660. 366 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. of the whole earth is he. He is to all, or may be, what he is to any. He is to every nation what he is to yours. The Hebrew idea of God stands in marked contrast to that of other nations. For although national gods were abundant ; although we have it in incontestible history, that very largely the divine idea grew among men, branching out of this sense of the family and of national life ; yet, in regard to the Hebrews, they seemed to hold, by their best men and their clearest thinkers, that though Almighty God had made a disclosure of himself to the Jewish people tran seen den tly clearer than to anybody else, he was not on that account theirs only. He was all the world's. A candle does not belong to the candlestick that holds it, but to every one in the room where it shines ; and the knowl- edge of God, the preciousriess of the divine revelation, does not belong to the nation in which it is first and most clearly disclosed. They hold it as a torch ; but it is that all may have the benefit of its shining. The Hebrew idea stands still more in contrast with the polytheistic notion of God ; for the Jews held that there was but one God, the Father of all, the Lord of all ; whereas al- most all other nations contiguous to them, and everywhere, although they held to unity, yet held to a unity that was sub- divided, and by which heroes and historic personages rose to the stature of gods. The government of creation was thus distributed into an aristocracy of gods ; than which nothing could be more repugnant to the revelation of God as it was made to the Jewish people. It is also very clearly to be distinguished from pantheism of every kind or the teaching that nature is itself, in its sum total, God. By that term we mean the sum of all think- ers and of all linking the sum of all vitality and of all phenomena : not a personality, but a complete system of the universe. The latest mystic and veiled form of this is that which Mr. Matthew Arnold has set forth in an attempt, wonderful in ingenuity, and still more wonderful in other respects, to show that the Hebrews did not believe in a personal God, but that they believed in "a stream of tendencies which THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. 367 make for righteousness" that they believed in this great quality of righteousness, and a tendency of the universe to produce it ; that they believed in an abstract force or influ- ence and not in a personal God. I say that this is one of the most wonderful pieces of ingenuity, as a literary marvel, that has been known in our life-time. That a man should under- take to show that the Hebrews, who have personified God in every conceivable way, who have clothed him with every name that belongs to personality, who have represented him in every possible personal form, and whose whole literature stands distinct from every other on the peculiar ground of God's intense personality and companionableness, now and hereafter that a man should undertake to show that they did not believe in a personal God, is one of the most stupendous and astounding literary marvels, not only of this age but of any age. We are told in the Scriptures that God is a Spirit ; that he may be made known relatively, partially ; and that the knowledge which is received of him must follow the develop- ment of men themselves. Nowhere else is there so much modesty as in the revelation of God in the Scriptures. In no other treatise, in no other book, is there such a sense of the fact that God is greater and better than anything that man can conceive, and infinitely different from man's con- ception. We are pointed in the directions in which his greatness appears. We are told that by and by, in a later stage, and in a higher development, we are to have the full knowledge of God if ever a knowledge of the infinite can be taken in by the finite. Except by analogies and glimpses of the spirit, he is incommunicable ; and the revelation of him must follow, as it has followed, the development of man. There may be a disclosure in words, which seeks to compass the whole ideal of God. There was that, given to Moses ; and the more you read and reflect, the more you will be filled with admiration for that disclosure of God which is recorded in the thirty- fourth chapter of Exodus. The reason for it is very sublime. This great nation had been taken out of captivity, where they had been infected, more or less, either by idolatry or 368 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. stupidity and animalism, and they were being led forth. It was to know how to lay the foundations of a nation that the statesman, Moses, asked God to reveal himself to him. If there be anything that a statesman may ask, it is this : " In the discharge of my duties to my kind, grant me something of the knowledge of that God whose function it is to dis- charge universal duties to universal beings." So Moses asked God to show him Himself, and I think that if states- men in our day, reading the Constitution none the less, were wont to say to God all the more, " Make manifest to us what is entire truth, entire honor, entire fidelity, and entire benefi- cence," we should have a much higher state of government than we now have. A national existence was starting, and the people had been gathered together at the foot of Mount Sinai, receiving the commands of God ; and then, in the midst of the most extraordinary concomitants, addressed to the senses through the dramatism of nature in her wildest moods, God, in an- swer to the request of Moses, " Show me thy glory," said, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long- suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth generation." There has never yet been put one single word by human thought or pen to the magnificence and the completeness of this delineation of the divine character of him who overrules the world by such natural laws as that conduct entails con- sequences, and consequences carry with them penalties, and penalties go on from generation to generation. Modern science is just beginning to unfold those facts that were disclosed to Moses in the earlier centuries of Hebrew national life. Now, in the administration of government, under such a constitution of natural laws, God makes himself known as paternal, as full of mercy, full of kindness, full of gracious- ness, full of forgiveness a forgiveness which goes through all the range of transgression and sin. THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF OOP. 369 And yet, though there is this declaration of God in words, we are to bear in mind that any real knowledge of God must always be dynamic, the result of the power of experi- ence. Our knowledge of God must be merely speculative and intellectual, until we have filled up the conceptions handed down to us, and which we have been drilled under, by consecutive and long administration. My father brought me up and took care of me till I was of ripe age ; and my thought of my father is clear and dis- tinct because of the continued perceptible action of his mind and government upon me through all the periods of my life. My mother died when I was only three years of age an unforgotten name ; an influence without personality ; a vision, a form, an inspiration, but not a person. My father is to me clear as crystal, because his personality wrought upon me. My mother is to me an ideal beauty, because she did not live to exert a direct personal influence upon me, but left a thought and a memory into which has been gathered every ingenuity of fancy. Every conception of beauty, everything which makes womanhood resplendent that I have attributed to my unknown mother. To my mind she is a nebulous glory, while he is a distinct, clear-marked personality. The character of God, as a poet or a mere philosopher would reveal it, remains in the minds of men simply as a speculative brightness. The God who has governed the world by laws that have been found out by joy and sorrow and mistake and obedience that God is the kuown God; and so it has come to pass that that revelation which has been made in names and words, largely and radiantly, has not had half so much influence as that side of the divine nature which has been called into existence by the revelation and disclosure of God's administrative processes in this world. Now, any administration of a moral government by laws must respect the character and condition of the subject ; and if men were born into life, high, complete, in full garniture, then we might consider government capable of disclosing itself to them in all its amplitude ; but if, in point of his- toric fact, men have come into this world at the lowest stage, 370 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. if nation after nation has been born into savagism, if they have gradually unfolded out of their low condition, and if there has been a long process of their education through ages, then it is true that any comprehension of the divine nature must follow the capacity of the race upon which moral gov- ernment is administered. And if, taking them at their lowest physical state, God would govern men, he would do it with power, with imperiousness, compelling obedience; this would be the side of divine nature and manifestation which their circumstances demanded and required. We whip children ; but we do not whip men. The rod in the family is good, whatever people may still say. As long as men have bodies, there will be motive in the skin which a rod can find out in a thousand instances in which it could not be found out in any other way. yes, persons who have one child, or two children, in affluence, with so much time that they do not know what to do with it, and who with all their resources can sit and take care of the child, watch for it beforehand, and turn the switch so that at every point the father's and mother's forethought neces- sarily causes it to run on the right track it is very well for such persons to be indignant at the brutality of the discipline of other people, and to say, " The way to govern children is to win their love, and imbue them with all knowledge." That is the best way, when you can resort to it ; but take a washerwoman who has nine children, and who goes out to work through the live long day, and comes back at evening to cook the food of her husband and children, and sits up at night to repair their scanty raiment, and works until nature is weary and worn, and let those nine great robust children be quarreling with each other, or with the neighbors' chil- dren, right and left, and say to her, " The best way is to win the confidence of these children, and to exercise forethought in their behalf" ! I tell you, she must use the instrument which she can use, and must use it promptly the instrument which God has given ; and that instrument, and the circum- stances for the use of it, are apparent to everybody in this audience who was brought up in New England ! And that which is true in the lower sphere of our own THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. 371 existence is true elsewhere. You must govern according to the thing which is to be governed. If you are governing animals you must address yourselves to that which will be recipient in them. If you are governing savages you must put an amount of fear and force into your government which will make itself appreciated by the savage. Always working asvay from the lower motive, we are to use that which shall prepare the subject for the next higher plane, and the next higher, and the next higher. It has been true in the history of the world that, in the unfoldings of the divine economy, and in the interpretation of the divine character, the earlier periods have been obliged to represent God as more imperi- ous, as more full of physical punishment; and figures abound which indicate this. As represented in the Bible, God is lion, eagle, thunder, lightning, monarch, and even despot, saying, "I will do what I will do, and obey thou shalt." But as the world unfolded more and more, and be- came more and more competent, there were larger propor- tions given, and motives were set forth which disclosed the higher nature of God ; and these were addressed to national life, to pride of nation, to the life and affections of the fam- ily ; and these left the old motives effaced. For God, in the higher revelations of his character, is paternal and national. And out of these higher views and motives, in the fullness of times, it begins to appear that God is paternal, not to one nation, not to one household, not to the lineage of Abraham alone, but to the whole world that he is God of the entire earth, and that he governs all mankind, not for the sake of his own selfishness; not for the oriental idea of his own per- sonal resplendency ; not as Solomon governed, who sucked the nation dry that his individual glory might be augmented, leaving its foundations rotten, so that the moment he disap- peared it toppled down ; not for the sake of making him- self look beautiful as the Governor of nations : he is revealed to us in the last day, through Jesus Christ, as the Universal Sufferer. When the times had come in which the world could hear it, then came the last disclosure of the divine nature, which is that, having been the Creator and Preserver, he was also, from eternity to eternity, the One who thought, UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. cared, suffered for every living thing upon the globe, that it might be saved by his parentage. Rising thus from the lower forms of appeal and motive, rising from the earth, rising from the simple phenomena of nature, rising from the ruder forms of primitive government, and from all the developments of the household, just as fast as men's moral ideas enlarge themselves, the conception grows larger and more bountiful and merciful. Not that it leaves out the fact that sin entails suffering. The truth remains that God, by the very constitution of his nature, of the globe and of the universe, will forever join disobedience to law, and to consequent suffering. That abides. It is the mainspring for the upbuilding of a race or people. But while that remains, there are other glories that remain namely, the power of conscience ; the power of faith ; the power of suffering love, which is the definition of Jesus Christ, the Eevelator of God's suffering for the universe : suffering, not as one endures an ignominious penalty, not as one undergoes punishment for wickedness, but as a hero suffers for his country, who, when he dies, is praised by the whole world ; or as the mother suffers, who takes care of her children, and dies for them, and, dying, becomes illustrious ; or as men suffer who sacrifice their interests, and lay down their lives, for their fellow-men. By these experiences, and by these symbols, at last it conies forth that God, standing central in the earth, is doing that which among men is noblest namely, carrying, suffer- ing, enduring; the great Burden-bearer and Atoner of the universe. This disclosure of God has been gradual. It is not fully out. It is like the rose, whose sepals are glued together, so that sometimes the beautiful petals cannot break them open, until some kind hand pulls them asunder, when, in an instant, the blossom bursts forth. The unfolding of the knowledge of God has been waiting through long periods. It has not yet fully blossomed out. And this truth of the universality of God, of the fraternity of God, of the relation of God to men as the God of the whole earth, is one of those truths that have lingered long. THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. 373 He is not the God of the whole earth as the Jews held that he was, who thought that Jerusalem was his fishing place, and that he was to sit in the temple, and throw out his line, and draw in all nations, and make them all Jews, just as to-day the Churchmen think that God is a Churchman, and that he is going to sit on the dome of the cathedral, and throw out his gospel line, and bring all people in and make them Churchmen. How good a thing it is that, amid the criminations of theology, now and then there is a laughing-spot ! for I think that wit and humor are the natural antagonists of the malign feelings and belluiue passions. The devil never laughs. See how people are going to bring in the unity of all na- tions. " Now let us compromise, and let us have unity," say the different churches, and they all respond, " 0, yes, let us have unity." Says the Presbyterian Church, " There must be government, and there must be something definite to be believed. Now, our system contains the greatest simplicity and the utmost liberty of worship, and exactly the statement of truth as it is revealed in the Bible ; and you cannot expect us to give up that which is as clear as daylight. To have unity only requires that men should all agree to that which we teach " which I suppose is true. The Episcopal Church says, "Why, unity? it is the great desire of the heart of God, the world is waiting for it, and why should it not be ? The world have nothing to do but to accept our form of worship and government, if they would all be united in one. " The Methodist Episcopal Church agree to this, except that they hold that there should be more enthusiasm. Epic- copacy runs to taste, and Methodism to social fervor. They are the same, either in America or in England, with -nis dif- ference. Meanwhile, the very modest Congregational Church steps in, and says, " It is unreasonable to expect that the Presby- terian will give up his system, that the Episcopalian will give up his system, or that the Methodist will give up that which is peculiar to him. If you bring them together and expect 374 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. them to give up their separate notions, and go contrary to their education, you cannot do anything in the direction of unity ; but if you bring together all sorts of people, and let them vote exactly what they will do, and allow them to deter- mine among themselves what shall be their government, you will accomplish something" (and that's Congregationalism!) So every one of the denominations stands substantially on its own platform, and says to everybody else, "My dear friend, let us be united ; let me swallow you, and then we will be one 1" So it was that the old Jews interpreted language like my text. It was revealed to them that God was the God of the whole earth ; and they interpreted it to mean that he would be the God of all men when they were Jews. According to their interpretation, the Assyrian was to turn Jew ; the Egyp- tian was to turn Jew ; the Roman was to turn Jew ; every one of them was to kiss the foundations of the temple in Jerusa- lem. Said they, "It is the promise of God that he will be the God of his people ; we are his people ; we are to subdue all men ; and they are to be his people through us." I need not say to you that, when you see this spirit delin- eated in one class, you at once see how widespread it is among all classes. Now, if God is the God of the whole earth, he must be the God of the whole earth just as it is ; and I remark that while believers in the true God were tribal and national, the natural mistake which was made, and which should put us on our guard lest we fall into it again in substance, was that of supposing that God was in a special manner the God of a par- ticular class. So let us not forget that if he is the God of the whole earth he is the God of all those physical conditions under which men are born. He is the God of those laws of descent which make the character of the parent go down to the children through many generations. He is the God of those decrees by which the drunkard's children inherit the drunkard's proclivities; by which deceit propagates deceit; by which honor breeds honor; by which motives brought to bear upon parents have an effect on the welfare of their children, reaching down to the depths of futurity. He is the God of THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. 375 the climate in which every person lives of that climate which drives the Esquimau under ground during most of the months of the year, and that climate which brings the swarthy African all the year into the open air, without clothes and without a dwelling. If he is the God of all the earth, then he is the God that establishes those laws which determine the occupations of men, and their characters, in a large degree. He is the God of the physical globe, in this sense: that whatever affects men by its nature, by its uncon- scious and continuous influence upon them, is of his ordina- tion. Being the God of the whole earth, he is the God of the mountains and of the valleys ; of the winter and of the summer ; of industry and of commerce ; of all the arrange- ments of life by which men are influenced. Men's places of abode, and their nature, are largely determined by their cir- cumstances ; and these circumstances are God's decrees. What are God's decrees ? Every natural fact is a decree of God. God's decrees are not limited simply to the invisible world, nor to doctrines, nor to administrations, as theology has pointed it out. God's decrees are seen in the eternal summer of the tropics, and in the eternal winter of the far north. God's decrees are seen in the hard work of the indus- trious man on the mountain side, and in the shiftless work of the indolert man in the valleys overflowing with fatness. God's decrees are seen in all the influences that make races and nations. God's decrees are seen in all the inevitable effects that follow the causes that are operating in the world. These causes are divine ; or, if you say they are not, then to you God is not the God of the whole world. Our conception of God in theology must not forget those facts ; and it is for the finding out of those facts to-day that science is at work. It is because, in finding out those facts, men of science run against the old theologies, that they are called infidels ; but every disclosure that is made by science, revealing any fact of creation, is a revelation of God, and is precious, and ought to be recognized as important by every man. There is much more that belongs to God's universe than we have yet found out; and there are many things qr to God's univorsj that are different from the con- \J 376 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF ao>. ceptions which we have formed of them in our imperfect thought. God is also a providence. As a providence he is not shut up in Jerusalem, nor in Palestine, nor in any sweet little parish that nestles along the Connecticut River Valley in Connecticut or in Massachusetts. He is a providence in the whole earth ; and he is the same kind of providence to the white and the black, the rich and the poor, the bond and the free, the male and the female. The whole earth is God's ; in its physical structure, and in the social, intellectual, moral and spiritual relations of its inhabitants ; and his special providence is spread abroad over every part of the globe. It belongs to Africa, to Asia, to Europe, to America and to the islands of the sea. But how is it that we think of this ? As the old Jew thought of it ? God remembers us and takes care of us ; but does .he not re- member and take care of the nations that are outside of us ? How is it with the people throughout the world ? Out of three hundred million people on the globe, scarcely one mil- lion are in those conditions which are prescribed by theology. Out of these three hundred million people there are probably not a million of the elect, if you try them by the judicature of the confession of faith. my soul ! straight and narrow is the road. Many strive to find it, and few get in, and fewer get out; and if the kingdom of God was entered by the gate of the "Westminster confession of faith, if that were the gate through which every man had to go into heaven or not at all, in my judgment there would not be enough to go into heaven in any one generation to raise a chorus. There would be solo singers scattered up and down through an im- mense space uere and there, and only a few of them so cabined, so cribbed, so narrow has become the sense of the divine nature that shines over the globe aye, to which the globe itself is but a sun-spot ; the universe swelling out illim- itably and rolling on past research and past thought, portions of it, doubtless, significant by their creations, differing from man. Everywhere the universal and Almighty God extends his providence ; and he is God of the whole earth by the crea- tion of the physical, and by the providence which watches THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD: 377" over men as tenderly and as gently as a mother watches over the rocking cradle. There is a thought of God which is sweet to the swarthy Indian in the infancy of his develop- ment, to the wandering Calmuck, and to the most benighted of the interior African tribes. There is a thought of God that is dear among the Asiatics, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Tartars. God's heart is not divided by latitutes or longitudes ; it is not checked by national names nor by race. It is universal. It is the reason of love, the course of it, the power of it, the father of it, in everything ; and God is him- self the most blessed exemplar of it. And the God of the whole earth shall he be called not yet, but by and by. The day is coming. If he be the God of the whole earth, then all those seminal and fundamental ideas which are common to the race of man- kind spring from him, and all other tendencies spring from him ; and they are concurrent testimonies, prophecies, of the administration of this world. He is the God of the house- hold, and of all those influences which spring from its love, its responsibilities and its cares. He is a God that so made men that society is necessary and indispensable. When a vine is made it needs no argument that it wants something to climb on. That it is a vine, is the argument that it must needs climb ; and the convolvulus climbs upon the stake, twining itself about it ; the ivy throws out at every axil leaves that clasp and hold ; and the clematis quirls its leaf -stalk about the wire or the pole, and so climbs ; but the very structure of the vine says, " Climb !" The methods of climbing are different, but the necessity of it is in the organ- ization of the vine. Now, God is the Father of kings, magistrates, governors ; and he made men so that when they came to be developed, they must have some form of government and society ; and so civil governments spring from an original decree in the nature of men. Out of that grows the tendency which leads to man's dev- elopment, which overcomes the animal in man and develops the social quality, and out of that the moral influence, and out of that the civil status, and out of that spiritual attri- 378 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF QOD. butes. All these instruments are at work; and the fruits which they bring forth are the results of divine decrees the decrees of that God who is God over all, blessed forever. In every part of the globe these tendencies are the same. The family live everywhere modified by divine inspirations and customs, under substantially the same government. Everywhere magistrates differ, laws differ ; and yet it is sub- stantially a government in which the obedience and subordi- nation of citizens is universal; and all the divine nature, with its power and influence, is used for the purpose of civil- ization ; and there is no civilization that does not enfranchise the moral nature that is, tend toward religion in its true forms. And that whole administration by which men go through various institutions to come to a state of civilization is of God ; and it is as hroad and clear in the woods as in Jerusalem, or on the interior plains of Asia as on the lip of the Mediterranean Sea ; and everywhere God has shown that he is the God of all the earth ; not of a select people yes, of a select people, doubtless ; but not to the exclusion of others. He is the God of the whole earth in this : that he has revealed through Jesus Christ the paternity of God ; and when he teaches men to say, " Our Father," the last stage is reached. Beyond that there is no name. There are no inti- mations that can be grander, more powerful, more genial, or more comforting than that. In view of these statements, I remark, first, There is in church life a bringing home of God's relations to men ; but we must not make the mistake in the church that the Jews did, who supposed because God had specially ordained them to be an instrument in his hands for the civilization of the globe, that therefore he was exclusively their God. I can understand how a man who keeps a lighthouse may come to think, at last, that the light in his lighthouse is the only light that there is at night upon the globe, and that he is the most favored keeper of that light ; I can imagine that kind of conceit ; and in the Jewish Church, as we see by reading its history, the Jews felt that they owned God, that he was a monopoly. And we find that same spirit, after generations have passed by, existing in the Christian Church, THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. 379 where it has been held that God was the God of every man that came in and accepted doctrines and ordinances as the priests taught them. It is difficuL to make discriminations rithout causing misapprehension. You and I believe that common schools are useful and necessary ; but suppose in any neighborhood where there is no school, the boys are determined to have an education ? It does not alter the fact that it is easier to get an education with a school than without one ; but if a man can get an education without a school he has a right to do it ; and if he does get an education without going to school, it is as good, so far as it goes, as though he had gone to school. The church stands as God's school-house, and it is an easier and shorter and more natural way of acquiring moral and spiritual knowledge to gather together with Christians where there is instruction, and where there are facilities for learning religious truth ; but when men say, " If you do not gather here you have no right to these things anywhere ; " I say that the God of intelligence belongs to the race, and that a man has a right to get knowledge anywhere, by a school, or without a school, by a teacher, or without a teacher. Edu- cation is as free as sunlight, and a man may take it where he can get it. If you can get it through appointed schools they will help you ; but if you cannot get it so it is free to you to get it as you will. Now, churches that arrogate the ownership of God, and of all the truth of God that has been given to the world ; churches that arrogate the ownership of all those ducts through which truth extends, and say, "Yes, God is the God of the whole earth, if the earth will join us," such churches belie their office and their Maker. There is not a church on earth in which a man may not come to God and find salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ ; and there is not a place on earth outside of churches in which you may not be saved. Even by the side of an idol a man may find God to be a substantial reality. Is that a favorable place for it ? No. Is it likely that he will ? No. Are the moral influences such as would in all probability tend to it ? No. Nevertheless, if a man stands by the side 380 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. of an idol, and has the spirit of God, of the Lord Jesus Christ, he may call him what he pleases Jupiter, or Jehovah, or anything else. God does not live in a name, but in a quality ; and if a man anywhere, in the darkness of heathen- ism or in the light of civilization, is led to put his trust, his faith, in qualities that constitute the true God, then those qualities are the true God to him, without regard to names. Well, then, we are not to give up the church ; for it is important in the educating work ; it is necessary that it should stand as an example, as a light, as a teacher ; yet the attempt of the church to administer God's whole trust of human nature is a piece of arrogance and impertinence which ought to be rebuked in our day, as it has been by the divine providence in days that are gone by. No theory of atonement, I remark secondly, can be valid, that has not been, to the whole world, in all their condi- tions, fixed by the providence of God. It was not the Calmuck's fault that he was born in a den ; it was not the Bedouin's fault that he was born in the desert ; it was not the North American Indian's fault that he was born in a wig- wam ; and it was not any nation's fault that it was born under cramped customs and laws and institutions ; and if God so loved the world that he gave his Son to die for it, if he is disclosed in the Lord Jesus Christ, the way of salva- tion is open to all men, everywhere, and there is atoning mercy, and a providential supervising of it, reaching out to all nations, races and conditions. How shall it come ? I do not know. In what way shall it work ? I do not know. I cannot unravel the inward counsels of God ; but I know that they who seek God and his righteousness shall be accepted and saved. I believe that for every class on the created earth there is power in that atonement ivhich is God himself. Of that atonement which is God himself, Christ was the trans- lator ; he brought it out, and made it apparent ; but the power to forgive sins lies in the irresistible love of God him- self. The power to transform men lies in the inherent nature of God. No act is so powerful as the actor ; no event is so powerful as the influence that caused it ; and in the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ there is a power nhich THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF QOD. 381 though you may not be able to follow it, or interpret it, or conform it to the canons of received philosophy, is universal, reaches out to every human creature ; and he who limits it, or withdraws it, is, I think, like a man who steals medicine from a hospital, bread from a famished city, or water from those who are perishing of thirst. No theodicy can satisfy the thinking mind of to-day but that one which makes God's government a government over the whole world, and not an oriental household. In the old times there was the wife and her children, and there were the concubines and their children. There were Sarah and Hagar one for the wilderness and what she could get, and the other for the homestead and its prerogatives. There may be reasons why, in a kind of parabolic life, there should be such historic reminiscences ; but to take these rude experiences of an early age, and lift them into the heavenly sphere, and call them God and moral government, and say that God is the God of the favored few, and that the great outlying sensitive race are not under his government and sympathy and law, seems to me to be so atrocious that the more men become educated and thoughtful, the more they will resent it. The fact is this : that in our time the world needs a view of God which shall satisfy the highest reason. God made the reason, and it is that by which we go back to him. With- out reason there is no duty, no interpretation of providence, no knowledge of God, and no civilization. They who decry reason as simply a natural faculty, and therefore not to be trusted, rail against God himself. A view of God which shall meet the wants of the world must be a view which shall satisfy our understanding of the undeniable I&cts of life. It must be a view which shall reach the real moral sense of the globe, now educated in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It must be a view which shall meet that state of mind to which men have been brought by the divine providence ; by the educating influences of the life and teachings of the Saviour. For we are passing out from the age of enforcements, and are coming more and more into a democratic age, not in the lower sense of the term, but in its highest and best sense. We are coming to an age of indi 382 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. vidual power, individual judgment and individual rights. We are coming to that age in which men are grown to such an extent that they are beginning more and more to be large as individuals ; and they are thinking and acting from mo- tives within themselves, and not merely from exterior and enforcing influences. Our time, then, needs that which shall satisfy the wants of the great mass of growing and thinking men. For ages men have made gods after their own hearts ; they have made gods of their passions ; they have made gods of lust ; but we are liv- ing in an era in which the ideal life is government, and law, and intelligence, and purity, and loving-kindness ; and I say that the public sentiment which has been brought under the influence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot but be shocked by the presentation of a God so narrow, so partial, so exclu- sive, so hard, so cruel, as the God which theology has pre- sented. You may build as many arguments as you please ; but, though they be made of iron and steel, clinched and double clinched, you will not long keep before a think- ing and acting generation of men the idea of a God that is repugnant and hideous to the sentiments of the human soul. Men that are divinely enlightened will not tolerate the thought of a God thatshocks the reason and the conscience, and still maintain his power and ascendancy in the heaven. But, on the other hand, present a God that will not rub out the dif- ference between right and wrong ; present a God that makes more and more manifest through the ages that righteous- ness exalts a nation ; present a God that administers over the earth an equable government, pitying and sparing his subjects ; make him the Chief among ten thousand and alto- gether lovely ; search the choicest places of human experi- ence ; go where the heart in its noblest moods is responsive to the advanced thoughts and examples of the age ; go where love suffers and smiles to suffer, and take some letters there ; go where friendship is sublimest and most unselfish, and take some letters there; go where heroism is strongest, bravest and noblest, and take some letters there ; go where sin is alle- viated, where sorrow is illumined, where mercy blesses those who deserve no mercy, and take some letters there ; go to THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. 383 prisons, and hospitals, and battle-fields, and poor-houses, and chambers of sickness, and take some letters there ; go to all places where men are yet animals, and not angels, and gather letters, and they will be letters which, when put together, will spe 11 GOD, glorious in the heaven and on earth. And that is a name which is composite not of barbaric forces, But of sweet- ness, and long-suffering through the ages, and patience illim- itable. Make me that God, and I ask no argument. He that has beauty needs no eulogy. He that has power needs nothing but that. A God that reaches the want of the race and the deepest feelings of the soul will stand, though against him are hurled all the storms of infidelity. No bombarding of eloquence or dissuasion of philosophy can keep men from believing in a God who is their health, theii life, fheir joy and their salvation. That is what the world is waiting for ; and if to the great work of ushering it in science can come bringing its offerings, let it come ; or if nations can come unfolding their experi- ence, and so do something to help on this end, let them come ; if the household, more rich than all other things in its treasures of experience, can come with a sacred love which shall illustrate and glorify the name of this yet unknown God, let it come ; if the soul of him that God has inspired in his personal history, and in whom he has unfolded strange and rare conceptions, can come with his contribution of knowl- edge, let him come ; and if all these things can be lifted up and made into an image of God before the world, God will be glorified, man will be redeemed, the race will be saved, and the universe will rejoice forever and forever. 384 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.* MAY God be merciful to these dear children. Thou hast brought them into this great world, where they know not anything. Born into life as to the outward, they are full of darkness as to things inward. Though they be born into the visible, yet all that is real lies within the invisible. Coming forth from darkness into life, they are still more in the darkness than in the light. And we commend them, little strangers and pilgrims, to thy heavenly love and care, believing that thou wilt by thy providence vouchsafe to them all needed guidance. If not a sparrow falls without thy notice, our Father, shall they ? Bless them in the love of their parents ; and may it be a love that shall bring forth wisdom. Grant that while they are receiving benefaction from their strength, and experience, and wisdom, these little children may render back a hundred-fold in joy and love, and in the teaching which comes from them to their parents for the service which they receive. And we beseech of thee that thou wilt open the hearts of thy peo- ple more and more to these little ones ; for of such is the kingdom of God. May we in them behold what we should be toward thee. May we behold their clinging love, their conscious helplessness, and their implicit trust. May we recognize in thee a Father; and may we have toward thee that trust and that love which a child has toward its parents ; and may we have a consciousness that we derive from thee whatever is best and noblest in the upbuilding of that nature which is to outlive death, and which is to stand in glory in the life which is to come. Eemember all the children that are within our congregation, and that are under our care in the various labors of thy servants, in every field, everywhere. We pray that the endeavor to inspire in their parents and in the households where they dwell more fidelity may be blessed of God. May the efforts which we make to instruct and ground them in a sound morality, and to bring them up as use- ful men and citizens, may receive thy blessing. We pray that those who are willing to labor and to bear pain may rejoice to feel that they follow, though it be with feeble, incompetent footsteps, the example of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. May none be weary in well doing, remembering that in due season they shall reap if they faint not. Bless all those who, looking upon their children, are in distress by reason of any fear, any grief, or any trouble that darkens their life or their household, May their faith never fail them. May they feel that they never stand so near to the heart and right hand of divine power as when they are pleading for the welfare of their children ; and may they not be impatient because God is long-suffering and waits. In due season tbou shalt avenge thine own elect; in due season thou shalt bring forth righteousness; and let none that are curmoiled, let none that are distressed of soul, let none that bear burdens complain or murmur. May they wait upon the Lord. And * Immediately following the baptism of children. THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. 385 wilt thou bring forth light in every household where there is dark- ness, and wilt thou bring forth joy in every household where there is sorrow. Grant thy blessing to rest upon all teachers in public schools and in private schools ; upon all who are teaching the poor or neglected, whether they be near or afar off; and upon all who are seeking to lay foundations of piety in true knowledge. Bless all those who are laboring to prepare teachers for their sphere; and may they rejoice in their work, even under discouragements. May knowledge go forth, not to overturn faith, but to establish it on immutable foundations. May this nation be saved from supersti- tion, from blind adhesion to exterior things, and from vanity arising from a conceited ambition in things intellectual. May this great people fear God, and keep his commandments. So we pray that thy name may be honored and glorified in our prosperity. Bless, we pray thee, the President of these United States, and all who are joined with him in authority. Bless all judges, and magis- trates, and legislators. Grant that the whole body of the citizens of this land may obey the laws implicitly, and that justice may prevail, and that peace may abide throughout all our borders. We beseech of thee that thou wilt hold back thine hand. Suffer not the scourge of disease to fall upon this land. Let not thy plagues visit this people. By thy mercies soften their hearts and lead them to repentance. We pray for all the striving nations of the earth. We believe that out of darkness is coming light. Ere long the morning shall break ; and there is not that in night that can put out the light that, traveling afar, shall come again. Though revolution follow revolution, though there be wars upon wars, and though troubles multiply, we rejoice, O Lord our God, that thy word stands sure. Thou art the God of the whole earth. All things are beneath thine eye, and all things in the end shall come to work together for good for the welfare of man, and for the glory of God. We beseech of thee that thou wilt, in thine own time, hasten these things. Bring in Jew and Gentile. Exalt all nations. Make the weak strong, and keep the strong from impetuous pride and domina- tion. So make all men recognize the brotherhood of love as that which should bind them together. Bring in the bright ideal of life in society and among nations. Make haste, we beseech of thee, thou that art emerging toward the future with abundant victories, to show forth the signs and token? that shall give hope to all men. Come, for the whole earth doth wait for thee. And so, at last, when thou shalt have redeemed the nations and established thy kingdom in all the earth, let the heavens and the earth rejoice together, and all the sons of God unite in gladness and thanksgiving to thee, as when the world was first created. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit, evermore. -Imc/t. 386 THE UNIVERSAL HEART OF GOD. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. O THOTT that art love over all the earth, thou that art power over all the earth, thou that art knowledge to all the earth, thou that art redemption to all the earth, thou that hast in days gone by, from eternity, been God, and thou that shalt be unto eternity God over all, to thee we bring our rejoicings, knowing that we do not under- stand thee ; knowing that it is but the hem of thy garment that we touch with our thoughts, but believing that we shall behold thy blessed and beatific countenance and understand thee when our souls, by heavenly intelligence, shall be uplifted in the life that is to come. Grant, we pray thee, that all the glimpses and fragmentary knowledge which we have of thee may be so directed by thy good providence that we shall go on, to virtue, to fortitude, to aspiration, to the utmost endeavor, and to patient continuance in well doing on every side. By faith, by love, and by hope may we hold fast to thee, and wait for thy disclosure, which shall be made when we shall see thee as thou art, and be like unto thee. Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then we shall see face to face. Now all things are transient, and are passing away; but amidst universal wreck behold, blossoming in the wilderness, unsmitten by the winter, and unsoorch- ed by the summer, that youth which time cannot touch. There abid- eth faith, hope, love; and the greatest of these is love; and thou, O God, art love. And to thy name shall be praise for ever and ever. Amen. THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. " Even as the son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for manv." Matt. xx.. 28. " If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfill ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus : who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, oven the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth, and things under the earth ; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Phil, ii., 1-11. You will observe that that which sounds through this pas- sage is the glory of self-renunciation. This is not the vision of a God in the plenitude of power : it is the vision of a God disrobing himself of power. Not the attributes of royalty, but the habiliments of servitude, are the insignia here held forth. All creation is exalted to a rapturous praise of a being who is set forth by the symbols of suffering and self- renunciation. That which is here uttered (not a dirge but a paean) by the apostle of our Saviour was also, in the first passage that I read, substantially stated by the Saviour himself. When 8trtn>AT MORNING, July 5, 1874. WESSON : Psa. xcvi. HYMNS (Plymouth Col- lection): NOB. 212, 907. 390 THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. they were making the last progress toward Jerusalem, just before his passion and death, the mother, with her sons, drew near, with a secret ambition to exalt James and John (per- haps it was) to the first places to seats on the right hand and on the left of Christ ; and our Saviour, with great gentleness, instructed them for instruction in this case was rebuke ; whereas, the other disciples were exceedingly angry ; and to these it was that the Master turned and said : "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them ; but it shall not be so among you ; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister [not your clergyman by no means but your servant] ; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your slave [that is full force of the original] : even as the son of man came not to be ministered unto [not to be served], but to minis- ter, and to give his life a ransom for many." There can be no question that the Christian religion has come down to us with a color which it had not in the primi- tive church, and which it ought not to have ; and that it has been so stained through and through with the ascetic element as to make it a totally different thing in the apprehension of men from what the religious spirit and service were to the Old Testament saint, from the spirit of the apostles themselves, and from the normal nature of things. I declare that the Christian religion is the introduction upon a lower nature of a higher nature, and that it is there- fore, in the highest and noblest sense of the word, natural. Men have been afraid to call religious things natural for fear that they should drag them down and degrade them ; but the true way is to bring nature higher, and show it as it is, as the organized thought of God, and to make it larger in its sphere, so that we shall no longer think of mere matter when we speak of nature, but include in it mind and emotion and dis- position, and the total of a glorious manhood. I say that religion, instead of being an interpolated thing, a stop-gap, made by reason of man's fall, an episode in the history of creation, is in the nature of things, from eternity to eternity, and expresses the best things of God and the best things of man ; and that it bears in itself the highest noble- ness and the highest happiness. THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 391 The Jewish religion involved, to be sure, penitential elements, and recognized in the experience of life abundant sorrows ; but the genius of the religion that was instituted by inspiration through Moses was certainly cheerful and joy- ous ; and the spirit of the Old Testament, while it has its sadnesses, while, in other words, it recognizes the experience of the human race, yet whenever it lifts itself up to the ideal plane where the human race are entitled to live is wonder- fully joyous. The life of Christ also, I take it, is greatly misinterpreted. It involved suffering, and, at the last and great dramatic hour, an awful passion which human thought may not com- pass nor fathom. And yet, it seems to me, no man can read the life of Christ continuously, from beginning to end, and take in what must have been the movement of the thoughts of such an one as he, going about clothed with double power power from on high and from on the earth and doing good, with any other result than that of rinding there the fruit of joy. The essential spirit of Christ was not sad, but deeply joyful ; and so it is said : "Who, for the joy that was set before him [that ever hovered over him and lightened his path], endured the cross." Joy, supereminent and abounding, floated up the life of Christ upon the under waves ; and when, in his darkest hour, he met his disciples, he was not as a sufferer overcome : he was in suffering the unsuffering, if I may so say ; for he said to them, when the shadow was on him, "My peace I give unto you." Now, he that in the extremity of suffering had peace to give to those who were about him was not over- whelmed with any such sense of suffering as we have been wont to attribute to him. The writings of the apostle are full of pathos and full of earnestness, and they recognize, in the most eminent degree, the conflicts of life ; but the very spirit of hope and joy pervades them. They always move with the step of victory. There is nowhere else, in an equal compass, such exaltation or exultation, I think, as is to be found in the writings of the apostles, and preeminently in those of Paul, the sufferer and the rejoicer. I know not where you will find, if you come 392 THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. into the full spirit of it, a more magnificent instance of it than that which is recorded in the closing words of the eighth of Romans, where he has been speaking of the suffer- ings of the whole world ; where he looks upon the creature delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God, and says, " The whole crea- tion is going on still groaning, and it is still travailing in pain." And then, after reasoning on all the light and dark- ness in which the world moves, he says : " What shall we say, then, to these things ? