^% ECHOES FROM SELECTIONS FROM THE RECENT SERMONS OF PROFESSOR DflVID SWING INCLUDING THE CELEBRATED SBRMON ON "CAPITAL AND LABOR," THE LAST PREACHED BY PROFESSOR SWING. COMPILED BY THOMAS W. HANDFORD, Pastor of the Church of the Multitude. DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO., 407-425 DEARBORN ST. CHICAGO. Copyright 1894, by DONOHUE. HENNEBERRY& CO. DEDICATION PEARL AND GRACIE AND BELLE. THREE MAIDENS IN THE MORNING OF THEIR YEARS ' Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet ! Gazing with a timid glance. On the brooklet's swift advance, Oil the river's broad expanse ! " Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. "To you, young men and young maidens, the divine philosophy of life comes like the song of the morning lark. A philosophy that asks only for a neat home, vines of one's own planting, a few books full of the inspiration of genius, a few friends worthy of being loved and able to love in return, a devotion for right that will never swerve, and a simple religion full of faith and love. This morning hymn sung by the world is for you. You should grasp this life while the inspiration of youth is pouring like a torrent through your hearts, and remember that out of humble life the mightiest souls have come, and on the threshold of a cottage the holiest sunlight has alwavs fallen." David Swing. 2227044 CENTRAL MUSIC HALL, STATE AND RANDOLPH STS., CHICAGO. THE LAST WORDS OF PROFESSOR DAVID SWING. Up to the last Professor Swing was busy with the grand work of his life. Contemplating the service of the approach- ing Sabbath he partly prepared a sermon he did not live to preach. The last words of the unfinished sermon ran thus : must all fjope mucf) from tije rafcual of 33rotf)erlB 3Lobe." The pen was then laid down forever. No words could have been more appropriate. They strike the key-note of the Professor's ministry. PREFATORY TRIBUTE. The world is poorer to-day by the departure from its busy scenes of Professor David Swing. Chicago, and the nation, and the age, have alike suffered irreparable loss. Men like David Swing make the world a good place to live in. They create an atmosphere that is pure and healthful and invigorating; and as the young man said of his sainted wife whose life had been as a light of heaven iipon his path, "// will be harder to be good now that she has gone;" so thousands who have been cheered and inspired by the now silent preacher, will sorely miss the helpfid influence of his words, and the might of his gentle personality. He was one of God 1 s "Apostle lights" whose radiance death has neither quenched or eclipsed, but only removed to shine more clearly under serener skies. David Swing, like the Fore- runner of the great Teacher, was a burning and shining light, and many thousands have rejoiced in the truth he taught. While we mourn the death of such a man, let us be very grateful that he was so much to his friends, his church andhis age, for so long a time. Of his sixty-four years, nearly half a century was engaged in public service. The life of David Swing was largely free from mere events. Too much has been made, and we fear more will be made of what was after all only an episode in his peaceful gentle career. That the custodians of orthodoxy felt called upon to disturb the even tenor of his way is by no means remark- able. When James I. of England said he would make the Puritans conform to the teachings and modes of the estab- lished church or he would "harry them out of the /and," PREFATORY TRIBUTE. 9 he was only representing the genius of orthodox jealousy which is generally as blind as it is narrow. James did "harry" the Puritans out of the land, and drove them across the sea to find in this country a shrine for liberty, and "Freedom to worship God." Professor Swing was practically "harried" out of the church; but the trial for heresy, gave Chicago and the age one of its grandest spiritual forces, untrammeled, and free "as is a bird of air, an orb of heaven." This was, how- ever, but a passing episode in a career that has been like a glorious river, bearing perpetual sunshine on its bosom, while its deep under currents run steadily on to the eternal sea of truth. In the grand sum of the life just ended the trial episode forms no important part. It might jtist as well be forgotten. Many who shared in it may well wish it had never been. The broad and generous charity; the large, hopeful, all-enduring love; that formed the theme of David Swing' s ministry became incarnate in his life. Beaiitiful and pathetic, eloquent and inspiring as his sermons were, he u'as the grandest sermon of all. And he, though dead, will be eloquent for many a day. Thousands whose hands he never grasped, whose faces he never knew, will feel sad to the center of their hearts that death has borne away so wise a teacher, so gentle a friend. He has served his day and generation and has "fallen on sleep," as did that other David of the kingly race. His sun went down at eventide, it went not down in darkness and in storm, but melted in the pure