tihxary of ti\e Checlo^ical ^emmarjp PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY The Estate of Rev. Robert 0. Kirkwood BX 7233^. B4 P6 Beecher, Henry Ward, 1813- 1887. Plymouth pulpit Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2009 witii funding from Princeton Tiieoiogicai Seminary Library http://www.arcliive.org/details/plymouthpulpitse02beec Plymouth Pul^ SERMONS PREACHED IN Plymouth Churchy Brooklyn^ HENRY WARD BEECHER. FROM ELLINWOOD'S STENOGRAPHIC REPORTS. Volume II. March — September, 1874. BOSTON : CHICAGO. Copyright in 1875, bv J. B. Ford & Company. CONTENTS. I. Charles Sumner (Isaiah i. 26) . . , , 7 Lesson : Psalm zxiii. *Htilns : 866, 962, 1004. II. Saved by Hope (Rom. viii. 24, 25) . . . .26 Lesson : Bom. viil. 15-39. Hymns : 130, 1230. 660. III. The Primacy of Love (1 Cor. i. 18-24) , . . 4?^ Lesson : 1 Cor. sill. Hymns : 247, 1261, 1225. IV. Foretokens of Resurrection (Col. iii. 1-4) . . 71 Lesson : Col. lU. 1-17. Hymns : 40, 364, 55L V. Summer in the Soul (Luke xvii. 21). . , .98 Lesson: Rom. xlll. Hymns: 255,60* 1363. VI. Hindering Christianity (Gal. v. 22-26) , . .117 1 iESSON : Kom. xll. Hymns : 365, 668, 660. VII. Sou' .-Relationship (Gal. iii. 26-29, Eph. ii. 19-23) . 148 LESSON : Eph. 1. Hymns : 1298, 816, 1230. V^III. CH.ilSTIAN JOYFULNESS (Rom. xii. 12) ... 169 Lesson : Eph. 1. U-23 ; 11. 1-7. Hymns : 2)7, 922. IX. Liberty in the Churches (1 Cor. xii. 31) . , ( 188 Lesson : Bom. slv. l-W. Hymns : 119, 970, 949. X. The Temperance Question (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20) . 228 Lesson : Psalm xlx. Hymns : 1008, 1001. 1020. XL God's Grace (Eph. ii. 8) ^ 251 Lesson : Isa. Iv. Hymns : 130, 180, 660. XII. Ideal Christianity (2 Pet. ii. 1^) .... 278 LES80N : 2 Pet. 1. 1-11. Hymns : 898, 865, 126L Kill. The Problem of Life (1 John iii. 2, 8 ; Rom. viil. 18-21) 291 Lesson : Matt. xx. 17-34. Hymns : 255, 1235, 1288. • Plymouth Collection. !▼ CONTENTS. PA01 XI"V. Dnjust Judgments (Matt. viL 1) . . . .815 LSBSON : James 111. *Hyun8 : 101, 1023, 1053. ^ XV. The Immortamty of Good Work (Kom. xiv. 18) 348 Lesson : Matt. v. 1-16. Hymns : 190, 604, 907. X^XVI. The Universal Heart of God (Isa. liv. 5). . 865 Lesson : laa. llv. Hymns : 652. 655, 660. f VII. The Delight of Self-Sacrifice (Matt. xx. 28 ; Phil. ii. 1-11) 891 Lesson : Psalm xcvl. Hymns : 212, 907. XVIII. Truth-Speaking (Epn. iv. 25) 411 Lesson : Prov. il. 1-22. Hymns : i02, 513, 657. *^XIX. The Secret of the Cross (1 Cor. ii. 1-5) . . 429 Lesson : Phil. 11. 1-11. Hymns : 666, 838, 346. XX. Resolving and Doing (Phil. ii. 12, 13) . . . .449 Lesson : P«alm xc. Hymns : 578. 513, 657. XXI. The Triumph of Goodness (Kev. xv. 3, 4) . . 467 Lesson : Rev. v. Hymns : 1251, 1230. XXII. Following Christ (Matt. iv. 17-22) ... 488 ~~- ^ Lesson : Isa. Iv. Hymns : 1321, 847, 651. XXIII Prayer and Providence (Matt. vi. 19-21) . . 601 Lesson : Matt. vi. 19-34. Hymns : 1809, 901, 1294. XXIV. What is Religion ? (2 Tim. ii. 19) . . . . 617 Lesson : Gal. v. 1-13. Hymns : 888, 705, Doxolony. XXV. Christian Sympathy (Rom. xii. 4, 5) . . .641 Lesson ; Rom. xil. Hymns : 102, 632. IXVl LuMiNOFA Hours (Luke ix. 28-42) . . . . itl Ttmr . ' uke Ix. 28-42. Hymns ; 119, 564, Dozology. * Fltmootk coLLX^noa. CHARLES SUMMER. " And I will restore thy judges as at the first, aud thy counsellors as at the beginning : afterward thou shalt be 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 princiiDles, 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 earlies't 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. SmsTDAY Etening, March 15, 1874. liESSON ; Psa. xxill. Hymns : (Plymouth Col- lectiouj : ISfua. 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 estabhsh 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 j^resent 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, coiTupt in political economy, and utterly subversive of all rights and doctrines of human liberty ; and there came to be developed a procedure which, w^Iiile it gave l^artial benefit to a favored class, corrupted the whole system of industry, not alone in the immediate field where this ^1 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 influ- CHARLES SUMNEB. 9 enced national history in sucli 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 keej) 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 exiaression in national life, there was more and more a corrupting of the in orals 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 kading men of the South — her scholars, her poets, her j^ublicists, 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 gi-owth. 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 the South. Nothing can be more melancholy, particularly for the Eastern jjart 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 jjlead in a prayer-meeting for slaves ; when men bated their breath in speaking of human rights j 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 pulj^its 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 compHcity with this great mis- chief, and refused to bear their testimony. I will not go into detail; but you will remember how jDitiful was the position of the great missionary and laublishing 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, rehgion, 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, bo man in the North who hoped for preferment dai'ed 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. It regard to the sacredness of freedom, but they must say some kind and concihatory things for slavery. When they did this, they were sound. 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 J. 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 sj^eaking. 