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifleth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? " And now look at this magnificent defiance with which he throws down the gauntlet to every conceivable form of earth- ly misfortune : " Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or naked- ness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, [and where is there such another magnificent burst of joy and cheer as this?] in all these things [in tribulation, and distress, and persecu- tion, and famine, and nakedness, and peril, and sword] we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded [and now his thought overleaps the bounds of time and earth, and takes in the universe] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Now, I ask you whether the whole view of the Christian religion, as it is laid down in the New Testament, is not one of joyfulness whether that is not the preeminent element, the genius, of it. I ask you whether the religious life which has been handed down to us from the church of the mediaeval ages is not, after all, so stained through with a sense of mel- ancholy and restriction and loss and narrowness and suffering that the popular impression is that religion, if not morose, is yet moody and melancholy, sad and sorrowful ; that its joy lies in the things that are to be in the life which is to come, and not in the thing itself. I ask you whether the THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 393 ascetic view has not been preached, and is not still preached, unconsciously, by men who disown it in terms, and who yet make representations of great doctrines in such a way as to impress the minds of their fellow-men with the convic- tion that to do the things that are noblest, best, divinest, in accordance with the highest law of true manhood, requires great suffering ; and that it requires a special dispensation of grace to enable men to do those things, because they are not only so hard, but so painful in the doing. This ascetic view of religion is false in general, and in particular it destroys its power. It is for the welfare of the race that they should understand not only that the highest line of manhood is possible, but that it is the most redolent of joy. This is a secret which the world ought to have disclosed to it, whatever it may cost. No miner is unwilling to work night and day, if only gold follows his work. The very mother, in the midst of travail and anguish, rejoices, forgets her pain, because a man child is born into the world. No man counts the suffering that is victorious in the end. But it is needful that the world should under- stand that religion is not a series of sufferings which are in the nature of a price paid for a joy by-and-by, but that it is a revelation of God to this world of that higher law of true manhood which carries with it, now and forever hereafter, the highest happiness of which men are susceptible. I declare that every single Christian duty laid down carries its own pleasure in it. I declare that if men want to know the sources and secrets of the highest joy they will find them in those very things which are ordinarily esteemed as most difficult and only to be done under a sense of duty things that men balance, saying, ' ' Shall I deny myself, or be damned ? Well, on the whole, I'd rather deny myself. It's hard, but still it's better to pluck off my right hand than to go to helL" And so they consent with themselves to do things that are painful, onerous, bitter, disagreeable in every way, revolting, as they think, to nature ; and they do it be- cause they are afraid, if they do not, that by-and-by the settling will be harder than they can bear. It is preeminently desirable, therefore, that men should 394 THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. understand that whatever may seem to be the difficulties and pains attending the performance of Christian duties, they carry in themselves, as the fruit of doing them, the very reward of good. They are not so hard as men think they are, and they are not so painful as the devil tempts men to think they are ; bub they are as full of joy as the tree of life is of apples that are shaken down over the head of the world. It is a misfortune to have it understood that righteous- ness is sad and painful, and that joy and hilarity are to be sought for only in physical life. It is a misfortune to have it understood that sufferings and tears and mortifications belong to the spiritual life, and that gayety and liberty and joyfulness belong to the fleshly life. It is a slander, and it is a slander that carries detriment and damnation to uncounted thousands. When our Master stood in the midst of Palestine, look- ing out upon the currents that were flowing, sometimes north, and sometimes south the various impulses, the vari- ous ambitions, the various lines of endeavor he saw men fluctuating from right to left, and from left to right, all seeking happiness ; and he, as it were, questioned the world and the men that were in it, and found that they were barren of happiness. Power sought it, and power did not find it. Eiches sought it, and riches did not find it. Vanity sought it, and it was not in vanity. Men sought it in the flesh, and there it died. Looking at all the ways in which men sought to make themselves happy, Christ stood and said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls." All the world's joy is but a tantalization. He that wants tbe peace of joy cannot find it in the flesh, nor in the lower social life, nor in the merely intellectual life, but in the realm of the moral life, where true divine manhood inheres. Let him mount there ; let him lay the lines of his life according to that higher spiritual wisdom, and he shall find rest unto his soul for there is a realm in the soul which never hears the tempest, nor feels the thunder-shock ; and the very earthquake may THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 395 shake and roll every other thing and not disturb the settled peace that God has given to those who know how to retreat to the innermost divine temple of the soul and -there find rest in God. Consider, now, this law of self-devotion, or this law of self-renunciation, if you choose to call it so, or this law of self-sacrifice, or the giving up of yourself for the benefit of others call it whatever name you please. It strikes every- body that it must be a heroic thing, but a thing which the world cannot be expected to find or to practice. Men look upon it as painful. They look upon it as necessary, but necessary just as surgery is not because they laugh when they are cut, but because if they are not cut by-and-by they will die ; and rather than die they are willing to suffer. So men say, ' ' Yes, we are willing to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, to serve other men, to use all the power of our being for the happiness and comfort of our fellow-men, looking not at our own things." The trouble is that they conceive of it wrongly. In the first place they think it is ordering them into a realm of labor, of pain-bearing, and storm-bearing, and they do not understand its genius. Then, in the next place, they say, "One thing I do know prac- tically, and that is, that if a man does not attend to his own bnsiness his business will not attend to him. I must look after myself ; and when I go over to my shop or my store, and you tell me, 'Now, look not every man on his own things, but every man on the things of others/ that is just what we do and we try to get them too." Thus they per- vert to selfishness the words which teach the largest disin- terestedness. But men say, " Business is business ; and a man must take care of himself. The law of self-preservation and of individual responsibility leads him to do this. You must look after yourself or nobody will look after you. Do you tell me that I must live a life of self-renunciation ? It is the same as saying that I must seek self-destruction. Society could not stand an hour if that were to be the principle of action." Let us, then, consider this a little more at the root. 396 THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. When you look at the animal life upon the globe in its lowest stage, you will see that the lowest form of animal life has but two substantial functions. One is self-preser- vation, and the other is propagation. All the lower forms of animal life have but these two substantial functions. That is their law to themselves. They have not the faculty for anything more. Many creations below them have not the faculty even for that ; but if you take the lion, the tiger, all beasts that eat and flee or fight, they have talents for these functions ; but to organize ideas, or to form communities, is not in them. They have not the aptitudes for such things. The law of the lowest life the life of mere flesh is to take care of self. That is the prime end of life in the mere physical realm, and its occupants are not equipped for anything more than that. As you begin to rise in the development of animal life, a new element comes in namely, that of congregations or com- munities. Animals begin, as they are more largely developed, to live together. Now, to live together, in its nature, im- plies the thinking of one animal or creature of another ani- mal or creature. There must be social equation. In one way or another that must be established. So, in the progressive development of animal life, there comes in something more than self-preservation ; there comes in the power of social ex- istence, which implies, more or less, the fitting of one to an- other, which is a very low form of self-abnegation. That is, we give up some things for the sake of some other things. So society, in its earliest stages, is formed. Men come together for mutual defense. They augment power. For there must be intestine government, and there must be submis- sion thereto. These things are nascent and crude ; but, never- theless, as compared with the state of the animals below them, the society of the savages in this world is an immense growth toward development. But as you go still higher, you will find not only that this is true, but that there comes in the social, as distinguished from this animal conservation. There is developed the society life of the household. In other words, even in savage life flowers blossom here and there, in the midst of rudeness and coarse- THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 397 ness and cruelties and unutterable degradations. The golden candlestick begins to be set up in the house, and the light of maternal love begins to shine out. There begin to be the seminal forms of the higher life in which thinking for others, caring for othero and doing for others, is the mainspring of a person's joy. In the lower forms of development, in the earlier stages of society, the bulk of the pleasure of the lower animals or creatures in it is physical. To eat, to drink, to sleep, to ex- perience pleasurable sensations of a physical kind, is the highest conception that they can have of happiness. Then they begin to find happiness in the exertion of them- selves in war, or in the chase, or in commerce, which feeds another stronger instinct. First, mere physical thrills are pleasures. Then rude strength exerted, and the sense of the superiority of man over man, are pleasures. But even in this realm there is developed a still finer element namely, that of heroism. You shall never find the element of heroism in which there is not this inherent quality that it is not for the person's own self, but for another. It is the man who stands on his own thresh- old against twenty men, and slays them to defend his household ; it is the man who, when the safety of the com- monwealth requires some one to go into the gulf, leaps in and perishes ; it is the man who stands for his country or for his kind, and has such exaltation of sentiment that he is care- less of self or forgets himself that is the man who is a hero. It is only the man who rises above self and gives himself for others, or for some great cause, that ever knows heroism, and becomes a hero in poem or in history. As society is further regenerated, we bcp'n to find more and more that the pleasures of men consist in pleasures which they produce in others. There is a low, corrupt form of it in fashionable society, and in politeness even. "We speak sweetly to men because it makes them speak sweetly to us. We make men happy because we know that they must pay their debts, and make us happy. This is a low form of, a rude seeking after, an important principle which underlies the very genius of Christianity namely, that your happiness 398 THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. comes from making other people happy from using yourself for the welfare of others ; but the essentially heroic nature is shown in generosity, in devotion, in fidelity, in magna- nimity. Even coarse, rude men remember the sensations of a great generosity more than almost any others, as is shown by the way they repeat them and boast of them. Men have a drunken revel ; and the wild night rages till the morning dawns, with what they call pleasure ; but after all, when one of them goes out at daybreak, somewhat sobered, and hears a cry of distress, and, following it, sees a woman set upon by brutal villains, and thrusts himself, without a question, into the affray, and makes her case his own, and with high con- flict and some wounds smites them down, and slays them, and delivers her, a thousand nights of debauch are forgotten, and that one act of heroism, in which he put life and power and everything magnanimously at stake for an unknown per- son, he never forgets. Nay, where, if you were to look, would you expect to find the greatest happiness in this world ? I think the old miser is happy. Happy ? Yes, just as boys are that make music on old tin pans. When I was a boy I drummed on the old meal-chest, and to me it was music that I made ; but the word came to me, '"Stop that noise !" and I marveled at the want of taste in men with regard to such things. There are joys of various kinds joys of avarice, joys of dissipation, joys of ambition, joys of vanity. It is absurd to say that there is no pleasure in these things. If there was not, the whole world would not go after them. But, after all, where is there the most joy ? You know just as well as I do that not the most resplendent things, not the things that are the most reported, are the most joy-producing. You know, taking all things together, that there is more joy in home than anywhere else. The mother, singing by her cradle side, does not care that routs and parties are going on in the community. Her babe is more to her than all the pleasures that could, be shed upon her from all the resplen- dent gatherings in the world. And what is her babe to her ? A burden. Yes ; but it is one of those burdens which are THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 399 light. What is it ? A yoke of servitude. Yes ; but it is an easy yoke. What is her babe to her ? A remunerator ? It does not even know her. It does not understand a word she says. She carries it in her bosom all night. It eats her. It is her jailej. It shuts her up in the house. It takes her from a thousand habits and accustomed ways of life. Dress no longer seems comely to her. Friendships are all swal- lowed up in this object of her care and affection. She gives her life to it, making it new day and night. She pours her life out on the most helpless of things that lives on God's globe. And she is the happiest creature ! She never seems to herself so happy as when, with her healthy child, she sits, and it croons, and she sings. Her happiness consists in emptying herself, and in pouring everything that is sweet and beautiful and noble in womanhood into this unconscious receptacle her little child. Look at the whole household life. When there are six or eight unlicked cubs running about the house there is some racket, and there are some crosses to bear ; but is there any- thing in this world that men look back to so much as to the old home ? They remember it for some reasons, and for others ; but, after all, with its instructions, with its regula- tions, with its restraints, with its "No's," with its "You shall's," and with everything else, it is the Eden of a man's memory. And when old age makes men's hands quiver, after they have gone through u long life, they have forgotten almost everything but home. That they remember, even to the moss on the bucket, and to the weather-stain on the old wall ; and father and mother live even when God is for- gotten, so strong is the impression of the household. Now, the household is the only place on earth where, regularly, and by the force of nature, men live self-sacrificing and self-renouncing lives. You talk to me of heroism ; and what is heroism but a spark from the- household, taken and carried out and made into a flame at large in life ? What a mother does every day of her life nobody celebrates ; but let her do that on a sphere as large as the world's sight, and then she is a heroine. Grace Darling, to save an unknown person, became heroic ; but a mother gives herself with a 400 THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRTFICE. thousand times more pain-bearing, in obscurity, to save one, two, or three children. It is common ; and the simple want of publicity does not make it less heroic. Heroism is cheap. It is so abundant in the family that we do not think of it. Self-renunciation bold, cheerful, ample, continuous we see it all the time in the household ; we admire it ; it enriches our nature ; it is magnificent ; and if the poet, like Tenny- son, can sing it so that all the world hears it, it is heroic. If any one outside of the family does the same thing for his country, it raises the stock of human life immensely. Thus that which is common in the family, outside of the family makes a man a hero. Who would not, for those he loves, do anything, bear any- thing, suffer anything ? What is there that is hard to bear if one only loves enough ? Why is it that men lie still and cannot make headway ? Why is it that so many are bound, and cannot make sail ? It is because the ocean of love is run out, and they are stuck in the mud of the lower life of selfishness. But when the tide comes back of a noble, gen- erous, loving spirit, which is always self-renunciating and self-sacrificing, then men are lifted up from the shallows on which they are lying, and they make their voyage of life easily. When, therefore, men carry out into the world-life the words and deeds of the household, they are praised and looked upon as happy. Yea, there is many a selfish, envious, proud, stingy, cold, coarse man, who, looking upon some generous devoted act, says, "My God ! if I could only do such a thing as that I should be happy ! " yes, so you would ; there is no doubt about that ; but you will not do it. Men will not cultivate the moods out of which such actions are developed. I give these illustrations to show you that the essential nature of self -sacrifice -is not pain-bearing; that it is not an impossible thing ; that it is an interpretation of the higher nature ; that it is following, in this animal sphere, one of the great secrets and principles of eternal manhood, of spiritual life namely, that they who have learned how to live for others have learned, too, how to live as God lives, and THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 401 heaven lives, and the universe lives, and therefore how to live happily. I have illustrated it by calling your attention to the fact that, as in the household life of men God has ordained such living on a low plane, and in a comparatively narrow sphere, the observation of it there will show that the inherent nature of self-renunciation is pleasure, not pain, and that it brings joy, not sorrow. I do not like to have men misinterpret what is going on before their eye?. I hear men say, "Is it not strange that that dried-up soul should have everything, almost, given to him, in life, houses, lands, all that heart could wish, while Kossuth, that heroic man whose name the world will never let die till the memory has perished, is an exile, is living far from his native land and his friends, and is a wanderer?" Let me tell you that your pity is not needed. If I were to go to Italy and search for the happiest man that lives there, probably I should take Louis Kossuth, whose soul is fed on noble thoughts, whose life has been consecrated to sacrifice ; because he who knows how to easily give up all has inherited all, on the principle which Christ enunciated when he said of his disciples, that if they gave up everything to follow him, they should inherit all things. He who knows how to serve gloriously is always served gloriously. He that gives from his lower life is paid in the augmentation of his higher life. You know very well that I do not believe in a technical theology which teaches us that man fell from a high state of perfection : on the contrary, I believe that he began at the bottom, and never had any altitude to fall from ; that he has been working his way up, through historic periods, all the time ; and that there is a point at which, having been an ani- mal, he becomes a spiritual being. I do not mean to give my faith to the theory that he was ever a brute, absolutely ; I do not commit myself to such an idea as that at all ; but I do believe that the human race, as a race, began its career on the earth at the lowest conceivable seminal point at which a human race can exist, and that everything that they have gained they have gained by gradual unfolding, evolution and education. Living on the flesh plane, they acted according to the law of self-defense, and everything was for me. On 402 THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. the next higher plane, almost everything was for Me, but something was for You, for the sake of keeping you peaceable with me. On the still higher plane of civility and patriotism and heroism, they lived more largely for others, but mostly yet for Me. But when they came to the spiritual plane, out broke the divine principle, and they lived no longer for the lower animal nature, or for the social nature, with a small distribution of self, nor even for a patriotic sentiment, with a large and more heroic distribution of self ; they came into that spirit in which they lived for others. That is God. It is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, who, though he was made in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no repu- tation, and took upon himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, and not only that, but the most ignominious death, the death of the cross. Wherefore God hath highly exalted him. God, by that everlasting decree on which the universe stands ; God, by the inscrutable law which runs through all eternity, exalted him the law that he who gives most is highest, and that he who keeps back most is lowest. He that would be chief, let him be your slave ; he that would go up, let him come down that is the law : not a special and arbitrary enactment of Christianity ; not a special and arbi- trary duty imposed by the church, but a decree brought into the world first by the Lord Jesus Christ. The race had so far risen, when the fullness of times came, that it was pos- sible to develop higher forms of life in which a new kingdom was to break out with effulgence and glory ; and here was a revelation of it. That law is, Use the whole power of your life for other men. So you shall harmonize your own life, and fill it with blessedness. " Take my yoke and my burden," says Christ ; " they are light, and they are easy, and they shall bring rest to your souls." Live for yourselves, and you fret; live for others, and all goes smoothly. Live for yourselves and you moan, you are dissatisfied, you are despondent, you are filled with pinings and conflicts and jealousies ; live for others, give up THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 493 all Hiing.s to God and to mankind, and count yourself but an accumulated force under the law of love, and life will be bright above, and bright beneath, and bright in the eternal future. And now, to-day, we are going to celebrate, for the last time this summer, and peradventure for the last time on earth, the Lord's Supper. Who may come and take it ? To whom is it offered ? For whom is it ? What is it ? It is bread for the hungry that stands here to-day, saying, "I represent God." What is it? It is the crushed cluster in these cups that stand here to-day, saying, "I am Jehovah." It is that which sets forth to men the giving up of all things for others. That is the divine ideal. That is the conception of God, who lives, not to be the center of the universe, hav- ing all things flow in, as into a mighty vortex, toward him. God sits throwing out everywhere, like the sun, light and warmth and power; and he represents himself by the loaf and crushed cluster, saying, "As the loaf feeds others and not itself, and fulfills its nature in giving food and strength to others, so do I eternally give myself to others." As the cluster gives its life, its very innermost blood, that others may be cheered, itself being destroyed, but gloriously reap- pearing in those that are helped, so it symbolizes the nature of the God of all grace and all joy. Oh, how blessed to be God, if that means to be forever, and with infinite circles, joy upon joy joy, not in the form of abstract raptures, that roll like airs through the atmosphere, but joy by exalting men, by ennobling them, by sanctifying men, by teaching them a nobler manhood, and waiting till they grow up into it by the divine power ol inshining, and so making them joyful here preparatory to the outburst of eternal joy there. Now, who may come to this table ? "I was baptized in my youth ; my parents were Christians ; they brought me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ; I was catechized up and down and crosswise , I know the catechism from end to end, and I believe it the Westminster Catechism, I mean ; and I have always been accustomed to the house of God." It is said that knowledge puffeth up. I do not ask you to come if that is all the reason you have. " But I belong to the true 404 THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. church. Jesus Christ founded the church, and ordained great officers in it, and empowered them to forgive sins, and I have had priestly remission and absolution ; and therefore I have a right to come. " If all you have is from the touch of man's hand, however sacred and reverend, I do not invite you to come. I do not give this invitation to a churchman, or to a member of the church ; I do not give it to those who are moral ; I do not give it to those who respect the services of religion, and mean to do something toward supporting them in the community. But if there be any soul, in the church or out of the church, that has been touched with priestly hands, or that has never been touched with priestly hands, but that believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thinks it is a glorious thing to be God, and do good, and spread joy and goodness throughout the universe if there be any soul that is kindled in the light of God's inspiration, and says, "I, too, want to live in that way," that soul I invite. But there is much for you to overcome before you can do it ; and you must fight the battle for yourself ; saying, " If God will help me I will fight that battle." Are there those who say, "I am conscious of my infirmities of temper, and of im- moralities of life, but I see what the higher life is, and by the help of God I will live toward it, and will from this hour endeavor to consecrate myself to the welfare of men, as God consecrates himself to my welfare ; I will give my life, as far as I know how to give it, for the good of others ; I will renounce selfishness and I will embrace benevolence, because it is his command" ? Now come and ratify that vow. As you take the bread, and as it gives you strength, determine in yourself that your life shall be as a loaf to others, and that you will give your strength to them. As you take the wine that exhilarates, pray that all the power which is in you may be as courage to the discouraged, and consolation to the dis- consolate^ If you are willing to consecrate all your power of body and soul to the welfare of your fellow-men, I ask you to come. I ask you not because you are sinless you are very sinful; not because you do your whole duty you fall far short of your whole duty : I invite you to come because, realizing your sinfulness, and your imperfect performance of THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 405 duty, you are striving to overcome your sins and fulfill your duty ; and 1 invoke on you the spirit of God ; and if you per- severe you will find that you are advancing from class to class. As you rise from the primary school to the academy, from the academy to the college, and from the college to the profes- sional school, so, in the Christian life, if you are faithful, you will advance in the higher way of living for others, until you have become like Christ, and understand more and more of him, and return with larger and larger power of peace find gentleness and goodness, and pour it out on the unlovely and upon the unworthy, and until you have this testimony in yourself : " By the grace of God I live, not for myself, but for others." Then, in that spirit, when death comes, it opens the ears to the eternal rapture, it gives to the heart eternal life, and it brings you, with your introduction writ- ten in your own soul, into the presence of God and joying angels. 406 THE DELIGHT! OF SELF-SACRIFICE. PKAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON.* WE rejoice, O Lord Jesus, that by the power of thy name men still are called from death to life, that by faith of thee joy takes posses- sion of sorrow, that hope is more than fear, and that there is victory even in defeat. We rejoice that all the streams of human affairs the temptations of pleasure, the power of pride, the organized forces of human life are not so much as the power of thy Spirit; that thou dost still, against the world and against all its seductions, bring forth children unto thyself, redeeming them from thrall, creating in them new hearts, and giving them a new spirit filled with love, with joy, with hope and with patience; that finally thou dost carry them forward to the very end ; and that having loved thine own, thou dost love them to the end. To thy holy care and keeping we commit the beloved ones who have been brought into this household of faith. We ask not that their faith may always be one of light or one of ease, but that thou wilt grant to them the secret of songs in the night, of light inward where there is outward darkness, and strength to endure hardness as good soldiers when thou dost lead them in a strait and narrow way. We pray that their life may not be hid except in Christ. May they shine forth upon the world that which they learn of him. We pray that they may be made fruitful in their spheres of labor. And as thou hast appointed to them severally, grant that they may adorn both the doctrine of Christ and the name of the Saviour, by bearing his Spirit among men. We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon the great brotherhood ; and more and more wilt thou be with every member of this church with each one in his own personal experiences, in his trials, in his secret, inward, hidden life, known only to God. Grant that there may be breathed upon the very springs of action the sanctifying influences of the divine Spirit. We pray that thou wilt bless all of us in our household life. More and more may we learn of God by the interpretation of our daily experiences. More and more may our love, our friendship, our life be sanctified, that it may reflect upon us the truths of the eternal world. Grant that all the members of this church, in their outgoing and incoming, in their various and appropriate duties in society at large, may bear in them a true manliness. May they have that man- hood which is in Christ Jesus. We beseech of thee that they may have force, and enterprise, and victorious accomplishment in the things whereunto they set their hand. May they be diligent in busi- ness and fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. And grant that they may serve thee, not alone in their thoughts in the household and in the church, but in their business, so that everywhere they may be witnesses for Him who loved them, and who gave himself for them. We pray that their spirit may be so guided and so disciplined as that they shall make known to men by their unconscious life, even more than by their words, what is the secret of God with men. We pray * Immediately following' the reception of members into the church. THE DELIGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 40? that thou wilt comfort them in any trial which may come upon them. Be near to any, we beseech of thee, who are sitting in darkness, and in great trouble. May the Lord be their counsellor. And grant that there may be for them, not day and night, but perpetual day; for where thou art no darkness can dwell. Where thou art there can be no weakness. Where thou art is peace which the world never gives, and which the world cannot take away. Grant, we beseech of thee, that if there come up any trouble, sud- den, great, and hard to be borne, they may be strengthened in their emergencies, not to forsake their faith in their Saviour. Be near to the sick ; and be near to those who watch with them, in all the alternations of day and night, with fear. Wilt thou strengthen them day by day ; and may their trust in God never fail them. We pray that thou wilt be with those who are perplexed in busi- ness. Be with those whom care rests upon heavily. We pray that thou wilt be with the Israel of God everywhere. Wilt thou be in the hearts of all thy people continually immovable. We pray that thou wilt bless the churches that are this day assembled in this city, and in the great city near us, and throughout all our land. We rejoice that there are so many, and that there is so much power in them. If there be such error of thought and teaching as diminishes the power in any, we pray that by thy Spirit they may be guided into a more perfect knowledge of thy truth. Bless even the fragments of truth everywhere, so that whether Christ be preached of contention or in earnest, he may still be made known to man, and blessed to the salvation of their souls. We pray for those who labor for the promotion of intelligence. We pray for those who are installed in places of great influence. We pray for all presidents of colleges, for all professors, and for all teachers of academies and common schools. We pray for those who write books, and for those who are editing papers, and sending them forth as leaves of the tree of knowledge throughout this land. May they be guided by the inspiration of God. We pray that thou wilt grant that intelligence may not disjoin itself from virtue, but that knowledge may lead to that righteousness which shall make men perfect before thee. We beseech of thee that thy kingdom may come, not alone in this favored land, but in all lands. We pray for peace. We pray that those evils from which discontent and discord have sprung may be abated. O Lord, we pray that nations may learn war no more, and that they may cease to live in their animal nature. Grant that men may no longer be as lions, and eagles, and beasts of destruction : mako the power of men to reside in their goodness of heart and in their intelligence and virtue. So may the day of ignorance and superstition and violence pass away, and cruelties cease to exist upon the earth. And grant that that great and glorious day may speedily come when Christ shall take to himself his power, ajd rule over the earth as he rules in the heaven. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. And to thy name shall be the praise, Fainer, Son, and Spirit Amen. TRUTH-SPEAKING. "Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man the truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another." Eph. iv., 25. Deceit is the sign of inferiority. It runs toward animal conditions of life. It is the sign of weakness. In the order of nature, that which cannot be done by discretion nor by strength, animals do by craft, by deceit ; and in the lower stages of human development deceit is common : and under such circumstances it does not take on, either to them or to us, the heinousness of guilt to the degree that it does after men have been civilized. In other words, we tolerate, in the lower stage of moral development, things which become intolerable in the higher stage of moral development. We see in the old patriarchs instances of cunning and deceit which would absolutely ruin the reputation of men in our times who were of a correspond- ing rank in life. They were blemishes ; but the gravity of the offense is tempered in our judgment by the circum- stances, by the small knowledge, by the few helps which surrounded those men. I propose, to-night, to speak some wholesome words on a subject which once was considered worthy of a good deal of instruction, and some practice namely, the subject of truth- speaking. To "speak every man truth with his neighbor" is a duty and doctrine of Christianity. Lying is in terms forbidden. SUNDAY EVENING, May 17, 1874. LESSON : Prov. ., 1-22. HYMNS (Plymouth Col- lection) : X"8. 102, 513. B57. 412 TRUTH-SPEAKINQ. "Lie not one to another, since ye have put off the old man with his deeds," as well as, "Speak every man the truth with his neighbor," is express and explicit. No man can be a truth-speaker in the sense of the New Testament teaching unless he has fully made up his mind to the intention of telling the truth and that, not sometimes, but always. When a man is determined to be a truth- speaker, and to reflect, as far as he reflects anything, things as they are, between man and man, then it is not always possible for him to tell the truth ; because it requires a great deal of knowledge to tell the truth, and it requires no incon- siderable amount of practice. It is an education both to know what is true, and to know how far to speak, and how far to be silent. For, telling the truth is not random talk- ing. It is an administration which requires an understanding and interpreting moral sense, and no inconsiderable amount of practice and skill in the affairs of life. He who discerns things aright, and knows times and seasons, and the fitness of matters, and speaks invariably the simplicity of truth, has well nigh completed his warfare with himself, and with the world, and may be counted, as James says, "a perfect man," because he bridles his tongue. No man can be a truth-speaker who does not love the truth ; to whom truth is not as to a musician's ear chords are ; with whose nature it does not harmonize. It is impos- sible for men to speak the truth occasionally with any consid- erable degree of success unless they speak it habitually, for the love of it ; unless they love it, as is expressed elsewhere, "in the inward parts." The habit of speaking the truth implies a whole cast of life. I have said that it belongs to an ideal manhood. More than that, it will symmetrize the man around a divine centre. For, as soon as a man has made up his mind always to speak the thing that is true, he will not speak near as much as otherwise he would be apt to. " In the multitude of words, there wanteth not sin," we are told ; and there is a great deal too much talking in this world, considering what stuff it is made up of. Men who catch what they hear easily too easily; men who hear everything that is said about every- TRUTH-SPEAKINQ. 413 body, and who go to and fro among their fellows such men, if they love the truth, and mean to speak it, will become very cautious as to how they repeat things or say things that they do not know to be true. A restraining in- fluence will be exercised upon their tongue, making it cir- cumspect, wise of discourse, and accurate of statement. Not only will the determination to speak the truth make men cautious, often leading them to take refuge in silence, but it will naturally tend to make them reflective. It in- duces men to study things which come to the mind in the nature of cause and effect. Is it best ? Is it kind ? Would it do good ? Silence is usually safe. Speech is not always safe. He who means to speak the truth knowing that it may wound, that it may injure, and becomes thoughtful of the result, studying the relation of cause to effect, is a truth- speaker. But more than that, since he who speaks the truth must needs speak of himself and of his own affairs continually, if he has entered into covenant with his own soul that he will speak that which is true if he speaks at all, that determination, foregoing and habitual, will have a great influence in keeping his thoughts of life such that he will dare to speak the truth. Men do things in privacy which they never would think of doing in public. Men do things away from home that you could not persuade them to do at home. When out from under the inspection of their fellows, men live much more loosely (they think more largely, but I think more loosely,) than they do at other times; and if a man is to speak the truth, he cannot well afford to be other than an honorable, straightforward, right- meaning, fair, man ; so that the determination of a man to speak the truth very soon begins to have a reactionary influence upon him. Let any man begin life with the conceit that he is a man of force, and that he can use truth as an instrument, parrying with it, piercing with it, defending himself with it, handling it as a skillful man would handle cards, playing them as he pleases, and the reactionary influence upon his disposition is to the last degree mischievous. On the other hand, let a 414 TRUTH-SPEARING. man begin life with the purpose, " So far as -in me lies, so far as I can discern what is truth, I will either be silent or I will speak that which is true," and it produces a prodigious moral restraint upon him, and alters the genius of his life, the whole shape and purpose of his education, and the con- duct of affairs. So that a man who means to use the truth runs in spirals, and is always crooked, whether going back- ward or forward ; whereas the man who means to speak the thing that is true goes in right lines, is a righteous man. The simple quality of truth-speaking is not that it is con- venient. In his talking a man will find very soon that to speak the truth requires that he should do a great deal more that he should think better, that he should feel better, and that he should purpose better things. As one who sits where all men, going by and looking through the door or window, see. him, sits with more grace than he otherwise would, so he who, speaking the truth, and admitting men to a knowledge of himself, of his affairs, of his thoughts and his feelings, must needs have those thoughts and feelings better behaved. Yea, yea ; nay, nay ; simplicity, transparency, a state of mind which you are not ashamed to have known these elements of character make a prodigious difference with a man. Wherever a man begins to speak the truth as the genius of his life ; wherever he lays the founda- tions of his life on this, whatever may happen, saying, " Let my state be high or low, successful or unsuccessful, one thing I purpose in myself, and that is that I will be a truth-think- ing and truth -speaking man," wherever a man takes that ground, and follows it, he has marked the outlines of a char- acter that cannot fail to grow in integrity, in beauty, in praiseworthiness, in knowledge, nay, in profitableness ; for I aver that although for immediate purposes, force, and du- plicity, and cunning, and craft, may be profitable, yet, in the long run, there is nothing so profitable in this world as right- down manliness, honesty, truth, fidelity, and reliableness. When we urge these things we are, of course, met by a thousand casuistical difficulties. I propose to look at these, though neither very leniently nor very severely. In the first place, the habits of society are such that men TRUTH-SPEAKING. 415 are beguiled, aiid almost unable to tell where the bounds are between right and wrong in this matter of simplicity in the representation of truth. The more you look into society, the more you mingle with men, the more you will be struck with the fact that those who are amiable and kind and good are extremely conscientious in the matter of strict truthfulness. I have met some who loved the truth in such a way that they could not speak other than the truth, and that the truth and they were one and the same thing ; but they are rare excep- tions. There are a great many who abhor coarse, vulgar, mischievous, malignant, needless lies, but who nevertheless regard the indirections, equivocations, and sly duplicities of life with great allowance. You can lie by lifting up your eye-brows ; you can lie by a nod ; you can lie by silence. In other words, the inten- tional producing on another person's mind an impression not in accordance with the truth is what I understand by not being truthful. The voluntary producing on another man's mind an impression that is true, is what I understand by being absolutely truthful. Now, there is a tendency of men in life, through the inquisitiveness of some, and through the morbid curiosity or the combativeness of others, to make a bad use of the truth. In the battles of life, in its rivalries, in its conflicts, men do not think it safe to let other people know many things that they know and it may not be safe. It does not follow, because you are to be truthful, that you must tell everything that you know. There are thousands of things that you have a right to keep to yourself ; there are thousands of things that it is every man's duty to conceal ; but so far as there is overtness in the matter of speaking, it should be accord- ing to the law of truth. It sometimes may be unpleasant, and may produce disturbance ; but in the long run it is the safest. It makes a nobler character, wins more confidence, and prepares the future for better achievements than a resort to indirections or equivocations. There are what may be called untruths of benevolence; and the question comes up, " Do you believe we ought always to tell the truth to the sick ? " No, I do not ; but I do think 416 TRUTH-SPEAKING. that we ought not to tell an untruth to a sick person, or to anybody else. " Do you think we ought to tell the truth to the unwary and the innocent?" No, not necessarily; but you have no right to tell them that which is untrue. I know how many cases occur in the sick chamber and elsewhere, in which persons are tempted, from kind considerations, to evade the truth ; and I have nothing to say in regard to them but this : that whatever may be tolerated on the ground of human weakness and infirmity, in a lower type of manhood, untruth under any circumstances is inconsistent with the highest conception of true manhood. I shall not go into the details of these things, but let me suppose the case of the Lord Jesus Christ resorting to these indirections which are thought to be excusable in men. No conceivable false impression can be imagined to have been made by him without producing a shock on every man's mind. You will defend yourself, you will defend the physi- cian, you will defend the Gospel, you will defend the business man, you will defend your friend or neighbor, and say, " "Well, it was a falsehood ; but then it was to save a man's life ; it was to do good ; it was for this, that or the other be- nevolent purpose ;" thus on the human plane you justify it ; but when you apply it to your ideal Being, you cannot toler- ate it in him, because it is inconsistent with ideal perfection. You could not tolerate it in Christ or in God. And it is in- consistent with the highest type of manhood. I am not speaking of whether we can live the highest life of manhood : I say that absolute sincerity and truthfulness are indispensable to the highest conception of true manhood. There are also what may be called untruths of fear. I think, to a very large extent, in early youth especially, the untruths which children tell are the result of fear. The un- truths of childhood are not always caused by fear, but a large proportion of them are. Our children begin their lives as little animals, and they have animal inclinations and tenden- cies ; and frequently it is not until a later period, when the intellectual and moral forces are developed, that their minds are balanced. Many a Christian mother foretells that her child will come to the gallows, because he lies so ; but it is TRUTH-SPEAKING. 417 only that he is an animal, and he is using his animal nature. By and by, when the social, intellectual and moral forces are developed, all that will be overruled full easily. Many a lying child has made a truthful man. Therefore, in the lower stages of life that is, in the youth and inexperience of children nothing is so provoca- tive of falsehood as the government which is frequently ad- ministered in the household, where threats, where chastise- ments, where sudden eruptions of violent anger, meet the child that has done wrong. I know that when I was a boy I told a great many lies, and that I never told one on purpose. Indeed, I think I rather loved the truth ; but being a child, and being sensitive to suffering, I dreaded punishment : and when I saw it threatening to carry me down like a flood, I dodged it ; and it was dread of my father that made me lie, and not my love of untruth. It was said to be a temptation of the devil. Yes, but he had his instruments. In schools many and many are, by indiscreet government, forced into falsehood. The self-defending instinct is very strong ; and it is to be borne in mind, in dealing with young persons of a sensitive nature, that often we tempt them more than they can bear, and fear overpowers their feeling of conscience. But not the young alone are liable to insincerities, equivo- cations, and falsehoods. These things are part and parcel of adult life. Everywhere men feel themselves justified in untruths by fear of the consequences of the truth. I have only to say that this is inconsistent with the highest ideal of manhood. When a man tells a falsehood, and says, "I know it is a blemish, but circumstances were such that I could not take the other course," he boldly avows that he lives below his ideal ; and every man does who, through fear, sacrifices absolute truth. A truth so told as to deceive is as much a falsehood as though the elements of it were themselves false. How often do we see persons who, in bargains and business, make state- ments which are simply and absolutely true, but who in doing it throw a shadow on the mind of the hearer which is very different ! He goes away, and acts according to the impres- 418 TRUTH-SPEAKING. sion that was produced, and that was meant to be produced, till the pinch comes ; and then the terms are looked at, and it is found that the words were exactly true, but that, after all, there was a misunderstanding meant and there was a mis- understanding given. There is no falsehood worse than that which a truth tells. It is quite possible for men to be true in every word, and yet false in the whole impression made. I need not dwell on the more flagrant kinds of untruth those of self-interest by which men bait their hook with falsehood that they may catch the unwary. I need not tell you how bad all those lies are which are mixed up in business. I may say, though, that however you may permit, that how- ever you may make customary, that however by public senti- ment you may authorize, certain sorts of untruth or equivo- cation, they are unworthy of manhood, and unworthy of business. I hold that that administration of affairs, whether it be national, commercial, political, or personal, is relatively low which adulterates the truth by any form of equivocation or indirection. If you look into the ways of life, you shall find that falsehood is organic so much so that it is very difficult to walk straight in the paths of business. Business is so organ- ized that he who conducts it is almost of necessity bound to insincerity and to indirection. What shall the young man do who is expected to state the thing that is equivocal or to lose his place ? He is expected, not to lie, but to deceive ; not to tell a falsehood, but to fib ; not to utter a black false- hood that has no profit in it, but a white one that brings custom and is profitable. He revolts at it, and he is told very plainly, "Look here, young man, you are green; and you will either have to walk out of this concern, or else you will have to come to this matter ;" and at last he does come to it, not intending it, not wishing it, but bent to it by the force of circumstances. How often do we find, not simply that the conduct of affairs is such that it requires more firmness than most men have to avoid untruth, but that untruth is wrought in liter- ally upon the very fabric of society itself ! Men who traffic know that they are trafficking in false appearances, in adulter- TRUTH-SPEAKING. 419 ations, in motives that are unlawful, in ten thousand elements that falsify to the expectation and to the faith of those with whom they deal. Now, we cannot afford this. It belongs to a low stage of civilization. You cannot sell shoddy for good fabric, you cannot sell articles of food basely adulterated, you cannot adulterate medicines, you cannot forge wines or strong drinks, you cannot make business itself all the way through insincere and false, and yet pretend to maintain a high stage of civili- zation. Nor can men deal continuously in these things, and consent to them, and further them, and yet maintain the highest type of manhood. You may say, " I do not pretend to maintain the highest type of manhood ; I admit the blemish and flaw, I accept it, and go on with it, and will take the consequences. " That is another matter ; but the piteous thing is that men think they are honest, think they are religious, and even think they are eminently spiritual men ; they think they are acceptable to God ; they dwell in very sweet reveries about heaven ; they talk about the indwelling of the Spirit of God ; and yet, when you come to scrutinize the conduct of their affairs, the construction of their life, the management of their business matters, you will find organized into the whole thread and fabric of their career more or less falsity. Do I say that it vacates their religion ? No, I do not think it does. I think a man may be religious in spots. I should be sorry to think that everybody was a hypocrite who was different at one time from what he was at another. If you take temptation from men, and relieve them from the pressure of self-interest, and bring them into the church, and they begin to lift their thoughts into the higher imaginative ranges beyond them- selves, and you excite in them all sweet associations, and let the truth play upon their most noble faculties, on Sunday they may be better men, and may think better and speak better ; but on Monday they go out and enter into the battle, and the hymn is gone, and the prayer is forgotten, and the sermon no longer sounds in their ear, and the lower faculties begin to work again and do things which are inconsistent with all their moods an 1 professions of yesterday ; and yet it 420 TRUTH-SPEAKING. is unintentional they do not mean to be hypocrites. Under one class of circumstances one class of faculties is excited, and under another class of circumstances another class of faculties is excited. Men are inconsistent, often, who are not insincere. They are untrue to their own highest ideal, and they act in ways that are contrary to their purposes. So I perceive men to be right in spots, carrying up some elements of character nobly and beautifully ; but some sides of themselves they allow to sink low down and become mis- chievous; they are irregular and comparatively speaking low-toned in their religious life. For no spiritual fervor can ever make up for the want of ethical correctness. The two elements which men need are morality at the bottom and spirituality at the top ; for mere morality is dull, heavy, unless it is spiritualized ; and spirituality is evanes- cent, and like the early morning cloud, unless it has its lower roots run down into sound practical life. Both things are needful. How, when society is constructed as it is, men who are in the administration of affairs shall escape and be able to make new channels, is a very serious question. It is very difficult for a man to be a public officer and be truthful. It is very difficult for a man to be a lawyer and be truthful. It is difficult for a man to be a physician and be truthful. Not that men in these callings are so depraved that they want to be untruthful ; they want to be truthful ; but they find them- selves so met by influences, hedged in by walls, confined to ways in which custom makes their feet to walk, that con- stantly and unwillingly and unwittingly they run into the evils of falsehood. Therefore it would seem as though there were no way of avoiding these evils except by changing the organic structure of the human race. Falsity so inheres in the framework and substance of society, that men who do not wish to be untruthful are constantly drawn down and made to be false to their best ideals of themselves. And yet, I believe it is in the power of all men more than they do, and of some men altogether, to be superior to their circumstances. I admit that those great influences which are acting night and day insensibly, and with a distributed TRUTH-SPEAKINO. 