light of heaven. We need not trouble about the future. Prof. Swing will have no successor. Such men cannot be succeded. Beecher and Spurgeon and Swing have done their work. A church may still flourish at the Tabernacle in London, at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, or 10 PREFATORY TRIBUTE. at the Central Music Hall. But the men are few and far between, who could gracefully wear the mantle of these as- cended saints. Other men and other methods will be able to do grand work in the old places. To follow in a proces- sion is one thing, but to succeed a great man is quite an- other. There have been many poets, only one Milton ; many preachers, only one Swing. But he has gone from us, and yet we cannot think that that busy brain has ceased to act, or that that large heart has ceased to love. Milton is not dead! Hampden is not dead! Washington and Lincoln are not dead, nor is David Swing ! He has en- tered the silent land, and we stand by that gate of death that leads to life silent and solitary and sad ! Church of the Multitude, December nth, 1804. SELECTIONS FROM THE SERMONS OF PROF. DAVID SWING. Christ the Center and Circumference. The most powerful Christianity for the near future will be that one which shall make the person of Christ the center and circumference of its truth and emotions. All which prefigured or gently and slowly led toward that Nazarine perfection should be thought to have performed its mission when the Christ came, and should be discharged as a pilot is paid off and discharged when he has brought the great ship to its anchorage and home. This the high orthodox refuse to do. Having informed us that Moses was a school-master in the in- fancy of religion, they retain him, rod in hand, after Christ has turned infancy into manhood, and they send the world in its old age to the same master as though to study again the alphabet of salvation. The success of public lecturers in raising a laugh any day and hour over the dogmas of the Church, warn us that we who preach Christ must draw nearer that one theme, and must per- mit the modern mind to enjoy a wonderful liberty in making up its estimate of all those parts of the Bible and of creeds which do not involve the historic reality of Jesus as the adequate Saviour of all who imitate his virtues. 12 ECHOES Worship Enchains Man to His Maker. It is a custom of logic to reason from the lower to the higher, but it is often fitting to argue downward from the higher postulate. From the worship of God pass down then that admiration of beauty which so fills our age. As worship enchains man to his Maker and detains him until he is enobled by so great an association, so all this lower admiration of beautiful things flings back some rich coloring upon the admiring mind. It would be a blessed hope for our youth if they could always have open to them some beautiful gateway. No school- house will ever open like the school of the sentiments. The worshiper becomes like his God. What Touches One Touches All. What touches one educated heart touches all hearts. There is for all our race one pathos, one laughter, one beauty. As the name of each flower of earth moves all hearts, and as each page of literature moves all thinking minds, w r hether that page was composed in Athens or in Italy, or by Schiller or Lamartine or Cervantes, so the name of each nation touches the soul, because he who is a good citizen of one land is the child of all countries. To fill the earth with such Christian citizens will be the final task and triumph of religion. Christian Means Christ. Under earnest intellectual action the word Christian will at last imply a human character like that of Christ. Later in the history of our race the words, Protestantism and Romanism, will disappear, both displaced by the power and beauty of a Christian manhood and woman- hood. It is a law of our planet that the less shall die when the greater shall come. The wild apple, the wild DAVID SWING. 13 orange, are not sweet enough to merit our soil and sun. Slavery died when the present century came with its study of liberty. Christ and Woman. The degradation of woman came from her being set apart for looking after the stuff. She could not aspire, or hope, or think anything, or learn anything, or be any- thing. Even so good a son as Telemachus told his mother to stay close to her loom. And the kind-hearted Xenophon said the greatest duty of woman was to look after her husband's food and clothes. At times, the Greek woman broke out of that jail and struck her harp like a Sappho or taught divine philosophy like an Antig- one. It is probable Christ aimed at this domestic bond- age of woman when he told Martha that she overrated the kitchen; that Mary's idea was better; that woman, like man, was the lawful heir of an immense spiritual world and should claim it. The kitchen .should be small, the halls of the mind magnificent. One course at the table was enough, the other five or six courses should be taken at the banquet of philosophy. The Protestants read the text and declared the