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 ths streets, armed, to defend the houses of the I^oor colored people in that city. I remember when no prayer-meeting or church -gathering allowed men to sjjeak 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 eggs — 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 7^-^^< 13 CHARLES SUMNER. bondage. I speak not of its want of thrift ; I speak not of its slatternly condition ; I speak not of its lack of enterprise ; I speak not of the smothej'ing 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 hrmsifu 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 unpeiTerted 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 entliusiastic 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 SUAIM^H. 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 agaiu. It is often said that the church of the Kortli 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 cuahles svmker. cliiircli stood established iu opposition to it. Tlie 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 Gid dings, wlio 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 cajitivity, 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 reaetionary spirit whicTi 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 1 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:J 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 , - V his education, by his social surroundings, he was fitted to be / y 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 the 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 there in Massachusetts than Adams ? Where have we found a man more nobly allied to liberty in the day of its peiil 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 ! Aristocrats do you call them ? They were the truest democrats. Longfellow, naturally tender and refined, shrinking from A struggle and from the rude rush of unwashed multitudes, did not disdain to set his harp, in the earhest hours, and sing 16 CHABLES SUMXER. 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. Wliittier, 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 Eftobs, 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 worih then to sj^eak 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 straggles 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 CBAELES StMXEIi. i; 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 lettres. 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 he destroyed, and Liberty must be established. Eor 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, '' Eise 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 read 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 tlie Moses that lielped to bring out of bondage myriads of tbe opi^ressed, who to-day feel that a father a^d 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, corruj^t time, he held trust and power unsullied and unsuspected. J^othiug 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 iiaivettf, '* 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 SVMNER. jg defense of ourselves, Jut 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 aL procedure on great principles. He was a republican states- man because he souglit the welfare of all ; and not of a privi- leged class. In his case this is the more noticeable because his personal habits did not lead him to love association with com- mon people. It was principle, and not personal attraction, that moved him. In some sense, it may be said that he denied himself, and loved those who were beneath him. Kay, 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 httle 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 prhiciple of justice to develop itself for the welfare of others. I can- not conceive of a man who by nature befitted the courtly 20 CHABLES 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 j)rovidence 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 Avhich 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- j)assed Charles Sumner in the entire dedication of the gifts which God granted him to the service of the poor and need3^ Thousands and thousands are blessed by him who have only heard his name to rail at it ; for whilo 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, j^articipated 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 reaped under these benignant skies, and in this abundant land, amidst plenty. We rejoice that thy gi-acious 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 grovmded 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 ell the earth shall 22 CHARLES SUMNEB. 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 SERMOK". Cur Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt bless the memory of 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 beei: permitted to stand in these days a light in dark- ness. We thank thee that it has sent out words of truth and tldeUty and courage for the right. We thank thee for tho 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, wheu 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. SAYED BY HOPE. " For we are saved by hope : but hope that is seen is not hope : for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see uot, then do we with patience wait for it.'' — Bouans • viii., 24, 26. We are said, sometimes, to be saved by faith. It is said sometimes, as here, that we are saved by hope. It may at first seem as though there were contrariety because there is variety. There is ia the action of every mind never any one element working alone. There is a combination of elements or of faculties that lead or guide ; and when they are all congenial and co-operative, and stand connected with the certainty of men's right living and right dying, then you may say, indifferently, of them all, that you are guided and saved either by one or