421 and continuous power, do in the long run constitute the strongest forces that act upon men ; but I believe in that illumination of the spirit, that life of the soul given by the power of God, by which a man may be superior to his cir- cumstances, and even to these constantly outlying and inbeat- ing influences which deteriorate his life. Meanwhile, there is nothing clearer in the world than the unprofitableness of all trick, fraud, guise, insincerity, dis- honesty, and untruthf ulness. And it is for the interest of every man, no matter what his business may be, and no mat- ter how many he has to serve him, that truth should be spoken between man and man. It is not the mother alone who ought to be an instructor of the truth, teaching the child at her knee the sacredness and honor of it ; it is not love alone that is interested in having the truth spoken ; it is not the priest alone, who instructs men to fear God, and love the truth, and labor for ideal character and purity ; the man- ufacturer is interested in having the truth told ; the mer- chant is ; the customer is ; the low in society the wretched poor are. One of the greatest curses of human life is the waste which is occasioned in communities by reason of the indulgence in untruth between man and man, disintegrating society, enfeebling affairs, making them operose, rendering them hard to be borne. We are incessantly punished a thousand-fold for our transgressions in this life as well as in the life which is to come. Against every temptation, then, against every seeming ne- cessity, I lift up the higher ideal of manliness, the truer wisdom, the nobler path, and say to every one who is now venturing upon life, and has his way to make, and his char- acter to establish, there is nothing better for you than man- hood. There is no favor, no parentage, no capital, that can be compared to that. A man who stands in the midst of affairs, tested, tried, proved to be a man of unswerving in- tegrity, a man of absolute truth, a man that is true, faithful, honest, honorable, is more valuable than gold, even in a com- mercial point of view. A man in politics who, though he may be ambitious and partisan, is shown to be faithful, hon- 422 TRUTH-SPEAKING. orable and trustful even in politics such a man, in the long run, wins. One reason why there are so many mushrooms and puff-balls in society is that men forswear morality. In the great bustle of commerce, in the conflict of affairs, in the heated ways of public life, men think that it is not only safe but justifiable and profitable for them to set aside the fundamental qualities of true manhood. That is the reason why, when they are cut down, they never rise again. We honor great men ; but it does not take much to make a great man in a community where there are newspapers. Great men have a campaign; great men have one term in Congress ; great men have a five years' or a ten years' career in the State Legislature ; and great men think themselves to be immovably great ; but many great men fall, and once fall- ing, never rise again. It does not hurt some things to fall. The elastic ball, when it falls, springs up again ; the solid metal, when it falls, may not spring up, but it is solid yet ; but find me an apple that, though fair of skin, is rotten at the core, and let that once fall, and what becomes of it ? However tempting it looks, when the shaking hand once touches it, and it falls, shall it rise again ? Suppose, as an application of this discourse, I should per- suade some of you to try this way of life ? Suppose I should persuade the maiden, no longer to guile, no longer to elegant indirections, no longer to the most exquisite and winning wiles and craft, but to simplicity and to truth. Is there any- thing that makes the virtuous matron a noble pattern of wo- manhood more than this she always speaks the truth? " My wife," said a man to me, " needs no memory. No matter what she says to-day, she need not trouble herself to think what she said yesterday or the day before. It w^s true then, and it is true now." The old proverb is, "Liars should have long memories ;" but no man ever had a mem- ory so long and deft as to make consistent a long thread of indirections that multiply themselves indefinitely. There is no ideal like that of a reliable character. There is nothing so venerable and noble as a man who is true, who means truth, and who casts upon every one the atmosphere of truth. TPUTII-FlPEARTXii. 423 It is better a thousand-fold than the best devices, or than the cunningest quips and quirks. It is essentially noble. It is of God, and God-like. And in the great battle of life, where so many go down corrupted for want of good morals, a young man can take no shield better than truth, the love of it, and the purpose to stand by it, swearing fidelity to it, and taking evil report as on the way to final good report. This is the very best equipment a man can have so far as his success among men is concerned. It takes a little longer to build on truth and morality. He that builds on these qualities builds so much deeper, and builds with so much more ease, that it takes more time ; but once built, truth and rectitude stand. They who are too much in a hurry ; they who do not believe that truth is neces- sary ; they who are conceited and very venturesome ; they who think that they can, by indirections and glittering insin- cerities, and cunning devices, win success, and stand there- in they, like the fool, rush on and perish. For your own happiness' sake, for the love of those who surround you, for the respect which, first or last, every man longs for in the community in which he dwells, for the noble and honorable old age to which you look forward, and for your hope in God, I commend you to sincerity, to fidelity, to honor, and to truth. Pure and unspotted, stand on the truth ; and in the hour of emergency the truth shall -jtand by you, and repay you a thousand-fold. 424 TRUTH-SPEAKING. PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE bless thee, thou eternal God, that thou hast been pleased to make thyself known to us, not by the dim light of nature alone, not merely by the mute things of creation, but through ourselves, and, above all, through our Brother and Redeemer Jesus Christ ; and that now, in the light of his truth, and life, and revelation, thou art still clearly disclosing thyself by thy Spirit in the experience of those that are drawn unto him and molded into the same image. We rejoice that we have an assurance that thou art. We bear within ourselves an evidence which none can take from us. We thank thee for that disclosure to the soul which cannot come by the understand- ing nor by the process of reasoning, but which comes by the breath of thy Spirit upon ours. We rejoice in thine iuward touch, and in thy presence, which we know by that peace which passeth all under- standing, and by the yearning which we feel for things transcendent and divine, and for that tenderness of heart which is not of man. We rejoice that thou dost inspire in us something of thine own self in the love of things pure, and true, and right. We thank thee for all the disclosures which thou art making in the world. We thank thee that thou art more and more molding the great race of men to right things. We thank thee that righteousness is the law of thy kingdom. Have compassion, we pray thee, upon all who are seeking to live aright, and who are yet filled with infirmities, or are struggling with weakness, or are overpowered by temptation, or are cast down. Thou seest that the battle is too mighty for many. O thou that art the Captain of salvation, come to the rescue of those who are overborne, and of those who are captive, and release them, and become their Redeemer. We beseech of thee that thou wilt look upon those who are tempt- ed more than they are able to bear; upon those who are tempted through selfishness, through pride, by overmuch love of gain, by the praise of men, through indulgence in pleasure, through the affec- tions, and through kindness; upon all who are overtaken with evil; upon all who are besieged with solicitations to vice; upon all who are weak and are assailed by reason of their weakness. O, thou that art a fortress and a refuge for men in trouble, may every one know how to come unto thee and be saved in the day of trouble. We pray that thou wilt kindle in every heart the desire to please thee. We pray that every one may bear about with him the con- sciousness of thy presence, and thy inspection, and thy power. So grant that that strength which is lacking in us may be manifested unto us from the abundance of thy greatness and of thine omnip- otence. We thank thee for sparing mercies. We look back through years to see all the way in which thou hast led us, with wonder and with gratitude. How many have been the evils that have risen up to engulf us I and yet at thy word the storm passed by, and all was calm. From how many destructions, as they seemed to us, have we been gloriously delivered. Our fears have been false prophets. Thou hast been a God of consolation, of light, and of joy; and thou TRUTH-SPEAKING. 425 hast more than fulfilled thy promises to us. When we hare loved but a little, and believed but a little, thou hast done exceeding abun- dantly more for us than we asked or thought, as thou wilt continue to do. Thou dost abound in riches of soul. These are the riches we need purer thoughts; purer aspirations; more fortitude; more self-denial; more setting our faces against the lurking seductions of self-indulgence. We desire and need more and more a sense of the power of the Spiritual world acting upon us, that we may know thtit our true life is in the invisible. So grant thyself unto us, every one, that we may more and more walk as becometh the children of God. If there be those in thy pres- ence who are heartsick, who are weary of their warfare, with whom the way of life is a covered and darkened way, be gracious unto them. Thou that dost comfort the mourner, and dost bless the mourning soul, wilt thou grant to them that lie in darkness all those consola- tions and songs in the night which shall make them praise the Lord. Grant, if there be those in thy presence who are perplexed, not knowing the way of duty, and who eagerly seek to find a path from the intricacies of life, that they may find it. Give them a clear understanding. Point out to them the way of rectitude. May they hear that voice inwardly, saying, This is the way of God ; walk ye in it. We pray that thou wilt help those who strive against their inbred sins, their crooked dispositions, and the habits which have been fast- ened upon them. Grant, if there be any who are carried away by their appetities, and passions, and desires, and who strive to break away from all their temptations and troubles, that they may know that the compassion of God is upon them, and that the help of the Spirit is vouchsafed to them. May they not be afraid, because they are sinful, to look up, or to plead for help. Though they are unworthy, although they have promised and broken their promise a thousand times, may they never give up, but still go to the Physician of their souls, that they may be healed of all their transgressions. We pray that thou wilt grant to all of us a life of truth and fidelity patiently borne. May we be forbearing in pain and long- suffering, in all circumstances of trial. May we live by the power of hope, and overcome despondency. May we accept the law of God every day, as it is revealed in his providence, and say, Thy will be done. May we rejoice with those that do rejoice, and weep with those that weep, condescending to men of low estate, and walking with a sweet fellowship with the men who are around about u?. Grant that we may lead useful lives in all our intercourse one with another in the household, and in the affairs of life, until we are hewn and fashioned into the image and character which shall fit us for the heavenly land. O Lord our God, take anything from us that thou wilt, and put anything upon us that thou wilt; but take not away our portion in heaven. Grant that we may not have our benefits in this life, and lose them in the life that is to come. Give us thy divine wisdom, that godliness which is profitable in all things, having promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come. And 426 TRUTH-SPEAKING. filially, when thou hast perfected thy working in us, bring us through the gate of death to the golden shore. There may we meet those who have gone from us. There may we meet the general assembly and church of the first-born the spirits of just men made perfect. There may we be perfected, and rise through the ages, rejoicing for ever and for ever, praising the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. CI-EANSE us, our Father, from all evil, from aU deceitfulness, and from all the things that tempt us thereto. Forgive us our weakness and our wickedness. Heal us of them, and lead us toward the charity of thy soul. We rejoice that the government of the universe is in the hands of a God of infinite truth ; and yet we rejoice in thy patience with crooked and untruthful men. Win them to better ways. We pray that thou wilt draw, with sweet and benign influence, all those who are in thy presence, toward the truth and a higher manhood, that they may walk and be strong therein. May those who have been wounded be healed. May those who are out of the way be brought back into the strait and narrow path. May those who have indulged in wrong things henceforth do them no more. So we pray that the spirit of religion may work all sweetness and righteous- ness in thy servants, and that thy name may be glorified in the well- doing of those who are thy children. We thank thee for the privileges of the day. Dismiss us from the sanctuary to our homes. Bless our families, that they may be as the gates of heaven to us, through life and its trials. And bring us at last to the joy of the eternal state, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen, THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. " And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and iu fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wis- dom of men, but in the power of God." 1 COB., ii., 1-5. We are not to understand, from the teaching of the apos- tle, that human wisdom or philosophy is to be despised. In the lower realms of life, not only is it indispensable, but it is noble. None exercise it more appropriately than the apostle himself did ; and there is much of the truth that belongs to the material creation. There are large realms of truth that belong to the lower forms of man's own mind and nature, which are to be discovered by the proper use of the reason, acting under conditions of philosophy ; and although this may have carried with it a certain sort of criticism, directly or indirectly, of the Grecian schemes of philosophy, yet there was in them a great power of usefulness. Nothing can reach down through thousands of years, holding the thoughts of men in delightful thrall, which is altogether inapt or foolish ; and yet, although a spade is one of the best things a gardener can have, it would be a very poor thing foi a mother to try to feed her babe with. Although the reason may be admirable, and the uses of it noble, in the lower KVEKINQ, May 24, 187*. LESSON : Phil. U., 1-U. HYMNS (Plymouth Col- lection) : NOB. 066, 838, 316. 430 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. forms, yet there are certain realms of truth, there are cer- tain sorts of knowledge, for which the reason is not adapted. It is not, then, to be understood that the Apostle Paul derided intellection, or systems of philosophy, but that he had a higher thought in his mind than the thought of these things. So, again, it is not to be supposed that the Apostle Paul scoffed at the skillful presentation of truths to men, or a wise approach with knowledge to men's minds ; for he him- self was a pattern. No more adroit man was ever known. No man, standing among Pharisees, or Sadducees, or any others, recognized more than he the necessity of adapting his teaching to those whom he taught, and to the circum- stances in which he taught. When, therefore, he says that he did not come with the wisdom of words, it is not to be understood as being a general fling at rhetorical or oratorical modes of handling the truth ; it is to be understood, rather, as implying that there are some things which the most skill- ful oratory cannot touch ; that there are deeper truths, higher realms, than any which can be reached by rhetoric. Neither did he invalidate in this declaration, those views and representations of God which were already familiar to the Jews, and which pervade the Old Testament. The glory of God as Creator; his sovereignty as Governor; his provi- dence as Administrator these in various ways he often recognized ; but there is something more than these in the divine nature. -. There is something more than a dynastic God ; something more than a rational God ; something more than a God of the heaven and of the earth, creating material forms, and administering an economy of laws. There was something transcendently more noble, deeper, higher, wider, and more influential than the current views of the divine nature. That which was built up, and that which was con- veyed to the minds of men by material figures drawn from the works of creation, from the procession of armies, from the power of the mightiest sovereigns, from those things which men most enjoy and most admire in these elements in their own appropriate sphere this was wise and helpful in THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. 431 leading men's thoughts up to a consideration of the true God ; but then, when one had approached to the central Sovereign of the universe, there was a disposition as well as a govern- ment. There was a God in his relations to the great crea- ^ tion ; but there was a God in his relation to his own children. ** A magistrate is allowed to have no feelings, and yet be- hind all magistracy is the father, the husband, and the friend ; so behind and within the sovereign God, there was the personal and dispositional element of the divine nature ; and it was this that the apostle caught. Perhaps more certainly, more anxiously, and more urgently than any other one, does he express this interior and personal disposition of God, as made manifest in the Lord Jesus Christ ; and it is this that gives us some insight or hint as to the singular use of language which he employs : " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross [why did he not say the preach- ing of Christ ? He, as it were, changed the name. Why, instead of using that glorious Name that is above every name, should he have said, 'The preaching of the cross' not, The preaching of Christ not, The preaching of that gospel system, that system of good news that had irradiated the world, and filled the world with joy? Why should he have said, The preaching of the cross that bloody and hateful instrument of despotism and cruelty ?] is to them that perish foolishness [Yes, and it'is to this day]: but unto us which are saved it is the power of God." What ! The cross the power of God ? In the passage which I read, Paul says : " I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." In other words, he determined not to know Jesus Christ as he walked in Galilee ; as he led captive the throngs of the people ; as he stood in the temple, meeting and matching his adversaries, and unfolding, serenely, and with transcendent power, the secrets of the spirit-land ; or as he was in his ascension at the right hand of God. He determined not to know Christ efflorescent, victorious, attractive, beautiful, winning. He determined not to know even Jesus Christ, when he came among the Corinthians, except as the wounded, the bruised, the crucified. Now, there is in this, when you come to scrutinize it, 432 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. something strange, something mysterious. Because you must remember that this Paul was almost a vagabond Jew. If, in 1859 or 1860, a black man had come from the South to New York, he would have stood against a popular prejudice more notorious than that against which Paul, being a Jew, stood in Corinth, a city that fairly groaned under the luxury that wrapped it round perpetually. The Greeks, like all nations, were conceited, and they thought Corinth was an enormous city, and they thought that all but Greeks were barbarians, as the Jews thought that all but Jews were Gentiles ; and as we think that all but the elect are non-elect, or that all but members of the church are objects of God's uncovenanted mercies which are a great deal better than the covenanted mercies of most folks who are in the church. The Corinthians had this contempt, and especially for the Jews. The Jews were odious to them ; and this Jew was unquestionably a diminutive personage. Paul's references to himself are not flattering. I think the idea conveyed of his physical appearance is that it was insignificant. And when he came to this ornate, luxurious city, this city of various refinement and culture, this city of intellectual, artistic, and esthetic power, it is natural that he should have said to him- self : " Now, I have a difficult thing to do : how shall I do it ? How shall I win this great city ? How shall I gain the ear of these people ? Will not the cacophony of my language grate on their ears? Will not my thoughts and notions clash with theirs, on the subject of divinity? Where are there any analogies between my views and theirs ? How shall I spin my ideas so that they shall join on to theirs ? How can I gain them ? What is there in common between them and me ?" If there was ever one thing that a Jew believed in, it was that when God should come as Messiah, he would come mag- nificently ; that the earth would shake under his footsteps ; that he would advance his glittering banner, and that the armies that would march under it would overthrow all oppo- sition ; that all men would bow down before him, and that he would stand in Jerusalem and upon Mount Zion acknowl- THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. 433 edged to be the glorious Sovereign of time and the world, and subdue the earth to himself. The Jews* notion of the coming Messiah was that he was a being of glory and power, conspicuous, brilliant, unmistakable. As to the Greeks, their notion of God was that he was a being of eternal youth, eternal beauty, and eternal joy, with- out alloy, with perfectness of condition, plenitude of place, and peace undisturbed. When, therefore, Paul came preaching a divine Saviour, how natural it would have been for him to slur over these ~*^ things which were offensive to his hearers in regard to that Saviour, only making conspicuous such features of him and of his doctrine as were agreeable to them ; but no, he said, " I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." He determined not to know even the Saviour, except as the crucified One. He de- termined to preach among those proud, beauty-loving, effemi- nate, sensitive Greeks, the most odious thing that could be preached namely, a malefactor ; a man so weak that the Roman government could easily lay the cross upon him ; a man whom his own countrymen despised and crucified. Such was his text, such was his theme ; and he went to this proud city of Corinth, and determined to preach this truth in its most unpalatable form, and to know nothing but that. Surely, he might well say that the wisdom of this world was not with him ; that he was not wise according to the pat- tern of this world ; that he did not depend upon the power of words, or the skillful arrangement of appeals ; that these would not help him under the circumstances. What was there that helped him ? He had advanced a new conception of the divine nature, which was foolishness to them who only heard it by the out- ward ear, while to those who really got it into their mind, and \ understood what it was, and felt the transcendent beauty of it, and entered into the interior conception of that which represented the constituent elements of the divine nature, it I was the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. And what was this cross, what was this suffering, what was this broken Saviour, but the revelation of God through 434 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. him who thought it was not robbery to be equal with God, and made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and, being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and be- came obedient unto death the death of the cross ? All this long interval of self-humiliation what was it ? It was that by which the Lord Jesus Christ revealed that the nature of God was not the nature of one who sat serene in eternal blessedness, and had kind thoughts, and sent out kind messages, and that it was not a dynasty in the heavens, lifted up above all trouble and all sorrow. Jesus Christ came to > reveal that the nature of God was the source and fountain of sympathy. "We see it represented in diminished forms, and under imperfect conditions, in the mother that gives herself for the child, in the hero that will die for a friend, in a thousand ministrations of love in heroic forms, in this life, where it is accounted to be noble and manly for one to suffer for another. The ministration of care, by which, through, uncounted hours, the mother bears for the helpless, for the weak, for the child that is brought up not less in her soul than on her bosom, drawing bodily food from the one and soul food from the other by which she gives herself for the child, and is continually spending and being spent that the child may thrive and grow, she growing as the child grows; the ministration of self-sacrifice, as seen in the mother, the dignity and grandeur of which is inherent in such action this is a ministration which represents, in some measure, care and love and solf-sacrifice in God. In thus giving self for another, they who go down go up ; they who serve rule ; they who are lowest are the highest ; they who are the weakest are the mightiest. In the direction of such a giving of one's self goes moral grandeur not carnal, dynastic grandeur, noi grandeur according to the method and pattern of men on earth, but the reverse. In the great interior sphere, in the spirit land, in the dignities and ranks and gradations to which God belongs, and toward which men aspire there greatness measures itself by what it does, and not by what it receives ; by the power which there is in purity to make the impure pure ; by the power which there is in wisdom to make the THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. 435 ignorant wise ; by the power which there is in the divine na- ture to make the suffering well and whole again ; by that power by which God pours himself out, and becomes bread which men eat that they may live, or water which men drink that they may quench their thirst, and that quenching their Wiirst they may be immortal. God is the Burden-bearer of the universe. He was the Lamb of Sacrifice from the beginning of the world. The essential nature of God is to suffer not as men suffer who are weak ; to suffer not as men suffer under the lash, for disobe- bedience ; to suffer not as stumbling ignorance, or blunder- ing prejudice, or overleaping eagerness, or blind avarice suffers ; to suffer not in any of the lower forms of suffering ; to suffer with that suffering which is full of joy and strength and grandeur, and which comes from the consciousness of giving one's self to make another soul larger and stronger and wiser and better. Here comes in the fullness of time, the descent of the Messenger of God, the appearance of the Ambassador of Heaven, to make known to men the inward nature of God. He who had stained the heavens ; he who had made the earth shake with the thunder of his power; he who had been materially equipped as a sovereign in the eyes of men he, according to the representation made by Jesus Christ, carried within his exterior grandeur a heart of love and self-sacrifice compared with which the heart of the sweetest mother that ever lived is as a taper compared with the blazing sun at noonday. As is a handful of mist that rises from the sea compared with the whole ocean, so is the purest and deepest and noblest soul among men compared with God. Now, that great ocean-nature, the infinite God, is not one who sits, as the Greeks thought, on a throne, making the universe subservient to him, nor one, as modern theology has taught substantially, who sits on a throne saying, " For my own glory I live, and everything I make I am going to make as a decoration to myself." Christ came to reveal a God who so loved that sacrifice was to him the emblem of love ; and who ruled over a creation that came in at the lowest point, and groaned and travailed in pain. He revealed a God. that 436 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. was Nurse ; that was Physician ; that was Minister ; that was Friend ; that was All in all to the desolate, the poor, and the needy. The manifestation of Jesus Christ upon the cross was to show that God suffered in order that men might he redeemed from suffering. It was to show the interior disposition of God as an all-helpful, all-serving, all-loving Father, full of the plenitude and grandeur and heroism of mercy. It was to make known to the world the divine ministration of good- ness. This was made known through the Lord Jesus Christ, and no person has ever felt the real power of the Lord Jesus Christ that his soul has not in substance come to such a view as this, though he may not have understood it in any philo- sophical sense. It has heen limited, it has been chequered, it has been clothed in ways that were grotesque, it has been so dealt with that the precious truth has been hindered in its progress ; but I hold that the sacrifice of Christ was a sem- blance of the divine nature, in which love universal bore in itself the capacity and the disposition to serve universal want ; and that when Christ laid himself down and said, " I am the Road," he let the feet of all the world tread upon him. The old, and the weak, and the captive, and little children, and all thab lived, walked upon him, as it were. He made him- self a way on which their feet could tread. He put himself underneath them, so that when he lifted himself up he might carry them up with him. Having humbled himself in this way, and done such a mighty and majestic service of love, fitly was it declared that God for this should give him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee might bow, and every tongue confess that he was Lord, to the glory of God. Our Lord, therefore, is not a despot of supreme decrees, who sits in heaven saying to the world, " There is law, and if you do not come up to that law, you shall be damned and if you do, a great many of you shall, that I made on purpose to damn." How hideous is the conception of such a sovereign as that, lifted up by the side of Calvary, that speaks of One who descended from the glory of the heavenly estate that he might bring down to men the infinite mercy of THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. 437 a self -sacrificing God, to represent the glory that the eterni- ties would disclose ! What a slander it is to depict God as one who finds his glory in the most despicable and hateful tyranny 1 For the race is born too weak, too poor, too low down, too ignorant, to find its own way from the ooze. We come from the dust, and to the dust we go again ; and if there be not somewhere something mightier than men's own power, what will become of them ? What would become of our children if they were all alone in the house ? How many babes would ever get beyond the first few days if there was not a ministration over them of some superior? We have it in the family all the time. We have it in the interpretation of the Bible as it is continually before us. Those who live for weakness and for want ; those who pour out their own experience, exercise their own judgment, spend their own time and give their own life for those who need succor, are honorable in the sight of their fellow-men, and are held in high esteem by those around about them by reason of these things. Mankind are but little children. The whole world is in babyhood. Men were created helpless. The race was made subject to vanity not willingly. God did not ask me whether I would be born, nor you. The nations were brought into existence without their volition. The con- tinents of the globe were peopled without consulting the beings by whom they were peopled. The whole earth is in trouble and bondage. And yet there is a God of infinite mercy and compassion. It seems to me that men might well rise up with an indignant infidelity, and maintain their man- hood against the mischievous and horrible idea of a demoriac God. That which takes place in the family between parents and children is an illustration of what takes place in God's uni- verse between him and his creatures. I know of fathers whose sons are intemperate, and whose houses are as Gethsemanes and Aceldamas ; and yet, such is their life that all the surroundings of their homes, and all the golden hours that might otherwise be radiant in the household, are sacrificed ; and no continuance in evil, no excess, no temptation, wears out the unweariable patience of 438 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. parental love ; and thus years and years of debasement being past, yet it is hoped that years in the future may bring refor- mation. Now, who gave to the father that love and that heroism ? "Whence did they come but from Him who does by the uni- verse and by its prodigals what the father in an earthly family learns to do by self-sacrificing love for his son. With these conceptions of God, I could say, almost, as Paul did, "Let me preach that view, and I will know noth- ing else." But there is something very subduing in the mercy of God, more than in his judgments and righteousness. We need the conception of a God who is infinitely righteous, and who is stirring the world up to righteousness. We do not want a God who does not care, and who would let the world go into a elough. We do not want a God who will not hold men responsible, and who will not visit them with pain and pen- alty for violation. We want a God who shall be a school- master that is exacting, and demand that his pupils shall per- form their duties ; but we want him to be a schoolmaster who shall work out the peaceable fruit of knowledge in the school boys, and make lovely characters in them. Those are not the best parents who do not care whether their children go right or wrong. Good parents will determine that their children shall go right ; and while they resort to severe measures to secure their obedience, they will have the welfare of those children before them, and they will love them, and will wait and suffer for them. The love of a true parent will empty itself for the child, and make itself the minister and servant of the child's wants. The parent that is wise and faithful will use pain and fear, as well as love, for the exaltation of the child. And we need the view of a father God, who has deter- mined in his infinite warmth of love that the whole creation shall yet be glorified, ransomed, saved ; and who, in time and eternity, by joy, by sorrow, by pain, by pleasure, by fear, by hope, by all motives, administers for the upbuilding of the entire race. This is a conception of God before which my soul can THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. 439 bow. I could not bow before a despot. I say freely that there have been views of God taught aud held up which are abhorrent to that spirit which has been bred in me by the familiarity of the Gospel, and to the moral sense which I have derived from my knowledge of Christ Jesus. Humility and gentleness and meekness, so far as I have had them sown in me, rise up in revolt at such ideas of God's character as have been made supreme in theology. I rebel against them with all the strength that there is in me. I resist such aspersions upon the life and example of the Lord Jesus Christ, and upon the character of Almighty God. I protest against such slanders of the grandeur and glory of the topmost heaven. But when you reveal to me that the regnant Power of the universe governs nations and individuals by material forces, by ten thousand cogent motives, by all the influences that can touch all sides of human nature, but that he governs them in love, with infinite patience, for the growth and increase of all his creatures, and that when I say " Our Father which art in heaven " I utter a vaster truth than any fatherhood on earth can interpret to me and make me understand when you re- veal to me such a God as that, everything that is within me bows down before it. I admire, I love, I adore, I follow, and I am smitten through with a sense of my infinite unworthiness, when I think of what such an One is, and of what I am of the contumescence of my pride, of the infiltrations of my selfish- ness, and of the despotic sides of my experience, instead of self-sacrificing and self -renouncing sides of that experience. God is crucified. Do you shrink from that ? Have you been brought up to think that God must be One who is lifted above the power of pain ? Stop, and think again. What would you think of a man on earth who was so perfect that he could not suffer for a friend ? What would you think of a woman who was so serene, with a face enameled and white, that she could see sickness and sorrow and anguish and death come into her family, and sit sweet and happy ? What would you think of one who was so perfect that he could remain tranquil and undisturbed in the midst of sorrows in over- measure on every side ? Would you consider absence from pain under such circumstances as perfection ? Would you 440 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. not feel everything that was generous in your soul revolting at such a conception as that ? I say that a being who cannot suffer for another is despicable. The idea of such a being is hateful. Do you shrink from worshiping Christ ? What ! do you shrink from worshiping that Name which is above every name the Name at the sound of which every knee shall bow, and which every tongue shall confess as Lord to the glory of God ? Is there not full and glorious permission here ? I call upon every man who has a sense of what is worthy in the noblest conception of manhood to look up to that yet nobler conception of which these are but analogies and emblems to the glorious sacrifice of Christ asjin interpreting element of the divine nature to God, who rules over the whole world. Are you unwilling to be his friend ? Are you unwilling to be his disciple ? Are you willing to take upon you the cross, and to live a life in which you shall give up yourself for the sake of helping others not every moment, but in great lines and in organized elements of duty ? If any man have not the spirit of Christ he is none of his. You may have the spirit of the Pharisee you may never drink ; you may never chew tobacco ; you may never swear ; you may never shave nor black your boots on Sunday ; and you may thank God that you are so regular, eating and drinking just enough, and not a bit too much, owing nobody anything, and paying your taxes regularly, and living, oh how gloriously ! And the more gloriously you live, the more you admire yourself ; and the more you admire yourself the more you marvel that your neighbors are so imperfect ; and when they suffer, you say, " They ought never to have done so : why do they not do as I do ?" Is that the soul of manhood ? Is that your conception of manliness ? Is not one to be in sympathy with the infirmi- ties of men ? He who holds himself to be a servant of men looks humbly upon his own attainments. Is not that the more generous and the nobler way ? Is it not that that the world lacks ? Is it not that, after all, which is to consti- tute the triumph of Christianity ? THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. 441 We have had almost everything that has been tried as Christianity. Christianity has had its period of athletic intellectualism ; and the reason has not yet unfolded to the world what the world dies for the lack of. We have had all that was esthetic. We have had all the glory and gor- geousness of beauty. We have had all that there was in elo- quence and poetry. These things have been thrown about the service of the sanctuary. And yet, the consciousness of the real God who sits in the heaven has not been brought to the world. The power for which the world yet waits is the revelation of that inner nature of God which stands in willingness to suffer, and which teaches us that our greatness lies, not so much in what we get as in what we give not in our centripetal, but in our centrifugal force. All creation groans and travails in pain, and it will stop groaning and travailing as soon as men live like Christ. ' There will be no more question whether Christianity is true or not as soon as men become noble and beautiful and radi- ant in those dispositions which constitute the elements of Christ's life, and of which Paul said, " I will know nothing ,but these." As soon as there is this living Christ diffused among men there will be an end of controversy, and men will learn not merely that, but that there is a power in those dis- positions before which all other powers fall down. It is not by mighty combination, or by instituted forces, or by argument, that the world is to be redeemed, but by the secret, silent power of souls that are baptized into the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. One single heroic deed is worth more than any Athenian oration. One who shows the capa- <- city to lift human nature to a higher level of excellence than it has yet attained is an apostle of God to the world ; and the race grows by its power to do the things which the animals cannot do, and that can be done only by a consciousness of human possibility. If we are to grow in knowledge, we must grow in that direction. Now you are prepared, perhaps, to understand so much for there is much that in the wisdom of God is not solved yet. "We speak God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory; but as it is written, 442 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of tnan, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him ? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." We interpret these things so far as we have the Spirit of God. All the sensibility of that moral consciousness which springs from love is nourished by love, and has its whole power from love. God grant that every one of us may have this new light, this new knowledge, this new sympathy, this, new disclosure. God grant that we may, every one of us, by word, by silence, by deed, by forbearance, by activity, or by rest, make man- ifest that Christ is in us, and that we have put on the Lord Jesus Christ. So may our whole life be a preaching of the gospel a manifestation of the glory of him whose name we bear, and whose spirit exalts us to communion, and to under- standing, is by-and-by it shall to fellowship, in the very presence of God. THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. 443 PRAYEK BEFOEE THE SERMON. WE bless thy name, our Father, for that revelation which thou hast made of thyself through Jesus Christ our Lord. We thank thee that thou art interpreting that revelation itself in our own experi- ence. We thank thee that thou art, by transforming us into the spirit of Jesus, making us to understand him, and through him the Father; and that thou art drawing us into life deeper, and sweeter, and more full of knowledge, than can come by the natural reason, or than we can learn from the world that is outside of us. We rejoice in the power of the divine Spirit, in the recreation and transforma- tion of the souls of men, in the communion between us and thee, iu all those great offices and influences by which we are lifted above the flesh, out of the realm of passion, and into the plenitude of the grace of God into that peace which passeth all understanding into that sympathy which interprets to us, far beyond the reach of reason, and gives us the secret and mystery of God, so that by the spirit we understand the hidden things of the spirit. We thank thee for all the hours of strength which we have had in the midst of weakness, and for all the days of consolation which we have had in the midst of great troubles. For thou hast often seen us toiling upon the sea, and with the winds, without direction, and unable to make our way, and thou hast come toward us, walking on the turbulent waves; and we have been terrified; and our fear and hope have struggled together; and yet, when thou didst come to us, and wert near to us, and didst ascend into the ship, behold, straightway we were whither we would go. So thou hast dealt with us in light and in darkness. And in summing up our experience, in looking back upon all our life and thy ways with us, we would call thee Him who does exceeding abundantly more than we can ask or think. Thou hast dealt with us more graciously than we deserved. Thou bast dealt with us wondrously. Our souls are witnesses of thy goodness. Thy mercies are ever new ; and we call upon our souls, and all that is within us, to praise thy name. We bow our knee to that name which is above every name; and we call thee Lord, and our Lord. And we rejoice, O thou ascended Prince and Saviour, that whatever is needful for us within the spirit land whatever supplications, or intercessions, or mediation thou dost make in love. Whatever defense or convoy thou dost send forth in our behalf, thou grantest not according to the wisdom of our asking, but according to the greatness of thy life. Now, we do desire not to stand in ourselves. Knowing how feeble we are in things high, and how strong we are in things that are prone to the earth ; knowing how strong we are in the flesh, and how poor in the spirit, we do not desire to stand in our own merit, nor our own excellence, in any way whatsoever. We rejoice that our excel- lency is in thee. Thou that hast lent thyself to us; thou that hast called us thine own thou that callest us no longer servants, but henceforth friends, and not friends alone, but children; thou that hast coupled us to thyself, and by the bonds of omnipotent love art drawing us to thee in an inseparable union we rejoice in thy great grace and glory as in part our own. For we are heirs of God, and 444 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, and are glad that the things which we win are all the better because they are of God, since they are in a sweet and blessed partnership of ownership with Jesus Christ. And now, we pray that we may stand thus girded about with this belief, inspired with all the hopes of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. May we be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord. Vouchsafe, we pray thee, thine especial thought and mercy, to-night, to all that are grouped together here. This has been a tem- ple of the revelation of thy goodness. Thousands here have dropped the tears of sorrow, but have lifted up eyes of gladness in the midst of sorrow, and in spite of it. Many have come grievously burdened, and behold, here the burden has been swept away. Thou hast made this place sacred, not by the hands of men, not by any external act, but by the grace of God, by the ministration of the spirit; and this place how beautiful is it ! It is to many of us the very gate of heaven ; for here we have stood and seen the golden leaves thrown wide open, and we have beheld the glory of God. We have beheld the crowned Saviour. We have followed thither, in the inspired and raptured hours of the sanctuary, those who have gone out from us, dearly beloved brethren who have labored with us in word and doctrine. We have sent heavenward many saintly companions, and a multitude of little ones; we have beheld them shine brighter and purer than stars, and have rejoiced in sorrow, and have taken comfort through faith. Even in the midst of adversities and trials, how sacred is this place! Now, let it be again, to-night, a place of divine ministration. Bebuke those who need rebuke. Be faithful to thy beloved. Give pain where pain is required for medicine. Withhold not thy hand. Chastise if thou lovest: or, forbear as thou wilt; only let us know that thou art dealing with us in love, as a father deals with his children. Give great strength to those who are greatly tried ; great patience to those whose trials continue; great light and clarity of judgment to those who are in perplexity; and great manliness and courage to those who are grievously beset and tempest-tossed. Grant, we pray thee, that every one may find his strength to be as his day is. So may it not be a vain thing that we have come hither. May we have such growth in the inward life, and such consolation of the divine spirit, such insight of things which lie beyond the sense?, that this shall continue to be as the gate of heaven. We pray for all of our absent ones for those upon the sea, for those in the wilderness, and for those in distant lands. We pray for those who are strangers in our midst. We pray that thou wilt look upon them, and grant that here, in this house, they may find themselves at home with the brethren of Jesus Christ, and with the Lord. Here may they find, for the moment, all the pleni- tude of divine grace and consolation. And wilt thou bless those whom they have left behind. Hear their prayers, listen to their desires, we beseech of thee, for their beloved ones; and answer abundantly. THE SECRET OF THE CROSS. 445 We pray for any who have come in hither forlorn, strangers, unfriended, knowing not whither to go or what to do. By thy provi- dence be gracious unto them. And may they not lose faith, nor hope, nor courage; but to the end, with all manliness, may they patiently persevere in the things that are right. We pray that thou wilt deliver any who are in the thrall of temp- tation ; any that have been misled ; any that are in those sorrows which come from remorse ; any that have fallen ; wilt thou graciously lift them up, and teach us to have compassion upon them. May we deal with them forbearingly, knowing that we, too, may be tempted. We pray that thou wilt spread abroad that spirit by which thou dost cleanse the world of transgression, in the hearts of thy people. Take away the distemperature of passion, of irritableness, of pride, of the dominion of men's selfishness one over another. Bring men together in love, and in mutual respect, each recognizing that the other is a servant of God. So we pray that every one may stand to his own Master, unhin- dered, unyoked, unshackled. Grant, we pray thee, that more and more there may be all freedom in the church of Christ, and that all those collisions, and envyings, and hateful jealousies which have prevailed in days gone by may be purged away. And let that bright day come, at last, when love, the sweetest, shall become the strongest of all things. More and more let thy pure light shine from out of the heaven, and all impure light depart whence it came. Let thy king- dom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And to the Father, the Sou, and the Holy Spirit, shall be praises everlasting. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OUR Father, we pray that thou wilt bless us in the truth that we have contemplated ; but bless us yec more, we beseech of thee, in the attempt to render that truth into our own lives. We know the right way. Thou art pleased, at times, to put our feet upon the mount of transfiguration ; and we discern thee in the radiance of thy glorified form. And yet, when we come down again, at the foot of the moun- taiu are demoniac influences, and all weaknesses of men. We fain would live far above human infirmity, and build our tabernacles where thou art beautiful. We would fain not go down into life to bear its sins, and burdens, and cares. Grant that we may have a better mind. May we not only determine to avail ourselves of that salvation which is offered to us through Jesus Christ by his suffering, willingly borne for our sakes and for the sakes of all creation ; but may we ourselves become like unto him. And in the same way may we more and more develop that side which is full of sweetness and full of medicine for souls that are wounded. And so we pray that thou wilt grant to all thy ohuroh the unfolding in them of that which is lik<- thee. O, bring near to us a sense of God's humiliation, 446 2*HB SECRET OF THE CROSS. and the beauty of it; God's service, and the need of it. Grant, we pray thee, that we may accept those things which the world despises; and though to them who understand them not they are foolishness and a stumbling, may they be to us the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. We ask it in the adorable name of Jesus, to whom, with the Father and the Spirit, shall be praises everlasting. Amen. RESOLVING AND DOING. "Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." PHH* ii., 12, 13. It would seem from this declaration, abundantly corrobo- rated elsewhere, that salvation is not a decree or simple act. We are not brought by any overwhelming shock or impulse into an absolute salvable state. It is a condition which is to be wrought out as education is, by adopting right lines, by pursuing rational methods, and by continuing therein until we have gained foothold and strength. There is a nature in man that is right. That which is called our corrupt human nature designates simply the wrong uses to which men have put right faculties. There is a right nature. The rea- son, in and of itself, is right. Its uses may be perverted, but the faculty is right. The affections are right; and if they are rightly used they are virtues, they are graces, they are undoubted excellences ; but they all need development. They need to be applied more and more to every part of life. There is a work of education for the body, with which we are familiar ; there is a work of education for the mind, in the adapting it to the various objects and ends of life, with which we are familiar ; and in the household there is more or less training of the disposition. Those who have the good fortune to be brought up under wise parents know what it is to be under discipline and education under restraint against SUNDAY MORNING, March s, 1874. LESSON : Psalm xo. UYMNS (Plymouth Col- lection) : Nos. 578. 513 657. 450 RESOLVING AND DOING. that which is evil, and under stimulus to that which is good. Now, this analogy goes on, and all the mind's moral sen- timents are the subjects of development and of education. And the importance of education increases as you rise toward the realm of the higher feelings, or those which work toward the invisible those that are under spiritual instincts or sen- timents. And it is in this direction that man's salvation lies, in so far as the human side is concerned. To be saved is to be salvable to be in a condition which implies and per- mits salvation ; and this is man's work. We are to work out our own salvation. More than that, much is implied in the qualification, " with fear and trembling." Now, there are a great many kinds of fear, some of which are very coarse, appropriate to low and almost brutal natures, and unworthy of a man more highly and truly developed. The fear that you would apply to a savage is inappropriate to a civilized man ; and the fear which you would search for among civilized men that roam the plain is quite out of place among those that live in retirement, and are conscientiously attempting to act according to justice. The fear and the trembling with which we are to work out our salvation indi- cate intensity that kind of apprehension with which men tremble under excitement when they are pursuing an object that is exceedingly dear to them : not fear in the sense of pungent dread or terror; but that fear which produces appre- hensiveness, keenness of desire and unwillingness to lose. There is a sort of half feeling of uncertainty in connection with it, !n all the great pursuits of life in the things which absorb us, and in which we have planted ourselves. We are familiar with this kind of anxiety. We work for wealth; and we work in competitions for a place or for a name ; we work in society for the favor of those whom we wonld win ; we work for ambition; we work for all the great ends of life that stimulate men; and we work for them with this very trembling apprehensiveness. We put our heart into them so that it quivers with anxiety. So the command is, Work out your religious character; work out purity, and humility, and gentleness, and mercy, and truth. All divine RESOLVING AND DOING. 