one needful course was Calvinism; the Catholics read it and locked Mary up in a convent that she might not be disturbed in her thoughts. Burns and Dickens. What is most wonderful about the young mind is the fact that when books and schools are denied it, it can meditate and turn the solitude of the farm into a great school house. Poverty can deny the blessing of books, but poverty cannot always prevent reflection from creat- ing a whole library of poetry, romance and philosophy. Many minds, like that of Robert Burns and Charles Dickens, have made their own power. Their minds 14 ECHOES kept their own school all day long. Even at recess the work went on. The school was perennial. There was no cross master. There was no tuition bill. Each sum- mer the poor lonely boy stood higher. He kept his own grade and voted himself the honors. Mind Growing Under Culture. By as much as the human mind grows under the per- petual influence of the school house and the perpetual accumulations of the literatures and the sciences by so much does it love more the broad places of our world. Mind grows under culture. It would be a great pity if long summers and rich soil and a thousand years should combine to make great oak trees, great cypresses, massive woods, and could not combine in some way in the construction of great minds and great hearts. The world's buildings grow larger, its ships larger, its bridges longer. Thus the mind journeys onward, and gladly exchanges ponds for oceans and little ideas for large ones. Schools, literatures, sciences, arts, and a thousand years are beginning to reveal an effect. Much that was pleasing once is too small now. Many ideas that once gave pleasure have become oppressive, not from any falseness, but from their littleness. Paulette's flower in her green paper box was not false. It was simply too much limited by the paper. ' It needed scope for root and branch and vine. Thought Brings Change. Great changes must come into man's intellectual world after thought has been playing upon it for a few hundred years. There must be new adjustments of sub- ject and object, name and thought. It would be very singular to us should some great despot come here and DAVID SWING. 15 set up an absolute throne in the night, and in the morn- ing we should wake to find Jie castes of India around us, and that we dare not speak to the man we liked yes- terday, and dare not touch the hand of our old friend. The wife must not eat with her husband, nor the son with the mother. The soldier must not associate with the farmer. Thus India has thirty-six shapes of human- ity, going from the Brahmin downward. Unable to find more than thirty-six names for these human colors they call all other people by the name of pariahs. Toussant I/ouverture. It often happens that a name comes down to us from the past, all covered with honors as though there were under it great achievements for man or learning or art. Toussant L/ouverture thus comes to us in moral charm, and we scarcely inquire whether he failed or triumphed. Upon reviewing the page we find that his schemes failed, and that all this splendor shines out of the grand inten- tions of his heart. Failure from personal defect, of judg- ment, or from some blemish of mind or soul, seems erased by the fact that honesty was present even when power was wanting. Ingredients of a High Manhood. A great variety of ingredients is consumed in the manu- facture of a high manhood. If it be true that much power of mind and heart pass along by heredity, then to create a good individual one or two or three centuries must be consumed. Each great and noble personage is thus a thousand years old. He carries the powers and mental charms which were toiled over and practiced by his pro- genitors. It is not wholly in bad taste when the Chinese worship the emblems of their ancestors, for the heart I 6 ECHOES ought to bow in gratitude to the memory of those who shaped well its destiny in advance. Those should be loved who did us all great kindness before we came into being. They prepared the house and then fitted the inmate to the house. Man Made Great by Sentiments. If one would find the true value of a sincere worship, one must first note the vastness of that spiritual fortune that comes through the heart. Literature is composed almost wholly of what the heart loves and admires. As the painter paints for the sentiments, as the sculptor carves for what society loves, as music works wholly for man's delight and tears, so literature utters all its eloquence to the heart. You would not designate the algebra and the law reports as literature. You would not class as letters the debates on tariff or silver. At the mention of the word "literature," human life in sadness or joy comes before us ; Helen of Troy poses in gracefulness ; Andro- mache and her child part with Hector ; the plumed Achilles hurries along in his chariot ; the woods whisper ; the nightingale sings ; Dante and Beatrice appear ; Ham- let acts his part ; Ophelia dies ; Paul and Virginia make of Mauritius a paradise and a grave; "Little Dorritt" is the beautiful dove of a prison ; Fantine sleeps in a hillock which soft rain levels and flowers conceal. Literature is not learning. It is man's holiest passion. It is the soul rushing out of the holy of holies. Man is made great by the sentiments. Touch literature anywhere and the human face flushes. The strings of that instrument called "letters" are fastened to the heart. Poor Thoughts Fade. All ideas that contain littleness live only a temporary life. Men only camp in them they do not live there. DAVID SWING. 