by another, since they all are present in this blessed partnership of salvation. One thing is sure, that of all books which ever were written, there is none that tends to project a man's thoughts into the future, and to thrust a man forward, so much as the New Testament. Never was there a book that, directly or indirectly, opened elements which belonged to tlic future as it does. Never was there a book which laid down a schedule for conduct and character which of itself necessitated for- ward action of the mind and feeling so much as the New Testament. Never was there a book whose latent and undis- closed philosophy implied so strongly as does the New Testa- ment the on-going of men, or their opening and development, which is always a work toward the future. Now, hope covers all that ground which the mind occu- SuNi>AY Morning. March 22, 1874. Lesson : Rom. viii., 15-39. Hymns: (Ply- mouth Collection) : Nos. 130, 1,230, 6fiO. 26 SAVED BT HOPE. pies in looking into the future for certain great Talues or results — not merely in forelooking, but in looking forward with special and concurrent joy. Hope is distinctively and universally recognized as a pleas- ure-bearing faculty ; and when men are said to be ' ' saved by hope," it is meant that they are saved by a generic exercise or conduct of the mind by which it works forward fot • itself toward its destiny — toward all the things which it esteems most highly, and which it most desires. And it 'works not bitterly, nor with acerbity, nor with any sense or feeling except that of cheer, and haj)piness ; and peculiar happiness — happiness that, although it stands in a certain relation to our past experience, looks at the future as a sort of escape from the present, as a realization of our ideal, and as something which is higher and better, and W'hich removes us further from trouble and vexation in this world. It is a mood of mind which, while it does not refuse the past as a source of knowledge and guidance, and as a sphere in which lie great duties that are incumbent upon us, yet furnishes men with spirit and aj)titude for present living by opening in them such a sense of their future as shall bring upon them new joys ; joys from fresh sources ; joys not tainted with evil ; joys springing from ideal conceptions ; joys as pure to I ^ the soul as the dews are to the flowers in summer. This saying that we are ''saved by hope" is only, as I have already intimated, a conformity of the spiritual philoso- phy of the New Testament to the actual facts of man's existence, and to the i^roblem of life. For men here are never bom at their full. They never grow up in any assign- able number of years to a perfect condition. There is a side - (and that is the side on which they are almost always looked 3^ at) where men are imperfect and sinful ; and they mourn their imperfection and sinfulness : but there is another side which men ought to bear in mind, which is fully recognized in the New Testament, and which God certainly bears in mind — namely, the side on which, out of limitation and imperfection and even sinfulness, is growing a constitution of things which is developing better and better ends, better and better characters, better and better conditions. SAVED BT HOPE. 27 It pleases me to see my oak-trees growing. I wish they '/a i would grow faster and become larger. I should be very glad if I could make them grow a hundred years in one, so that 1 could sit under them as I sat under the great live-oaks in the South. But they will not grow in any such way as that ; I see that they are little things ; and when I think of big oaks, I say to mine, ** What poor little sniveling things you are ! -^d f,J i ^ How insufficient you are as trees ! " Nevertheless, I do not despise them because they have not yet grown. I say to them, " Grow on. You will come to it by and by. You have it in you." And from year to year they grow more and more ; and in time they shall become large trees, with wide- spreading branches, underneath which men shall sit, in the boughs of which birds shall rest, and which shall be crowned with beauty and majesty ; for the summer shall caress them, md the winter shall make them strong by its storms, and in every way nature is engaged working upon them to develop them. I should be a j^oor dendrologist if I walked every ^ay along the border of my litt]^ jjaradise on the hill, and flouted my trees. *'0h ! this r an onus arboris. What an apology for a tree it is ! This is an Austrian pine ; now I have seen the Austrian pine on Austrian mountains, and this is hardly even an apology for it." If then I said of my ash- tree, "Well, that is a poor ash. Why, I could almost jump over it ; whereas the true ash of the field is so high that the birds can scarcely fly to the tojD of it ;'' if I thus went on calling my trees to nought because they were so thin in stem, so narrow in spread, so low in height, so imperfect and crude, how unfair and unreasonable I should be. I do not do so at all. I ^o around among my trees, and say, '•' Ah ! how'mnch larger you are than you used to be ! How you are growing !" And I imagine how much they will have grown when they are five years old. They almost touch each other now ; and I say to myself, " The time will come when some of these trees will have to come out in order to give the others a chance to spread, and when those that remain will have to be pruned." I take as much pleasure with my quarter-ways as I should if they were half- ways ; and I shall take as much pleasure with my half-ways as I should if they 28 SAVED BT HOPE. were wliole-growths — aud more ; for if they were full-grown, I should enjoy the comfort of them, hut I should not have the pleasure of seeing them grow, or of cultivating them ; for when a tree is finished the satisfaction of tending it and nursing it is gone. Yon can get some other satisfaction from it, hut not that. Now, I look upon men as starting in growth and develop- ing toward, purit}'. That is the divine idea. There is nothing that requires so much to bring it to its own nature as man — for man's nature lies not at the beginning, but at the end. It is not what he is in the seed form that is his true nature, but what he is when he is carried to the utmost extension that belongs to the mind. That which men call nature in a man is not his true nature. Grace is trying to bring men back, or to carry them forward, to their real nature. In such an economy as that which prevails in this world, the philosophical problem of human life is, how to unfold man- kind, and bi-ing them to their true perfected nature ; and in the solution of that problem, as the fundamental and govern- ing element, hope is precisely that wliich men want. Faith is of the same nature. Trvist, also, is of the same nature. All of them are, as it were, golden cords which lead up to the Throne ; and by them men draw themselves into the future. So that if it be faith, faith takes us out of the pres- ent and the visible to the invisible and the future ; or, if it be trust, trust takes us from the region of the past and advances us upward and forward ; and if we are saved by hope, it will be because hope is pleasure-bearing, and has in it encouragement, sweetness, and enjoyment. It is that which carries us away from the past, and lifts us out of the present, and brings us to the glowing and glorious future. The apostle says, ''We are saved by hope ; but hope that is seen is not hope." When you look upon the attainments that you have made, upon that which you have achieved, you cannot properly say, "That is hope." Sometimes, however, the expression is conventionally used in that way. Sometimes persons say, " I have a hope," meaning that they have gone through a certain experience. Men may with propriety say, " I shall be saved by hope," meaning that SAVED BT HOPE. 29 they have a hope that through God they will be saved by 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 no: [that wliich 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 of such a nature that it gives impetus and courage by which we are rendered willing to abide delay until the time for real- ization 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, tliat 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-by. 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 apj^renticed to him in a state of V^>Wr;:^>v 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 tr}ing 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 person who was be- ginning to learn to j)aint, if he became vexed with his hand, and abused it because it committed blunders, and could not do its work perfectly ? And yet, persons think they are doing God's service when they abuse their faculties, and 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 the hand or the foot be- 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 aiDprenticeship, which requires gi'eat patience, and which cannot come to symmet- rical union with the other faculties except by a protracted exi^erience 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 foiesight 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 tilings 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 HOPK 3\ 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- tically defective. All ways of preaching the Gospel of Chrisi 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 ot 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 Avorld 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 imi3el]ed along that line. Just as the shuttle is impelled, by irresistible power, to carry the thread which is put into it, and weave tlie 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 BT HOPE. who Las lost all liis friends, and all his property — a jailor goea to sucli a man, smiling and joyful, and says, '' My dear friend, wake up ! I have something to tell you that you would like to hear." The man, startled, wakes himself, and. says, " What ! ^m I i^ardoned ?" ^'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 di^^ne 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. Beecher with an unmistakable and pronounced manifestation of applause, and then suddenly stopped, as if alarmed or ashamed. Mr. Beecher 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 i/ou ; 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 sufEereth 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 nob 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 of 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 tliat 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 Gosj^el was concurrent with the divinely natural tendencies of men. I hold that these natural tendencies lie in the j)lane 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 gi'ound ; 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 ifc is worth any man's while to SAVED BY HOPE. 35 have a garden. There is no man 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 1 am moved to con- verse on the subject of religion, and ask guidance," they looked solemn, and in a sepulchral tone said, ''0 my friend, if God's spirit is striving with you, you are in a very danger^ ous 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 sjjirit 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 liojie. If the truer spirit cf the Gospel should speak, what would it say? " 0 ye, that know how to love father and mother, there has begun in you that divine quality which can teach you to love God. 0 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 01 God's countenance, be ripened into better forms. 