451 fruits are of the divine Spirit; work them out, with such earnestness that you shall be full of fear and of trembling that kind of fear and trembling which men have in other pursuits, where their hearts are wholly engrossed. The conception of highest manhood the Christian manhood, that manhood which is the fruit of the divine Spirit working on the soul is to be pursued, then, not list- lessly nor indifferently. The path to it was never yet so plain or so easy to a man in every part of his nature that you are likely to stumble on it, and, without knowing it, find that you are a thoroughly Christianized man. There never was a man so favorably made or placed that it re- quired no will or effort on his part to rise into the fullness of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. All the original tendencies of the mind involve in them more or less of self-seeking more or less of the carnal elements; and no man rises into a truly Christian or Christlike spirit, by which, instead of evil, he loves good, and instead of self-seeking seeks the welfare of another, and the glory of God, the invisible Being of creation, without strenuous efforts; and this not once for all, but continuously, as against the world, as against his own passions and appetites, as against social wrongs, and as against the temptations that spring from business. By all those influences men are held back from the attempt to live upon a high plane a truly spiritual and Christian life. Now comes the declaration, "It is God that worketh in you." A great many, when it is taught that men are to work out their own salvation, are afraid that it will inspire men with a vain confidence. They feel it to be important to teach men that they are absolutely dependent upon God, and that without him they can do nothing. That is all very true; yet I have never seen any particular reason why men should be taught that. Suppose I were to say to a man who had my microscope, and who was about to examine objects, " Now, my friend, I want you to understand that your eyesight, your vision, is absolutely dependent upon the light. Bear that in mind every time you undertake to look through the micro- scope. There is no such thing as vision without light, and you are dependent upon the light." Suppose I should say 452 RESOLVING AND DOING. to the farmer, " Work your farm ; but remember tbat you are dependent on tbe seasons." Suppose I were to say to the hungry man, "Now, my friend, here is food; but I want you to understand that you are entirely dependent upon this food for life and strength." Of course he is. Everybody knows that already. Some theologians are very much afraid that we will teach men that they can help themselves. They stop us, they put us back, and say, "You must honor God in everything." I, too, think we ought to honor God in everything. "You must not take away from God the glory of working out the salvation of men. Men cannot save themselves. They depend upon God. A man cannot see without eyes ; a man cannot eat without a mouth ; a man cannot live without the conditions of life ; a man cannot do anything unless he has been born." All these things are very true. But, really, is it the way to inspire men, to say to them, "You have no natural power ; you lost it by the fall whatever that was ; you are all dependent upon God ; and it is presumption for you to undertake to endue yourself with those attributes or states of mind that are wrought out in men by God's Spirit " ? Men seem to feel, as to this matter, that it is almost a forgery for a man to attempt to endue himself with humility, with meekness, with faith, with aspiration, with love, with hope, and with power in it. They think it to be somewhat as if a man should write his father's name on a check, when only his father has any business to write his name there. It seems to be thought that God has a right to instill in men right purposes and resolutions, but men have no right to as- sume them. And when we quote the passage, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," they say, "Ah, yes! but don't you see that it also says, "God worketh in you " ? Yes, that is the ground on ivliicli I exhort men to work, that God works in them that he works incessantly in them, by ten thousand more modes than we know of or sus- pect : not alone in the ways which we point out in our ser- mons, but in a multitude of ways besides ; not alone in the ways in which men's thoughts and feelings rise from low to high, and in which their feelings grow and swell like tides, RESOLVING AND DOING. 453 but ID infinite ways ; not alone during revivals, not alone during impressive hours on Sundays, in the church, but al- ways and continually the great brooding soul of God over- hangs the race, and there are down-dropping influences exerted upon men perpetually, and operating upon their souls, dissuading or persuading, arousing or fortifying. In multitudes of ways, beyond our conception, the vivific na- ture of God is carrying life and power to human souls everywhere. When, then, I urge men to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, that is, with earnestness, and say to them, "It is God that worketh in you," they say, "If God is working in me, there won't be any need of my working." Why not? The apostle says, in Corinthians, "Workers together with God." Cannot two work at the same thing ? Is it impossible that there should be two work- ers, and that there should be two influences, one from above, and that they should meet and co-operate ? I say to a child, "Now, attend, my daughter, because your mother is watching you, and taking care of you, and helping you at every step. Give yourself to your studies and duties ;" and she says, " But if mother is going to take care of them I do not need to." But do not the child and the mother and father co-operate ? Do not the pupil and the teacher co-operate ? Is not the action of the scholar as necessary as that of the teacher ? The teacher stimulates, but the scholar studies. There never was a teacher so skillful that he could understand anything for his pupil. Every boy has to under- stand for himself. We talk about being self-educated, as if that were a rare achievement. There never was a man who could educate another man. You can store up knowledge, and educate yourself ; but no man can educate you. All education is self -education, in the nature of things. And so, if it be declared that the divine Spirit is working in us, it does not mean that it does our work for us, and then infixes it in us. The work of conversion is not as if one made up the whole work of a clock, and went and put it into the empty case, each part in its place, and wound it, and set the pendulum a-going, and said, "Go on and tick." Char- 454 RESOLVING AND DOING. acter is not made in that way. It is not first constructed and then put in its place. Where there is a rightly formed character, there are aspirations of soul, and lofty desires, and gracious affections ; and these things we develop. We as really develop them by that which is in us, as they are devel- oped by that which is in God ; and that which is in us, and that which is in him, co-work. And the command is, " Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling ; for it is God that worketh in you, both to " What ? Two things that are the most difficult in the world " to will and to do." Here is where men especially need divine help to will that which is right. Many persons see what is right, but they look upon it just as they in the street look on objects that do not belong to them, and never will. They discern the right, but they do not will to follow it. Many persons admire what is right in others in a vision of the imagina- tion they admire it without any sense of its relation to their personality. Many men that lie admire the truth. Many that give up to intemperance admire temperance. Many who are dishonest admire honesty in others. Many men that are far from heroic admire heroism. Indeed, by the law of compensation, we often admire most that which we have lost ourselves ; and the unvirtuous admire virtue ; the weak admire strength, and so on through the whole category. Then, there are a great many people who wish right things, but do not will them. They wish, but they do not put forth any effort to gratify that wish. There never was a lazy man, probably, that did not wish he was rich. I do not believe there ever was a man in the world who, when his bad disposition had brought him to grief, did not wish that he had a better disposition. A man in a passion offends his best friend, and he says, " Plague on my tongue ! I wish it was out ; I wish I could govern myself, and not talk so as to spoil everything." He wishes; oh, yes, he wishes; but wishing is not willing. There is something more in willing than in wishing. And although men admire and wish, they do not choose. No man can be said to will to possess or to choose any object or any grace, until he does something more RESOLVING AND DOING. 455 than to admire it and to wish for it. No man wills to have the truth until he desires it more than he does untruth until it is predominant in him. No man wills to be indus- trious until he prefers it above every other grace, under the circumstances. The ox does not want to walk fast ; but when you keep goading, goading him, then he wills to do it ; he prefers that to the other thing ; but it is not until he prefers it and does it that he wills it. A man living in a certain course of life, and feeling that it is evil, and knowing many of its mischiefs, talks about it, and means to do this, that, and the other thing ; but it is not until his will, under the concentration of 'various influences that are brought to bear upon him, takes hold of the right thing energetically, that it can be said that he has willed it. That is the great trouble with men in the matter of relig- ion. Do you say that you admire religion ? There is not a person who had the good fortune, of all fortunes the best, of a father and mother that belonged to the church and had a Christian spirit that made his child-memory of them sacred there is not a person like that who can look back upon the lives of his parents without saying, "I wish I were as good as my father. He was a better man than I am, and I wish I were like him." There is many a man who sits at the table and gambles, where the coarse joke passes backward and forward ; and yet when some evil story strikes at his mother, he stops and says, " Now, boys, that has gone far enough ; I am not going to talk about that any longer." He is low, and brutal, and hard ; but he has a tender thought of his mother ; and if, sometimes, you could see him alone, you would see him melted to tears by his recollections of her, and you would hear him say, " I wish I were as good a man as she was a woman." He admires and he wishes; but that is all, and nothing comes of it. That is the trouble. You do not go far enough. You admire virtues, and you wish you had them, but you do not take the proper steps to acquire them. You do not will nor choose to have them, This is true in every element and 456 RESOLVING AND DOING. department of life. You want accomplishments, you want means, you wish you had them, but you are not willing to pay what they cost of strife and endeavor. You have not the patience and the continuity which are required to obtain them. And that is the very point where, if anybody wants help, God stands ready to grant it. He works in men "to will." There it is, therefore, that the light beams, and that the blessing comes. There is hope for you, if you wish, and if you call on God for help in order that you may will, and that, willing, you may do. There is encouragement for every man who is discontented with his low estate, and with his ignoble character. Work out your own salvation, for God will work in you to will. Open your heart to him. Lay bare your disposition to God. There is an influence in the air, a uni- versal, divine will, atmospheric, that strengthens men's wishes, and points them, acuminates them, and empowers them, until they become determinations and choices. But, when a man has chosen, when he has determined, is he safe ? No. Paul said, " To will is present with me, but how to perform I know not." How many men have made up their minds and changed them ! How many per- sons have resolved, and have failed to carry out their resolutions ! How many men form purposes that they do not carry out ! I think our resolutions are much- like children's amusements when they blow soap-bubbles. They are made of breath, and they grow larger, and they become more beautiful as they grow larger, and the more beautiful they are the more perishable they become ; and as they are shaken from the pipe, see how they rise, irridescent, reflecting the rarest pictures ; and while you look at Athena they are not there. And men oh, what dreams they have of virtues ! oh, what dreams they have of piety ! oh, what resolutions they make when they are under the influence of soul-subduing music, and while they are listening to the dis- course which satisfies the reason, stealing upon the affections and the tenderer sentiments ! How often men, sitting under such circumstances, say to themselves, " I see this as I never saw it before, and I will go home and change my life. I am RESOLVING AND DOING. 457 determined that, by the grace of God, I will be a better man. I will have prayers to-night." He goes home, and says, "Let me think this thing over." Somehow the colors are not so bright on the way home as they were when he was in church and listening to the discourse. When he gets home, he says, "Well, now, my wife will think it very strange ; and I will put it off until to-morrow morning, and then I will tell her and the children that I am going to turn over a new leaf, and have prayers, and live a reformed life." He sleeps upon it ; and when morning comes, he says, " What was it that I was thinking of last night ? Oh ! I recollect. Well, I don't feel very much like it this morning. I guess I will wait until to-night." And that is about the last struggle that he has on that subject. His goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew. Another man is very well satisfied that he is living an erroneous life. His associations are bad. His imagination is becoming contaminated. His very health is being under- mined. He sees in himself the slackening of the nerves of industry. His boon companions and convivial friends dodge him. And lie says, " It is time for me to stop." The text of the sermon, it may be, that he just heard preached was " The time past is sufficient " ; and it has opened up to him his past record. It has disclosed to him what his life has been, and what the dangers are into which he is running. Listening to the sermon, and hearing the text, "The time past is suffi- cient," reiterated in his ears, he says, " That sermon is aimed right at me, and I will stop ; I will reform f and he goes home with a firm purpose ; and his purpose abides with him until he meets some companion, until he finds himself in some congenial, pleasant company, and their spirits mix to- gether, and he is beguiled ana soothed and quieted ; and be- fore twenty-four hours are passed he says, "Well, I did mean to give up my past life, but I will take another turn." There was the will that was strong the night before ; but, how to perform. Oh ! if it could be done by willing, he would have done it that night. If it could have been done by praying, he would have done it. If it could have been done by writing in a journal, " I hereby vow and purpose to quit all illicit so- 458 RESOLVING AND DOING. ciety, and lead a true life," he would have done it. If these things would only have done it, it would have been done. But to-day it required that he should meet all obstacles, and stem social influences. It required that when temptation arose he should have the power of subduing it. It required that when he was thrown among his old companions he should be strong enough to control his appetites. It seemed to him when he was at home as though he had the strength to hold himself back from the temptations which before had been irresistible. He had the desire, he had the will, to do it ; but his will de- liquesced before the influences to which he had so long yield- ed. Before he came to the point where a choice was to be made, where a purpose was formed and confirmed, he was gone. Now, as men get the Divine Spirit, in the first place, to help them to make up their minds to do right, and show them what is right, and encourage them toward the right way ; so they need the Divine Spirit when they come to execute their purpose, and transmute purpose into action, into habit, into life. Blessed be God, then, for the encouragement of the declaration, "Work out your own salvation, for it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure." Well, if it be God that works in men to will and to do both, why is it that men do not generally will ? And if he works in them to do, why is it they do not perform ? It is because, though the Divine Spirit works upon men, it must needs work upon open hearts, and have access to them. I go out to the meadows, in a few weeks, and say, "Now, grass, begin to grow! Flowers, begin to blossom!" The clouds are passing away, and the sunshine is coming. Spring is not far off, and the buds are creeping up. In a few weeks I can go out and say to the dead-lying meadows, " O turf, work ! Send forth your green spires and your bright blossoms. O boughs work ! and lift up your banners. Hold out your fra- grant cups of incense ; fling them to the sky. Eejoice that the summer is coming. Work, work." And all the meadows hear me and obey. But here lie pieces of plank, and there are roots under them which do not come forth because they are covered up. All the air is full of warmth ; but whatever RESOLVING AND DOING. 459 is hid from the shining of the sun, whether purposely or acci- dentally, feels but remotely its influence ; and that which would otherwise take place does not take place. Now, if men shut up their reason (and they do), if they turn away their affections (and they do), if they are not hon- est with themselves and with their God (and they are not), although the whole heaven is full of summer, their hearts will be full of winter. You can make winter. Let him who wants it take an east and west running fence, and on the north side heap snow, and the sun will not strike over there during the whole year ; only an atmospheric warmth will be felt there ; and there shall be a foot deep of ice there while on the other side of the fence you are gathering fresh vegetables for the table. There will be the same atmospheric conditions on both sides, only the sun, striking on one side and not on the other, will make the difference. It is the same with men who are contiguous to each other. One is open to the Divine Spirit, and it enters into his heart and resides therer Another refuses to open himself to the Divine Spirit, turns away from the strivings of the blessed influence, and loses it. It lies with every man whether the divine will shall fruc- tify his will ; whether he shall be influenced by the spirit of God ; whether the work of the power from on high shall be efficacious with him. No man was ever converted by accident. No man was ever converted who was not in such a condition that the divine influence could penetrate his heart and stimulate him to the development of a Christian character. No man can become what God requires of every one of us without the help of the Spirit which is freely rendered to every man, and without his own serious and most earnest labor. You are born low enough, animal enough, worldly enough ; you are born of the flesh ; you are born in those conditions in order that you may work up out of them into that nobler manhood which is in Christ Jesus ; and it demands the whole force of your nature, as it is worthy of the whole force of your nature. You are not living for an hour ; you are living for eternity. Your destiny turns on character ; and the for- 460 RESOLVING AND DOING. mation of that character, the upbuilding of it, is one of the most glorious ambitions that you can essay. It requires the divine power and the human power in co-operation. The di- vine power is ever present ; and it is for you to determine whether that divine power, persuading and striving, shall prevail with you and draw you in the direction of things right. If you are willing, in the day of God's power, you will rise by the divine help, step by step, until you stand in Zion and before God. Now, if there be those here who have thought often and often that they would attempt to be Christians, perhaps yon have said to yourself, " If I can, by a few weeks set apart, get a head of feeling, an impulse, that shall shoot me into the experience of a Christian, why then the thing will work itself out. Once converted, always converted. No falling from grace. If in some revival I could only, by the warmth and enthusiasm of the people about me, be brought to the welding point, I am sure I could hold fast." My friends, the kingdom of God is lik a grain of mus- tard-seed, the smallest of all seeds when it is sown ; and it sprouts and throws down its roots, and throws up its branches, and grows imperceptibly, little by little, little by little. It is like the leaven which a woman hid in three measures of meal, which was as good as gone, so far as you could see, but which leavened the whole lump. The kingdom of God in the hearts of men begins very small, and works onward and always to the very end. Do not wait for a revival or any other extra- ordinary influence to give you a start and an impetus. The Christian way is the true way, the Christian character is the manly character, the Christian life is the better life in every respect ; and do not wait for dramatic convictions. Do not wait for lightning-like emotions. Do not wait for anything. God is on your side. Your knowledge is abundantly suf- ficient. Kesolve, to-night, " By the grace of God I will en- deavor, from this time forth, to overrule my passions and appetites and dispositions that are not consonant with the Lord Jesus Christ. I will enroll myself as a scholar ; and to learn the divine will shall be the purpose of my life." You will often fail ; you will frequently miss, as the child does RESOLVING AND DOING. Q\ that is learning to spell ; you will be like a child that is learn- ing to write, and that scrawls before he writes well ; or that is learning to read, and stumbles over the words before he reads fluently ; or that is learning arithmetic, and makes many mistakes before he can work the examples correctly. Let every man who undertakes to love God and do his will expect to meet with obstacles ; but let him put on the Lord Jesus Christ and pei severe, and he will triumph in the end. Take his dispositions and begin to practice them ; and if you fail do not be discouraged. Go on, looking to God in prayer for light and strength, and I will guarantee what the result will be. If the soul that is beginning to live under the influence of the higher impulses knows itself, and realizes its affinities and the dignities that belong to it, and is drawn steadily upward, it shall advance from strength to strength until it stands in Zion and before God. I pray you, do not squander again, to-night, any thoughts or purposes that may have arisen in your mind while I have been speaking. Sanctify the time and the hour. Rise up and go away from here with a sense of your duty. Go with an earnest purpose formed for your life, and with a sense that you must connect this life with the other in. order to fulfill your destiny. Men that know how low and ill-bred they are spiritually, and who know that without love to God they cannot rise to their higher manhood, seize the opportunity. God is shining, and the divine Spirit is striving, and the "Word is witnessing, and those who have gone forth call to you from the battlements of heaven, saying, "Come, come, come ! " Go ye, begin to live that glorious spiritual life which shall never terminate till the throne of God itself crumbles. 462 RESOLV1NU AND DOING. PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE rejoice, Almighty God, in thy supremacy. We rejoice that thy power is exerted every where. We behold it. Though we cannot perceive all thy truth, yet much comes to us, and more is hidden be- cause we are so imperfect, and do not know how to discern things spiritual. V'j rejoice that thou art Sovereign, and that thy will is supreme. None can counsel thee. Thou givest wisdom to all that are created ; they borrow from thee; and if they return and come to thee with words of wisdom, they but bring back light which is reflected on them. We rejoice that, being the wisest and the strong- est, thou art also the best ; and that that which we call good in thee is yet botter, and that we may understand thee from the best things which are in ourselves. We rejoice in the truth. Thou art nobly true in fidelity. And who is faithful like unto thee? In all upright- ness we rejoice ; and we rejoice in love ; but where is there upright- ness and where is there love comparable to thine? We rejoice in patience, and in self-sacrifice, and in long-suffering; and yet these are in us but a faint and reflected light, while in thee they are orbs glowing with original lustre. And we rejoice, more and more, as we grow in stature inwardly, and in the knowledge of the Spirit. More and more glorious dost thou open up to our thought and to our feeling. We rejoice in that which we see and in that which we feel, and we have a blessed assurance that all that lies beyond will, by and by, interpret itself to us so as to be better than we think. Now, we pray that we may be brought near to thy throne by an abundance of love ; by a sense of duty and obedience ; by filial fear. May we be drawn very near to thee, that thy heart may leaven ours. We pray that thou wilt keep every one of us from temptation to sin. Open the door of escape to all that are tempted. May they be able to overcome easily besetting sins, and all small sins that lead continually to greater ones. We pray that thou wilt be near to all those who are seeking to walk in the way of righteousness, and scarcely know where to step. WUt thou make the path plain to their vision. Wilt thou work in them so that they may feel inclined to walk in the Lord, and to live blamelessly. We pray that thou wilt help all those who are tempted by their passions by pride, by selfishness, and by avarice. May they be able to know their own estate, to perceive the force that works upon them and in them, and mightily to strive against whatsoever is wrong, to overcome it in the strength of God, and to stand continu- ally under every conflict victorious. We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant to those who desire to behold thee, the vision of thy goodness. Upon those who mourn the want of faith, breathe thou thy Spirit. To those who desire to re- joice and cannot, give, we pray thee, the spirit of cheer and of song. We pray that thou wilt comfort any whom thou hast greatly tried. May they be able to acquiesce in the Spirit of G od. May their experiences come as God's messages to them. May they humble RESOLVING AND DOING. 463 themselves before God. May they be chastised by the stroke of thy hand, knowing that it is the Father's discipline, who chastises not for his own vengeance, but for our profit, that we may become partakers of his holiness. Grant thy blessing to all those to whose minds thou art carrying unsettling truths. Bless all those who preach the Gospel. Bless those who are working for the reformation of morals. Wilt thou cover this land as by a flood with thy divine influences. Bring, we beseech of thee, every success to schools, to the honor and glory of thy name. Bless colleges and seminaries. Bless all efforts for diffus- ing true knowledge and right influences among those who are in darkness. May those who are despised be sought out and made honorable. And we pray that thou wilt bless those who do wrong. Inspire them with a sense of their wrong-doing. Arouse their conscience. We pray that they may be led from their evil courses to do the things which are right before God and man. Bless all this laud, and all the States that are therein. May thy will be done in this nation, and may it become strong, not for violence, not for selfishness, not for aggression or self- aggrandizement, but that it may be a light to weary and struggling nations, and that it may give courage and hope to those who are seeking liberty. And may all the nations of the earth arise and meet the coming of their God. May thy voice be potential; and may we everywhere discern the glory of the Lord arising and shining, until the whole earth shall be filled therewith. And to thy name, Father, Son, and Spirit, shall be praises ever- lasting. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. OUR Father, wilt thou bless the word of exhortation. May it not be in vain. May the truth search out all the motives and emotions of the heart. We pray that many may be made willing in the day of thy power, and be encouraged to go on. And may thy name be glorified in this assembly. Bless all who preach the Gospel. Bless all the churches. May they be filled with the divine presence. May they work for things high and pure. And grant, we pray thee, that at last, as one by one we go forth from the church militant, we may enter the heavenly church triumphant, to rejoice there over those victories which thou hast ministered unto us. And to thy name, Father, Son, and Spirit, shall be praises for evermore. Amen. " And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and tbo song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy : for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest." REV. xv. 3, 4. If it were possible in one way more than in another to destroy the glory of this most wonderful Book, it would be by treating it after the manner of science, or after the man- ner of philosophy. If it be treated as if it were an unfold- ing either of the past or of the future by a succession of ideas philosophically expressed, or according to any rules which belong to didactic teaching or statement, it will be utterly destroyed and ruined. For the Book is unique in this : that it is a drama which contains in it the moral of dramas. It is a Work addressed to the imagination in respect to the highest aspirations and experiences, and in respect to the whole sphere of human desire and knowledge. It teaches chiefly by symbols, which were far more significant in ancient days than they are now ; and things were made to do service then that to-day seem strange simply because other things are substituted, and they are unwonted. Its sphere is cast in a much higher atmosphere than we are accustomed to think. It is a Book which overhangs the whole career of time. Indeed, it is at the point where time and eternity meet that this .ublime drama takes its rise. It SUNDAY K v KX i xt;, June 14, 1874. LKMSUN : Kev. v. H Y.M xs (Plymouth Collec- tion) : NOB. 1,251, 14530. 468 THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. is poetry; and yet not lyric, and certainly not cast in the mould of pleasure. It is not poetry for any such measured use as we make of poetry in literature. At times it seems wild, and even grotesque, but never less than sublime. It is unworldly, and it has strange spiritual power ; because what- ever undertakes to successfully teach a drama or a grand ora- torio must needs be lifted up largely above the thoughts and comprehension of men. Now, if this, which in its single self has been the fountain and inspiration of the grandest works of men of such works as Milton's Paradise Lost, as Klopstock's great German work corresponding to it, and as the work of Pollock, which was much read, but which seems now to have largely died out of the general mind if such a work be treated, as I might say, after the manner of men, it is disfigured and utterly ruined. What should we think of one who should go into the lobby of the Vatican to see the frescoes of Raphael, and take with him scales and rules, weighing out certain parts of the pigment, measuring other parts, and ciphering upon and estimating these pictures by weight and size, as if they were a mere merchantable commodity ? Men would stand with uplifted hands in amazement that there should be found fools that would treat pictures in this way, applying to them rules that they are infinitely above, and that have no relation to them. What if we should find men who in regard to music or poetry should treat it after the same commercial scale after the same mathematical rule ? And yet, so men have been for generations attempting to interpret this sublime, vague, but most glorious and useful drama, ciphering throughout the past as if it were a literal prophecy, and ciphering into the future as though it were a prophecy unfulfilled ; and attempting, by arithmetic, by historical interpretations, by various ingenious parallelisms or infer- ences or analogies, to obtain didactic meanings from it to suit their own schemes of thought. Suppose a youth should walk, at evening, when the heav- ens were all balm, and the sun, just gone down, was throwing up all gorgeous colors into the west, mounting to the very apex of the sky suppose a youth, walking at such a time THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. 469 with his well-beloved, they being full of sentiment, full of feeling, in the midst of this charming scene, somewhat fore- casting their own life, and in the language of affection look- ing down through the days that were to come suppose that then she should breathe the thought of her fancy, her feeling and her love, into his ear, and he should receive it in silence, and think of it for a time, and at last say, " My dear, let me reduce what you have been saying to the laws of the mind ; let me see exactly the philosophy of those statements." How in an instant the touch would turn the whole scene to empti- ness and folly ! How incongruous, how impertinent, it would be ! And yet, it would not be more so than are those meth- ods by which men have attempted to solve, and to satisfy themselves about, this stupendous and unmanageable Book. You will sooner reduce the Northern Lights to the conditions of a material proposition than you will reduce this Book to any method of thought that is yet known. You will sooner make the sunset conform itself to any theory of arrangement. It is a drama, indicating the close of the long struggle between good and evil which has been and is a thread of human history. It is a drama which does not pretend to be symmetrical, and which does not attempt to have unity. It is like a great piece of music, filled with strange choruses and songs. It is full of swarming conflicts set off by stu- pendous images. In the construction of this irregular, sublime, transcendent drama, all creation is made a tribute. It includes lions, and lambs, and eagles, and dragons, and kings, and slaves. The good and the bad are mingled with thunderings and lightnings, with night and with day. Seas of fire, seas of glass, pavements of gold, cities, gardens, all manner of fantastic things and all manner of real things, are here strangely blended ; and who can unfold them, who can take them apart, and give them that analysis which belongs to time, to history, or to any of the modish thoughts of man- kind ? It is a sublime Book that hangs in the future, giving assurance of the final triumph of goodness, of truth, of justice, and of love in the world ; and we must take it as a magnificent tableau, and not as a regulated philosophical 470 THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. statement, aud still less as a history, either of the past or of the future. To interpret that Book is to feel it; and he interprets it alone, while he rejoices in it, who finds his im- agination swelling to moral inspirations, who finds himself lifted up into an heroic mood, who believes that the things ~ which now seem weak have in them everlasting strength, and that the things which seem now trodden under foot are as seeds that, being trodden under foot, are to spring up with new vitality and strange power. It is a Book which reaches the understanding but little, and the heart much and that through the strong colors of imagination. It is out of this Book that we have a multitude of scenes ; but none of them, perhaps, is more remarkable than the one which I have selected for our text. For, although the de- scription of that strange scene, which we read in the open- ing of our service to-night, sung by ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, has some elements which are lacking in this, yet there is in this passage, if less of the pictorial, more scope and more inward suggestion for motive. " And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb." Now, Moses is not to be regarded here exactly as a historic | personage ; certainly it is not the song which he composed \ that is meant, nor the song that was composed by the Lamb ; _^^but here is the theme Moses and the Lamb. And what was Moses in this heavenly tableau, to the thoughts of those addressed, but the beginning of a great divine dispensation of mercy and of education ? He, far back in the wilderness, \ and in the beginnings and sources of history, organized truth \ and beauty and right, and set agoing those great services by /which the soul was to be enriched and ennobled. In other words, he was the beginner. The song, beginning with Moses, and ending with the Lamb, connected the very first dawn of divine truth, in the earliest periods, with its first flow, and all its mutations, clear down to the time of Jesus Christ, who in Jerusalem was, and who now in the New Jerusalem is, typified as the Lamb. The figure to us is almost dead, but to the Jew, who had been accustomed to THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. 471 associate with the sacrificial Lamb whatever was sweet, what- ever was beautiful, whatever was pure and unworldly in perfection, the figure meant immensely more than it means to us. Tin- song was of triumph. It was the shout, the jubilatic outcry of the universe, that stood around about the ends of things, looking back to the beginning, and seeing the way of God down through the whole dispensation of time in the world, now fulfilled and brought to a triumphant close in the other life. All that there was in the different heroes; all that there was in the different dispensations ; all the judg- ments ; all the sufferings ; all the reformations ; all the growths ; all the developments ; all the victories whatever had gone to make up the moral elements in human history, in the household, and in matters touching priestly offices and prophetic qualities in those who witnessed in the wilderness, in prisons, and in the mountains, the apostolic administra- tions, and all the after periods, and doubtless all that which has come down from the apostles' day to ours all these things constitute the theme of that great heavenly outbreak- ing song. And what is the result of it ? It is simply the chanting of the old bard by which the deeds of his chief are narrated, as we narrate the achievements, enterprises, battles, and vic- tories of a hero. " Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty ; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name ? for thou ouly art holy : for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest." Here, then, is the divine catastrophe evil gone under ; imperfections swelled out to perfectness; ungrowth and crudeness brought up to ripeness and to beauty ; goodness triumphant through the universal realm. All nations shall come to thee, not one being left out. This was the vision, not of time, but of the upper sphere ; and it was this : the absolute triumph of the divine part in man. They who have gone before, and for generations yet those that shall follow us, must see the flesh stronger than the spirit in the great mass of mankind. The saddest sight, 472 THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. I think, that a man can contemplate, who believes in the Fatherhood of God and the maintenance of moral govern- ment, is the way in which the race have lived hitherto. Time, looked at from any high standpoint, is a most sad and dreary experience, unless we have some outlet; unless we have some compensation somewhere. If there be no consola- tion ; if you believe in none ; if you take the human race ethnologically, and with the narrow eye of science simply, the eye of sense, I know not anything that is so sad, and that so tends to destroy the trust of man in man, or all hope for man. The might and power of past ages has been physical, passional, sensuous, devilish ; and although here and there there have been sprinklings of goodness, although here and there there have been a thousand sweet voices heard, yet, in the main, the chant of time has been hoarse, harsh, cacophonous. In the main, the movement of the human race has been the movement of vast bodies with vast sufferings, and vast wastefulness, and vast uselessness. To-day I might take the continent of Africa and turn it bottom side up into the gulf of destiny, and take out every living thing in it, and the world would not know that it had lost a thing. To-day I might take more than half the globe, and sweep the hand of destruction across it, and cut off the race of men, and the world would lose no idea, no moral influence, no treasure that it was important to keep, no possi- bility in this life of anything great. And if man be looked at as a creature of time, and as worth only that which he is able to contribute to political economy and to the welfare of the globe, he is the poorest thing on the earth. It is bad to look too literally at things, and to trace them literally. It is, therefore, that we find in this the re- oound from minute and statistical and philosophical investi- gation. There must be something which shall help us out of this ; which shall lift a man's soul above the traditions of historical verity. We get it through the imagination in this light that streams down from the far future. And that struggle which has been going on, although there have been great improvements in some respects, is still going on. THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. 473 is it hard to be skeptical to-day. It is hard not to be. It is not hard for a man that opens his eyes to see. It is easy for a man to be orthodox, if he will take the right books, and shut himself up, and hear nothing except what they contain. It is easy for a man to have faith in Christian thought re- specting this world in all the glories of the millennial concep- tions, if in seeking facts he will take only those that are convenient, and those that are arranged for that special pur- pose. But when you take the human mind, and shut out nothing, and look at all the conditions of men, all their birth traits, all their tendencies, all the great channels in which they inevitably flow ; at things as they are, as they usually have been, and as they will yet for generations be ; when you look out with a true, loving eye, and an unbiased judgment, it is not easy not to be doubting, skeptical. There must be some door open. An honest man, a sympathetic man, a generous man, in other words, a child of the gospel, cries out in anguish of soul at the state of things which he finds upon the globe. There is need of some relief somewhere, or one could not live under the pressure and burden. If a man can shut himself up in a system, so as that his sympathies are cut off from his kind ; if a man can be so trained by any strange transformation of nature within that he shall feel himself bound to sympathize with the elect, and live or rest without concern or care for all else ; if a man can coldly look on and be happy when he knows, or thinks he knows, that his friends are to be condemned, I can see how he may be relieved from pressure of doubt and skepticism and unbelief. But I cannot conceive how a man who under- takes, according to the spirit of the master, to say, "The field is the world, and God so loved the world that he gave his son to die for it" I cannot conceive how a man who holds himself responsible in his reason for taking an account of the condition of the whole human family from the begin- ning through the bloody ages to the present day, with all their prospects in the future I cannot understand how such a man shall not be troubled, even if he have nothing but the mere earth-side, or physical sense, to judge from. It is from this aspect that there comes to me inconceivable 474 THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. relief and rejoicing when I find that the spiritual, the inef- fable, cannot be actually represented, cannot be stated sys- tematically and succinctly, because the higher states of being have no corresponding expressions, no language, by which they can be philosophically set forth. If an emotion be made known to us it must be made known by some symbol, by some vision, by some poetic repre- sentation ; and therefore, looking down through the ages and hearing the thunder of groans, and the clash of battles, and seeing rivers of blood still rolling along the gulf-stream of time, seeing the world bestormed, and seeing lurid torna- does sweeping over the earth, it is an unspeakable gladness to see at the end, and on the horizon, the bright and glowing colors of triumph ; and I stop to gaze ; and that administra- tion which has seemed so doubtful, so dark, seems lighter and plainer. They who stand disengaged from the igno- rance and darkness of time ; they who are lifted up, and are at a point of vision where they can see the past, the present and the future I behold them, not bearing witness to us, but in their own unconciousness breaking out into ecstacies of gladness because God is justified. He who brought into existence this globe, with all its miserable populations, in the last estate shall stand and be glorified in the thought and feeling of those who behold the end as well as the beginning. Yea, he shall be glorified, not as the oriental monarch is, who is praised whatever he does, but upon grounds and reasons. "Thou only art holy." " All nations shall come and worship before thee." Why? "For thy judgments are made manifest." There is charity ; there is explanation ; there is reconciliation ; there is harmonization ; and in the end it shall appear, when we see from the beginning to the end of this tremendous, and as yet uninterpreted, riddle of life and time, with an unclouded eye, and with a vision just and true and perfect then it shall appear that God is lovely and beautiful. This vision of God that we shall then have will present him in such an aspect of loveliness and beauty that we shall no longer, as we do now, see through a glass, darkly ; we THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. 475 shall no longer worship God as we do here, tentatively and strugglingly ; we shall stand in the presence of God as men stand in the light of the sun. When the sun pours itself down upon men they cannot look at it, from its fullness and glory of light. And the glory of God is a glory which the disengaged spirit shall appreciate. It is a glory that the love of every ransomed human soul shall appreciate. It is a glory which, made ineffable, shall be appreciated by all that is pure and true and noble in us. It is a glory that shall shine out so transcendently that every soul shall be awakened by it as flowers are by the sunlight. And those to whom here, look- ing upon the career of time, it seems most murky and muddy, shall in that blessed state see reason of congratulation and rejoicing. Now, I do not ask to know how it shall be : I only ask that it shall be. I am satisfied that there is no other outcome to human life than that. I see from day to day what is the difference between men between the worst and the best; and I go back to Solomon, and must needs take his melan- choly philosophy. After all the strivings which men go through, when you consider how imperfect life is, what is it worth ? It does not seem to be worth much here ; but oh ! it is the beyond that gives value to the present. It is not the measure we have here, but the fulfillment which we expect there, that makes life worth having. Who would bear the frets, the annoyances, the burdens, the long-con- tinued sorrows, the accumulated insults, the raspings, the pressures of life ; who would carry on and on this troubled dream which is so easy to be ended (for life, like a candle, you can blow out with a puff) ; who would take all the suffer- ings of this life, if there was nothing but this ? It is true of many a man in the conflict of life, that the more suffering he has, the harder it is to bear, the more it has power over him, the more he shuts himself up in his feelings. But when I look beyond and see an unexplainable victory, let me know that it is certain and that there shall be a period when I shall stand among the ransomed throng, and see on every side radiant manifestations of harmonious wisdom in per- fected form, and then in that faith and in that hope I am 476 TH E TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. willing to live, to bear and to suffer. For all I want is cer- tainty. I can wait for the consummation. When, in 1863, I was a pilgrim in Paris, my country lay upon my soul, and almost took joy from my eyes and my heart in the scenes that I beheld, and in the company that I met. The depth and blackness of her struggle lay heavily upon me. And it was on one radiant Sunday, not unlike this, that as I wended my way from the Grand Hotel to the church the tidings came of the surrender of Vicksburg. No words can tell the buoyancy, the awful sense of gladness, that I had. I went into the house of God, and I sat down in the pew of our minister, Mr. Dayton. By my side sat his daughter, about eighteen or twenty years of age. In a pause of the service (and I thought it was not unmeet to be mingled with the religious service), I said to her, " Vicksburg has surrendered." She answered me not a word ; but, turning to her companion, another young lady, she whispered it to her ; and both sat still as statues. The hymn was given out, the music -sounded, and she began to sing ; but no sooner had she opened her lips to sing than, in a flood of tears, she buried her head in her hands, and wept for gladness and triumph. She was far from her native land ; the ocean was between her and her home ; she was yet to abide in a foreign country for many months ; but to receive that news was enough. It overwhelmed her. It overwhelmed me also. And before the sun went down, yea, before the sun was at the noon, the other tidings came of the defeat of Get- tysburg ; and then my cup ran over. No man can tell how victoriously I walked. At the Grand Hotel, where I staid, was a large collection of men 10 whom my name was not sa- vory, and who had been accustomed to gather themselves in the great court when I came down, and by every mute de- monstration to show contempt for me, and to send many contemptible messages by the servants to rne (which I never received, although I heard of them afterwards) ; and no sooner (I was wicked !) no sooner had I learned the double glory than I went back to the hotel and walked out into that court to see my adversaries ; and alas ! they were not there not one of them. S THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. 477 It was when I was tossing upon the sea, off the harbor of Charleston, that we were spoken, in 1865, and the tidings were communicated to us from another ship, " Lee has sur- rendered;" and the wild outcry, the strange caprices and exultations of that moment, they never will forget who were present. We were far off from the scene of war ; we saw no signs nor tokens; it was as if the heaven had imparted it to us ; but oh, what gladness, what ecstacy there was in that news no man can know but those who have suffered as we had suffered. It was a whole life-time that we lived in those four years yea, a hundred life-times. A man might live twenty centuries, and not in all of them have as much experience as was crowded into those dark four years. And yet, when the tidings of victory came, all the past was as nothing ; and ever since the thunder of cannon, the clash of swords and the groans of the wounded have been dying out and receding further and further, till they have well nigh gone. "Wounds that could not well be healed have become less and less sen- sitive, and our whole land is steadily coming together, and being knit together, in spite of hindrances, and in spite of the many things that would better not have been ; and before ten years have rolled around the great flame of war which has passed over us will have been well nigh forgotten. So, only let me know that after the conflicts of every > kind in this life all jarrings, all disputes, all superstitions, all cruelties, all idolatries, all unfaiths or unbeliefs, all crimes, all vices only let me know that after these, I shall stand and look back upon time, and shout, "Thou art worthy, Lord God Almighty, because thy judgments are just and true, and all nations shall be gathered under thee," and I am content. The darkness shall be but as a troubled night. The day comes, and where is the night ? where are its dreams ? Now, then, we have part and lot in that blessed song. They who have gone before us are singing now. My mother's voice has not been still for these years and years. My little children have not been songless. They whom I have taught in my long ministry, and who have gone home before me, have not sat waiting dumb and empty. Those whom you all have known, thrice ten thousand, ten thousand times ten 478 THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. thousand, who have gone up, are to-day in the plentitude of that heavenly vision ; and we who are lingering and waiting may rise through the ministration of the imagination, through these gorgeous symbols, through this magnificent drama which foretokens the struggle and the victory, and may join in singing that great song of Moses and the Lamb the song of redemption the song of the healing of the nations the song of the destruction of evil and the triumph of good ; and through long suffering, through many defeats, through the steady growing power of goodness and its final ascend- ency, all darkness shall be swept from the universe, and there shall not be a pang, nor a sorrow, nor a wandering soul ; but God shall be glorified, and shall sit supreme, with his whole household around him, blessing and blessed forevermore. May you so live that now, beforehand, the joy, the cor- dial, the blessed strength and stimulus of this anticipated victory, may comfort you on your way. May tears be staid, or may they flow for medicine. May sorrows be healed, or may they be sanctified. May your faith and patience be aug- mented. Look up, look beyond ; and whatever other things you may draw out of this Book, of pleasure and of joy, do not forget this : that there is a living picture hanging over the church and over time, proclaiming this grand and com- forting truth, " Goodness shall triumph, evil and the Devil shall be exterminated, and God shall seem lovely to every living thing." THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. 