17 They are not home. Poor thoughts fade when some new and great beauty is born. Thus the two words, " Protestant " and "Catholic," are serving only in an interregnum, waiting for the advent of some crowned forehead. When the ' ' Christian citizen ' ' shall have come into this Nation the lesser worlds will soon perish ; for great as ' ' Protestantism ' ' and ' ' Romanism ' ' have been, neither name contains any trace of immortality ; but to the term " Christian citizen " one may easily attach the word " forever." What Modern Scientists Have Done. The modern scientists have done two deeds at one and the same time. They have indeed made the universe outgrow the early interpretations of Genesis, but they have made it too vast and too amazing not to have come from a God. Even the slow development of animals and plants, and the newly found wonders of light and heat make the demand greater for a mind which could arrange so many great means to so many great ends. All that enlarges the material kingdom must enlarge its cause and make the argument for a Creator greater now than it was when the sun was supposed to be drawn by horses and affected by summer and winter winds. The Sensitive Mind. A slow mind and sluggish heart can be aroused by an external storm. Blessed that mind and heart which in times of peace and of prosperity can still perceive the need of mankind and can realize the greatness of the sea of human life, even though no storm be on its surface. A common mind can realize the greatness of the ocean when it is storm-tossed, it is a finer soul that is filled with awe also by its stillness and solitude. I 8 ECHOES The Value of Worship. The value of worship does not accrue to the Deity, but to the worshiper. When the first offerings were ever made to a god the mind that brought the gifts was still an infant, and thought that its god needed all kinds of food and drink and jewels. Even in times later, and much grander the temples of Athens and Carthage and Rome were full of offerings made to the divinities of each land. Garments, armor, jewels were stored away for the use or delight of the divinities. A Greek general made a vow that if his god would help him win a certain battle he would offer to that god as many kids as there were enemies left dead upon the field. When Solomon dedi- cated his temple he offered to the Lord 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep, it not then being ever imagined that all those animals were the Lord's before Solomon had killed them ; and that, so far as the Lord was to be thought of, the oxen and sheep would please God better when they were roaming in peace on the green hills than when they were only dead carcasses in the slaughter pen. Do Not Ask Too Much. Sir William Hamilton and men of that high school have declared that the true logic must never ask for more causation than is necessary; and such writers as Trench have said that a miracle is to be believed only when it was performed for some tremendous purpose. Modern logic does not exclude the miraculous, but it demands, in a religious system, the least possible of the superhuman and the most possible of the reasonable or natural. To the pulpit of to-day the young man and the young woman come in all the new truth and power of logic, asking the high Calvinist why the sun stood DAVID SWING. 19 still for Joshua, or why God ordered bloody wars, or why He helped Samson catch the foxes, or pull down a temple, and he is unable to make any other reply than that "all things are possible with God." This answer brings not the silence of peace and conviction, but the silence of contempt. The questioner knows well that God could make the sun stand still, but doubts whether he did so for a transient Joshua. The event must be as great as the divine interference. Man is God's Guest. It is said of some Eastern nation that if a guest admires anything in the home of the host, the host must give that object to the guest. It would be cruel to send the guest home with longing, but empty hands. What is thus told in fancy of some unhistoric state may be told in truth of man's greater world, for what he worships is instantly his. Admiration, worship is possession. Man cries out, "I admire the sun and the stars!" Henceforth they are his Nothing can separate them from his heart. He admires music. Ever afterward it is in him, of him, and for him. They are inseparable. Man is God's guest. God gives him what he worships in the infinite house. Worship is not for God, it is for