36 SAVED BY HOPE. 0 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. And I say to every person. It is a dismal thing 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, and the best part, of himself unopened and unused. All the forces of your constitution, all the elements of God's law and scheme, 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, VnC^ 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 -jusfce ; but 'i^' no, it is not chief-justice, for a great many reasons. 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 domin- r.'5t|^ SAVED BY HOPE. 37 ion of the will. Conscience is one of the most fiei'y.. sensitiye, 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 otier 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- 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 f,^ r^^ the other way, and then you have him. Men of hard knotty temperaments are not diflficuH to manage if you have the time, and think it worth while to manage tnem. But when you take love (I do not mean the commoner^ quality ; I do not mean shinplasters passing for love : I mean bullion ; I mean specie-basis love, such as springs from the / inspiration of God, and is in sympathy both ways, to ward '\ 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- vice. It leads the various elements of the soul to give them- selves to wholesome uses, as naturally as the sun turns sour to saccharine. Therefore it should be the chief justice in each man's soul. When a Christian is all the time trying himself by the law of rectitude, he is not free. Paul said that when men were under the law they were in bondage. ITo man is happy who is subject to a condemning conscience. You never will have peace until yon 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 ern- 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. L* 38 SAX'-ED 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 o£E 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 exjDecting a discourse — with an aj^plication ! 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 1 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, tliau do it and let me find it out after- wards. " When a boy goes out of the presence of his father under 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. T am going to try to do right ; and I will tell him when I do wrong." Here is the eighth of Eomans 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 hel]? you. Keej) 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 you clear to the end." Would it not be a base 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 by fear, nor by conscience, nor by regrets of the past, nor by a realization of the meagerness and barrenness of the pres(3nt, 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 heavep upon the souls of men. In the love of God in Christ Jesus, which is higher than IQ SAVED BY HOPE. the heights, lower than the depths, wider than horizons, passing understanding — in this great love is hojie for every- body. Poor, trembling, unhappy soul, do not think that your f Jj 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 hojie 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 gi'aces — for love, for purity, for joy, for peace ; you that would bring forth the fruits of the Spirib — 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 tlic threshold of life, and de- velop certain elements, and do a certain work, and arc 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 }ii^ SAVED 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 under the same beneficent guidance. It is the same season of grace, nourishing them, and preparing them, and carrying them up to a better sphere. 0 ye that are wind-driven ; 0 ye that are weather-bound ; 0 ye that are frosted or frozen ; 0 ye that are seeking fairer cHmes ; 0 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. PRAYEE BEFORE THE SERMON. We thank thee, our Fathei-, 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 seudest 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 andsonship, and that we shall be able to breathe a new consciousness of adoption, and feel that thou art our dear Father. Graut 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 pray 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 giant thy blessing, this morning, to all who have come up into thy sanctuaiy 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 tlij^ 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 compassion, 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 bounds and glorifies this lesser horizon of time. May we Ijehold, far beyond our heaven, the heaven of heavens. May we discern more than thought can find, and more than language can express. O 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 know 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 desire 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, but 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 that we are carrying our dear ones, and are being borne by them, into the assemblage of the spirits of just men made ijerfect. We pray that thou wilt enter into every dwelling, and that thou wilt say in each household, Peace be with you. We besetjch 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 into 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 om- souls, our Father's ho.use ; and may we realize that we are strangers and ])ilgrims, 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 of trouble, out of sorrow, out of night, may we spread our wings and fly away to be at rest. Grant thy blessing, dear Father, to rest on all assemblies that are gathered together for worship this day; and may the messages whieli 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 j^resence and spiiit of the Lord and Master, and do those things which shall be for the furtherance of thine honor, and forbear those things \ehich shall make for trouble and for harm. Eveiy where, 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. Araen. 