479 PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. BEHOLD us yet struggling in the darkness or in the twilight, our Father. Thou that sittest in the midst of joy and victory hast thou forgotten? Thou that hast known tears, and sorrow, and death hast thou forgotten? Blessed be thy name, O Lord our God, that there is nothing that thou dost forget except our sins. All our wick- edness is ever present with thee. All our desires and all our failures bring thee to our succor. For thou art a present Help in time of trou- ble; and thou seest how the course of time doth sweep us. Helpless we are cast down upon the river of life, unable to resist, swept by it, whirled in eddies hither and thither, and often precipitated down narrow and dark ways : but we are never lost to thy sight : we are never lost to thy power and thy government. We are controlled by thee as much in the darkness as in the light. Thou art He that walk- est upon the sea, and in the night, and upon the shore, and in the twilight. Thou art in the city, and thou art in the wilderness. Thou art in heaven, and thou art upon the earth. Wherever there is need, there is divine supply. We rejoice in thy greatness. We cannot understand it. We are often perplexed in attempting to measure thee by the analogies of human life. We strive to conceive of thee by the patterning of our nature upon thine. All that we can do is to find some things that we discern as through a glass, darkly ; and yet, they are things so full of glory, and so surcharged with all hope-inspiring elements, that we rejoice even to see thee through a glass as darkly. But the vision waits. There are those, innumerable, who behold thee face to face. There are those in thy presence who have gone forth from our fami- lies. We have also our forerunners from this brotherhood. From every one of our households have parsed out those who have gone before. And they all are with thee, rejoicing. We are left behind to fulfill yet something of duty some portion of the destiny that has been appointed unto us. Thou art serving these, often in ways that are to us unknown ; and thou wilt yet call us home ; and we shall rise into the land of victory, and of joy, and of honor evermore. Now, be pleased to help us, that, though we may not leave our tasks, and lay aside our burdens here, to go up and rejoice there, we we may rise in thought, and by faith take some refreshment. Visit the lost. Find those that have gone forth. May they taste the joys that leave behind no sorrows, realize the blessedness of eternal victory, and come back to live again as if they had waked from pleasant dreams of the night that linger through the day, and cheer and comfort us. Take away our sordidness. May we not have a feeling of servi- tude to thee. Fill us with that interpreting filial love which shall make thee transcendently beautiful, and which shall draw us along the ways of duty by that which is sweet and noble, and not by scourging fear. We pray that thou wilt grant that we may more and more abound, in the Christian life, in all honor, in all truth, in all fidelity, in courage, in hopefulness, in activity, and in accomplishment there- 480 THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS. by. Grant that we may never be weary in well doing ; for what mat- ters it what befalls us? Why, heaven is just beyond, and we cannot fall without falling into the land of the blessed. Grant that through tears, and through sorrows, and through sighs, we may still rejoice in losses, in burdens, in troubles of every kind. May we learn how to rejoice. Teach us the divinest lesson which thy servant of old was taught, that we may rejoice in affliction, and make up in ourselves that which was lacking in the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that tbou wilt help us better to fulfill our duties at home, and better to discharge all the obligations which rest upon us in our relations one with another in the business of life. May we be better neighbors, better citizens, better men ; and may the spirit of God in- spire us, lifting us above all littleness, meanness, and untruth, and purifying our inward vision from darkness, and our hearts from guile. Grant that we may walk as they who know that they are the sons of God. We beseech of thee, grant us this inward blessing which shall itself produce all outward good, or sanctify whatever experi- ence may come to us. We pray that thou wilt accept our thanks for the joy, the inspiration, the intercourse, and the hope of this day; and grant that the spirit of this day may stream forth throughout all the week ; and may it be the door of the week through which heaven is poured upon our way. And so be pleased to grant us from week to week this vision, this day of rest and of heaven, that all our days in its spirit may be linked together; and that at last it may not be un- familiar to us when we rise to the song, the sympathy, the occupa- tion, and the joy of those who are redeemed. And we will give the praise of our salvation to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON". GRANT unto us, our Father, great joy in the faith which we derive through our imagination. These are the consummations which are needed to interpret time and life. These are the compensation? which we desire, and without which we faint and sink. We wil 1 believe in them. Our heart and our flesh cry out for God in victory for righteousness. Be pleased, we pray thee, to make us content with the allotment of our lives. Light or shadow, burden or rest, trouble or peace, whatever may befall us may we be content with it. Grant that we may feel that this is not our home. May we regard heaven as our home, and to that may we look, and in that by forethought may we dwell ; and at last may we go thither, and see thee as thou art, and be like thee. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen* FOLLOWING CHRIST. "From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say. Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea : for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him. And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him." MATT, iv., 17-22. We are to take into consideration how different was the teaching of Christ to the men of his own nation and age, from the teaching of Christianity to the men and nations of our times. He commanded these sturdy, rude fishermen to follow him. The command was very simple. The thing to be done was not complex, and there was no difficulty in obey- ing it. That is, they understood it : it lay in the scope of their power to forsake their calling and follow him. But when we, in the name of the Master, preach the repentance which he preached, and command men to follow Christ, they are perplexed. For they see no one. There is no person presented to them. As to following him, he does not appear. And it has to be explained that to follow Christ cannot be the same thing in our day that it was in his own ; that then it meant personal adhesion, actually becoming one of his dis- ciples, or one of his school-band at any rate ; that it was accomplished physically in his own day and presence, but that it cannot be any longer so ; and that, therefore, we must SITNDAT EVENING, April 9, 1874. T.KSSON : Isa. Iv. HYMNS (Plyiuoutb Collec- tion): X.is. HWl.slT. Iu7 484 FOLLOWING CHRIST. give to it a transition meaning, or the equivalent in our time ; and that to follow Christ is to be clothed with Chris- tian dispositions ; and that to be clothed with Christian dis- positions is, on the other hand, to be free from all malign dispositions; that the presence of the divine grace in the human soul of necessity implies the subsidence of malign passions, the avoidance of all evil, and the clothing of one's self with the character which belonged to Christ and to his followers in their day. This, stripped of all figurative ex- pression and all historical illustration, is to become spiritual- minded to live in our nobler nature under the inspiration of God; to walk in knowledge, in truth, in purity, in all kindness and fidelity. And a call to a Christian life is like a summons to an education, or to reformation. But we come upon this difficulty : that both in the time of our Master and the time of the apostles, the command was to a change of life and a change of disposition by the power of a man's own will. The same style of personal preaching is still maintained, with eminent propriety ; and men are urged primarily to renounce all evil, to put it away from them, to break up bad habits, and shove them aside, to take on right habits, and to follow after them ; to be clothed with Christ, to love God, the invisible, and men that are visible, and to love them in all their moods, with an infinite pa- tience. And when this is commanded, it is not that men say, " These are difficult things to do." "But," they say, " you command me to do immediately not only things that lie remote from me, but things that are not under the control of my will. If you were to command me, for instance, to rise up and go into any given assembly, that I could do ; that is competent to my will ; but to command me to hate what I love is another thing. The will cannot make me hate. It is not in the power of the will to make me love what I do not love. Why, you might as well command me to be accom- plished ; to know music ; to be a good geographical scholar, or a good historical scholar. These things are not subject to a man's own will." There is a certain plausibleness, not only, but a great deal of truth in this declaration ; there is one part of a man's FOLLOWING CHPTZT. 485 duty in going from a worldly into a truly Christian dis- position, that is subject to his immediate will ; and there is another part that is not subject to his immediate will. Look for a moment at the way in which men act in other things. It is quite possible for a man to say, " I will step into this house, if you please ;" it being a snowy day ; and he steps in, sheltering himself, it may be, from the passing blast : but if there is no house, he cannot say, "I will build me a house in a minute." He cannot do it. If he do build a house, it will require time. It is not within the compass of his will to do it instantly. But when a man builds a house, cannot his will be brought to bear upon it ? Oh, yes ; but the result cannot be attained instantaneously. It must come through periods of time. It must be reached through many instru- mentalities. However, if a man says, "I am determined that I will build a house," he then begins to act according to that general decision. He says to himself, " Where are my funds ? Where is my plan ? Who shall be rny architect ? Where shall it be placed ? Of what character shall it be ?" Having determined to build a house, with all these remote contingencies before his mind, he goes to work and builds it; and when at last he has accomplished the achievement, when the house is built thoroughly, it is the work of the will ; but it is not the work of one will, nor is it a work accomplished by any instantaneousness of will. In other words, we are quite familiar with the fact that there are primary, secondary and tertiary actions of a man's will. Things that are near us, we can do or refuse to do by the power of the will ; but if the thing is complex or remote, the will acts through periods of time in reference to it. The human will is obliged to act in intermediate ways. Thus, a man cannot will another man to trust him instantly. You can will that another man shall trust you, but it will take time to bring it about. You may so demean yourself that he shall say, after observation of you, through days and weeks and years, that you are trustworthy ; and when that has taken place, you may say, "I determined that he should trust me." You cannot go to a person and say, " Love me," and compel him to love you on the spot ; but 486 FOLLOWING CHRIST. you can will that ho shall love you ; and you can make your- self lovely and lovable ; and in time you may rejoice and K ; that that which you purposed in that man has come to pass. It came to pass, not by a will-stroke, but by the taking of various steps which the will determined upon. Under the influence of the will you took the first step, and then the second, and then the third, and all the other intermediate steps, until you accomplished the final result. That which is true in regard to these elements is true in regard to the whole social fabric of life. We are acquainted with that fact. One says, "I will not dwell in ignorance all my life; I am determined to have an education; I have made up my mind to that." These are words that are derived from the will ; a determination is formed ; and if it is followed out the result intended will be achieved. If he is living with gay companions, and is tired of it, he says, "If I am going to have an education, I must cut myself free from these distractions;" and he does so. That is one step. Then he says, " I must put myself where I can get instruction ;" and he looks about to see where instruc- tion can be had, and puts himself at school, or under a teacher. That is the second step. Then he says, "I must now apply my mind to the thing I mean to learn ;" and he applies his mind to it. That is the third step. Thus the first comprehensive determination breaks itself up into sub- sidiary determinations, so that the primary will becomes secondary, the secondary becomes tertiary, and the tertiary quaternary. There are, perhaps, fifty intermediate steps in the process of acquiring an education. This is the way in which men become artists or engineers. Tins is the way in which, men enter into the professions of life. They do it by the power of will, but not by its instan- taneous action. It requires time, and instrumentalities successions of instrumentalities. Not that it does not require the replenishing of the will again and again and again ; but it is nevertheless the action of Jbhe will. We all have a con- sciousness of this. Within certain bounds I can have just what I have a mind to. I can have knowledge if I want it. Not that I can call for it, and have it come at once; but, FOLLOWING CHRIST. 437 willing to have it, I can go to work and attain it. I can have skill if I want it. Not that it will come at my call ; but by taking certain necessary steps I can acquire it. So I can have refinement. Not that I can stand and say, "Now I am going to be refined," and immediately afterwards say, "Now I am refined." Not that any man can deal with these qualities, in their nature, by any other than the usual mode. Not that they can be attained except through a gradual process of evolution and education. No man can change the nature of things instantaneously. Yet, in all our experi- ence, and everywhere, we see how indispensable it is that a man shall have will-power; and that will-power distributes itself gradually, successively and continuously through long periods. Thus the social fabrics of life are built up. Thus intel- lectual development takes place. Thus the fine arts are carried on. Thus civilization propagates itself. Thus the fruits of the various industries of life are wrought out. The will-power of men, taking the form of determination, acts upon natural laws, and produces its influence upon the world. Now, men say to me, "You preach that I am to become a new creature in Christ Jesus ; you urge me to choose : but I cannot choose. These are things that cannot be chosen. You command my aspiration. You enjoin upon me love of the invisible, joy in the Lord, faith and hope ; but I cannot change my heart by merely willing to change it. I cannot endue myself with gracious affections simply by willing to have them." No, you cannot directly ; but there are some things that you can do. You can take those steps which experience has taught you stand connected with the accomplishment of these commands. Look at it, first, negatively. Our Saviour, and his dis- ciples after him, taught (and every faithful preacher knows and preaches the same thing) that the beginning of a higher and better life is an honest and earnest determination to break away from its opposites. It is quite in vain for any man who is given over to drink to be a reformed man with- out beginning with this determination: "I renounce my 488 FOLLOWING CHRIST. cups." The mere renunciation of drinking habits does not make a man sound and- well; the damage done by intemper- ance is not effaced in an hour ; the various pains and weaknesses of body and obscurations of mind are not removed instantly; the disastrous effects of his habits upon his business, and the injury done to his social connections, are not remedied immediately ; the threads that are snarled or broken are not straightened or repaired instantly; but the first step towards reformation is this: "I renounce this deadly enemy; I will have no more to do with it." You cannot make an honest man out of a thorough -go ing thief by any other course than this, bringing him to the determination, through the fear of God, "I will never steal again that is my determination and my purpose; I never will any more go with those that do, and that will tempt me to do it." That resolution does not make an honest man of him ; it does not take away the furtive feeling ; it does not take away the infernal inspiration ; neither does it repair the character ; and certainly it does not reinstate him in the con- fidence of the community ; it does not set him up in his business again. These things are all to come gradually ; but this is the first step toward these things. A man who is going home is lost in the wilderness ; and while his home is east, he is tending to the west : but by and by he has some token which satisfies him that he is going right away from home. Now, turning round does not take him home ; but I leave it to you if he has not got to turn round before he gets home. Men are going in wrong courses in various directions. The first step, under such circumstances, is the renunciation of the wrong. If it be in the nature of a single act or tendency, it may or may not be subject to the immediate operation of the will. A man can forswear drink, or gam- bling, or companionship. Not that he may not be tempted to it again ; but he can bring his will to bear on the instant. Then come the successive steps. The mere renunciation of wrong is not to embrace the right. A man may recede from pernicious or malicious courses, and yet not take hold on theii opposites. FOLLOWING CHRIST. 489 Now, in the preaching of the Gospel, the first command is, " Repent !" To repent is the first step. But what is repentance ? It is turning round. It is going away from evil and toward good. That first step lies within the scope of a man's will. Next comes the positive form. When one is conscious of having gone wrong, and is determined to go right and be right, and enters upon a clearer knowledge of God, he has taken a positive step. And then comes the more difficult question of the will. It is very true that you cannot say, "I will to be humble." It is true that you cannot say, with any effect, in yourself, " I will love God." All that you can do is this : knowing what are the causes that produce love to God the facts of the Divine Being, the facts of the Divine nature, the facts of the Divine action, as they have been made manifest in history or disclosed in the world around you knowing that these causes will produce love to God, you can bring them before your mind. It is in your power thus to create love toward God. Let one put in my hand a volume containing the life of a most heroic man, and say to me, " Admire that hero, whose life is given here." I cannot say to admiration, " Come out and admire him." I can take a candle, and if one says to me, " Shine on that thing !" I can obey him ; but I cannot say to my mind, " Admire !" and have it obey me. It will not admire simply because it is commanded to. What can I do ? Well, if you want me to admire that hero, you must let me read the volume. I take up the life of William Wallace, or somebody else ; and I read the facts coming out one after another ; and I do not need to be commanded to admire. I say, "That was a fine fellow." I go on reading again, and I say, "This is admirable." And as I read on I begin to glow with enthusiasm. And finally I lay down the book, and say, " That was well worth reading." I think and muse about it, and urge others to read it. I preach to you admiration of God in his providence, or the love of God in his government ; and men say, " I cannot admire these things, for I do not understand them." That is true ; and you cannot arbitrarily will to admire them ; but 490 FOLLOWING CHRIST. you can say, "I will listen to those who tell me about them; I will put my mind in such conditions that I can apprehend them ; I will bring myself into such a state that I can behold the glory of God that fills the heaven and illumines the earth ;" and so you can indirectly will to do or to be that which you are commanded to do or to be. Take the matter of humility. There are a great many persons who pray for that quality. I think there never wa< anything that people so fail to live up to as their own prayers. We hear a great deal about the prayer of faith ; but how many persons are there who pray in faith ? There are few that pray at all who do not pray that they may grow in grace, and that they may be humble ; and yet, the moment you attempt to make a man humble that is to say, the moment you bring him under circumstances where his pride is interfered with there is nothing that he renounces so indignantly as the answer to his prayer. He does not want to be humble. He thought he did when he prayed ; but when he sees the thing face to face, he does not relish it. No man can will humility in himself ; but he can bring him- self into circumstances where he will discern the need of it ; and, step by step, he may create in himself such a disposition that he shall come to a knowledge of it, as he comes to any other knowledge, and attain it as he attains any art or accomplishment, and prove it as he proves any other thing which he learns in life. In short, there is no distinction between education in moral elements and education in intellectual elements. There is no distinction between the mental processes by which men attain to religious experience and the mental pro- cesses by which they attain to social experiences, or artistic experiences, or any other experiences. There is not one mind for religion and another mind for secular things ; there is not one law for spiritual things and another law for things worldly. It is the same mind under the same law, and under the same moral government ; and that method by which men know how to repair the wastes of misconduct ought to bring them nearer and nearer to what is good, until they have satisfied themselves of that which is understood and admitted FOLLOWING CHRIST. 491 on all hands by men who enjoy the benefits of civilization namely, that religion requires men to turn from evil. So, then, when we command men to repent and come to God, we do not command that which is impossible, though it may not be possible for it to be done in a moment, or in an hour, or in a day, or in a week. The beginning of it, how- ever, may be instantaneous. Steps which stand connected with the final product may be taken at once. I cannot go to my cornfield and say, " corn, rise up !" and see it spring forth instantly ; but I can go to my corn- field and plant corn in a furrow, and say nothing, and it will come up in its own time. Though my will cannot evoke it directly ; though I cannot by my will-power lift it up as I do my hand, yet it is certain that my will has much to do with producing it. I can determine what it shall be. I can say whether it shall be small, or whether it shall be large. I can say whether it shall be sweet corn, or whether it shall be field corn. And yet, I have to wait for it through its ap- pointed seasons. I can make my will determine my condition, my relations, my accomplishments, and my happiness or unhappiness. You urge your children to do this. The teacher urges his pupil to do it. Every master employer talks of it to his apprentice. Every man who is bringing up young men in business urges it upon them. And when I urge you to unite your- self with God by Christian graces and excellences, I only repeat the same thing which you are saying to men in other relations, as teachers and educators. The same general phil- osophy and the same general practice prevail throughout society in regard to the change of life from indolence to industry, from prodigality to frugality, from indifference to carefulness. You are all the time attempting to tell men how to build themselves out of animal life into a useful, industrious, social, refined, civic, patriotic, frugal, manly life ; and I press the same things, according to the same laws, when I enlarge the sphere and apply them not merely to time but to eternity ; not merely to those who are around about us, but to God, and to the spirits of just men made perfect ; not merely to the things that perish in the 492 FOLLOWING CHRIST. using, but to everlasting things that God has reserved in his kingdom for those who love him. So no impossibility is presented to men when they are called to repentance and to righteousness. To say that men cannot repent, to say that they cannot return to righteousness, to say that they cannot become meek and gentle and long-suffering, clothed with hope and filled with love, is to say that men are unsusceptible to education. Education will not come of itself ; it will never come unless you seek it ; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it. It is exactly to this point that I bring my discourse to- night. I address it to those here who are consciously liv- ing in courses that are wrong ; and my message to them is, Repent! The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The Divine Spirit, that evokes desires and aspirations, and addresses the conscience and the reason, inspires me to speak this message to you. Turn back from evil. That you can do, if you will to do it. If the evil be multiplied, if it be spread through various relations, then the will must be repetitious, and meet the thing to be done, step by step, and continuously ; and I call to every one of you, whatever may be the wrong, whether it be wrong flowing from pride, or wrong flowing from ambition, or wrong flowing from vanity, or wrong flow- ing from the appetites and passions ; whatever be the nature of the wrong, whether you are joined with others or whether you are solitary, whether you be long practiced or new in evil, whether it be secret or overt, I call upon every man that believes himself to be an heir of immortality, to abandon the wrong. Bring your mind to the consideration of it now. Why should you go on in wrong longer ? Why should you continue to educate yourself in that which you yourself disallow with your best nature, and which you, in your clearest hours and sunniest moods, believe to be unworthy of you ? Why should you continue it ? Since the power resides in you to change it, why should you not bring that power to bear upon it at once, and say, " By the help of God, I will forsake every known evil." FOLLOWING CHRIST. 493 In one bosom such a purpose as that will lift up one specter ; and in another, another. Many of you will, per- haps, be appalled when you consider how wide has been the waste, how great has been the desolation in your souls, how they lie like Tadmor and Palmyra in the wilderness ; and how to repair this waste seems almost beyond your com- petence. Nevertheless, it can be repaired. No man lives who cannof repent and reform. There is no evil that you cannot resist and conquer by the help that God will give to every right-minded, right-willing man. I call you to take one step beyond this. The forsak- ing of evil is not enough. No man can easily forsake evil except by taking hold on good. Industry is the cure of idleness. " Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good," says the apostle. Work is a cure for dishonesty, if a man works at right things hard enough and long enough. The way to attack any evil is to put into the place of it its opposite. Let the liar speak the truth. It may be awkward at first, he may have to try it a good many times before it fits his tongue ; but there is the law, and the prac- tice is to be begun and continued until the tongue naturally speaks the truth. In all the relations which you sustain to one another there are many things that are wrong, and many duties that yon will recognize without my mentioning them. Now do the best things, as the way to abandon evil, and as the method by which to overcome those habits that are so perilous to your manhood here and hereafter. Search out the positive virtue that stands over against every known evil ; will that and follow after that. More than this, why should a man who can do a thing easily do it by the hardest ? There are two ways in which a clock may be made to keep time. One is to go to the hand and pull it round five minutes, and then in five minutes go and pull it round again, and keep moving the hand round on the dial five minutes at a time until the twelve hours are passed by which time you will be tired of the operation. The other way is to wind the clock up. There 494 FOLLOWING CHRIST. is an active force inside of it ; and if you wind it up and start it, it will go of itself, and keep going. Now, can a man be helped in any such way as that ? Must a man, all day long, say to himself, "May I say that ? No, I must not say that, because it is wrong. I am going to try to do light, and that would not be right. What am I thinking ? I must not think this. It is wrong. What did I feel then ? I must not feel so. What is my motive ? I am afraid it was not right." The dealing of a man in that way with himself would be like the turning of the pointer of a clock by hand instead of winding it up. A man who should act in that way would make a fool of himself in a year. He would break up all continuity of thought and action, and destroy himself. It is bad for a man to be thinking about his digestion. Any man can make himself sick by watching his stomach all the time. A man can impair the integrity and efficiency of his mental faculties by continually watching their action. And is there any way in which this can be avoided? Certainly there is. There is such a thing as a supreme affection, which takes charge of the mind and drives out every other affection. I carry in my mind a great many dramas, a great many tragedies. I know a great many sor- rows, a great many sufferings, a great many histories. Some- times it seems to me as though I walked in a motley, ghastly crowd, there are so many things that I know professionally about so many people ; and sometimes they are pitiful and painful. I recall a case, many years ago, in which one had lived a life of pleasure and indulgence, to the verge of vice. At length there sprang up a goodly affection in her bosom ; and that which had been impossible before the avoidance of temptation and of connivance with evil became easy. No sooner had there come a worthy object of love, and no sooner had her soul begun to love, than love expelled her lower feel- ings, rectified her life, cleansed her heart and imagination, and reestablished her in purity and integrity, to which she has adhered to this hour. I know the history of a person (strange as it may appear, that person has no more idea that I know it than that the Emperor of China knows it; it is my secret and hers), and FOLLOWING CHRIST. 495 it is a marvelous one in many respects. Not only is it mar- velous, but it is illustrative. For here was a nature really great, with nobleness ; but it was almost a wreck, and it was recovered, not by a minute inspection of motives, not by working out this, that, or the other individual thing, but by enduing herself with a great affection that had such power over her whole soul that it became sovereign, expelling all evil and cleansing the heart. So, then, when you desire to overcome easily-besetting sins, let it not be by a minute inspection of every act of your life, but by becoming so imbued with a right purpose that your whole conduct shall be shaped and directed by it. What you want is the indwelling of the Divine Spirit, the love of God shed abroad in your heart; and this should be the master passion of your being, and should control your imag- ination, your understanding, all your lower affections. Let this divinely-inspired love once take possession of you, and it will expel all temptation, and cleanse your soul, and lead you into all right ways. This is the promise given. This is the office-work of the Spirit of God. While men are pressing toward evil, they should be aroused by having the light of this truth thrown upon their course, to inspire them with a purpose of reformation, and turn them about ; but that which they need more than all else is the Spirit of God by which they shall be transformed through the renewing of their hearts, and by which their affection shall be changed through the plenitude and efficiency of the divine power. Only let a soul be caught up into a knowledge of the beauty of God in Christ Jesus, and feel the heart of God, the blood of Christ, as it were, pulsing in him, and that affection, su- preme, regnant, becomes the mainspring of conduct, and all the wheels move, the hands keep time, ten thousand evils are dissipated, and the life becomes symmetrical and har- monious. There is, then, at every step, within the reach of your understanding, within the reach of your will, the initial experience the beginning of just those courses the ends of which are salvation to the soul. I preach to you possibilities. I set before you your own dispositions and outward lives. 496 FOLLOWING CHRIST. Look at them. Do they need "rectification ? Do they need exaltation ? Do they need cleansing ? There is provision made for all these things. You are, it is said, dependent upon God. Blessed be God for that dependence ! You are dependent on God as the scholar is dependent on his teacher. It is not an irksome dependence. It is a dependence for which the scholar is grateful. You are dependent upon God as the sick man is upon his physician. It is not a repulsive dependence. You are dependent upon God as you are upon the lawyer who interposes in your behalf, and wields his knowledge of equity. It is not a disagreeable dependence. We are dependent upon God as we are upon the seasons. It is not a depend- ence that we would fain be relieved from. It is a glorious dependence. No sooner do we invoke God, and open our- selves to the influx of the Divine Spirit, than it brings light, and change of purpose, and finally victory and joy. So, then, though I cannot call you to follow Christ as the disciples followed him, who laid aside their nets and forsook their vocation, I can call you to a Christian life. I can hold up before you this higher conception of following Christ by the inward man. I can urge you to abandon whatever is evil, and follow whatever is good. I can call you to do these things, not by your own strength, which will fail you a thou- sand times in life, but by the strength of God. Not only does the love of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, make provision for the pardon of every man, but it delivers every man from his sins, if he puts his trust in God. I commend you to this faith of Christ ; to this love of God ; to the begin- nings of a course of life through the strength and light and guidance and help of the Divine Spirit. Ye that are so powerful in your households ; ye that know the ways of refinement and of knowledge ; ye that can com- mand the elements of nature, in winter and in summer ; ye that can walk the sea or the land ; ye that are the architects of your own fortunes ; ye that know how to stand in your civic relations patriotically, and do the things which good cit- izens ought to do, why should you not make God your sov- ereign, and the eternal world your commonwealth ? Why FOLLOWING CHRIST. 497 should you prove recreant to those duties which belong to your higher manhood, if you are able to fulfill those that be- long to your lower manhood ? I do not blame you for your worldly wisdom that is good ; but I do blame you if, know- ing so much of worldly wisdom, you do not apply it to your higher manhood. May God give you the light, the help and the victory ! PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. OUR Father, we are called by thy voice to confession, and to sup- plication, and to communion. Not because we are good, but because we need the divine help to make us so; not because we are wise and companionable, but because we are afar off and without grace, and in utter need of all that shall make us associates worthy of thy chil- dren, do we draw near to thee. For thou art the Fountain of all Goodness. Thou art the Source of Inspiration : and from thy nature comes the influence by which we rise above the flesh, and seek after things spiritual and divine; and we beseech of thee that thou wilt listen to us; not because of our petition, but out of the great good- ness of thy soul. Make us to understand more perfectly than we have understood, how great is the goodness of the Lord towards us. Thou art so great that thou wilt not suffer iniquity upon us, nor let us sink and go the way of the beasts of the field. Thou hast destined us to immortality and to glory, and thou dost chasten us. Thou dost make the world seem often to us, when lured by it, hard and dark, that we may not be idolaters therein. Thou art calling us by a thou- sand things to thee; and we pray that we may understand the econ- omy of thy providence, and what is the meaning of the things that happen ^ay by day. May we understand the school of the Lord in which we are disciples, and that thou art our Teacher and our Guide; may we submit ourselves to thy righteous will, revealed day by day in thy providence; taking sorrow when sorrow is sent, and disap- pointments when they come from thy hand, and chastisement when thou dost in love afflict us. Grant, we beseech thee, that we may not forever seek pleasure, and only desire the stimulus of joy. May we know also something of the medicine of sorrow. May we be made strong by experience in adversity. May we know how to be patient, and to endure with long-suffering. Grant, we pray thee, that we may have such strength in thee not in our own wisdom or goodness, but in the mercy and the strength 498 FOLLOWING CHRIST. and the inspiration of God that we maybe steadfast, Immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. We thank thee for so many kindnesses as thou hast graciously sent upon this congregation ; for so many Christian households grouped together here ; that so many souls have been enlightened and inspired with the wisdom that is from on high : that so many have found per- sonal access to the Beloved ; that so many from day to day live by faith of him who loved them, and gave himself for them. We pray, O Lord, our God, that more may be won to the blessed- ness of Christian life ; that more may repent of whatever is evil, and turn away heartily from it, and put their faith and trust in the love of God. We pray that we may hear the voice of many inquiring and ask- ing to be guided into truth by thy divine Spirit. We thank thee that there are so many that are reformed, who walked in the crooked ways of iniquity; so many that are instructed, who aforetime sat in dark- ness and in the region and shadow of death ; that so many are free who were bond-slaves to Satan; that so many are seeking those pleasures which endure, who sought from day to day evanescent pleasures. Accept our thanks, we pray thee, for the truth, for the validity of it, and for the power of God every day ; and more and more make thyself manifest. Grant that thy work in the midst of this people may be but begun, and that a great many more may be brought into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. We pray that thou wilt be with those who teach and with those who are taught. Be with all that labor, whether in word or in acts of kindness. Spread abroad the beneficent influence of Jesus as manifested in the hearts of thy people here. Spread it abroad every- where, to all those who need, to all those to whom the Gospel is not preached. And we pray that thou wilt shed abroad the light of truth upon this great nation. Bring it more perfectly under the influence of truth and justice. Let thy kingdom come in all the world. Let thy delay be cut short, that seems already so long. Bring in Jew and Gentile. Grant that the nations of the earth may not dash against each other ; that wars may be unknown and pass away utterly ; that ignorance may flee away ; that knowledge may prevail ; and that there may be that liberty in which shall be the strength of a true manhood. And we pray that that kingdom may come in which dwelleth righteous- ness, and that all the earth may see thy salvation. We ask it in the name of Jesus, to whom, with the FatheV and the Spirit, shall be praises evermore. Amen. PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. I propose to make some comments upon the passage of Scripture which I read as a part of the opening service namely, the 6th chapter of the gospel according to Matthew, beginning with the 19th verse : "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal ; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." I do not like even to seem to contradict the face of Scripture ; and yet, as this passage has been largely under- stood, and is to-day understood, nothing could be more at variance with the teaching of the Scripture elsewhere, and nothing could be more at variance with the history and out- flow of Christian morality under the divine economy and providence. If we are to interpret the Sermon upon the Mount without any rudder, without any central virtue which shall throw all these various economic commands into their relative positions, then I know not how we can avoid accept- ing statements which are contradicted by every step of the world's history since the day of their utterance. The rudder of this passage is in the last part of it, as it is in a ship : " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and till these things shall be added unto you." So, then, all these things are the very things we have been told not to seek. Seek the kingdom of God, and you shall have those things which you need, but which you an- told not to seek. Now, it is very certain that if they are in and of them- selves mischievous, it is poor economy to receive the^a iu any SUNDAY EVENING, May 17, 1874. LESSON: Matt, vl., 19-34 .cfYKxa (Plymouth Collection) : NUB. 1300, 901, 1,294. 502 PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. way. I understand the general teaching of this Sermon on the Mount, in so far as these economic truths are concerned, to be this : that a man is not developed by the external. It is not bodily strength, nor bodily skill, nor accumulation of the ordinary sources of enjoyment those that feed the ear, and the eye, and the palate, and the different senses that a man's life consists of. A man's life is within. It consists of the kingdom of God that is developed within us of our nobler manhood ; and in that nobler manhood we are to dwell ; and the things which do not make for that, but which make for the gratification of the body, and for the lower and outward life, do not belong to that kingdom. Any modes of seeking right things which shall act in these direc- tions are reprobated, and are to be set aside. Now, then, if your end in life is to be rich ; if that is the thing which you aspire to ; if that is the ambition which inspires you, Christ says to you, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth ; do not seek things secular or things expedient from an earthly point of view. They are transi- tory. They are not sufficient for a man's needs and necessi- ties. He breaks down under any such search as this." He does not say to a man that absolutely he shall not lay up anything. He does not say to a man, " It is wro'ng to make money." All the way through the teachings of the New Testament, throughout the teachings of the apostles, there is the recognition of property ; and Christ himself recognizes it. He dined with rich men, and accepted their hospitality and their alms ; and he nowhere rebuked them for being rich. But wherever a man is rich in money, sacrificing for it manhood, or neglecting manhood for it, his riches are such as are reprobated, and justly, too. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Now, if you shall say from this passage (as, if you take it literally, you must) that it is wrong to make money, then you substantially assert the other proposition, that the world would get along without any commerce j but we have speci- PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. 503 mens among the savages in our own forests, and in tropical climes, where men cannot work, or where they are so lazy that they do not want to work, of the outcome of that state in which men are not inspired by enterprise ; and we find that those nations that are freest to receive the gospel in its largest form, and to live under its dominion, and to develop manhood most perfectly, are the nations that have had the most thrift, the most industry, the most foresight, the most of those things which seem to be forbidden in this passage. So far from enterprise and commerce militating against morality, I aver that these are the very methods by which God in his providence educates men by which he teaches them foresight and sagacity. Our rising early and toiling late, and being careful in the ordering of our affairs, and becoming masters by the control of material things, and deny- ing self, and practicing forbearance in the present for the sake of benefits in the future, thus living one day for the next, and one year for the next, and enlarging our horizon, and developing intelligence and thrift through these instru- mentalities God is developing morality and character in us. So that though commerce is not the school of spirituality, yet in the lower forms of morality it has been employed from the beginning in the providence of God as a school where men have been developed and educated in certain great pri- mary virtues, or in fundamental honesty. Therefore this passage does not mean that men are not to lay up treasures. It sets two ideas before them. Here is the manhood which comes from the kingdom of God in you, and which consists of righteousness, truth, justice, love, purity in short, the royalty of manhood such as Christ inspires. That is one end of life ; and making money is the other. These are set up before you. If your prime end of life is laying up treasure you are base indeed ; and Christ says, " Lay not up as the chief end of your life treasures that are fugacious, and that will supply only your lower wants ; but lay up treasures spiritual. Seek the kingdom of God, and then these other things will come, and will come harmonious- ly will come without mischief in the coming and in the use. "The light of the body is the eye; if, therefore, thine eye be sin- 504 PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. gle, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness I" There seems to be no immediate connection of this pas- sage with that which goes before. The connection is gen- eral. We are to remember that this is not a consecutive ser- mon, and we are not to look for a logical connection, every part with every part. According to the history given by the evangelists, our Master, after a day of wonderful miracles, went up into the mountain, and spent the night, there with his disciples. In the morning, descending part way, he met the crowd, and seeing a great multitude, he turned back and went part way up the mountain, and sat with his disciples ; but the crowd thronged about him ; and he began to preach and to teach them according to the method that he pursued, which was this : when he announced a topic he was ques- tioned by the people; and he answered their questions. There were interpolations among his remarks. We have no record of the interruptions and questions, but we have indications of them. We know that this was the method not only of our Saviour, but of the Rabbis in whose school he received his method of teaching. The questions and interpolations, which gave rise to many expressions, are dropped out. So there seem to be disconnections. There were disconnected passages in the progress of the discourse, but they all had a general connection with the line of thought. Here the injunction is, Let the purpose of your life be simple and single. The great end and aim of your life is the development of the divine nature in yourselves. As when the physical eye is put out the whole body is dark, so when the spiritual vision is gone, how great is the darkness of a man's soul ! "No man can serve two masters." Yes he can. Many a man does it. There are two masters in every family. u Either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. He cannot serve God and mammon." Ah ! there is the explanation. Two masters that shall represent opposite principles no man can serve. If one rep- PRATER AND PROVIDENCE. 505 resents lies and the other truth, you cannot serve both of them. Of two masters, if one represents justice and the other injustice, if one represents benevolence and the other selfishness, if one represents the carnal and the other the spiritual side, you cannot take them both. You can choose between one and the other ; but if you take truth and spir- ituality and honor and justice, you must give up their oppo- sites. " Ye cannot serve God and mammon." You can serve God and make mammon serve him ; you can serve God and use riches in serving him ; but you cannot take the essential, worldly, selfish, sordid, avaricious spirit that is called mammon, and be rooted and grounded in that, and at the same time be rooted and grounded in spirituality. " Therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put ou. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than rai- ment?" If you take this at its face, and give a literal interpreta- tion to it, it will traverse and oppose the whole providence of God and the whole experience of civilized humanity. Take no thought ? Take no foresight ? Is, then, sagacity bad ? Is forethought mischievous ? Is it true that a man should un- dertake to live heedlessly in respect to food and raiment ? Is there such an economy that a man may say, " I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore I will have no trade ; I will follow no industry ; I will not go to the market ; I will not go to the tailor or to the shoemaker ; I will eat nothing but what God's providence sends to me, and wear nothing ex- cept what God's providence sends to me" ? What sort of a world would we have if men undertook to carry that out literally ? There have been such things attempted ; and if they do not come too often and make too much pretension, as speci- mens they are very interesting. There are institutions that are said to be supported by faith. A man opens an asylum for consumptives. He has no money, but he prays. He says, " If I look up in faith to Christ, he will supply all that I need." By and by he pub- lishes an annual report ; and what do we find ? The man 506 PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. has received enough money to pay the rent of large build- ings. He says, " I let it be known generally that I had such an institution, and patients flocked to it." In bis journal he makes this statement: " On such a morning a bill of three hundred dollars came in for food and various other necessa- ries, and I had no money ; but my soul dwelt in perfect peace. I spread my wants before the Lord, and rose up and went forth without a trouble ; and that afternoon I received by mail, from unknown persons, money from one twenty dol- lars, from another one hundred and fifty dollars, and from another four hundred dollars. So I had all that I needed, and I paid the bill, and my steward was in amazement." Now, let us test this a single moment, because it has all the appearance of following literally the face of Scripture. If there is such a provision as this we ought to know it. I am exceedingly anxious to build me a nice house on my farm, and I am exercised to know how I shall do it ; and if I can do it by praying, if there is a faith by which I can go on and build, and have money that I have not earned sent me from north and south and east and west, and I can be assured of it, I will go forward and build. A man wants to build a banking-house. Is it safe for him to retire to his closet and pray, and then go on building with- out knowing where the money or the material is coming from ? And if you can build one house in that way, why not a whole street ? And if houses can be built so, why not ships? If you can do such things by praying, and without thinking or doing anything yourself, why can you not carry on the whole work of civilization in that way ? I do not undervalue prayer and faith ; but I believe that the vast achievements which we witness in life are the re- sults of human thought and will and intuition. The secret of men's success in life lies largely in themselves. Certainly there was never a wiser adaptation of means to an end than we find to exist in regard to this very outward influence. Suppose I should go into the street and limp with very great suffering, and, instead of taking a staff to walk with, should pray in faith, and a friend, seeing me, should run to my side, and say, " Let me help you I" Under such PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. 507 circumstances I might think that my prayer of faith had. brought me succor ; but suppose every man should limp, then what ? If prayer is good for one, why not for all ? I say that where there are results there are causes. Take the case of an asylum. In the first place there is an appeal to universal sympathy. If a hospital is estab- lished, and pains are taken to let it be known throughout all the length and breadth of the land that it has no regular support, but that it depends upon what comes to it casually by way of voluntary contributions, that fact is a cause which may account for the support which it receives. I think one institution during a generation in a nation might be supported in that way. But was there ever a net more deliberately spread to catch contributions than advertising that they are expected for such a good purpose ? It is not prayer that brings in the money; it is the adaptation of a means to an end. It is the use of causes to produce a result. It is a wise appeal to the known sympathy of the human soul. I believe in prayer, and in the prayer of faith ; but I do not believe that God ever would make a tree forty feet high in an instant in answer to any amount of praying, I believe in the prayer of faith, but I do not believe that it will subsoil my farm, nor drain the wet places on it. I do not believe the prayer of faith is meant to be a substi- tute for our own endeavors, or that it is meant to be a premium on laziness, as it would be under such circum- stances. You are children of God. In fact, this passage says you are to develop in yourselves the godly nature. This is the great end of your life ; and in doing this, in the full exercise of your power, you are not to be anxious. Tak- ing thought is not the true rendering of the original verb. The correct translation is, Take no distracting thought; take no worrying thought ; do not be anxious. The declara- tion is this (and certainly it approves itself to the judgment of every one) : you are under the divine providence ; you are seeking, as the great end of your life, the development in yourselves of the noblest manhood namely the pattern 508 PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. that is in Christ Jesus. Now then, in carrying this out do not fret yourselves, nor worry unduly in respect to ex- ternals, bodily comforts, food, raiment and the like. It is not that you are not to work for them, and think of them, appropriately, and that you are not to put such emphasis on them that fear for want of them should take away the comfort of your life. That is not where you live. " Behold the fowls of the air ; they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; and yet your heavenly Father feedeth them." There is an illustration ; and how strangely people employ it ! They say, "Yes, God feeds the birds and he'll feed us ;" but did you ever stop to think how he feeds them ? Did you ever stop to think whether he does not make them feed them- selves ? Did you erer see a robin bring up a brood of young robins ? Do you suppose a robin gets on the edge of its nest, and says, " God, feed my little ones." No, it sends them to hunt worms ; and out they go, and work in the turf as hard as any creatures of their size should work. When the sparrows are fed by God, he sets them hopping through the hedges where seeds are, and along ways where insects burrow or hide. When he feeds birds he feeds them according to their nature. He has a providence which takes care of them in accordance with the nature of birds. Let us take the next illustration that is given here : "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? and why take you thought for your raiment? " Which of you by worrying can add anything to your stature ? Suppose you are homely, and are discontented, and wish you were handsome, can you by worrying grow handsome ? Suppose you are short, and are at a disadvan- tage for that reason, and you would like to be taller, can you by worrying make yourself taller ? Who can change an immutable law ? Who can change the absolute facts that exist about him ? Then comes another illustration : "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." That is certain. They do not work at the plow, nor at the anvil, nor at the loom, because lilies do not want the PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. 