man. We are in God's home. He says what you love is yours. An Age of Worship. Perhaps we are coming to an age of worship rather than of theology. It is easy to imagine a period in which the Old Testament and the New Testament will empty all their holy and beautiful things into the public heart. If any mind shall not love all the holy books let it take a part, as Linnaeus did not espouse the earth's rocks and waters but only its plants. If one cannot admire Paul let 20 ECHOES him read after Saint John. If worship declines at some one spot, it will rise on some other page, as we are often unmoved by the great ocean but can cry at the voice of a song, or sit down in deep joy in the leafy woods. One thing is essential to find some path in which the foot can always advance with reverence; for reverence, wor- ship, admiration are the mighty educators of our race. The Example of Jonah. If Jonah was literally swallowed and transported around in the ocean for three days in the whale's dark bed-chamber fitted up for such a contemptible guest, then the lesson ends with Jonah; and if God has you and me, in mind He will have to issue to us a similar order, and prepare for us t\vo more great fishes; but you and I are included the moment the story is spiritualized, because then the lesson is on the surface that if any adult mortal would rather join the crowd in sin than lead it toward righteousness, that person ought to be swallowed by any kind of marine or earthly monster existing in animated nature. The Moral Spendthrift. Old hand-earned gold is not the only wealth that may be dissipated by a subsequent generation. An inherited power and morals may also be squandered and an age go out of life mentally and spiritually poorer than it came in. The child of the highly civilized parent inherits great animation and will soon possess a language, a taste, a conscience, and a mental activity far beyond the reach of the child of the savage. This is the spir- itual inheritance which may soon be squandered. The child which, at its tenth } r ear, could possess such a large fortune, may soon turn toward vice or crime and thus DAVID SWING. 21 fling away as a drunkard or criminal a moral excellence which had been accumulating for him in many a past century. Confucius. So essential is it that man stand in the presence of greatness that the Chinese have extracted not a little of virtue and honor from their devotion to only their ances- tors. Confucius, who, for twenty-five centuries, has molded the lives of many millions, accomplished this result chiefly through five forms of reverence that be- tween emperor and officers, between father and son, hus- band and wife, brother and brother, friend and friend. This reverence, playing upon the hearts that were alive, arose still higher after the object of regard had passed out of life. If a brother was dear while he was living, he is made still more dear by the mystery of death. Death transfigures those we love. All faults are for- given and forgotten, and all merits are nurtured into bloom. How much greater the transfiguration when love ran deep before the death. The Chinese, having exalted these five relations of heart to heart all through the happy days of earth, then at death the emperor, or the father, or wife or son, or friend passed up into a memory akin to worship. Thus every youth went to school to all the goodness of his country. He was sur- rounded by five types of mortals who were trying to live in such a manner that their bones would be like those of a saint. This reverence was an education. More " I,i ves of Saints" than Saints. Thoughts will keep from age to age, and cannot ever be marked as "perishable goods," but still there may be a wrong done society by means of that robbery 22 ECHOES which thinking commits against doing. This calamity befell some of the Christian centuries in which almost all the religious leaders became writers. There were ten men to suggest for one man to perform. It is now gen- erally doubted that there were anything near as many saints as there were " lives of saints," for the mind had cultivated the art of sacred biography, and had reached the ability to make a volume out of a name whose real pious exploits were worthy of only a page. The " lives of the saints were more numerous and wonderful than the saints ' ' themselves. At least, great works were absent, and abundant words were present in all those dark centuries. Irrelevant Terms. If the special names of many of the churches are fail- ing and are about to fall away as dead limbs from the oak, it must be coming to pass that names are falling away from other objects besides the church. The sun cannot shine upon the grape and not touch the ripening fig. In Illinois the sun cannot shine upon the wheat and not touch the corn and grass. The age that finds irrelevant terms in the sanctuary will soon find them in the home and street. Our land is leading in this work of separa- ting manhood and womanhood from all that is irrelevant. The Composure of Theology and the Courage of Skepticism. In some of the costly missals of the old Roman church, there are many pictures in life colors showing the attitude the priest should assume at certain points and crises of the service. It is therein shown how the arms should be raised in the celebration of the mass, rind how the holy robes should be received and be surrendered by the DAVID SWING. 