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 l)ope 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 Pilgrimg and the CUnton Avenue Congregational Church. THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. " For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto lis which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will brin^ to nothing the understanding 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. 18-24. 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. " Where are the loiseV^ 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 knowledge among the Jews. " Where is the disputer of this world?" By this, doubtless, is meant the dialecticians, whether among the Jews or among the Greeks — the sophists — the men who 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, 1S74 ; immediately following the adjournment of the Congregational Council, convened at the call of the Church of the Pilffrtnis and the Clinton Avenue Oongregational Church, for discussion of the forms of order and discip- line in the Plymovtb Church. TjESSON : 1 Cor. xiii. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection).' Nos. 247, 1,261, 1.225. 48 TBIj primacy OF LOVE. irregular and peripatetic forms — where are they ? God has made them seem foolish hy the presentation of Jesus Christ, who is the power of God in the wo-rld. 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 sav 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 impiilses 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 fwr the sake of glorifying the intellectj 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. He 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 you 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, then 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 philosoplier in this world think to be so important are things of which, as we stand looking at them in the world to come, wo slmll say, "When I was a child, I did think as a child ; but now that I liaye become a man, I have pnt 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 ai'guments 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 GJiall in the other life be convicted of its fatuous follies, there will rise up the reality of our manhood — its disjDosition — 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 constitutiim which belongs to us here. It will not be shredded away, but will go through the ])rocesses 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 I of the passional man, of 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 sjihere 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, what these relatioDS are ; and no man should be audacious enough THE PBIMACY OF LOVE. 51 to profess to know. There are other relations in the death and suiferings of Christ than those which we can interpret. But we can understand those which are obyious — those which are clear to our powers of comprehension. Christ appeared in 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 Grod. 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 ought to know that. If, on the other hand, men are to steer first for those grand dispositions which arc 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, tlien let us know that. Some men stand say- ing, *Tirst 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. TL.1: 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, and 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 sijiritual 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 tliou art not wortliy 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 eveiy 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 giA'ing continuity to all human experience. Now, to call the world to love is a very different thing from calling the world to orthodoxy. Eepent 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 bom 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 develoiiments 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 learn how to run, and fly, and come into perfect 54 THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. Ciscendency. 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^ "lam sovereign in the human soul." It is that which is of God, and goes again to him, in all its ten- dencies, and hears in itself, more than the conscience does, the right to he a vicegerent of God. No man preaching righteousness alone, no man preaching rectitude alone, no man preacliing virtue alone, no man preaching wisdom alone, no man preaching taste and beauty alone, j)reaches the whole Gosi^el. 