509 products of any of these things. But do they not work in their own sphere, and according to their own nature ? Is the lily dreamed into existence ? Is not there a bulb ? Does it not follow the laws of light and heat ? Does it not grow by increment ? Are not the stem and blossom the product of natural laws ? Although it does not toil as we do, yet, according to its own nature, it toils. As there is a providence that takes care of birds, according to bird-nature, so there is a providence that takes care of grass and flowers, according to their nature. It takes care of them, not in spite of natural law, nor over natural law, but through natural law. " And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, Tras not arrayed like one of these." " Now, the point comes still, that although the bird must earn its living, there is no evidence that the bird has the habit of fretting or worrying about it. Birds go to bed at night utterly unconcerned about the future. They have no plans in their little heads. They doze peacefully through the night. In the morning they are up at twilight before you are. (I state it as a fact, though you will have to take it by faith, as you will never realize it. They sing at half-past three o'clock ; but none of you know anything about that.) They rise without any fever of desire, and go to work accord- ing to their own nature, and in the use of instruments which are indispensable to them. So God feeds them, and they are happy. These little unburdened folk, if you do not look too closely into their habits, seem almost like ethereal creatures. Yet they are full of monition and instruction in so far as the use of natural laws is concerned; and in their sphere they take care of themselves, without unnecessary friction or unnecessary fretting. Men are likewise cared for, in the providence of God, according to their nature and within their sphere. Like the birds and like the lilies, they are called to do their own part in this providence ; and they do it with the exercise and under the excitement of fear and apprehension. They vex the days with speculations full of pain and distress. And the point of the parable or illustration is this : in attempting 510 PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. to develop in yourselves the kingdom of God, a manly char- acter, you are under a providence that takes care of you just as it takes care of the hirds and the lilies. You are to exert yourselves as the birds and the lilies do ; but as they do it serenely, and without unnecessary fret and care, so you are to do it serenely, and without unnecessary fret and care. This gives you light as to the doctrine of divine provi- dence, of the providence of God, which I believe to be universal, and which I believe also to be special and personal, for the recognition of the minutest circumstances of men's lives. The providence of God is not the supersession of natural law. The moment you take away a man's faith in great natural laws, the bottom drops out of human endeavor. It will not do to take away method and certainty, and substi- tute for them the vagaries and superstitions of an erratic imagination. All divine help proceeds through divine law ; and all special providences are by the use and under the cope of a system of laws. God uses them, we may believe, as we use them. I am not bound by natural laws ; I am not held in cap- tivity by them. When we speak of natural laws we seem to feel that they are certain irresistible forces acting in certain definite lines. Without attempting to be nice in the definition of the term "law," about which there is much confusion and much variation of statement, we may say that what are popularly understood to be certain divine laws are not coercive. They are not in any sense immutable. They are entirely mutable. They are not inconsistent with an overruling providence. They are the very fountains of an overruling providence. In other words, you say, "I know the laws of light, of moisture and of heat ; I know the laws that govern the soil ; I know the relation between the seed or the plant and the soil ; and it is because I know that these things stand in such relation to each other, and because I act upon that knowledge, that there is a certain growth and fructification." We make natural laws work in certain physical directions. The intelligence of the mind working through natural laws, and producing given results, is civil- PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. 511 ization. "Without the intelligent element, the great natural world, with its laws, would be empty. A chaotic period of the globe would come again, and no such thing as civili- zation would be possible. It is natural law directed by personal intelligence that makes the wilderness bud and blossom as the rose, and creates gardens, plants orchards, and brings civilization. It is natural law acting under the direction of human intelligence. Now, all that we need for a better understanding of the divine providence is to suppose that God is able to do, by the whole scheme of the globe and the universe, what we see men do in special, in their place, and in their relations. If I can make my children happy by being a providence to them ; if I can so control natural laws as to make my household poor or rich ; if I can so use natural law as to make my average state high or low ; and if men in general have this power, then much more may God, by his scheme of natural laws, and by his intelligence of them, constitute a providence. It is under this providence that men are exhorted to industry, frugality, foresight and prudence, in all their relations, while seeking to build up in themselves this manly character, this grand divine nature implanted in them. While they are trying to do that, the Lord says to them, " You are doing it under a providence. You are doing it under a scheme of forces which are in them- selves adapted for that work. You need not forsake your fields, your farms, your shops, your warehouses, in order to become Christian men. It is through the right use of these things that you are educating yourselves into Christian dispositions. The end of your life is true man- hood ; and he who is seeking that supremely is working under a scheme of natural laws of a providence that will provide for you better than you could be provided for in any other conceivable way. Let him that would be true, be true ; let him that would be humane, be humane ; let him that would be moral and spiritual, be moral and spiritual ; and he will find in the cultivation of these things a reflex influence exerted on his industries ; and 512 PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. his enterprises will yield more abundantly than if he had made selfishness and pride and avarice the motive of con- duct in the great secularities of life. "Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" If in the conduct of the lower forms of animated creation God can order his physical laws so as to abundantly take care of them, shall he not by the more noble laws that environ mankind, be able to take care of them ? " Therefore, take no thought [be not anxious], saying, What shall we eat? [never saying, What shall we be?] or, What shall we drink? [never saying, What shall we aspire to?] or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? [outwardly; and never saying, What robes and raiment shall the soul have ?] for after all these things do the Gentiles seek [that is the way the unenlightened Gentile reasons]; for your hea- venly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things [for your lower nature]. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his right- eousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Gain that, and all else that you need will flow from it. That piety which is of the large, true, noble type is sufficient, because it carries the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. "Take therefore no [anxious] thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. 513 PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE rejoice in thee, our Father. Thy wisdom, thy power and thy glory we cannot compass to understand ; and yet, whatever there is of thee, whatever there is of power, and of wisdom, and of glory, are ours ; for we are thy children, and thou art our Father, and thou canst not be built up to an estate of power and glory that will not make us the more rich and the more blessed. Grant that the con- nection which is between us and thee may be realized, and that we may cease to look so much to the earth, as they that sprang from it ; that we may look more and more to thee, and know that the true manhood in us, and which life is bringing forth, is of God. We pray that we may have the knowledge of the truth which lies in this connection of our souls with thine. Here is our life. Our life is hid with Christ in God; in that blessed revelation which he hath made; in that glorious faith which he inspires; in the power of that love which draws us by our inward and best nature to the divine. In this our life is hidden, in this our life is strong; so that they who love thee, and live in the trust of God and in the peace which passeth all understanding, are served by whatever there is of life. Joy is theirs, and sorrows are theirs. Thou art theirs in dark- ness, and thou art theirs in light. Thou art theirs in adversity, and thou art theirs in prosperity. Whom thou lovest thou chastenest so that adversity is robbed of its terror. If God be for us, who can be against us? What weapon formed against thee shall prosper? In thee we glory. We rejoice in the Lord ; we rejoice from day to day with increasing joy ; and we pray that the plenitude of this inward life, and all its remunerations of faith, may be more and more apparent to thy people. Open within them the kingdom of God. Widen it. Grant that its bounds may evermore increase with them. May it be for us, every one, to know within ourselves the true king- dom. May we therein from day to day be strong, and hidden as in a tower of defense and in a fortress, against our adversaries. We pray that thou wilt grant that the light of the truth may dawn on their eyes who see it not, or who dimly see it. And we pray that by the Holy Ghost the truth may be revealed in the inward consciousness and experience of thy people more and more amply ; and we pray that in them thy precious word may be no longer powerful in the let- ter only, but in the spirit. May it be a disclosure in them. May it be transferred, so that the truth shall be understood by their living consciousness. We pray that thou wilt bless all those that are especially in thy care to-night. All who have come bringing petitions and requests hear thou them. All who ask for strength, all who ask for consola- tion, all who ask for guidance, all who ask that they may learn to love by love cleanse thou them, and set them on their way toward the heavenly land rejoicing. We pray that thou wilt bless this church, in all its works of love; in all its schools and missions. And bless the more those who po every Sabbath day from the midst of their families to give time and strength to those who are less favored ; and we beseech of thee 514 PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. that they may be prepared for their holy work by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Grant thy blessing to rest upon all the churches of this city, and upon all the pastors. May they grow in grace and in favor with God and with men. We pray that thou wilt bless all instrumentalities throughout this land which are for the furtherance of the truth, and for the promo- tion of intelligence, and morality, and pure religion; and may those jealousies and those irritations which have existed between church and church throughout this land, and throughout the world, pass away, and be gathered among the things of days of twilight and of darkness; and let that blessed time come when men shall see eye to eye, and heart beat responsive to heart, and thy kingdom be one, though there be infinite varieties one differing from another in love, one in trust and faith, and one in power; and we pray that thus thy name may be glorified in the midst of this people, and spread abroad the light of truth everywhere to the dark places of the earth and the continents in which night dwells. We pray for all nations. We pray for the ingathering of the Jew and the Gentile for the final glory for that millennial day when thou shalt reign a thousand years. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. GBANT, our Father, that we may rest in thee, rejoice in thee, and seek to change these natures of ours from selfishness and from pas- sion, and from all that is low and degrading, into truly divine natures of love, and purity, and peace, and joy, and of righteousness ; and in this higher power of a redeemed and regenerate nature grant that we may not only find thee, but that we may make proof that in the wisdom derived from this higher life, all our lower duties are the more easily performed, and that we see more clearly, that we judge more accurately, and that we have motives for more patience in the fulfillment of disagreeable duties, and that we walk stronger and are mightier by reason of the things of the kingdom than we would be if, without that kingdom, we were clothed with all human powor. Grant that we may have this conception, that we may live more and more in thy Spirit, and that we may dispense with unnecessary thoughts and anxieties which spring from fear, and that we may trust God, and be at rest. We ask it through the adorable name of Jesus, to whom, with the Father and the Spirit, shall be praises ever- more. Amen, WHAT IS RELIGION? I shall take for a starting point, in the remarks that 1 make this morning, the 19th verse of the 3d chapter of the 2d Epistle to Timothy : " Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sore, baying this eeal, The Lord knoweth them that are his." The context is thig : " Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrec- tion is past already ; and overthrow the faith of some. Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure." We have come in our day into times precisely like those of the apostle, in which there is a great movement through- out the whole civilized world, and a great change of feeling, an apprehension or what is worse, in regard to the stability of the Christian religion. There are two classes that look upon this matter from very different standpoints. On the one side are those who are devout philosophers in religion, and who hear doctrines which seem to them to be very strange expositions of Chris- tianity doctrines which they have not been accustomed to. They see the manners and customs of religious institutions or churches very much disturbed ; and they have an impres- sion that evil is coming in like a flood, that the foundations are being removed, that the old landmarks are being taken out of the way, that everything is going to wreck and ruin, and that rank infidelity, atheism and anarchy are going to overflow the world. Then, on the other extreme, there are those who feel that religion is not worth anything at all if it stands on founda- tions of the past ; but that it is like an old stubble-field, that Preached at the Twm MOUNTAIN HOUSE, White Mountains, N. H., Sunday morn- Ing, August 23d, 1871. Lesson : Gal. T., 1-13. Hymns (Plymouth Collection) : Nos. W. 706, Doxolony. 518 WHAT IS RELIGION t it was valuable one or two thousand years ago, that some wheat was reaped from it then, but that what was good in it has been gathered out, and that we are coming, by prog- ress, to a new era. Some think it is to be an era of spirit- ualism, in which there are to be glimpses of light and knowl- edge from other spheres ; and yet, what foundation it is to stand upon they do not know, though they think it will stand on something. In sympathy with these, or in antagonism to them, as the case may be, there is a host of men who believe that science is breaking the seal, and that the things of God, hidden from the foundations of the world, are now being made known through the ministrations of science ; and they say, " Away with your superstitions and dogmas and doctrines ! They may once have been helpful ; but the time has come for the shining of truth through science." So, in these different ways some out of fear for the integrity of religious things, and some with the hope that there is to be a far more blessed day of knowledge than ever before, and almost all, I think, with an amiable, kind, humane feeling this great outlying, skirting host are of opinion that religion is pretty much done up, and that we are now to look for something better. To all such I say, The foundations of God stand yet, firm and sure ; and I declare that the essential elements of Chris- tianity were never so apparent as to-day; that they were never so influential ; that they were never so likely to pro- duce institutions of power ; that they never had such a hold on human reason and human conscience ; and that the re- ligious impulse of the human race was never so deep, and never so strong in its current. In the first place, then, we must recollect that there may be very great changes around about religion, in its external forms, without any essential interior change, nay, even with the augmentation of its interior power. I will aflmit that there has been a great change of the forms in which facts have been woven into doctrines. In other words, the great outlying facts of human consciousness the nature of man ; the char- acter of intelligence and of volition ; the truths of respond- WHAT IS RELIGION t 519 oility and moral government ; what they are ; how they are to be brought together into a perfect system ; the existence of God and of a divine providence all these things have been held in various ways, and have been philosophically stated in different forms ; and that there has been, and is yet to be, a great change in the mode of stating these things, I do not deny ; but I hold that their statement is one which grows better and better from age to age. Some men think that anything which is a revelation from God must be always one and the same thing ; but God's revelation is alphabetic ; it is a revelation of letters, and they can be combined and re- combined in ten thousand different words, varying endlessly. The great facts which are fundamental to consciousness, once being given, are alphabetic ; and these facts may be com- bined ; and with the development of the human race in intelligence and moral excellence they go on taking new forms ; and larger experiences must have a larger expres- sion. The trouble with a statement in an early age is, that while it is true to the sum of the knowledge of that age, each age develops an individuality of its own, knowledge making it larger ; and a statement must be made which is as large as the actual experience of the human soul has been. Take agriculture. In the earliest period of the settlement of a neighborhood, men clear a piece containing a few acres of ground, and put such a fence around it as they can afford, and plow among the stumps, and leave them standing ; but as time goes on the stumps disappear, and in twenty or thirty years, when they are gone, a man, coming back, and missing them, says, " Why, where are those precious stumps that 1 remember used to be in this field ? The boys have easy times plowing now-a-days ; but when I was a boy it meant some- thing to plow among those stumps and their roots. This is not what I call farming. You are all going to effeminacy." It is not such farming as he was used to ; but it is better than the farming that belonged to primitive times, which may have had its pleasant memories and associations, but which was not farming in its highest form. Has not agriculture grown ? Has it lost ground because the fences and the plowa are bettor than they were at the beginning, and because ouo 520 WHAT IS RELIGION* man jan now do as much as ten men then :-ould ? Has agri- culture gone under because its instruments are changed, and because its forms are different ? Is not the change it has un- dergone a sign of advancement and improvement ? So, in the knowledges of the world, and in its various in- stitutions, there have been changes, and there are to be changes ; but they are progressive. On the whole, they arc not ominous of evil, but are full of fructifications of hope. The changes of religious institutions trouble people ; and if I supposed that the church was an exactly ordered institu- tion, I should be troubled about its changes ; but according to my understanding it is not such an institution. When an architect has drawn the plan of a house, or a public building, his lines are laid down just so, his measure- ments are precise, and he specifies whether it shall be of wood or brick or stone ; and the contract is made according to the specifications, and the builder has to follow them. Now, there are many who think that the church was sent to us in that way, that there are just such lines and meas- urements laid down respecting it, and that we are bound to follow those lines and measurements. They think that exact ordinances are prescribed, and that we are under obligation to observe them. If I believed this, I should look upon the innovations oi modern times as dangerous ; but I do not believe the church was ordained to be in a particular shape any more than I be- lieve that schools were. I do not believe that the New Testa- ment prescribes that our ordinances and methods of worship shall take on any given form. I do not believe that the rules and regulations of the church were made precise and specific any more than those of town meetings, or the constitutions of the several States, or the Constitution of the United States were. Government is ordained in the nature of man, and it begins to operate, and men find out among themselves, by their experience, that their government is to be formed and administered largely according to the climate and physical characteristics of the country where they are, the degree of civilization which they have attained, and the exigencies of national life as they arise. WHAT IS RELIGION T 521 The same is true of religious institutions. I believe that God ordained the church. That is to say, when he made men he made them social beings, so that no man can live without, wanting to touch his fellow men somewhere. It is the necessities of men's social natures that have led them to come together in churches. When patriotism swells in the hearts of men, and sets them on fire, no man wants to be alone in the field, and he seeks his neighbor, who joins him ; and the villagers unite together ; and the more intense men's feelings are, the more they run to each other. For we are not born to be separate drops, but drops united together to form streams, with chan- nels deep and wide, and with impetuous currents. When God made men with social natures, he ordained that they should come together by their loves, by their tastes, by their enthusi- asms ; and that ordination is the foundation on which the church stands. It is decreed that you shall come together with your aspiration, with your devotion, with your affection, with your hope. So God created the church ; but whether it should be Pres- byterian, or Methodist, or Baptist, or Congregational, or Epis- copalian, or Roman Catholic God has never troubled himself about that, though his zealous disciples have. The form of the instrument of religion is not a part of his decrees. He no more ordained that divine worship should be carried on in certain fixed ways than he ordained that men who live by agriculture should harrow or furrow their fields. Agriculture does not stand on the machines irhich it employs, but on the necessity of men to eat. When God made men hungry he foreordained agriculture. And in the matter of the church, it does not stand on its ordinances. But do not think that I am speaking contemptuously of these things. What I desire to be understood as saying is, that men have no business to worship an ordinance. I say that men have no right to make an idol of the church, or of Sunday, or of the Bible, or of anything that is in itself an instrument. Religion is something other than the instrument by which it is produced. Do I say my prayers to the school-house ? No. And yet, 522 WHAT IS RELIQIONt I believe in intelligence ; and the school is simply an instru- ment by which we develop that intelligence. Do I say my prayers to the arithmetic, the geography, and the grammar ? No. I think they are useful ; but I would kick them every one out of the house if you were to tell me that I must say my prayers to them. They are my servants, my helps, but not my masters. And so, when men open the doors of the sanctuary on Sunday, the church is not my master : I am its master, for I am a son of God. It is simply the chariot which he has sent to carry me on my journey. When a minister stands to teach me, is he my master ? No. If he can help me, well and good. Like other men, he is to be estimated according to what he can do. What he is, that am I. I am a sinner before God, living on God's mercy and goodness, and that is he. No ordination, no long line of influences, though ten thousand times ten thousand years should rest on his head, would make a man anything but a man. And when he ceases to be a man, he dies, and is gone. All men that live have the same passions and appetites ; hu- man nature is the same everywhere ; and ministers have their pride, their vanity, their weaknesses and their temptable- nesses; they are all just common men; and God never put one of them over his fellows, or made him superior to them. Still less did God ever say to an ordinance, " Go down and stand in the midst of men, and make them bow to you." Therefore, not to the refluent waves, nor to the sprinkling drops, nor to any instrument, will I bow down, and say, "Ye are my master." God is my master; and to these things I say, "Ye are my servants;" and I look down on them all. Now, when I see that there is change in the institutions of religion, in the currents of government, and in the ordi- nances of the church, I do not stand quivering, and saying, " Men have departed from the counsels of God, and religion is going to destruction, and we do not know where it will end." I say that religion lies, not in outside things, but in the states of men's minds. It is the way that they think and feel and act that determines what their religion is. Religion WHAT IS RELIGION f 523 is human experience. It is the soul's action God-ward and man -ward. And if religion is going out of the world, it is not because the old church is unshingled, nor because the familiar bell has stopped swinging in the belfry, nor because men are indifferent to forms, nor because they do not care for the Book, nor because the ministry is not revered as it used to be. These things may be fortunate or unfortunate, according to circumstances ; but religion will not have died out of the world until it has died out of the human soul. Religion is the experience of human souls in their relations to God. Sympathy toward God and men that is religion ; and whether that is decreasing or increasing in power through- out the world will not be judged by these external signs or measurements, but by other and very different ones. It is said that men do not believe in virtue. Well, when a man tells me that the refinements of the school-men are lapsing on questions which relate to eternal regeneration through the Son of God, and that many of the fine distinc- tions between ability -natural and ability-spiritual are going out of men's thoughts and out of much use, I admit it ; but I say that the great fundamental truths of religion namely, the nature of man, the wants of man, and divine love as a sufficient supply for human wants instead of growing weaker are growing stronger in men's minds. There has been a great deal of teaching in regard to the depravity of man. I think I could preach to you a doctrine of total depravity, after the old fashioned sort, which would make every one of yon red in the face, and angry, so that you would say, " I do not believe a word of it;" and I think I could preach to you what men tried to preach in the olden time on that subject so that yon would not one of you deny it For example, every man is bora at zero. He is nothing at first. We are told that men are born without original righteousness ; but this is not half of it ; they are born without original anything, except a little sack of pulpy matter. The supreme function at birth is suction. Men are born without a name and without a trade. They are born without power to walk, without power to handle anything, without power to 524: WHAT IS RELIGION t see, and without power to hear. Their senses are not bom until they have been in the world months and months. It is a mere seed that is born. When, therefore, I am told that men are born without original righteousness, I do not find any difficulty in believing that; for they are born without anything. They do not feel nor think. They are a bundle of capacities susceptible of development by-and-by. There is not one element in that wonderful, obscure, undeveloped thing called a ~bciby, which is not unfolded by the law of gradualism, little by little, step by step. We do not learn to see except by experience in seeing. The eye is all right ; but it is to be trained for its function. We cannot stretch out the hand, or bring it back, or do anything with it until we have learned to use it. There is a jubilee in the family when the child first walks. The father comes home at night, and the mother says, " Oh, baby has walked ! baby has walked !" Yes, it has walked ; but it had to practice a great while before it could get up, and stand on its feet, and take one step after another without falling. Walking has to be learned ; and when the child has learned to walk, what infinite slappings there are to teach it to not walk where it ought not to ! How we strive to teach the child to talk ! and then how we rebuke him because he talks too much, or at the wrong times ! How much time is spent in teaching him how to reach out his hand ! and then how his hand gets whipped when he reaches it out and puts it into the sweet-meats ! Everything is taught, and everything comes by practice, in these matters. When, therefore, it is said that men are born in a deplor- able state of wickedness, and that there is no original right- eousness, you accept it as much as the old divines used to. You state it differently, but you recognize it. It is inherent m human nature. Nobody can deny it as it is stated and explained now, and nobody is disposed to. But that is not all ; it is not possible for man, beginning at nothing, to unfold and grow up to something, without making many mistakes. The child does not walk perfectly at the outset ; it is not possible that he should ; and you do not set it down against him. The child is not able to use his WHAT IS RELIGION? 52ft baud at once ; but nobody sets tbat down against bim. It is a part of God's original design in tbe world tbat men shall be born at the seminal point, and grow up gradually to- ward perfection ; and that being tbe original design, imper- fection is a part of it. As no man can use bis eye except he has been drilled to do it, and as no man can use his hand except he has been drilled to do that, so no man can use his reason without having been taught to use it. When the child goes to school, and undertakes to learn to write, the master, if he fails to make a round and beautiful 0, does not say to him, " That is total depravity. You ought to write right." We wait for a child that is learning to write, and give him a chance to be- come proficient by practice. Early imperfections are not nec- essarily blameworthy. They are largely inherent, and necessary to the conditions in which men are placed in this world by the creative fiat of God himself. When a child begins to learn a trade we expect him to spoil tools. When a young man commences to do carpenter's work we do not find fault with him because he does not shove the plane just so, or use the saw in the best manner, or make his joints exactly right. We wait for him to learn these things. The process of learning a trade is called apprenticeship. We have an ap- prenticeship for the hand, an apprenticeship for the foot, an apprenticeship for the eye, and an apprenticeship for the ear. When a man learns arithmetic and grammar he goes through an apprenticeship of the reason. And do not you think that there is an apprenticeship for the affections and the moral sentiments ? There is ; and it is harder to develop the higher powers in the soul than it is to develop the lower ; it takes longer; and it is attended with more imperfec- tions ; and these imperfections are a part of God's foreseeing wisdom. Just here comes in the distinction between infirmities or faults, and transgressions or sins. The Scriptures recognize a difference in them. Wrong things done on purpose are sins ; and those things which fall out from inexperience, from not knowing, from weakness or from imperfection, are fault* Imperfections inhere in the whole divine conception of the 526 WHAT IS RELIGION? human race on the globe ; and men are filled with infirmities, of necessity ; and these infirmities break out into transgres- sions more or less complicated all the way down. Now, I have been stating facts ; but suppose that I should say to you, " The doctrine of the Bible is that men are sin- ful ; and so sinful that they all need to be born again"? I do teach that doctrine, in its totality. Everybody is imperfect. Everybody sins with every part of his mind. Nobody ever becomes manly and strong except by an overruling influence that inspires him, and lifts him up from the lower plane to the higher. And so, after all the pother that is made about the doc- trines of human depravity, and the need of regeneration by the power of the Holy Ghost, are they not true ? Men kick them about like so many foot-balls ; but do they not recog- nize them as true when they are stated in a different way from that in which they have been accustomed to hear them stated, and in a way which is suited to the experience of our times ? To us the old doctrines may seem to be dying, but the old human nature is just the same everywhere. Men are empty, and do not know how to do right things till they have learn ed ; and they learn painfully, and under circumstances iu vhich they want divine inspiration ; for no man rises from a low plane to the higher one of heroism and enthusiasm with- out the aid of a higher mind than his own. Men think these truths are passing out of the world ; but I say they are simply taking another form of exposition. The truths themselves are inherent, universal, indestructible. I think that if there be any one thing that has been mis- interpreted, it is the doctrine of the divine influence upon the human soul. As I recollect my own belief when I was a child and I was an orthodox child I believed that when a man who was born a sinner, and who had grown up in sin, came to a certain age, and went through a proper fermenta- tion, and had dejected the lees, as it were, and left the wine of life pretty clear above, he was converted. I believed that he then passed from the north side of the hedge, where it was shady, to the south side, where the sun always shone. I be- lieved that God shone on his elect, that they had the divine WHAT IS RELIGION t 52? influence, and that no others had. But my impression now is, that there is not a single human soul that is not the pro- duct of the divine Spirit, and that that Spirit is the vivific element of the universe; and that as the sun in spring knocks at the tomb of every sleeping plant, and there is a resurrec- tion wherever there is a bud or germ, and there is not a daisy or harebell, or ranunculus, or flower of any kind that does not start at the solicitation of the sun's light and warmth, so the roots of power being here in human souls, there must be a shining of the divine Soul directly upon them to bring out in them intelligence, emotions, and moral sentiments. This down-shining influence of God is universal What, does the Spirit of God help men before conversion? Oh, yes; all men, always and everywhere the savage and the semi-civilized as well as the civilized. All men, whatever may be their nature, are under the divine guidance of provi- dence, and of the stimulating influence of the divine Spirit All may not profit by it as much as we do, but it is as much for them as for us. All do not profit by the sun alike, but the sun shines as much for one as for another. Some are lazy and some are industrious ; and it depends upon each one how far he shall derive benefit from the life-giving power of the sun. How much profit shall be enjoyed by each one is deter- mined, not by the sun, but by the man who receives its light and heat. The sun means gold to one man, and mud to an- other. It means active energy to one man, and sitting in the corner of laziness to another. The sun is not to blame if men do not take its bounty. And so inspiration comes to all men. Those who receive what they can take in of it are thus prepared to receive more, and to be made better and better by it. And I think that this doctrine of divine inspiration and down-shining, in- stead of being less believed than ever before, is more be- lieved. It is taking on some extravagant forms ami modes of expression; its philosophy is not always the wisest and best ; but I think there is a prevalent growing feeling that God is nearer to the human race now than he was in the past; that he is the universal Father of mankind ; that those lim- itations and distinctions which exist among men are a part of 528 WHAT IS RELIGION? God's original design; and that more men are coming to him, and coming in more ways, than ever before. Do not think that you are the only men that pray. Drunkards pray. There is not a man here who has put up such anguishful petitions to God as some men have who are very bad in the sight of the world. Do you sup- pose that men who are bad go down without prickings of conscience, and without many yearnings for the inteipc- sition of God's power? I tell you, the struggles of men who are going down to death are often a thousand times more admirable in the sight of God than the easy efforts of men naturally born to virtue. It was the one that was lost that God thought of more than of the ninety and nine just persons who needed no repentance ; and I think the prevalent feeling is that God never was nearer to men, and never more helpful toward them, and never dearer to them than to-day. The first truth is the Fatherhood of God ; the next is the brotherhood of man ; and I think they were never before so prevalent and vital as they are to-day. But look at it ^in another way. Take the elements of religion ; it is not one thing alone. It means the moving of the human soul rightly toward God, toward man, and toward duty. He who is using his whole self according to laws of God is religious. Some men think that devotion is religion. Yes, devotion is religion ; but it is not all of relig- ion. Here is a tune written in six parts; and men are wrangling and quarreling about it. One says that the har- mony is in the bass, another that it is in the soprano, an- other that it is in the tenor, and another that it is in the alto ; but I say that it is in all the six parts. Each may, in and of itself, be better than nothing; but it requires the whole six parts to make what was meant by the musical composer. Some men say that love is religion. Well, love is, certainly, the highest element of it; but it is not that alone. Justice is religion ; fidelity is religion ; hope is relig- ion ; faith is religion ; obedience is religion. These are all part and parcel of religion. Religion is as much as the total of manhood ; and it takes in every element of it. All the elements of manhood, in their right place and action, are WHAT IS RELIGION? 529 constituent parts of religion ; but no one of them alone is religion. It takes the whole manhood, imbued and inspired of God, moving right both heavenward and earthward, to constitute religion. Many men think that a man who shudders and trembles with a sense of the presence of the Most High, who is so devout that he lays his hand on his mouth and his mouth in the dust, and cries, " Unclean, unclean ; God be merciful to me a sinner," is a very religious man ; but that depends upon circumstances. I have known men who went into a mood in which they were profoundly struck through with veneration when under religious influences, but who could not resist temptation in business, and would cheat, and would get the best of a bargain, and justify themselves by their love of others. They said, "I love my neighbor as myself," that was for Sunday ; and they also said, " Every man for himself," that was for Monday, and the other week days. But you find men who, in conference meetings and church meetings, or when the bell sounds, or when the organ peals, have reverent feelings, and in whom, under snch circum- stances, worldly feelings do subside. They go to church, and when they come to the church door they take off their hat, and march to their seat, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and bow themselves down, and go through the whole religious service, and rise, and go out, and feel that they have been religious ; and they see boys pouring out of the church on the other side of the street, talking and laugh- ing, and they shudder to think what an irreligious and god- less generation of children is growing up. They have been doing their religion ; and it is ink-color ; it is dark and som- ber. But do I revile it ? Do I say it is incongruous and inconsistent with Christian hope ? In its place it is as much right as either part in a piece of music is right. The sub- bass is all right in an organ ; but I should not want a man to play on a thirty-two foot pipe all the time and teil me that that was music. There are other men wno think that religion is a proper view of the whole scheme of Gospel truth. They lift their spectacles up from their sharp, gray eyes, and begin at the 530 WHAT IS RELIGION? beginning, and lay down position after position, and squint along the line ; and if it lacks a thousandth part of an inch, they think there is heresy. Orthodoxy to them is right belief at every post and corner. This is intellectual religion. But do I ridicule it ? No, not in its place and position. There is no man that is a man who does not think; and if he thinks he must connect his thoughts together; and if he thinks about religion, his thoughts must form a system ; and provided he is not conceited, and does not think that he is the man, and that wisdom shall die with him, he has a right to his system; and the Arminian thinks his way, the Calvinist his, and the Arian his. They have their schemes of the universe ; but the trouble is that they are almost all pocket-schemes. Men's way of thinking is not God's way of thinking. " As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts, saith the Lord." The difficulty with our systems of religion is that they are not big enough to comprehend all the knowledge and experi- ence of the world. They are provincial, limited, narrow ; and if you make them dogmatical and despotic they are cruel. Dogma is indispensable to religion, but it must be in its place. There comes another man. He is not a reasoning nor a venerating man. He is one who believes in emotion. He likes a joyful hallelujah which well nigh takes the roof off. Occasions where there is singing, and shouting, and seizing by the hand, and laughing, and being happy, and making glad in religion those suit him. " Ah ! that is glory, that is glory ; " he says. But do I revile that ? No. I like to see it, provided a man does not say that that is the only thing in the universe. I say that in due measure it is to be re- spected instead of ridiculed. Another man comes along and says, " Oh, the beauty of creation ! Oh, the loveliness of virtue ! How sweet are these sentiments !" Do I revile men of taste ?' Oh no, I do not revile them except when they attempt to despotize over me, and say to me, " My style of thinking is to be your style, or else you are a publican and sinner." Taste, in its time and proportion, is one element of religion. Religion ig the whole of all these things. WHAT IS RELIGION t 531 Then comes a practical man, and he says, " You talk about your metaphysics and emotions and sentiments ; but what I believe in is good square matter-of-fact common-sense ideas. Show me something to do, and I will do it. That is what I call being a Christian." Well, to my thinking, he is a dead man who has no thoughts and feelings and sentiments. You can grind out, with Babbage's calculating machine, re- sults about as good as these pragmatical men produce. Matter-of-fact things are good ; but they are infinitely better where they are accompanied by taste and reason and venera- tion and beneficence than where they are without these ac- companiments ; for the whole is better than any single element. And all of these elements may be abundantly found. Look at the ethical feeling that is, the sense of duty and fidelity and right. See how strong it is, the world over. Take the element of humanity. Was there ever a time when the whole world's heart throbbed as it does to-day in response to calls for help that come from the needy ? Let Chicago be burned, and, before the last peal of the alarm bells has sounded, from London thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars are coming in. Let there be famine in India, and American Christians instantly send ships thither laden with supplies. Let disease sweep New Orleans, and every village or hamlet in New England takes steps for its relief. And do you tell me that humanity is growing less ? It never was so broad and high and deep as it is to-day. Take the element of domestic virtue. There never was a time when the household lived on so high a plane. There never was a time when "father" seemed so venerable, or when " mother " was such a charm to bring the thought of heaven to the soul. There never was a time when so many men were homesick for home. There never was a time when so many looked back upon the family in which they were brought up as a Garden of Eden from which they have been expelled by age and duty. The household was never before so much a power as it is now. It is subject to assaults, open or covert, but it will dash all these things from it. As the human body has in it a resiliency, or repellant power, by which it throws off morbific influences and attacks, so 53S WHAT IS RELIQIONt the household has a power of virtue which never was so radiant and so irresistible as it is to-day. When the foun- dations of the family are adamantine, and when there is a crystal dome extending over it through which men see God and heaven, tell me not that religion is in danger. The family is God's primal church ; and to-day it is the nearest like the divine and heavenly state of all things that we have. Public spirit, which is a form of beneficence, was never stronger than it is to-day. It is growing more and more uni- versal. And I judge of the preaching of a place by the pub- lic spirit which I see exhibited there. If I go through a village and see that the town pump is in a dilapidated con- dition, and the fences are tumbling down, and the town house is a rattlety-bang affair, taken possession of more by winds and rains than by men, and that the churches are poor, and the almshouse is a miserable place, and the roads are stony, and that there are no bridges but rails with a few clods thrown on them, I say, " There is poor doctrine preached in this village." For any true preach- ing of religion will make men public spirited. No man can be preached to as he ought to be in regard to his duty to God and men without his religion having a reflex influ- ence on his house, his barn, the public highways, every- thing that belongs to him in common with his fellow men. " Ye are brethren " is a part of the Gospel. Religion is not love to God alone: it is love to man as well. Among other things, it means public spirit and by that test I think there is not a good gospel preached in some parts of New Hamp- shire ! Democracy in its true sense belongs to religion. Religion extends its walls about everything in creation. It looks upon all men, whether they be ignorant or educated, high or low. good or bad, as one household. It has that spirit which leads a man to extend warm quickening sympathies to his fellow men in proportion as they need them. Religion, where it exists in its highest form among men, draws them to those who are bad quicker than to those who are good, that they may give them help and succor. This spirit is spreading everywhere ; and I do not despair WHAT IS RELIGION t 533 of seeing the time when in even heathen nations the true spirit of reflected Christianity shall have its influence, and when men can go around and around the globe and find in every tribe and section in the wilderness and everywhere the common feeling that man is a child of God, and goes back to God, and is immortal. That is not all. I ask you to consider what religion is according to the definition of Paul : " The fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." A man, going dowu to Boston, hears of Cushing's place. Everybody, I suppose, who has been to Boston, has heard oi that place. There are magnificent flowers, and all sorts of fruits there. The fruits are the world's wonder for variety and lusciousness and perfectness. This man drives out to Cushing's, and goes around the place. When he gets there, the first thing he looks at is the fence ; and he says, " Well, this place is not what it is cracked up to be look at that fence ! I have a better fence than that about my lot at home." He goes into the grounds and looks at the lawns, shaven and shorn, and he says, "I'd give more for my old medder with timothy hay in it than this docked, shaved lawn." He looks at the house, and says, "I thought it would be a fine castle, but it is only a house." He goes into the orchard and looks at the fruit-trees, and says, " There is a great deal of bad bark on those trees." But he came to see the fruit ; and what has the fence, or the lawn, or the house, or the bark on the trees to do with that ? The way to judge of the value of the orchard, or garden, or grapery, or hot- house is to try the fruit. The test of the fruit is the fruit itself. If the apples, and the pears, and the plums, and the peaches, and the grapes, and the figs, and what not, are good, that is enough. If they are large and ripe and luscious, what more can he ask ? I do not care whether a man whitewashes or blackwashes his fence, or whether he uses guano or barn- yard manure, or what his mode of cultivation may be, the question is, Does he get good fruit ? If he does, his method is good. Now, I take it that the apostle is speaking of religion 534 WHAT IS RELIGION t when he speaks of the fruit of the Spirit ; and the fruit of the Spirit is what ? Orthodoxy ? Oh, no. Conscience ? Not a bit of it. One of the fruits of the Spirit is love ; and is love dead ? Does it no longer rock the cradle ? Does it no longer sit patiently through the day and night by the bed of pain and sickness ? Does it weep no longer for the out- cast wanderer ? Is there no sacrifice that love makes ? Another fruit of the Spirit is joy ; and is joy gone ? Is there no merriment among children ? Are there no longer hours of conscious fidelity and heroism ? Are there no acts, are there no developments, which imply the exercise of the noblest parts in men ? Are they shaking down no fragrant dews in the soul ? Is joy like a worn-out instrument whose strings are broken and whose body is smashed ? Is joy voiceless and tuneless? Was the world ever before so full of joy aa to-day? Peace, the strangest of fruits is it not slowly coming to be that which is the unison of all other qualities with bless- edness in the soul ? I do not mean that peace which is leth- argic and sacrifices nothing, but that peace which comes from the excitement of all parts of our nature, carrying them above the ordinary line of experience. It is high up that the most perfect peace is. There are places in the nooks and ravines of the mountains where there is peace ; but they who go up in balloons say that as they rise above the earth all sounds die away, and that high up in the pure ether there is perfect silence. And so, as men rise through the experience and trials of life, they find that high up there is a realm of peace. Is peace dying ? Some tell me they do not believe in religion because of the way that men act in Wall street ; because they see elders, and deacons, and ministers even, doing wrong things. Of course they do wrong. They would not be in the human body if they did not. But go and see what mothers bear for sons. Go and see, in miniature, that same atoning sacrifice which Christ fulfilled, in those who literally give their life, living it, giving it, for the unworthy, the poor and the needy. Do you tell me that religion is dying out ? It blossoms every- where. Every household is full of it. Every village is filled WHAT IS RELIGION* 535 with it Orthodoxy, the exact statement of things, may be shattered ; church order may be changed ; but never will religion die out until the human soul is void of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, faith, meekness, and temper- ance. Ye, then, who mourn because particular modes are chang- ing, and think that religion is dying out, look deeper, and pluck up hope out of your despair, and confidence out of your fear. And to you that think religion is going away because of science, let me say that science is the handmaid of religion ; it is the John Baptist, oftentimes, that clears the way for true religion. By religion I do not mean outward things, but inward states. I mean perfected manhood. I mean the quickening of the soul by the beatific influence of the divine Spirit in truth, and love, and sympathy, and con- fidence, and trust. That is not dying out. Not until the soul of man is quenched can religion die out. Not until God ceases to be God can religion be quenched in this world. It may have its nights and days ; it may have its winter and summer ; it may be subject to the great laws of oscillation and change; but, nevertheless, the word of God standeth sure ; its foundations are immutable ; and not until the last generation has been born and translated, not until the last tear has been shed, not until the last pulse of love has throbbed, not until the new heavens and the new earth appear, will religion die on the earth or lose its power among men. 636 WHAT IS RELIGION* PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. WE rejoice, our Father, that our thoughts are lifted, not by oiu wills alone, but by the inspiration of God ; for we cannot discern the things that are spiritual and afar off save by divine help. Thou that broodest the world, and dost spread abroad thy wings and it is night, and let thy face shine and it is day thou everywhere the beloved and the loving, we rejoice in thy succor and inspiration and help; and we implore thee, this morning, not because thou needest im- ploration, but because it is sweet for us to ask, and to behold that the blessings which we ask are given graciously. We draw near to thee as our children to us, that draw near with their helplessness and with their wants. We desire to draw near to thee with their confiding faith, and their love unaffected. We call thee our Father. Thou hast made thyself known to us as such. We do not discern in thee dreadful power, nor do we discern in thee the scowl of oppression and of cruelty. Our thought of thee is of all truth, of all justice and equity, of all gentleness and sympathy, of all love and helpful- ness. What our father and our mother were to us, that art thou ten thousand times ten thousand fold. We grope as in the dark. We are like tapers here. Thou art the sun rolling in the immensity of thy being, and giving light and warmth to every one. We are afraid, O Lord our God, often, to trust in thee, fearing to exhaust thy mercy, which is ineffable, universal and inexhaustible. Thou dost pity us, knowing our frame, and remembering that we are dust. Thou dost succor the ill-deserving, causing thy sun to rise upon the good and the bad, sending rain upon the just and upon the unjust, and filling the earth with thy bounty so that all creatures, not excepting those that are seemingly most worthless, are still cared for. The insect of the air, the worm of the earth, the fish of the sea, the cattle upon a thou- sand hills, all things that are created, are objects of thy thought. Thou dost watch over them ; and how much more is man, made in thine image, destined to draw near unto thee, and to become a son of God in the heavenly laud, perfected. In thee is our hope. Not in ourselves, but in the greatness, in the mercy, in the grace, and in the everlasting bounty of our God, we find inspiration of hope and of trust; for thou dost shelter those that know how to come under- neath the shadow of thy wings. Thou art the tower to which, when hard pressed, thy people run, and are saved from their pursuers. Thou art the shadow of a great rock in a weary land ; and blessed are they that know how to sit down in the shade in the midst of sur- rounding heat. We desire, O Lord our God, that thy name may shine more clearly, and that thy heart may be more aboundingly known among thine own people, and that those who are children may become witnesses more worthy of their parentage, and have more of joy and strength and faith and patience ministered unto them through the might and goodness of their God. Vouchsafe thy blessing to rest upon us now, in the hour in which we are gathered together. How many of us! From what diverse ways! From what different experiences 1 And yet all united to- gether by common infirmity, by commor sinfulness, by a conimoo WHAT IS RELIGION T 537 need of forgiveness, and by a common necessity for that love which comes only from the soul of God. Vouchsafe to each one in thy presence, this morning, that which each one needs. Search the hidden grief of every one, and either heal it or give grace to bear it. Be with those that are near to thee in supplication day by day, and that will not let thee go without the blessing longed for, more precious to them than life itself. Hear their prayers, and answer them. Those that carry sorrows, and wear them as a garment all the year round, and are acquainted with grief vouchsafe thy presence, likewise, this day to them ; and may they hear inwardly their name called of thee, even as Mary, in the midst of her tears, was called by her name by our Lord and Saviour. And we beseech of thee that thou wilt strengthen the weak, and succor those that are in peril through overmastering temptations. Deliver from evil those that are beginning to be drawn into its whirl. We beseech thee that thou wilt look piteously upon every want and every necessity. May those that hunger and thirst after righteousness more and more be fed and filled. May those that are drawing near to the confines of life rejoice and look away to that eternal youth beyond, which waits for them. May those that are in the midst of life fulfill their duties with a right manly sincerity and earnestness. May those that are young grow up uncontaminated. With truth and honor and manhood undefiled may they enter into the places of those that are departing, and do better than their fathers have done. We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon all our friends that are separated from us. Go with us homeward. Lead us to our children and our children's children, to our companions, to our parents, to our brothers and sisters, far away across the seas, in the wilderness, everywhere; and unite us in that love which is upon them and upon us at the same time. We beseech thee that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon this house and household; upon those that abide here and minister to our comfort; upon all that are gathered here to spend the days of vacation ; and grant that this house may be filled with peace and joy. May everything that is benign and pure rule over whatever is selfish and proud and hateful. May the spirit of joy and of gladness, springing from sincerity and purity, prevail here from hour to hour, so that the blessing of the Lord shall dwell upon this place forever more. We commend ourselves to thee. Take care of us while we live. Mark our years out for us. Not for our asking give us more or less, but according to thy wisdom. Think for us, dear Lord ; ordain for us ; and then make us able to say, in every emergency, The will of the Lord be done ; till we have passed the vail, and the shadows flee, and the morning comes. Arise, O Sun of Righteousness, with healing in thy beams, and bring us where there is no night and no more sor- row forever. 