23 celebrant. Thus that age had a volume of positions and motions and expressions and reposes, and when down upon that childish period swept Voltaire and his laugh- ing allies, the church was powerless of rational speech. Protestantism was an advance from childhood to man- hood, from form to reason, but its dignity to-day is too much that of the owl, rather than that of the eagle. Theology sits in sublime composure; skepticism soars with courage and ambition. The Shellfish Element in Man. The stupid animals that live in shells the snail, the clam, the oyster retreat into their houses and fasten their pearly gates the instant anything except the soft water touches them. Though only a pebble may roll against their houses they go into retirement as though there were a dreadful enemy about. Man possesses some faint traces of a shellfish origin, for when a great painter has made a bad finger or ill-shaped hand, however grand the face or form or subject, the fastidious spectator instantly closes up all the doors of enjoyment, and thinks that the artist should have followed the plow. So when a public singer offers to an assemblage one false note, the great unrelenting condemnation sets in, and all go home not glad at the sweet sounds they have heard, but angry that a person should have taken their money for a flat note. It would require years for that vocalist to heal the wounded public. The Death of Caste. Even the more sensible Greeks in Athens once had six grades of humanity: Priests, mechanics, shepherds, hun- ters, plowmen and soldiers. By a fine process of differ- entiation the early Greeks found a difference between the 24 ECHOES mechanic and the plowman, and between the farmer and the hunter. In our age and land the mind longed to be released from all this oppressive straightness, and on meeting an Emerson and a Webster it did not wish to be told that they were degraded farmers, that Washington was a low-born surveyor, and Franklin only a low, inky printer. Our Nation came from a desire to escape the oppressive caste of all barbarous times, and to reach and enjoy the broader country into which the Lord seemed willing to lead his children. Creeds Harmful to Worship. A large part of the church creed has been inimical to worship, and much that was not hostile has been irrele- vant. No close definition of a trinity or of the will, or of the creation of man from dust or from a rib, no detail about Noah or Samson has ever added a single flower to the altar of love and reverence. The eternal doom of men for Adam's sin has never made the name of God beautiful. Very much of the creed has been an enemy to the joy of God's house. It was an error of the theologians that the human race could adore where it could not admire and conld love the deeds of an unjust power. The Music is More than the Notes. The Bible need not pass in person into the common school, because the great soul of that book has journeyed outward, and now the gems in the book are only a few compared with those that sparkle in the wide world of truth and beauty. Cardinal Newman's hymn, "Lead K'-dly Light," is not the Bible, but it came out of it. It "'as once a Bible grain, but it now is a field of wheat all ripe and bending far away from the Egyptian tomb. The Russian hymn to the Deity a hymn which was DAVID SWING. 25 once wrought out in gold letters and hung as a banner in the Emperor's palace is not to be found in the Bible, but it arose from that sacred book as our Nation came from a few pilgrims. As the original eight notes of music have been forever expanding, and have become now the almost infinite music of the civilized nations, so the fundamental utterance of the Holy Scriptures have become enlarged into a varied magnificence of prose and poetry. If there be any sect, or any faction of a sect, which does not wish to see a Bible in a public school, then may the common literature of our race rush in and save education from being robbed of many of its greatest beauties and noblest senti- ments. Our age need not clamor for the original eight notes of Matthew, or Paul, or St. John, but it may well clamor for the music which the eighteen centuries have wrought out of the Galilean scale. The springs of the Mississippi are eclipsed by the river itself. Our Race Is in its Infancy. This is not a dream. If God made our world and our race it is not probable that we, the children of earth, can outdream the skill and beauty of the Infinite. Who are we that we should think of some great human destiny that a God had forgotten ? Do we not see that a hundred names are dying for want of greatness ? The words Baptist, Methodist, Calvinist, Episcopalian, farmer, mechanic, tradesman, are too small for a long career. They were cradle words, lisped in human infancy but they are not the language of man's later life. Should a man come to you now saying, " I am a Presby- byterian," or " I am a high-church Episcopalian," would you not see at once Paulette coming with her little plant growing in her green paper box ? Oh, Paulette ! would 26 ECHOES the world could give thee a great outdoor field for thy plant and a massive to-,ver for its vines, that they Might mantle o'er the battlement, By war or storm decayed, And sweetly fill each mournful rent Time's envious touch had made. We would love to give thee not tears of compassion, but those of a deep admiration. Is this a dream ? Why is our race founded upon a great God ? Is it that this God may never make any final use of the infinite? Is it that He may never reveal to His children His wisdom and love ? Do we climb only to fall ? Do we run forward only to go back ? Oh, no ! Our race is still in its infancy. We are still lisping cradle words. Our great terms have not yet come. Humanity will run forward because it is led by the hand of a God. God Great by What He Gives. God is great not only in what He has, but in what He gives away. He owns all the colors, but they are poured out upon the world for us. The clouds catch some, the rainbow some, the flowers some, the human cheek some tint, but they are all for us as well as the Creator. God owns the sun, but what does he do with the extra sunbeams ? Ask our world on this day of spring. A?k all the human beings that live on this planet. Ask the birds and the dumb animals, and all will say that the sunbeams are for God and us. The sea is His and ours. The midnight sky is for Him and us. We need not the old times to come back and create more love of gold, but we pray for the days to come when human goodness and beauty will be like God's colors and light poured out for all in great profusion. DAVID SWING. 27 Caste is Weak. In India there are thirty-six shapes of human condition between the Brahman that may be worshiped and the widow who might be burned. This is the land in which the thirty-six discriminations are to be erased. In England the shopkeeper is still far below the personage called the "gentleman." Caste is weak, but it still prevails; but the world is rolling along gracefully toward a time when all the old, cruel names will give place to the one high rank of intelligence and honor. The intelli- gence and honor of a farmer will make the plow an ornament ; the printing press of a Franklin and a Childs will be turned by honor into a coat of arms ; the merit of mind and heart will make the youth or the maiden have an ancestry from God ; education and a Christlike character will make woman into a queen ; her heraldry need be only the rose on her bosom ; culture and righteousness will open all the doors of fashion and office and fame. Children born in humblest poverty can be reborn in the mighty mansion of humanity. The Pulpit Must March with the Age. Aside from the privilege of seeking and finding what is most true and the happiness which attends the con- sciousness of mental freedom, those outside of rigid orthodoxy are better able to answer the objections of the new generation to a life of faith and worship. While no form of Christianity can rest upon what may be called a wholly rational basis it is desirable that there be the least possible quantity of antagonism between the Church and common sense. There was an age once that loved the miraculous more than the natural, and which, like children in presence of a story-teller, was most im- 28 ECHOES pressed by the tales which were farthest removed from all human experience and observation ; but few of the qualities of that period remain. Voltaire, Hume, Thomas Paine, Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, Renan and Strauss have passed over the w y orld, and the pulpit that follows such names must differ from the pulpit which went before them. Humanity Waiting for Noble Deeds. The welfare of mankind is no longer waiting for words, but for noble actions. The song of charity has been well sung by all grades of voices and the self- denying religion of Jesus has been well preached to this generation. The presses are all busy with the literature of kindness, and each drama and each novel finds its climax in the triumph of the poor. All has come except the triumph. The quantity of humane philosophy on the one hand is equaled by nothing so perfectly as by the quantity on the other hand of ignorance and help- lessness and sorrow. The Worship of God an Unfading Flower. In these days of universal complaint and unrest the heart need not be empty of good and peace. The worship of God is an unfading flower. It cares no more for human theolog}- than the skylark cares about the size and distance of the sun. Behold the unchanging good- ness of God ! The leaves have come back to our forests. Trees a thousand years old are bedecked again in verd- ure. The roses that bloomed for Anacreon have come back for us. The olive trees that wove a shade for