53$ WHAT IS RELIGION t PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. QUICKEN our faith, Almighty God. O thou Saviour that hast loved us, aud loved us in our weakness and want, and art loving u* into strength, and into truth, aud into justice, and into patience, and into godliness, love us still. This is a wonder that we never could interpret if we had not been parents ourselves. See how we love our children, though they be erring. Others do not love them in their weakness, but we do ; and thou lookest out of a larger heart of the same kind as ours. But while thou knowest how to teach the lore of love, thou knowest how to lay upon men responsibility : for whom thou lovest thou cbastenest, and scourgest every son whom thou receivest. May we, then, have more and more confidence in thee, and accept the duties and discipline of life with more gratitude and cheerfulness and hopefulness, looking forward ; for we are not to stay a great while here. We are in tabernacles. The city that hath foundations is not far off. We hear the voices of its inhabitants. From off the walls come wafted to us, now arid then, the word of cheer, Come; and be that hears repeats it, and says Come; and whosoever will, let him come. And all are coming. All find their way back toward the Sun of Righteousness. Grant, O Lord our God, that we may have more faith in thee, more hope for the world, more sympathy for the race, more kindness toward each other, so that we may stand holding each other up, pitying each other's faults, helping those that are cast down, and doing most for those that are most needy. May we seek out those that are in sorrows, and minister to them. Make us like thyself, thou that didst give thy life, laying it down and taking it up again, and that art forever, in heavenly places, carrying thy life, not for thy- self, but for others ; and being made like thee, may we be called sons of God, and find rest with thee in the heavenly land. We ask it through riches of grace in Christ Jesus. Amen. CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. " For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office ; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." ROM. xii. 4, 5. Is this sympathetic unity a peculiarity of church life ? Are these words meant to explain simply that when a great number of persons are joined in a church connection they are in a spiritual, sympathetic unity ? Yes, it means that, on the way to something a great deal larger than that. It is the declaration and the spirit of it runs through the New Testa- ment, and colors every part of it it is the declaration that the ideal condition of the human race is one in which man- kind are knit together by a sympathy which makes one man the brother of another man, the world over ; and that too, as is explained by the Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians, the 12th chapter, without regard to nationality, or sect, or con- dition in life whether bond or free, Jew or Gentile, in the church or out of the church. The ideal condition, or that condition toward which God's providence is steadily conduct- ing the races of the world, and which they will reach when they shall be ripe, is a condition in which every man shall feel that every other man is a part of himself ; or, in other words, in which every man shall feel as a parent feels in the family, that every other person is in one sense a part of him- self. Mankind will yet come they are not in a hurry, but they will come to that condition in which nothing will be so Preached at the TWIN MOUNTAIN HOUSE, White Mountains, N. H., Sunday morn- ing, August 90th, 1874. Lesson: Rom. xii. Hymns (Plymouth Collection); No*. 102, SB. 542 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. near to the heart of man as man, without regard to the fack of relationship, kindred, interest, or neighborhood. The time is approaching when the mere fact that one is a human being will open and kindle the hearts of men toward him in all sympathy and kindness. It is of this unity, which springs from the Gospel the sympathetic unity of soul with soul that I shall speak this morning. I have said that this was not a matter of the artificial life of the church ; and let me say that I look upon the church, not as a substitute for anything, but simply as an instru- ment, as an educating institution, by which God attempts to diffuse the light and knowledge of true manhood throughout the race. It is a subservient institution. It is not itself a primary thing. It is secondary. In the work of ages the church is full of grandeur and excellence ; yet it is simply subordinate, doing the Master's will. God's heart and God's purpose are the salvation of the world ; and it is the deliverance, the elevation of every living human being on the globe,. that lies before the divine mind as the reason and motive of administration through the periods of time ; and the church bears relation to this great end just as the common school bears relation to the prevalence of intelligence through the community. We believe in schools and academies ; but we value the community more than we do even them. Their worth lies in the fact that they are blessing the whole community. They are not in them- selves sacred ; they are not valuable except for such worthy objects as they may serve ; they are good lor what they do : and the church is good for only that which it accomplishes. What is greater than any church is that for which the church was created namely, universal mankind. We are therefore to suppose, not that God is working for the Jew or for the Gentile, for the Asiatic or for the African, for the European or for the American, but for all of them. We are not to suppose that the divine providence is watching alone over good people, virtuous people, healthy people ; it watches over all alike. It makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 543 on the unjust. The divine purposes have respect to every one, everywhere, without regard to nationality or condition. Such is the ideal state. It is one toward which the feel- ings of sympathy, of benevolence, and of love, man for man, are perpetually tending. So, when we speak of the unity which all mankind are seeking, we shall not be able to form a just opinion respect- ing it unless we take into consideration this internal unity. Everybody wants unity in the churches, everybody is striving to bring them together ; and there would be no difficulty in uniting them outwardly if that were enough ; but what would be the advantage of a mere external unity of the churches ? What advantage would it be in a village if all the inhabi- tants should say, " The citizens of this village should be perfectly united ; and, therefore, let us move our houses up so that they will touch each other. Moreover, let all the peo- ple of this town have the one name, Adams. Let them all call themselves, and be called, by that name. Besides, let us all have breakfast and dinner and supper at the same hour and minute, at the stroke of the bell." They might secure unity in these outward things, so as to be able to say, " There is not such a united village in the world as we are ; " but what would be the advantage of mere external unity in a vil- lage? Suppose every village in the land should march in such a unity, as soldiers march on a parade, would they be any better or happier ? Physical, material unity may natter pride, perhaps, and give argument for boasting ; but it will not raise a man one step in the scale of intelligence, or make him kinder, or destroy his prejudices. It will not make the cruel man lenient, nor the impatient man long-suffering, nor the despotic man merciful. It will do no good. But the churches have been calling to each other for unity. The Presbyterian church is going to have one church throughout the world when the kingdom of Christ comes ; and that one church is going to be a Presbyterian church. The Episcopalian church is going to have one great church ; and that great church is going to eat up all the little churches ; and it is going to be an Episcopal church. The 544 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. same is true of the Baptist and Methodist chnrches. But the Congregation alists believe in none of these hierarchies ; they believe that each of them has some elements of truth, and that when the millennium comes, that which is good in all of them will be gathered up and brought together ; and this means that all Christendom is going to be Congregational ! But the church a man is in is much like the clothes he wears, provided he is fitted. I wear black, and some of you wear blue. Some of you wear short coats, and some long. Some wear one kind of hat, and some another. It is not the hat, not the coat, nor anything of the kind, that we think about in judging of a man's character ; and the fact that there are different denominations or sects is of little account if only they behave themselves, and do not quarrel, and are peaceable, and are not arrogant, and do not pretend that they are the one people who know God's secrets, and do not claim to be ordained to rule over their fellow-men, and do not sit on their peculiar throne of creed or church and say to all others, " Bow down to us when you hear our sack- but and psaltery, or we will burn you up." The trouble is, not that there are so many sects, but that they are often weak in that which is good, and strong in that which is bad. It is not, therefore, organic unity, nor unity of belief exactly, that we are seeking. I never saw a man who was large enough to report the whole truth in respect to anything which he looked at. It has not been considered safe, I think, in heaven, where the manufactory of men is, to put everything in everybody. The result is, that one man carries so much, another man so much, and another man so much. Why, it takes about twenty men to make one sound man. One man is hopeful and impetuous ; another is cautious and slow ; and the two put together would make a much more evenly balanced man than either of them is separately. One man is reflective ; another is perceptive ; and the two united would make a better man than either of them alone. One man looks at things as an enthusiast ; another sees things in a matter-of-fact light ; and if the two were put together they would temper each other. And when fifteen or twenty men come together, and accept the truth as it is seen by all CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 545 of them combined, they have a far more comprehensive knowledge of it than they would have if they only saw it from their individual standpoints. When each one has made his statement of it, and infused into it all the elements that are in him, they will be nearer to a full presentation of it than any one of them could come simply by his under- standing of it. Men want unity of belief ; but I would like to know how they are going to have it so long as they are made to differ as they do now. For instance, here is a man of enormous self- esteem. Firmness stands like an adamantine column in his disposition. He sees everything in the light of duty and law. He says, "It is the business of men to obey the law ;" and he sympathizes with the magistrate. Says he, "If men have sinned they ought to be punished ; the law was made to punish sinners " and he would like to be the man to carry it out. He is, every particle of him, in sympathy with gov- ernment and law. Take another man. He has enormous benevolence ; he has not much self-esteem ; and he sympathizes with men instead of laws. He sees everything in its relations to the poor and suffering and needy. One of these men will say, "The law is broken, and penalty must follow." The other will say, "Oh, poor trans- gressors ! what will become of them ?" How are you going to make men who are organized so differently read the Bible and see everything alike ? When you read the Bible you will see one thing, and when another reads the Bible he will see another thing, owing to the differ- ences of your organizations. If you mix on a plate iron filings, pieces of flint, a little Indian meal, and a little flour, and take a magnet, and draw it through, it will not touch the meal nor the flour nor the flint, but it will pick up all the iron filings. Now, men are magnets, and if you draw them through the Bible they will catch the things which they are sensitive to, while they will pass by the things which they are not sensitive to. Proud, domineering men will catch the ele- ments which tend toward government. Kind, generous, 546 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. democratic people will catch the elements that tend toward kindness and generosity and democracy. Men who are char- acterized by taste will catch the elements of taste. Those of imagination will catch poetic elements. Each one will catch those elements which are peculiar to himself. How, then, are you going to take men as they are made, and make them believe alike ? Some persons are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month, and it would not go through their skin. No explanation would suffice to make them understand it. They must accept it by faith if they accept it at all And yet, there are other persons who are so sensitive to everything that is humorous or ludicrous that probably there is not a thing on earth that does not, first or last, suggest something funny to them. How are you going to take such minds, and make them look along the track of truth and see alike ? They are made differently, and it is not without a purpose. For variety organized variety is strength. A community is strong by the differences and not by the liknesses that exist in it. Suppose every man in a town were a blacksmith, and nothing else ! Fortunately it is never so. Among the people in a town, some are tinners, some are hatters, some are weavers, some are carpenters, some are painters, some are merchants, and some are bankers. The town is rich by the variety of its trades and callings. Now, in beliefs there are certain great stable, funda- mental facts which nobody doubts ; as, for instance, that of sunrise or sunset. "We all believe in the revolution of the globe. All men agree in regard to certain fixed truths in mathematics. There is no great schism in the matter of arithmetic ; everybody acknowledges that two and two make four. But when you come to questions which involve feeling, probably no two persons agree at all. If you could sharply look in and see just how the same proposition strikes two persons, you would probably find that if it was a proposi- tion where emotion was concerned they would not agree. It is colored in one, perhaps, by imagination, which is predom- inant in him, and in the other by a predominating reflective reason. One person is cautious and hesitant, and another is CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 547 headlong and venturesome, and these facts make it impossible for them to view the same truth in tho same light. One man is remarkable for coolness, and another for intensity of feeling ; and they will differ in their impressions of a truth according to their individualisms. These things being so, how preposterous it is for any church to undertake to give a solution of the nature of God, which involves every conceivable question of human disposi- tion ! We can know God only so far as we have sparks of him in ourselves. To delineate the whole history of divine providence for thousands of years; to explain the various questions of moral government which aiise ; to determine the various methods and doctrines of responsibility and penalty and reward ; to unfold the whole theory of the human mind ; to undertake encyclopediacal knowledge, running through the whole career of the race how shall this be done so that everybody shall see everything just exactly alike ? It is abso- lutely impossible. God laughs when he sees fool Man trying to do it. It is against nature. So, all the strifes and quar- rels of the different sects, to bring everybody to see things just as they see them, are waste work. It never will be done. Well, as you cannot have external and organic unity, nor an exact unity of beliefs, from the very structure of the human mind, there seems to be but one other kind of unity that you can come to ; and that is the unity of the Spirit in the bond of perfectness, or sympathetic unity. Come, go with me into a house where there is father, where there is mother, where there are eight children, where there are two servants, and where there are three or four friends. They are all of one church ; they are all of one business ; they all live under one roof ; they all either are of one name, or are very nearly associated in name ; and you say, "They are at perfect unity." No, they are not; they quarrel l&e cats and dogs. It is an unhappy household. They have all the unity that the church is striving after ; but it does them no good. Go with me into another house. There are father and mother, and eight children, and two or three friends ; and they are sweet-tempered, genial and kind ; but they belong 548 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. to very different churches. They are gathered together from various quarters ; but they all happen to be alike in loving each other. They think differently and believe differently, but that does not prevent their being united. Difference is perfectly compatible with unity. For, are there not four parts to a good tune ? and do not all these parts help each other ? Differences are only methods of unity, provided they are concordant. In the great family here at this [Twin Mountain] house there is more unity to-day than there is at large in any church or sect in Christendom. You have come together from every direction; there. are hardly any two of you of the same name ; you are crowded into this room under cir- cumstances of very great inconvenience ; and yet you are polite one to another. You are willing that all others should have seats ( after you are provided for !) There is no strife here. You are harmonious. You wish well to each other. You are even kindly disposed to believe what I say. And yet you are from different churches. You belong to sects of almost every name ; but still, there is a genial, kind sympathy existing between you. In short, you are gentlemen and ladies for the time being ! Everything moves in unison. And I will venture to say that there is not a room in this house where there will not be greater happiness after this service. I will venture to say that you will feel kinder to each other, and nearer to each other, and more helpful* cf each other, during this week for the experience of this morning ; it is the natural result of a season of united feelings. And I ask you if such unity is not the best kind. I ask you if inward, sympathetic, benevolent unity is not the unity that does good. This, then, is the dominant Christian idea of oneness namely, unity of the heart. A man who is royally endowed with bodily and mental gifts, and who holds himself in such a sweet alliance with every human being that he carries him- self genially and helpfully toward all, is a true Christian. Of course such a man carries himself so toward those that ho loves as his own ; but let a man who is blessed with a supe- rior intellect, with rare physical endowments, and with cir- CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 549 cumstances favorable to their development and use, carry himself in a spirit of kindness and gentleness toward the poorest, the lowest and the meanest, and he represents the ideal of Christian manhood. When a man comes to that high state he is Christ's, not only, but he exhibits Christ to men. When the church comes to that state it instantly becomes the true catholic church that is to say, it becomes the church which is going to take possession of the world the church of the heart, the church of sympathy, the church of benevo- lence, the church of love. By this spirit of sympathy one with another, I remark first, all hatreds, and all injurious conduct under different names of pretension, are forbidden. We have no right to in- flict pain except as a physician administers bitter medicines. We have no right to make men suffer except as a surgeon am- putates a limb. We have no right to resort to penalties ex- cept as the schoolmaster punishes his pupils. We may inflict pain and cause suffering and resort to penalties so far as they are necessary to prevent the repetition of evil in an indivi- dual, or to prevent others from experiencing them, under which circumstances they are not cruel. No human being has a right to cause any form of injury except for a benevo- lent purpose. The doctrines that teach that God's admin- istration in the world is one of vengeance, and that it is continued for no other reason than because God chooses to perpetuate it, make God a demon, and not a Father. All pains and penalties are to be beneficent, and they are to be administered beneficently. A judge has no right to judge a man with a cold, un sympathizing heart. A father has no right to punish a child with an unfeeling, angry spirit. No man has a right to mulct his neighbor, or inflict suffering upon him in any way, except for his good. No man knows what justice is who does not know what love is. There is no justice except the equity that moves under the influence of love. This is the Christian doctrine. All other doctrines are anti-Christian. Secondly, this spirit of universal sympathy, this spirit of brotherhood between man and man, forbids envy and jealousy of every kind. You perhaps do not believe that there are such 550 VtLltlSTfAN SXMl'ATHY. things as envy and jealousy ; but if these qualities could only squeak like unoiled hinges, there would be such a noise in every community that you would think Bedlam had been let loose. Envies and jealousies do not generally go out except in masquerade. They put on various masks and disguises of society philosophic statements and the like ; but back of these all their hateful features are to be seen. The commu- nity is full of persons who are unhappy because other persons are better off than they. One man gets what another man coveted ; and the latter says, " There ! he has got the prop- erty that is mine that is, that I wanted." The rich and the poor look with jealousy upon each other. The poor are angry because the rich get so much while they get so little ; and the rich are angry because the poor are in the way of their getting more. Competitors in politics or merchandise look at each other with the lower and smaller forms of petty envy and jealousy. But, the word of God says, " In honor preferring one another." It enjoins upon us the duty of giving the prefer- ence to others. Does anybody really do this ? Yes ! I should like to know if the mother, when she sits down to the table with her children, picks out the best things, and eats them, and gives the children what is left. Does not she in love prefer every child ? And, going down, she is more attentive to the youngest than to those that are older. She does not disown the twenty-one-year-old boy, nor the sixteen-year-old, nor the twelve-year-old ; but, after all, the little babe in the cradle rules the whole of them. Her sensibility and kindness increase in the ratio of their need. Now, that which the mother feels is the type of universal motherhood, or the true Christian feeling when it shall have been ripened in human nature. Every man is to come into that state in which he shall feel for others kindness and good- will, so that their prosperity shall be his joy, and so that if he puts out his hand for some promised fruit, and another, quicker than he, gets it, he shall draw back his hand and say, " Thank God, it is yours. I am glad that you got it." That is not the way that men do now-a-days generally ; but it is the Christian way. CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 551 In politics men do not prefer one another. They strive by every means to prevent the community from preferring others. Men are standing on the ground of selfish animal- ism. Society is organized on the same principles of offense and defense which prevail among the beasts of the field. The law of strength and violence is a hundred times stronger in the world to-day, outsid of the household, than the law of kindness and love and sympathy. But there is a day com- ing when the household feeling will become the neighborhood feeling, and the town feeling, and the county feeling, and the state feeling, and the national feeling. Then, when nation after nation comes into this higher manhood, and the public sentiment of the globe begins to be that of love and sympathy, the new heaven and the new earth in which dwell- eth righteousness will have come. "We are far from that day. We see the dim morning twilight which foretokens it, but that is all ; yet the day is coming when the animal in men will not predominate as it does now. So the true spirit of the Christian man condemns indif- ference ; and for the same reason that it condemns this it condemns all neglect, all carelessness. They are wrong. You have no right to be without feeling for others. It may be that your occupation is such that you are absent-minded; but no man ought to be in the presence of another person, though it be only a child, and a beggar's brat, without expe- riencing a feeling of interest in that person. Anything that has the stamp of humanity on it ought to excite in your bosom positive sympathy and good will. It would be impossible for a man to walk in a gallery of magnificent pictures and not be affected by them, unless he was absent-minded ; and it ought to be impossible for a man to walk among men and not have a genial, brotherly feeling toward them. Strangers come together, and not having been introduced they will walk past each other time and again, and never exchange a word. Men will ride together for hours in a stage-coach without any intercourse whatever ; or if there is any, it will be of the most formal character, be- cause they have not been introduced to each other. Many men who are not church-members have more true 552 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY, Christian spirit in them than many who are ; for they do not go anywhere without feeling kindness, gentleness, good- humor, good-nature and good-nature, if it is not a grace, is the nurse of all graces, that brings them up. The man who carries that with him everywhere and always is better than a man that is gruffly orthodox. There are men who go about making everbody happy and it does not take a great deal to make men happy, often- times. A little attention makes some people happy. I recollect meeting in the street, in Brooklyn, one day, a carpenter who had made some repairs on my house. I stop- ped and said, "How do you do ?" and shook hands with him. "Now," said he, "you big folks, who live in fine houses, do not know how much good it does a poor fellow when you speak to him and shake hands with him ; but I tell you it does him a great deal of good. Why, your stopping and speaking to me, and shaking hands with me, will make me and my folks happy for a week. When I go home to- night my wife will say, ' Where have you been ? and who have you seen ?' and I will say, ' I have seen Mr. Beecher.' 'What did he say?' 'Oh, he shook hands with me, and asked after my family.' She will go on asking questions, and the children will ask questions, and we shall talk about it all the evening, and all the week, and it will make us all happy. It isn't much to you, but it is a good deal to us." There is many a man in this audience who could make happiness follow him as phosphorescent light follows a ship's wake on the sea ; but most of you are so genteel that you do not think it would be proper for you to have to do with others unless you have been introduced ; and some of you say, " It is not for us to mix with the vulgar herd;" and others are timid and sensitive, and hesitate on that account. But there is not one of you that is not honored and beloved of God in the proportion in which you let your light shine so that other men may walk in the path which you make luminous. Indifference to men is a sin. It is not necessary to your being a criminal that you should murder, or commit bur- glary, or set a house on fire, or pick some man's pocket. If you take your culture, and taste, and sensibility, and wrap CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 553 yourself up in them, and walk alone among your fellow-men, touching nobody, kindling nobody, sympathizing with no- body, except one here and there whom you select as a com- panion for yourself, you are a criminal before God ; and there is many a man that walks thus who is a greater sinner than the man who is hanged, for the law of Christian sympathy is absolute ; it is the imperial law of the realm. It is the ideal of Christian life ; and he who violates it by counting his fellow-men as nothing, as dust under his feet, as dirt, violates the fundamental law of the universe, and is a criminal. We always sympathize to a certain extent. He is a bad man who does not sympathize with his own kin though often you find men who do not do it. Xot unfrequently you find that men who are benign on the street are ugly at home ; and, quite as frequently, you find that men who are hard, and whose teeth are like knives in business, are very saints at home. You could not pry open their hand with a burglar's tool on the street ; but when they go home it is broad open. They would not give anything outside of their household ; but if their wife and children want anything they readily grant it. If you saw them at home and nowhere else you would say that they were princes of generosity ;'but if you saw them abroad and nowhere else you would say that they were tighter than the bark on growing trees. Now, we should expect a man to be in sympathy with those who bear his name and carry his blood ; but that is not enough. e ' If ye love them that love you, what thank have yc ?" " If ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others ? Do not even the publicans the same ? " "With our neighbors, also, we are apt to be in sympathy provided it is not when we are in collision. For example, on a holiday, at a military muster, or on any occasion that brings the people together, there is generally a good-nature, a kind- ness of feeling, manifested by neighbors toward each other, which is not usual at other times and places. Men who at home, working on their farms or in their shops, do not care for their neighbors, when they get away from home, and meet them as persons that live near them, feel very much drawn towar.l them. 554 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. You will see that in traveling abroad. Men to whom in Brooklyn I used to say a simple " Good morning," in Paris, when I was home-sick, 1 wanted to put my arms about. They lived near where I lived, and that was under the cir- cumstances a sufficient reason for my feeling drawn to them. It is a diffusive form of selfishness which leads you, when you are away from home, and see persons who live near where you do, to sympathize with them. People sympathize with their own households, with their neighbors, and with their own countrymen, as against foreigners. Men having the same interests as, for instance, stock- holders in the same concern, if it i < paying a good dividend sympathize with each other. Selfishness sympathizes with selfishness, everywhere and always. We sympathize with per- sons of our own sect. We sympathize with them intensely when they are attacked by another sect, though not so in- tensely at other times. When nobody attacks us, we go to work to point out heresy among ourselves, and are like hounds pursuing each other. There never was a man on earth so orthodox but that there was somebody a little higher than he in orthodoxy who looked down upon him, and said, "You are not orthodox." There is always some one who thinks he is a little nearer to God than anybody else. The scale is infinitesimal; and when there is not a revival, or some other special influence to knit men together, those of the same denomination are apt to criticise each other if there is the difference of a hair between them. If a Methodist brother builds his fence three-quarters of an inch over the line on the land of another Methodist brother, that is enough to furnish a pretext for all manner of lawsuits and quarrels unless there is a great religious awakening, or unless there is some squabble between some other denomination and the Methodists, in which case these two brethren join hands and fight the common enemy. Men that quarrel with each other on farming will unite their forces in a Presidential election, and shout, and grow red in the face, in contending for their favorite candidate or party. An attack on sectarians from the outside brings them together very quick and very close. And that is carried further. Men outside of the church CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 555 baring good an example in the church, why snould they not follow it ? As sectarians herd with sectarians, as men in one church sympathize with each other as against those of another church, so you will find men in society at large limiting their sympathy and good-will very nearly to those of their own sort. In speaking thus, I do not undertake to lay down an extravagant doctrine, and say that we have no right to like those that are of our sort : we have that right. If I love painting, I have a right to associate especially with those who love painting. If I love reading, I have a right to associate with those who love reading. If I am a mechanic, I have a right to associate with mechanics. If I am a lawyer or jurist, I have a right to associate with men of that profession. I have a right to associate with men who are interested in the same things that I am. There is certainly a propriety in your following the law of affinity and likeness and prefer- ence in selecting your associates ; but I object to your whole manhood being absorbed in that way. I object to your taking those that you like, and refusing all others because they are not of your sect or set. I think it is a selfishness that God frowns upon, and one that hurts your soul. That is exactly the point that is brought out in the parable of- the Good Samaritan. A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, that stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed leaving him half dead. He lay as if he had been in TVall street. And when a certain priest came that way and beheld him, and saw tj his look that he was not a priest, ho walked on, saying to himself, " Ho '13 not of my set;" and he had no sympathy and no feeling of humanity for him. By and by there came down a Levite, and he looked on him, and said, "Poor fellow ! he has been rather roughly used," and walked on the other side. There came also down a Samaritan (Samaritan was a name as detestable in the Jews' ears as in your ears Abolitionist was twenty years ago) ; and he went where he was, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and put him on his own beast, and took him to the tavern, and paid his bills in advance, and said to the host, " Take care of 556 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. him ; and if any exigencies arise which shall make his ex- penses more, I will repay thee." " Which of these three was neighbor to the man that fell among thieves ?" asks the Master. Well, which was ? Thus, you take care of those that take care of you, and sympathize with those that sympathize with you, and that is right enough ; hut you neglect those that are not of your sect and set and sort, and that is wrong. It is wicked. Every human being has a right in you, and you have a right in every human being. On God's globe there is not a man not even in the farthest China who is not your brother. There is not a poor devotee on earth that bows down to river or star who is not your brother or sister. The whole human family is one, of whom God is the Father. The blood of Jesus Christ is stronger than the blood of any earthly father or mother ; and you are united by the blood of Christ into one great household. Look at the repugnances which spring up among men, asd judge them according to this law which I have been developing. In the first place, we feel ourselves justified in having great indignation and great vindictiveness of feeling toward those who have by crime or vice forfeited their place and their citizens' right in society. I think the horror with which we teach our children to look upon thieves and burglars and harlots is one of the most pitiful of possible commentaries on human nature. I do not know that it is yet possible to bring to bear upon the criminal classes influences which shall wholly restrain, them without resorting to the employment of physical force and the infliction of pain ; but judged by this higher ideal, what a state of things it is in which, when men need most, and are dying for the want of somebody to look after them, and take care of them, and bear with them, because they are sinful, there is not in the community a church, hardly an individual, that knows how to suffer for the outcast as Jesus Christ suffered for the whole world ! Christ died for his enemies, we are told. It is made conspicuous by every form of statement in the New Testament that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die for CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 557 it, while it was afar off from him, utterly unlike him, and repugnant to every conception of infinite purity and good- ness. God's nature was such that he bowed down to succor and to save his creatures ; and when he rose from the dead he lifted the world on his shoulders ; yet in our own commu- nities, at this late period of Christian teaching, we are brought up to abhor jailbirds as we do toads, and to detest vicious and criminal men as if they were snakes and vipers ; and we shut them out of our hearts as if they were not men. Now, as I hold, we must abhor vice and crime, and all that is evil ; we must not introduce into our household econ- omy those who shall pervert and destroy the purity of our children ; we cannot be too careful on that side ; and yet there is no man so cruel that his cruelty is not a plea to our compassion ; and there is not a man so dishonest that his dishonesty is not a plea to our thoughtfulness and sympathy. If the Spirit of Christ were in us, we should desire to succor most those who most need succor. No man is so much in peril as the man whose passions are corrupted ; and yet we tread down the criminal classes. But all such the multi- tudes of vicious boys that run riot at night in our great cities ; the great mass of feculent sediment that infests our streets ; the thousands and hundreds of thousands that shock our taste and are repellent to our unsanctified natures some- body must care for them or they will perish. God, methinks, the purest and the highest, is the only one that calls them brethren while we gather our garments up and walk on the other side, and leave them weltering in their vices. All who are by disposition unlovely we feel justified in turning our backs upon. We think we have a right to eschew their company and speak evil of them. Here is a man that is hard and grasping; the whole neighborhood agree to call him an Id hunks, an avaricious dog; and from the moment that is done, every thought we have about this man is one that strikes him. We do not pity him. We do not consider measures for his relief. We do not take remedial steps in respect to him. Let a man come to this hotel, and let it be said of him, " Do you see that man ? He was the guardian of an estate 558 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. that was left to a family of children, and he cheated them out of it ; he has their property ; they are poor, and he is here spending their money." That would be infamous, I admit ; but it would not justify me in treating him as if he were not a man. It would not be a reason why I should not preach to him and pray for him (for we are commanded to pray even for those who despitefully use us). He would not be out of the sphere of my sympathy because he was a wicked man. If you are a Christian, you ought to be in sympathy with men in the proportion in which they are wicked. We cite the faults and foibles of men as reasons why we do not want to have anything to do with them ; and we submit them, often, to the raillery of the community. A man is constitutionally vain, but carries himself with constant awkwardness, and does not know it perhaps; and the young people whisper, and tell everything" that they know about him, and ridicule him. All churches talk about each other. And in politics and business men talk about each other. There is no Chris- tianity of any conspicuous eminence that teaches us to bear each other's burdens. There is no Christianity that is very current which teaches us to sympathize with men because they are imperfect, or to take care of them because they have faults. There is no Christianity of any great prom- inence which teaches us to look after people's hearts on the same principle that we look after their bodies. "We feel, also, that we have a right to toss the head about poor, ignorant, shiftless men, who do not succeed in life. Men say, " Are you going to give anything more to that mis- erable creature ? You might just as well pour water into a sieve. You might as well put money in a bag with holes in it. Why, he is one of the poorest, laziest, most shiftless wretches in the world." I understand perfectly well that there is a political economy, and that it is not best to adopt a system that will put a premium on laziness or shiftlessness ; but do you know that laziness and shiftlessness are inborn ? Do you know that if you are smart you got your smartness from father, or mother, or both, by lineal descent ? Many persons are born without much will, and with very little CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 559 force ; they have a small stomach, no bigger than my hand ; and when they throw down food into it, it is like a mill which has not much power to grind ; and the blood that is made there is poor ; and there is but little of it ; the consequence is that when it is pumped up into the brain, having been very poorly aerated, it does not stimulate the faculties a great deal ; it is pretty cold business that is carried on up there ; and when it goes down again, and around, it goes sluggishly; and when it returns to the brain there is not as much elec- tricity and snap and fire there in a whole day as you get in one single throb ; and yet you stand, with your superior en- dowment, over against that poorly-endowed, badly-born man, who never had even any education as a compensation for his bad birth, and say, " Poor devil ! let him alone. The best thing he can do is to die." That may be ; but it is not very amiable for you to put him out of the pale of sympathy and succor simply because he needs so much. I do not blame you so severely because you have been so badly brought up. You have been studying catechisms and creeds so that you have had no time to study conduct. You have been so busy thinking about church machinery that you have not had much time to think about Christian spirit and life. You have studied the body until you have forgotten that there is such a thing as the soul, or until you act as though you had. I do not blame you altogether I pity you. If there is anybody that needs pity it is a man in a Christian community who does not know how to love as Christ loves. Men sometimes pin a red or blue rag on their shoulder as a badge to show what organization they belong to ; and many professed Christians are known as such only by the rag of doctrine which they wear ; but if any man have not the spirit of Christ he is none of his. Was there a harlot in all Galilee that could look upon Christ and he not know it, and speak peaceable things to her ? And did he not abhor immorality ? Did not thefts, and whoredoms, and all forms of iniquity rise before him blacker than they can rise before the human imagination ? and yet, so much wickeder was it to be selfish with the intellect and the moral feelings than to be selfish with the passions, that he turned and looked upon the Phari- 560 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. see and said, " The publicans and the harlots shall go into the kingdom of God before you." It is a solemn warning. We talk about civilization and Christianity in the world ; but when I see how men live ; when I see how much the malign passions rule and how little they are subdued, I feel that there is a great deal lacking of that which constitutes true civilization and Christianity among men in the com- munity at large ; and I ask, " Where is beneficence ? Is benevolence a real vital principle ? Is everybody happier where you go ? Does summer shine out of your soul and make summer for others ?" I do not care for your churches and doctrines if they do not create in you the fruit of the Gospel. Without love to God and men your professions are vain and empty. Now, I ask you whether there is not a difference between the natural man and the spiritual man. The common man is good-natured when everything pleases him. He has a sort of generous feeling when he has more than he knows what to do with. Under such circumstances he does not mind throwing out five dollars here and there, once in a while. He feels about money as I do about dirt. I do not value dirt very highly ; and if a man wants a handful of dirt I will give it to him. I will not be stingy about it. Men are very gene- rous when they begin to have a good deal ; but when they get rich they are apt to become penurious, and to be suspici- ous in every way. As it is with common men, so it is with Christians. When I see a man going about the community and prating about Christianity, I say to him, " Where is the radical prin- ciple of the Gospel love ? I do not care what church you are in. If you live in the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ you are in the true church, no matter what the name of the external church to which you belong may be. If your spirit is one of kindness always and everywhere, you are right, no matter what teaching you have been under. The spirit of essential self-sacrifico and disinterested love is Christian, and nothing is Christian which comes short of that. In propor- tion as that spirit grows in you are you growing in grace, and orthodox ; but in proportion as you substitute outward con- CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 561 formities for that spirit you are becoming heterodox, and going back to the world." Oh, my friends, it is ineffably sweeter to be right in this regard. He who is right by the force of conscience is never so happy as he who is right by the force of love ; for con- science is a hard master, and carries a straight rule. The more acute your conscience is to inspire you to duty, the more it torments you when you violate your duty. Con- science is a despot. It almost never smiles ; it sits and scowls ; and its business is to flagellate rather than reward : but love suffereth long, and is kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, think- eth no evil. Love, transcendent, shall abide when doctrines, and ordinances, and churches, and governments shall have passed away when nothing else shall remain but the other supeme moral sentiments of the soul faith and hope. Love, even in that hour, high above either of these, and above all other things, high above them as the spire of a cathedral is above the rooi or the foundations shall exist ; for it is God; and is yet to be God over all, blessed because blessing for ever and forever. 562 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. PRAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON. WE rejoice, our Father, that thou art leading o*ur thoughts up to thee by all the associations of this sacred day ; by the familiarities of friendship; by the rejoicing of love; by all the blessed memories which come to us in the calm and quiet of the Sabbath. We thank thee that the whole week doth not need to rush on with care and burden ; and that we have a right to pause, and upon one whole day to rest in body and in soul, and to give our spirits, oppressed with labor and care, repose, or to give them incitement or instruction in the things that pertain to righteousness. Wilt thou grant thy blessing to rest upon this day, and upon all that are present in this assembly, coming from a hundred experiences, bearing each his own thread of history, with sorrows not alike but in common, with joys also in common, and yet strangely different. O Lord, as thou dost look upon every heart here, and see that it is in weakness and sinf ulness, and in everlasting need of God's help, grant that to every one may be given, this morning, that quickening Spirit which bears to the soul peace, and purity, and the sense of forgive- ness and inspiration, so that courage, and hope, and joy may spring up from associations with thee. We need thy help, and thou art most helpful. We need thy forgiveness, and thou art most long- suffering, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. Thou art patient with those who are seeking, even in the least degree, to live aright ; and assistance cometh to them from the divine offices of the Spirit. Not the sun, traveling in the greatness of his strength, sheds more light and life than tLou, in the greater strength of thy nature, O Sun of righteousness, that dost come with healing in thy beams. Vouch- safe to every one in thy presence, this morning, we pray thee, the sanctifying influence of thy Spirit. We pray that thou wilt bless each one who puts forth the faintest endeavor to live better. May whatever is good in us ripen. May whatever is evil in us be more and more overruled. May we not refuse to go forward by sitting down in sinf ulness and remorse, and forever looking backward and bemoaning our mistakes, or our want of improvement of privileges, or our sorrows in bereavement. May we forget what is behind. We are children not of the past, but of the future. We live by faith, and are filled with hope. May we look forward away from the mistakes and errors of the past. In the light of the hope that is in Christ Jesus, may we look forward and press forward toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. If there be those that are seeking to break down evil habits, give thou them, we beseech of thee, strength not only, but patience to persevere therein. Be with those who are by every means endeavoring to build them- selves up better, and more and more Christlike. Give them power to gain perfect dominion, at length, over every appetite, over every lust, over all selfishness, over pride, and envy, and jealousy, and every malign passion that is in the soul. And may all those that are seeking good help each other. Grant that there may be more pitiful- uess in our souls toward any whose purposes are good, but who are CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 563 wafted hither and thither, not by their own will, but by that which Is around about them. We pray that we may be bound in sympathy even to those who are evil. May our hearts yearu for them as thy heart yearns for us. What should we have been but for the thought of God resting upon us, and for thy grace and patience with us? We should have been even as the poorest and most needy are. Let us, then, not be for- given, and be the recipients everyday of thy bounty, and consume it selfishly upon ourselves, turning censoriously upon those that are less favored than we, and condemn them, or pass them by with indif- ference. May we be joined in heart to those who are beneath and far away from us, even as we are joined in a blessed unity to thee and to thy Spirit. Grant thy blessing to rest, we pray thee, to-day, upon this house, and all that dwell in it upon those that direct and control it, and upon those that are recipients cf their kindness. May thy blessing rest, also, upon all those who have gathered together here from neighboring places. Speak peace to every heart. Comfort the sor- rowing. Strengthen the wavering. Inspire those who are discour- aged. Give courage to men who are in places of peril, that they may resolutely, and with divine help, overcome their adversaries. We pray that thou wilt follow our thoughts; for what Sabbath morning dawns upon the earth that our hearts do not search out whom we love everywhere? Some are in distant lands, some are upon the sea, some are in far remote places in our own land, and some sit sorrowful in their homes, waiting and watching. Wherever they are whom we love, love thou them this day, and bear to them some sense of our sympathy ; and may our prayers fall as dews on flowers upon their heads. Let thy blessing rest upon all the interests of this great land. Bless the President of these United States, and all those who are joined to him in authority. Bless the Governors of the different States, and the magistrates therein, and the citizens belonging thereto. Spread abroad the light of knowledge, we pray thee. May schools and seminaries of every kind flourish. May intelligence prevail throughout the whole land. And grant that this great nation may grow up in strength both outward ana inward, not to tread down the poor, the weak, and the oppressed. May this nation not be filled with greed and avarice, but may it at last begin to shine abroad with the true light of Christian kindness, and become the defender of the helpless, and an example to those who are toiling in oppres- sion. At last may that light come forth which shall emancipate the world. May men, touched with the divine Spirit, live again in their higher nature, and become too strong for manacles to hold them, and too wise for despots to oppress them. Thus may this whole world come to its liberty by coming to the Lord Jesus Christ, and receiving the new manhood that is in Christ Jesus. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit, vermore. Amen. 564 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. PRAYEE AFTER THE SERMON. LORD, grant thy blessing to rest upon us, to give us an understand- ing heart, not only, but to give us an applying disposition. Grant that the truth which we have heard may be as seed sown in good ground, springing up, and bringing forth a hundred fold. Pity those things which we blame in ourselves, and those things which we rep- rehend in others as their teachers. Have compassion upon us because we are sinners. Have compassion upon our motives. Have compas- sion upon all those faults which are full of weakness and selfishness. Thou that makest thy sun to rise on the good and bad alike, help us, because we need help. Thy goodness and our want join in one plea. Be merciful to us, and teach us to be merciful to each other. Spread abroad that large-mindedness and catholicity of feeling which shall unite us, with growing force, to thee and to our fellow-mon, that at last we may understand thy law, that goes everywhere, disseminat- ing liberty, being imperious, and yet full of freedom. May each one of us hear and obey the command, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, don, and Spirit, evermore. Amen* LUMINOUS HOURS. I purpose giving, this morning, mainly a historic dis- course, tracing the line of events that preceded and imme- diately followed that scene of unparalleled simplicity and beauty of which we read in the opening service the Trans- figuration. I know of scarcely another point in the narrative of our Master's life, around which there are so many inter- esting questions, and from which may be drawn so many threads woven into instruction so perfectly, and of such im- portance. The first question that arises is in regard to the time. As you will perhaps bear in mind, in the narrative that we read from Luke (for this event is described by Matthew in the 17th chapter, and by Mark in the 9th chapter, as well as by Luke in the 9th chapter) it is said, "About an eight days after, (that, evidently, is a phrase used as we say 'About a week,' or 'About ten days.' Both of the other evan- gelists say, ' After six days,') he took Peter and James and John, and went up into the mountain to pray." These three disciples seem to have been the most intelligent and the most useful of the disciple band. They were the ones that almost always accompanied the Saviour. They seem to have been men of some mark and character. Certainly they proved afterwards that they were more active than any of the others. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were called " Sons of Thunder." They were men of work. And when the Saviour went off on any mission, he took Peter, James and John with him. You will recollect that the mother of John and James Preached at the TWIN MOUNTAIN HOUSE, White Mountain*, N. H., Sunday morn* Ing, Sept. 6th, 1874. Lesson : Luke lx., 28-42. Hymns (Plymouth Collection) : Xus. 11% 464, Doxology. 568 LUMINOUS HOURS. undertook to make them Prime Minister and Treasurer of the new kingdom, saying to Christ, " Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom." They had a natural ascendency over the other disciples, and it excited envy and jealousy among them. The dispute on the way to Jerusalem, as to who of them should be greatest, came in part from this. Now, Jesus took these three disciples, it is said, six days after. Six days after what ? Well, so far as we have any in- formation, after nothing. It reveals, in one sense, we may say, the loose way in which the gospels were constructed. What is the origin of the four lives of Christ ? If Prescott should sit down to write the life of Ferdinand and Isabella he would first collect facts, dates, etc., belonging to their career, as guides or milestones by which he would travel through their history. These he would arrange, introducing the various characters, and unfolding their experiences, step by step, year by year, and putting them in the relation of cause and effect, of precedent and consequent. Were the four Gospels written in that way ? Did Matthew, under the divine inspiration, sit down, begin at the begin- ning, and go right straight through to the end ? He did not. Neither did Mark, nor did Luke, who was the most method- ical of all of the evangelists ; nor did John, who wrote the last Gospel many, many years after the others were written. It is to be remembered that our Master, so far as we know, never wrote a line. It is one of the things to be remarked with wonder, that that man, whose influence has been revolutionary in time, and on the globe, never put pen to paper. Not only that, but nothing went down as coming accurately from his lips, and by his direct authority not one single scrap. All that we have of his sayings and teachings was caught up, as it were. The disciples were with him in the valleys, on the mountain sides, in obscure fishing villages, and in the despised province of Galilee ; for at the cruci- fixion, you will recollect, it was said to them, " Your speech bewrays [betrays] you," and they were taunted as having come from Galilee. The inhabitants of Galilee were despised in Jerusalem as in Boston men are if they do not live in the LUMINOUS HOURS. 569 "polished city;" as they are in New York, if they do not live in the "metropolitan city;" as they are in London, if they are not Londoners ; and as they are in Paris, if they are not Parisians. These were refined men, and esthetic people, and orthodox folks, who regarded Galilee as a con- temptible province. As the Jews despised the Gentiles, so the Greeks and Romans despised the provinces. And five- sixths, nine-tenths, nineteen-twentieths, of our Lord's life, was passed in that province. But his instructions there were not registered. He took no pains to have them sent out. He spoke them, and lot them alone, and they rested sim- ply in the memory of those who were around about him ; and not a hundredth nor a thousandth part of them have been gathered up at all. The words of John are very signifi- cant where, using an oriental extravagance and employing metaphorical language, he says, "There are also many things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." It always seemed strange to me, since there was such immense fruitfulness of discourse in our Master, that there never came to us anything except that which is embalmed in the four Gospels. One would think that the intelligent philosophers of his day might have caught something, and the heathen something, and thus at least single sentences would have been handed down to us ; but I have looked through all the pseudo and counterfeit gospels of the third and fourth centuries, and in other works outside of the New Testament, and I have found nothing that looks like a possible sentence uttered by our Lord, save one. It seems as though this might have been spoken by him. It is re- corded in an old book that he was walking along the road and saw a man working on Sunday, or on the Sabbath, as they would call it, and said, "If thou understandest what thou art doing, blessed art thou ; but if thou un- derstandest it not, thou art accursed." That is to say, "If thou hast so large an idea of a man's life as to look upon the Sabbath day as his servant, and not his master, and thou art working in that broad sphere of intelligence, blessed art 570 LUMINOUS HOURS. thou, because thou art emancipated ; but if thou believest the Sabbath day to be a day of bondage and a law over all, and in defiance of that art working on it, accursed art thou." This sounds very much like the Master. It resembles many sayings of his. Besides that, I know not of a single other one that is to be found out of the Holy Scriptures. How, then, came the Gospels into being ? What is the origin of them ? Well, those who heard him went out and repeated what they heard. Of course there would be hun- dreds of men talking up and down in the villages, and telling what they heard him say, and what they saw him do. By and by one would distort the truth a little, and another would distort it a little more ; and after some twenty years it became apparent that there were so many different versions as to make it necessary that somebody should give authentic state- ments. So Matthew, who companied with Christ, wrote the first Gospel ; Luke wrote another ; Mark, another ; and St. John the last. It is said that St. John wrote his at the request of the elders of Ephesus, in order to include in it some teachings that Christ gave, of which the other Gospels had nothing. On what principle did they construct the Gospels ? Sup- pose in a village where there are a dozen officers, intelligent men, who went with Sherman on his march to the sea, they should come together and talk about that campaign. One would tell a story ; that would suggest another which some- body else would tell, and that would suggest another. One man would say what he saw, another what he saw, and an- other what he saw. So it would go round and round the circle ; and the whole evening would be spent in that way. The principle on which they would relate their separate nar- ratives would be association. They would not attempt to give a connected history. One man's story would make another man think of something that happened five years before ; and that would make another man think of some- thing that happened two years after. The different narra- tives would be thrown together, so far as the time element is concerned, in confusion ; and yet every particle would be true. LUMINOUS HOURS. 571 Now, the evangelists put their accounts together in very much the same manner. The Gospels are not constructed in any order of time or dates. The facts which are recorded in them stand in the order of suggestion and association. One is given, and another, and another ; and when you come to connect dates with them, you find, perhaps, that a thing which happened near the close of the Saviour's life is placed at the beginning, and that a thing which took place near the beginning of his life is placed toward the close. It is evident from the mixed way in which the events stand that there was a very loose manner of combining them. This is shown in the very first clause of the passage which we read " About eight days after." Altar what, is not stated. The writer had something in his mind which he did not record. We have, then, to look into the evangelists more closely to see where it wa j and when it was that the steps were begun which led to this grand culmination on the mountain top, this transcendent vision of glory and what those steps were. Our Saviour's whole active ministry probably did not overrun fifteen months. The great bulk of his miracles and instruction were included in one year. It has generally been said that there were three years of his ministry ; but the active part of those three years did not reach much over one year, and according to the best modern scholars did not ex- tend beyond fifteen months ; and of this time perhaps all but two months one spent actively in Judaea and one in Peraea was spent in Galilee. It was in Galilee that his fame began. What was the reason of that fame ? The reason of it, when you come to trace it back to the very root, was that he was the most perfect Jew that the Jews had ever seen or heard. It is very striking to see, in looking through the life of Christ, the sentiment of patriotism that he touched. He was a Jew after the strictest type. He knew that he was descended from the old and revered ancestral Jewish stock. He con- formed to the usages of the Jews. He observed the Sabbath day. He worshiped in the synagogue. He went to Jeru- salem to attend the great feasts. He represented, to the common people, in whose hearts the sentiment of patriotism 572 LUMINOUS HOURS. was the strongest, the perfect Jew. When he began to work miracles, they said, "Another prophet has come." The instruction that followed his guileless life ; his wonder- workings ; his appeals, not so much to the reason as to the moral sentiments ; his kindness and familiarity ; his going about and doing good, in contrast with the haughtiness of the Pharisees, and with the selfishness that belonged to the dominant party at that time in the Jewish economy; his sympathy for the poor, the sick, the necessitous of every name these things won the great multitude to him, and they regarded him as a prophet in that long line of Jewish prophets of whom they were proud, and of whom the whole world has become justly proud, because among them have been some of the grandest moral natures that ever lived. There have been men in history that illumined philosophy, and de- veloped power, and achieved military glory ; but nowhere has the moral element been more conspicuous than in the Jewish nation, of which men nowadays are sometimes so much ashamed. The faith of our fathers, their conscience, and their hope of immortality, all sprang from that wonderful people ; and Jesus seemed to his own countrymen to be the most illustrious among them. They felt that their time had come. This proud nation, on which the Koman yoke lay, and which the Assyrian had trampled into the dust, but which inherited the promises of God, longed for emancipa- tion ; they looked and waited for it. And, at last, there came among them a man, spotless, wise, and of wonderful power with God and with men, and he carried the hearts of the common people with him, as being the best Jew that ever lived in their modern times. When miracle after miracle was wrought by him, the Pharisees found fault ; but the common people were on his side ; and all the time they had this latent feeling : " He will very soon disclose himself ; the old banner will outroll again, he will draw his sword, the promises shall be fulfilled, and no longer shall we be the tail but we shall be the head ; all nations shall come and worship at Jerusa- lem, and we shall be God's right favored trusty stock ; we shall convert the Gentiles, and then the whole earth shall be redeemed." So they watched him with great expectation ; LUMINOUS HOUftS. 573 and days and weeks went by, and the blind received their sight, and the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised, and the poor had the gospel preached to them; and they said, "When will the time come everything is on the way to it, but when will it come that he will declare himself the Messiah ? " It was to the north-east shore of the sea of Tiberias, or Galilee, that Christ went, not long before the occurrence of this scene, to rest. Overborne with the fatigue of instruc- tion, he told his disciples to get with him into a ship, or boat, and they went thither with him. When the multitudes heard that he had gone there they ran around the lake shore, out of their cities and villages, to join him. The average distance was not above six miles. It was not further than that, even from Capernaum. At one point the mountain came down to the very sea. Between that and the mouth of the Jordan there was a large plain. There it was that the Saviour landed ; and it is said that there were some five thousand persons there, besides the women and children ; so that there could not have been much less than ten thousand people gathered there. He rested and taught them all day ; and when evening came his heart was filled with compassion toward them on account of their hunger for the Saviour thought of bread-and-but- ter as well as of catechism. He thought of men's bodies as well as of their souls. He had regard for physical as well as for spiritual wants. There were ten thousand people with- out food assembled before him at that time, and then it was that he performed the miracle of feeding the multitude. That was the most undisguised miracle of the whole series. There was no deception about it. If you think that a man can carry food for ten thousand persons in his pockets, or that he can conceal it in the caves of a mountain and sur- prise them with it, you are greatly mistaken. There could have been no such thing as collusion in this case. Imagine how much it would take to feed ten thousand people, so that there should be enough, and twelve baskets over. He took the five loaves and the two fishes, and multiplied them, and multiplied them, until the ten thousand persons, men, women and children, were fed, under circumstances that made it 574 LUMINOUS HOURS. evident that it must be a divine power that was at work. There was no getting around it. If he had raised a man from the dead they might have said, " Oh, he had just fainted away ; " if he had restored some person that was sick of a fever, they might have said, " Well, there are doctors that can heal the sick by magnetic influence ;" but no man can feed ten thousand folks from five loaves and two fishes by anything short of superhuman power. It was one of the most convincing of miracles ; the people were convinced ; and they said, " Indeed, unquestionably, this is our long- promised Leader." It is recorded that then they undertook to take him by force and make him king. That was the point of the highest popular enthusiasm. Then it was that the wave broke and overwhelmed them with disappointment, for he not only refused to be king, but he determined to de- part. The disciples themselves were caught up in the popular enthusiasm, and that single sentence is very significant where it is said, " He constrained [compelled] the disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side." They were so wrought up with the multitude that he was obliged to exercise his authority over them, and take hold of Peter, and say, " Get into that boat," and to push John in, and send them off. Having sent them off, he went back to the moun- tain to pray. What was there in that refusal to be king that should damage him ? Any man who is curious of human nature, and watches to see how the heart and mind work, knows how, in our day, where there is a cause in which men are engaged, as for instance the temperance cause, they become enthusi- astic, and their leaders eagerly zealous. Let a minister in a parish, during a temperance excitement, preach that to ab- stain from intoxicating drinks is well, to be sure, but that he does not want to sign the pledge ; let him say, " I believe that every man should be temperate, but I do not think it necessary for him to bind himself never to touch a drop of them, when the cloud overshadowed them, from which edge, but he won't go in body and soul and help carry on this work ; " and they dislike him more than they do drink- ers, and oftentimes more than they do liquor dealers them- LUMINOUS HOURS. 575 selves. Men who are conducting a reform want people to come in or keep out ; they do not want any half-way folks connected with them. Now, the Jews were full of expectancy ; they thought the time was coming nearer and nearer when he was to declare himself as their king ; their hearts grew warmer and warmer, and their enthusiasm burned higher and higher until the climax was reached, and then he turned away and utterly refused to be king ; and when the disciples attempted to per- suade him lie warned them off, and sent them back into the boat, and departed himself to the mountain. The people were disappointed in him, and said, " He is a sham ; he is a pretender ; he has no heart, no nerve, no bone and muscle ; he is nothing;" and that was the end of his popularity. You will recollect how, that same night, when the disci- ples were on the sea, he came to them walking on the water, and quieting the wind which was " contrary unto them." And they came ashore and landed at Magdala, a little south of Capernaum, on the northwest coast of Galilee. There he was met, we are told, by the Pharisees, by the Scribes, and by the Herodians. The Pharisees represented the most orthodox people among the Jews. The Scribes were their teachers, their doctors, their lawyers, the most learned and eminent men that they had among them. The Sadducees represented the philosophic element. They were not very religious, but they made up in ambition what they lacked in other respects. At this time the Sadducees were in great power ; I think both the high-priests were Sadducees. The Herodians represented political ideas and influences of the reigning court. So at Magdala Christ met the ortho- doxy of the Jews, the scholarship of the Jews, the advanced philosophy of the Jews, and the regnant politics of the na- tion. Every element of power among the people he found waiting for him. And when he undertook to teach them, their ears were shut to him on every side. Unfaith and scornfulness confronted him whichever way he turned. He found himself rejected everywhere. And he was not spared from ridicule. When he spoke of the bread from heaven, men said to him, "Why don't you give us that bread?" 576 LUMINOUS HOURS. Contempt was heaped upon him in every form. He was met with the most caustic, bitter, taunting feelings. At this place Christ took a ship, with his disciples, and sailed up the coast to Bethsaida Julius. He also went to Chorazin. Capernaum was likewise visited by him. There he was grieved and heart-sick, as he was leaving Galilee for the last time. Then it was that he looked wistfully at the cities on the hill, where he had spent so much time, and said, " Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! woe unto thee, Bethsaida ! for if the mighty works T\hich were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted into heaven shalt be brought down to hell; lor if the mighty works which have been done in thee bad been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." Landing at Bethsaida Julius, he heals a blind man, and then goes on far north to get out of the way of the rabble, and to escape insult. To tell the truth, Jesus was tired ; he was worn out for he had a body, and it behooved him to be like his brethren ; his spirits were sucked up ; and he longed for solitude. 80 he went to the very bounds of Pales- tine, northward to Cesaraea Philippi, called " the coast [?'. e. the borders] of Tyre and Sidon." It was in the neighbor- hood of these cities ; but he did not go to them, so far as we know. He attempted to hide himself ; and he gave in- junctions that nobody should be told where he was. Here opened the history of the Syrophoenician woman, who brought to him her daughter that was possessed ; and it was in close connection with this that the Transfiguration took place. This leads me to say that in the account of his ascending the high mountain at evening, no mention is made of the place a circumstance which brings to mind again the singu- lar manner in which the Gospels were constructed. Mount Tabor, which is to the southwest of Capernaum in Galilee, has been said to be the mount of Transfiguration ; but it is morally certain that it was not, for the reason that from im- memorial it was a hill fortified by a citadel. Josephus speaks U'MINOUS HOURS. 577 of strengthening its works, so that it must have been a place frequented by soldiers and people. It is impossible that Mount Tabor should have been the scene of the Transfiguration. History rather points out that this scene occurred on the skirt, or one of the bounds of Mount Her- mon a snow-clad mountain that never lifted the white cap from its head. There it was that Jesus went at night with Peter, James and John. It was a custom of Orientals, as it is now, after wrapping their head with a mantle and saying their prayers, to in- stantly lie down and fall asleep, (men in the open air sleep easily.) At evening our Saviour ascended high up on the flanks of Hermon, and these three men were asleep, as they were in the garden afterwards ; and Jesus now, as then, prayed ; and while he prayed a great change came over his appearance. It is said that his face did shine as the sun ; and his raiment was white and glistering exceeding white, like the snow. It is not said that he was lifted up, though Raphael, in his picture of the Transfiguration, makes him so ; but that he stood wonderfully changed in his whole aspect is the sum of the declaration of the Gospels. There appeared also Moses and Elias. Why they ? Why not angels ? Why not, as at Christ's temptation, and at his baptism, personages of celestial origin ? You are to remem- ber that the old dispensation was about to cease in power for the sake of giving place to the new that is to say, as the blossom falls in order that the fruit may swell under it, and be better than the blossom, so the old dispensation was the blessed flower of ages from which has come the noblest fruit that the world ever saw; it was fit that there should be witnesses from the old dispensation ; and there were not two names belonging to that dispensation which were more illus- trious than those of Moses and Elias, or Elijah the He- brew name is stronger than the Greek. Moses was the grandest law-giver, and Elijah was the noblest prophet and reformer, of his time. They stood magnificent as the pyra- mids of Egypt. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were treasured names ; but these men never did or said much that was worth remembering. No philosophy, no organization, no 578 LUMINOUS HOURS. new order in the state, and no development of spirit-life, ever sprung from them. They were simply magnificent pic- torial heads and fountains of Jewish stock. They were pious, pure, and mildly sagacious. Their nation was proud of them as of mythical men. When it came to the matter of national growth and reform they were of no account. Moses was the greatest man of antiquity ; and I think I may say that even in modern times a greater than he has never walked the earth. "Wondrous was his career beyond the power of words to paint. At forty he began and was cast out ; then he spent forty years more in the wilderness as in a school of solitude ; and then at eighty, when most men are ready to lay down the burden of life, he took it up and commenced the work of emancipating and organizing the men of the wilderness. At the age of a hundred and twenty years his eye was not dimmed, and he left a record which has not died out. There never has been a commonwealth, and there never will be one, without having the marrow and bone and muscle of Moses put into it. Absolutely, his was one of the greatest names of the world, and it was unquestionably the greatest name of antiquity. The name of Elijah was also illustrious. When the king- dom seemed about to be destroyed, when Ahab the idol- atrous, and Jezebel the infamous, caused the prophets of God to be hunted, then came this man as a flame of lightning and a burst of thunder from the wilderness, and undaunted he put down the king, and slew the prophets of Baal, and restored the kingdom, and exerted such an influence that his name to this hour is talismanic in the history of the Jews ; so that when they have their Pentecostal feast, or Passover, there is always a chair left for Elijah, as with an expectation of his coming. These two men stood transfigured as the angels of heaven, and Christ was transfigured between them. What was the theme of their conversation in this august drama? His death, that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. When you consider the solitude of the mountain, the cool air, and the green grass upon which they were, and the mag- nificent background of glacier-capped Hermon; when you LUMINOUS HOURS. 579 consider that it was night, and that the three disciples lay sleeping while this magnificent picture was passing before them, a transcendent Gospel before men dead, as it were when you consider these things, you must feel that this was one of the most illustrious spots of the whole history of the New Testament. Just as these figures were disappearing, Peter, James, and John awoke ; and they saw the brightness and the glory as they were fainting, fainting, fainting and going out in the air; and Peter, the impetuous, who always spoke first and afterwards thought what he had said, exclaimed, " Master ! let us stay here forever. Let us build three tabernacles one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias;" "for he wist not what he said," as it is recorded ; and he is not the only descendant of the apostles who has not known what he was talking about, when speaking on such subjects! The Master adjured them that they should tell no man. Then of these figures that were luminous, the two de- parted. Christ apparently resumed his natural aspect ; but the whole heaven was as one great beaming mass of light ; and a vision shone upon them; and out of that cloud as from a voice of thunder came the words, "My beloved Son hear ye him ; " and then the vision departed. This doubtless took place between midnight and the dawn. When the morning had come, Jesus took his dis- ciples and began to talk to them about his approaching trial and death. They descended with him from the moun- tain ; and when they had reached the base the people saw him coming, and were surprised and amazed. It seems that he retained something of the appearance which he had on the mountain top, and they ran to him. Soon he found his dis- ciples in an altercation with the Pharisees. Then occurred a scene which was the antithesis of that of the Syrophoanician woman. A father met Jesus at the bottom of the mountain, and no dramatic literature has anything to be compared with that father's petition for his son. Christ healed the son, and then he passed on, and went south again. Thus far for the external history. Now the question arises, in the first place, What was the intent of the Trans- 580 LUMINOUS HOURS. figuration ? Why was such a passage of history as this developed in the economy of the New Testament ? It is a matter profoundly to be grateful for, that our Saviour was bodily tired at times ; that he was hungry at times ; that he was an outcast at times ; that he had not where to lay his head ; that he was homesick. Said he, "The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but I have not where to lay my head." There is nothing in literature more touching than the homesickness of Christ. He had wrought in his miraculous way and in his teaching way, until his spirit and body seemed spent ; he had come to the very climax of popularity ; he had been rejected by the common people ; and going back to the west side of the lake he was disowned by the men of his own nation. He was a Jew, and he had the spirit of patriotism which belonged to the Jew ; and no man who loves his nation can bear to be set aside from it. I know that in the old days of the Anti-slavery conflict there was nothing that ever pierced my soul more bitterly than the thought that I loved this whole land, and was shut out from more than half of it. I knew that my heart's desire was to have the whole nation prosperous, illustrious, grand ; and to know that that longing was met with scorn and contempt hurt me. I thought I understood how Christ felt when he was rejected by his own people. So, spent by labor and worn out by grief of heart, he yearned for the wilderness. No man attempts to do great things for his time and for his people, that he does not long for the wilderness. The more you love men, the more, sometimes, it is impossible to endure them ; at times you go into the forest, when trees seem more to you than men with their selfishness, uncharitableness, and hardness ; and it is a comfort to me to know that my Master was homesick and worksick, and longed to get into the wilderness, where no man could find him. He needed more than that. Christ being under human conditions, and suffering what humanity suffers, was discour- aged ; and it was necessary that he should be built up again. Therefore he ascended into the divine communion ; and it LUMINOUS HOURS. 581 pleased God, by the opening of the heavens, and by those messengers of the old dispensation that were adapted to pour balm and consolation into his heart who was working for the new, to give him re-invigoration. man of God, preaching in the wilderness, tired, dis- heartened, and accusing yourself of a want of courage and faith, your Master was tired, and needed angelic ministration to set him up for his work. woman in some despoiled neighborhood, bearing the bur- den of the household, and longing to do something for the school, or for the needy of the neighborhood, unhelped, alone and discouraged, and often wishing yourself dead, you tread in the footsteps of Him who once walked the earth, but who now reigns in heaven. ye that are seeking the world's gain, either in your fam- ily or in the community; ye that embrace in your thought and ambition the ages and nations, do not be ashamed that you experience hours of deep depression ; for Christ had them, and he sanctified them to the good of men. Like him, too, you may have times of luminousness and emancipation. On the mountain-top, unexpectedly, in the night, when all is darkness, there may come to you the radiancy of a revelation from the heavenly land. Jesus Christ was walking with his face toward Jerusalem, his heavens were filled with thunder-bolts, stroke on stroke fell upon him, he was subjected to torment and suffering, and he needed, by influences from above, to be armed for the next and last scene that of his forty days' passion. More than that, did he not foresee that the events then taking place were more than likely to scatter his disciples, to frighten and dishearten them, so that he would be quite for- saken by them ? He did. The Transfiguration was meant primarily for his comfort. Next, it was meant for the comfort of the apostles. Peter, James and John were to go with him to Jerusalem. There he was to have a season of conflict with the scholars before he went to the peasantry. He was to go among the educated Jews, to be put into the hands of wicked men, to be cruci- fied, and to be buried out of sight. 582 LUMINOUS HOURS. You recollect the beautiful narrative given in Luke, of the walk to Emmaus. You remember how bewildered they were ; how Christ walked with them unknown to them. You have not forgotten how he held their eyes so that they could not tell who he was. When they said they had hoped that Jesus was he who was to be the deliverer, but that he was destroyed, then Christ opened his mouth and taught them out of the Scriptures, and showed them how it was necessary that the Saviour should be put to death, and rise again. That was a very perilous period for the disciples, during which their Master was cut off and entombed, and when there was nothing for their senses for their sensuous mind for their bodily sight, and they had not yet learned faith ; what was it that under such circumstances held the disciple band together ? Do you know that the imagination is a stronger element than the reason ? You might suspect it by the fact that the Bible employs imagination ten times where it does phil- osophy once. When old people go back to their childhood, what things do they remember most ? Arguments ? Not at all. What do you remember about your mother that is gone ? Not any- thing by which she was formally made known to the world, but some picture, some scene of tenderness, some fragrant sentiment which lingers in your imagination. What is it of your friends that you remember longest ? Not the shape of their eye-brows, or of their face, which was drawn as they sat like a wooden dunce having their portrait made, but that expression which they had when they came to the door and looked in and glanced at you ; or which flashed over their face when at table some story was told. You remember that. You never will forget it. The mem- ory of man is kept alive by dreams, by superstitions, or by pictures which appeal to the imagination and the fancy. These things get a hold upon you which can never be lost. Now, when the disciples went down to Jerusalem, and they saw Christ indefensible, arrested, carried before tribun- als, subjected to a mock trial, condemned, dragged forth LUMINOUS HOURS. 688 ignominiously, taunted, lifted upon the cross, in darkness and anguish, dying ; when they saw his enemies triumphant and exultant, and saw Christ buried, and saw the stone rolled up and the tomb sealed, and saw guards placed to watch the sepulcher, there was every inducement in the world for them to have said to themselves, " We have been living like a bub- ble, and it has burst, it is ended and gone"; and they could not give a reason for thinking it was not gone. There was nothing that they could put their hands upon which helped their faith ; but they remembered how Christ looked when working miracles, when performing deeds of mercy, and when standing before them in transfiguration on the top of the mountain with the old prophets, and talking with them, when the cloud overshadowed them, from which the voice addressed them. This wonderful mountain-top pict- ure they remembered. Against their reason and their senses there was something in their hearts that said, "We cannot give it up"; and they held on till the stone flew back and Christ appeared again to their longing, loving vision. As, then, the Transfiguration was to comfort the heart of Jesus, so it was to prepare the disciples for the tribulation which was before them, and to hold them steadfast unto the end. Christian brethren, there is some instruction to you and to me which ought to be drawn out of this beautiful picture. To me it has been as a bosom to a child. I have sucked at it as a babe at its mother's breast, and have been made stronger, healthier, patienter, better, by that which flows to me from this heavenly vision of the Transfiguration. In the first place, to every one of us, first or last, come these luminous hours. I do not believe but that everybody has an opening heaven and thoughts that lift him above the vulgar present. I believe that everybody has heroic hours, generous hours, hours in which the superiority of the true, the good, the beautiful, is not any mere speculation, but a sensation, I might almost say a conviction. Everybody, I think, has his radiant hours of inspiration. But, alas ! most men use these hours simply as hours of courtesy, or hours of luxury, and they say, " Oh, if we could always feel so ! Oh, 584 LUMINOUS HOLTXS. if we could always be just as we were at the end of that meeting, when the last hymn was sung, and the last stanza was rounded out gloriously ! Oh, if we could always be as we were at the winding up of such a sermon, that taught and inspired us ! Oh, if we could always live in such moods as we come into sometimes, alone, in meditation or prayer!" But they are transient. Men do not see them perhaps for months, and sometimes not for years. They are not concat- enated. They do not become our life at all. And transfig- uration seven times a week, I think, would become unins- tructive. It is solitariness that makes a thing striking. Things that we do over and over again every day are trite and make no impression upon us. Those hours of illumina- tion which God gives to men are precious hours; and you want to repeat them. You want to build tabernacles and sit down in them. Some men's idea of being a Christian is to have a good time ; to sing hymns till they feel like angels. They want to be on the mountain-top, out of the reach of turmoil, while at the bottom of the mountain the devil is at work destroying men. They do not want to be in the midst of sorrow and suffering, where they will see tears and hear groans. They want to enjoy themselves, and let the world go. Peter prayed for that; but it was not his business, and it is not yours, nor is it mine. Thank God for the hours of brightness which come to us, and thank God for the hours that must come to us, one after another, of burdens and troubles. Being a Christian does not take you out of life, nor redeem you from the laws of this world, or from social disturbances, or from political exigencies. We are workers together with God, where tears fall, where breaking hearts are, and where sorrows gush like springs from mountains. Here is where we live, and where we should be ; and if we are occasionally taken into those higher expe- riences, let us bless God for them, and use them to strengthen ourselves for lower ones. Many and many a man is working out his salvation better in tears and under burdens than when he seems to himself an angel about to fly to the king- dom of glory. It is not when you feel best that you are best, but when you suffer most and most patiently under trials and LUMINOUS HOURS. 585 misfortunes. Not when God is lifting men up, but when he is pressing them down, is he blessing them most. Not when he rides into the city after a victory is the general most noble, but when he is in the wilderness, and everything is dark and lowering, and by his courage and indomitable perseverance he overcomes obstacles. It is when a man rises above his circumstances and moods that true manhood shows itself in him. It is then that he is grandest and nearest to God. There is another thing. As the Transfiguration on the mount was designed to teach the disciples how to conduct themselves when the exigencies which were to come upon them should be developed, so these luminous hours which come to all men ought to be used by them to determine their duties and courses. " What shall a man do ?" is a question that is occurring every single day ; and what a man shall do will be settled by a higher or lower court. The lower court of man's nature, where pride and selfishness and avarice and vanity reside, almost always settles questions, and it almost always settles them wrong. What is generous ? Is it best to act generously ? What is liberal ? How much ought a man to be liberal ? What is self-sacrifice ? How far ought a man in justice to himself and his family to be self-sacrificing ? these questions are generally settled by the lower court of the human mind. It says, " Take care of yourself : if every man would take care of one, the whole world would be taken care of." A man's first impulse, if he be a man, is to do the best, the noblest, the ripest thing; but he says, "Let me take a second thought"; and that second thought always lowers the tone of his manliness. A man says, " I thought I would give fifty dollars ; but 1 think I will give only twenty-five." He thinks again, and says, "There are so many people here that I don't believe I need to give more than ten dollars." Before the box comes round he thinks again ; and he does not give more than a dollar. In those hours when" your best nature is in the ascendency ; when the reason is calm and the moral feelings are alive ; when you are impelled by motives from the side furthest awav from the beast then is the best time to settle 586 LUMINOUS HOURS. questions of doubt and procedure. In your best hours take your highest thoughts, and follow them. Some of you, in many hours, doubt whether there is any God. Some of you doubt whether there is any validity in the Bible. Somo of you doubt whether there is any good except as circumstances favor. Those doubts and skepti- cisms every man, whose mind is active, and who is observing, has, more or less, in his lower hours ; and they dampen and hinder him ; but at other times he looks beyond the expanse of this life, and over the horizon, and he has a sense of the certainty and nearness of God ; and his whole soul adjudi- cates. Then it is that he should take his reckoning, fix his landmarks and steer by them. When a man goes over the Alleghanies, or any untrodden mountain, on some hill-top he looks forward and sees how the whole land lies ; and he singles out some vast rock, some tall pine, or some prominent point, as a land mark ; then he goes down into the champaign, and the way is no longer open like a map before him. He is lost ; but still he keeps the general direction ; and by and by, through a little opening, he sees yonder rock or pine or point ; and he says, " Ah ! that is what I saw," and travels on, and emerges again. Pretty soon he disappears again in the valley, but keeping the direction, he soon rises again so that his landmark comes into view once more. It is when you are on the mountain-top that you should take your landmarks and steer toward them, and when you go down and lose sight of them, keep straight across the valley until you rise so that they greet your vision again. Not when you are in the valley can you tell which way to travel, unless you have learned it on the top of the hill. One single other thing. After all the beauty and sub- limity of this wonderful miracle wrought upon the person of Jesus Christ, and after all the instruction connected with it, it still comes back to me in the light of the apostle's joyful yet sad utterance, " Now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face." We are all of us ignorant ; we know in part ; we are partialists ; nobody knows a great deal ; but the time is drawing near, Christian brethren, when neither upon LUMINOUS HOURS. 587 this mountain, nor at Jerusalem, nor upon Mount Hermon, nor upon any earth-summit, shall we need to receive instruc- tion, or have any luminous hours, or pass through this or that experience ; but when we shall stand in Zion and before God, and shall see him as he is, and shall be like him, and shall rejoice with him forever and forever. May God so incline your hearts to wisdom, your souls to love, and your lives to faith and to a holy obedience, that when, brighter a thousand times than the Mount of Trans- figuration, the vision of God shall rise upon you in the other life, your eye shall not blench, and your heart shall not be daunted. He it is for whom I have waited. This is He for whom my soul has longed. I have traveled through time, and twi- light, and midnight, and sorrow ; but I behold Him, and it is enough. The blessing is begun, and it shall end ue.'er. 588 LUMINOUS HOURS. PKAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON. WE bless thee, our Father, for the clear light of truth, dawning in the early day, and gathering strength with the ages. It shines brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. Forgive us that we have so much light, and yet go stumbling along the way of life. Forgive us that we, standing under the influences of two worlds, are scarcely able to know and understand the laws of one, and obey them. We acknowledge our weakness; the sense of our sinfulness is always with us ; but thou art gracious. Thou dwellest in love unspeakable. We build with selfishness and pride. We, creatures of the dust, and ruled by material influences, hardly yet understand, even in our choicest experiences, what are the greatness, and the wisdom, and the power and the discipline of divine love. We rejoice that thy government is established thereupon. We rejoice that God is love, and that yet he will control the universe so that all things shall work together for good, and that tears shall be wiped away, and groans shall cease, and sorrows shall roll their ceaseless waves no more for ever, and that there shall be no more hurting, and no more sickness, and no more crying, and no more death. How far away this land of vision is we know not; through how many ages yet the world must travail in pain we do not know; but it is a joy to our heart to believe that this radiant future is the consummation, and that toward it all things are steering. Whatever may be the mischances, whatever may be the interruptions and hindrances, however long the term may be, yet there shall come a day when all things shall be gathered up, and when to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, of things in heaven and things on earth, to the glory of God the Father. And we rejoice that when the end shall come, he will deliver up the authority, and God will be supreme, all in all. Our reason cannot follow. Our imagination staggers. What the radiant glory of that far-off development and perfectness of being shall be we cannot tell ; but we hope, and fash- ion to ourselves in a thousand effervescent ways, and by a thousand pictures that come and go, the blessedness of that estate in which we shall dwell with God. May the light of hope cheer us. May there fall down from heaven upon our souls, to-day, some brightness and joy that shall enable us to be stronger, more courageous and hopeful, and better able to endure unto the end. Especially we beseech of thee, draw near to thy servants that are gathered together here this morning, and surprise those that have come not knowing why they came, and cheer those that have come hoping to meet thee. Lift the light of thy countenance upon those who dare not raise their eyes unto thee, being children of sorrow, bound fast and hopeless, if such there be. Grant, O Lord, that thy light may come to those who sit in the valley and shadow of death. Make thyself again, as on earth thou didst declare thyself to be, the opener of prison-doors ; the breaker of bands and shackles ; the emancipator, leading forth those who are LUMfNOUS HOURS. 589 bound in dungeons. Give release to consciences that are bound and imprisoned. Give release to those who are endungeoned by doubts, and to those who are hopeless by reason of outward troubles. Break the yoke that is oppressive, and put upon the neck the yoke that is light and easy. Grant, we beseech of thee, that Jesus Christ may be known to all who are here to-day, as the great presentation of God ; as the helpful and suffering Father; as the one who bears the burdens of the uni- verse, and carries all things in his arms toward universal victory. Grant that we may have rising upon our thoughts to-day a concep- tion of the Healer, the Sun of Righteousness, that every one of us may be able to come under his wings, and be brooded of God. We pray that thou wilt bless the little ones the children that are growing up. May God guide them to honor, and fidelity, and true manliness and piety. We pray that their parents may both set a godly example before them, and know how to train them, as well as to teach them. Bless, we pray thee. the families that are gathered together. Search out all their needs. Help every one of them to trust in God, and to bring that trust to bear on the affairs of life. We beseech of thee that thou wilt go with our thoughts every- where to-day as we remember those who are left behind, and those who have gone forth upon the great sea, and those who are scattered abroad throughout the continent. Will the Lord bless abundantly those who are absent from us. Thy heart is larger and warmer than ours. Take the measure of thy benefaction, not from our thinkings, but from thine own nature; and overflow the souls not only of those present, but of those absent ones who are dear to us. We beseech of thee that thou wilt bless this neighborhood, and all the region around about. Bless all this great congregation in their gathering together this day to worship God. We beseech of thee that in the stillness and sweetness of this mountain retreat, the pres- ence of that God who spoke from Mount Sinai and from Mount Cal- vary may be felt. May this be a Sabbath of calmness and peace in the souls of multitudes. May a blessing accompany those who go hence. Grant that all the villages and neighborhoods may be visited by thy salvation. Be pleased, O God, to remember our whole land, and all classes and conditions that are in it. Remember those who are spoiled and broken up in life, and are dying of despondency. Remember those who are outcast in ignorance, and know not how to conduct their lives well. We ask thy mercy for all those who are seeking knowl- edge, discouraged, in twilight, but who yet are looking toward the East for the dawning of intelligence. Grant, we beseech of thee, thy blessing upon the States of this Union. May all those bonds that have been broken be reunited more firmly than evei. May all causes of offense, and dislike, and hatred be purged away, and may justice, and love, and reciprocal interests, and common patriotism, and longing for the welfare of the world around about us and lying in wickedness, be ushered in. Unite us inseparably that the nation may, following the example of the Lord 590 LUMINOUS HOURS. Jesus Christ, use its power, not for the despoiling of the poor and the weak, but rather for their building up on every hand. Bless the President of these United States, and all who are joined with him in authority. Bless all the Governors of the several States of this nation, all judges and magistrates, and the great people. And grant that thy kingdom may come, and thy will be done, in this land as in heaven. These mercies we ask through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen. PEAYEE AFTEE THE SEEMON. Otm Father, bless to us the truth which we have spoken. Bless to us the scenes that are recorded in thy holy word. Grant that we who interpret that word so poorly may discern more fruit and instruction in it than we have been wont to think it contained. May we learn more and more easily from it. Yet, may it not supersede the experiences of our lives, nor the revelations that thou art mak- ing to every person in bis family, and in all his way and work. Bless thy word to those who are impatient of the disciplines and trials of thy providence, and to those whose hearts are set against the truth. Bless all thy servants in the varied lines of their duty. And bring us, with all whom thou lovest upon the earth oh, bring us, ransomed and redeemed, into the kingdom of thy heavenly glory. And we will give the praise to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, vtrmore. Amen. Books of TReligious Interest PUBLISHED BY FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, Lyman Abbott, D.D. THE GOSPEL COMMENTARY. See J. R. 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