Christ are in our world still. The carpet of flowers and grass is spread upon Ajnerica again. It was unrolled before the feet of Washington, and now it is unrolled DAVID SWING- 29 for us. Thus the worship of Go.l need meet with no end or decline in the human heart. It is a lifelong beauty and a lifelong happiness. Man need not be a theologian or a sectarian. Life will be full to overflow- ing to the heart that is a worshiper. Oriental Figures. Nearly all of Oriental speech was boldly figurative. The four men who came running breathlessly to Job, the first one announcing an ambush by the Sabeans, the second one telling of a shower of fire, the third one in- forming the good man of a raid by the Chaldeans, the fourth one announcing a cyclone of full modern violence, are just like the men and women of Bunyan, or like the leopard, the wolf, and the lion which suddenly appeared before Dante when he began to advance into the gloomy forest. That these four calamities should have befallen Job in one day ; that each force took some peculiar property, the Sabeans, oxen; the Chaldeans, camels; the fire, the sheep; the wind, the house; and that each tumult left one man only alive to tell its special tale, and that Job's best friends sat in silence with him for seven days and nights upon the ground to help him bear his sorrow are not the details of history, but of picturesque literature. In all those lands and times which created the books of the Old and New Testaments, to be a writer was to be an artist, a painter. To find the mean- ing of those Scriptures the student must make the ex- ternal phenomena to be those creations which art employs for conveying some spiritual idea to the heart. The Reconciliation of Christianity and Common Sense. It will be easier for the clergy to cease to be Calvinists and literalists than it will be for the rising generation to 30 ECHOES cease to be reasonable. In this dilemma, it is easy to determine where the change of the future will come. A great reconciliation must be brought about between Christianity and the improved common sense between the Author of nature and the Author of religion, that faith and law may both have their places in the life of man. Faith will always be willing to believe in a world beyond this; in rewards for the righteous, and punish- ment for the guilty; in a world to come not made with hands, as the world that now is was not made by human fingers. Faith will look backward and forward toward a great cause, but this looking will be founded upon the sublimity of the objects and upon the feeling that there are places in the universe where the word law must give place to the word God. It will be a misfortune if the pulpit shall continue to compel this faith to descend from these majestic heights, and embrace lovingly miracles which possess no bearing upon the life and hopes of man- kind. Something That Was not a Mistake. When the modern critics in the church and out of it are enlarging upon the "Mistakes of Moses" and upon the historical childishness of the Bible, they should not for- get to tell us that there ran through the whole Bible period a something that was no mistake, a something whose history arises up before us as real as the earth it- self and as beautiful as its four seasons, as magnificent as its June. That something was worship ! Theology came and went; the laws of Moses were passed and obeyed and repealed, fables were told and forgotten, Paul and Apollos differed. James and John were unlike, but in worship all seemed to meet and the Jacob who saw angels on the night-ladder is beautifully akin to Si. John and DAVID SWING. 31 Paul and all are wonderfully akin to our age that sings the one hymn of the whole race, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." The Robe of Thought. Never before was the earth so covered with the rich drapery of learning and wisdom and romance. Even the sleeping literature of the old East has been translated into our language, and thus Asia, and China and Persia speak over again, words that fell like manna many ceutu- ries ago. The month of June cannot weave for the prai- ries a vestment of grass and flowers richer than that robe of high thought which the past has woven for the nine- teenth century. The Scotch Heather. That Greek who said he did not wish to belong to one city, but to all cities was a forerunner' of our age. How dear to each of you is Germany! how dear France! how dear England! The Scotch heather is our flower just as well. We can all sing the praises of that purple cover- ing of the hills. Chicago and Edinburgh alike love it: Flower of the waste! the heath fowl shuns For thee the brake and tangled wood; To thy protecting shade she runs, Thy tender buds supply her food; Her young forsake the mother's plumes To rest upon thy opening blooms. Bloom of the desert though thou art, The deer that range the mountain free, The graceful doe, the stately hart Their food and shelter seek from thee; The bee thy early blossom greets And draws from thee her choicest sweets. 32 ECHOES How to I