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 neiglihor 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 tlien he must rejoice ; that then he must feel right ; that he must have faith ; that he must have activity ; that he must tiy 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 ojie 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 TEE PRIMACY OF LOVE. 55 asurp its place. Pride comes in a tlioiisand 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 tlie 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, 0 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 tlvis 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-j^ower, 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 Hke 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 tlie 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 TBI: 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 henevolence; 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 he the voice of love when they are gathered together in their assemblies, and so that the one crowning experience shall be love, gouls 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- lieves 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 i the summer sun in March and April, which destroys that K \ 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 cliurch 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 wdtliin them! If you have that spirit of seK-sacrifice and love, you are right, and are in aflSliation 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 sj^ring from a loving disposition. And in order to reap the fiill 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 surchai'ged with this divine jirinciple, 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 PBIMACY OF LOVE. be, as a part of tlie co-operative plan of God's providence, larger and larger proj)ortions of children born into life witli this great jn-incii^le more and more clearly recognized than it was even in the 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 be 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, oj)erating 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. Par, therefore, should it be from any wise man to deride the progress of scientific knowledge. What we affirm is, that this knowledge is not that which is to convert the lower man, the ordinary flesh-man, into the rpirit-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 mere 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 itsell 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 — thougn 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 Koman 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 -y / V)roken up into some four sects. If you wave ojnly to cut one ^^ . go THE PRIMACY OF LOVE. or two of its hoops, four clnirclies would spring out of the Church of England to-day. There used to be a time when the Presbyterians and Congregationalists had their little pet quarrels on hand, and when the Episcopal church used to open its great slumberous doors, and say, "■ 0 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 tliey 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 bidiops ; 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 : Mati 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 coines 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. 6 J the fruits of the Spirit — love, peace, joy, humihty, and good- will toward men. If you throw this out, you throve 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 wdiich 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 ? 0 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 PBIMACi OF LOVE. and agitations and persecutions endless. In the name of religion in church o)-ganizatiou, there has been every spirit manifested bat tliat 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 aj)propriate 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 tlie 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 as 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 ind{\'idual 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 youi- 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 tlirougli all darkness and all storms into the haven of peace and rest. Under its guidance the world will go right ; but without it mankind will still have the same wearisome strifes that it has ever had. The church is never much more than a bucket of water y 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 the 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 tho infringement of your rights as anybody. You are not willing to lie down that some other man be the better for it ; 3'ou 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 philosoj)hy, 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 wiU not linger nor delay. Cliristian brethren, I 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. Tlie 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 t>'anscend in importance, to you Q4, 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 Clod, 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, 0 earth, the scowling cloud that has overhung thee shall be struck through with light, bearing the colors of heaven. Then, 0 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- mg 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 lieaven, as the voice of a multitude, or as the sound of mighty waters. THE PRIM ACT OF LOVE. 65 PRAYER 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 inflniteness 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 the 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(j THE PBIMACY OF LOVE. Now, we worship thee, and rejoice in thee. 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 Almight}', 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 Sense 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 i^ain : reach down one leaf from the tree of life that they may find their usual strength. There are many who cannot see thee 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, aud 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 briug 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 tliy work here again. Show forth, we pray thee, lliy power, as in days gone by, and fill this house with rpjoicing, not for ourselves, butforthe«xcellency and the glory of thine own name. Now, we pray thee that thou wilt teach us, more aud more, les- sons of trust, lessons of peace, and li>ssons of contentment, in the way of the Lord God toward us, and load us in thine o\Fn waj', so that we may not stumble nor be beyond the reach o£ thine hand, or the hear- THE PBIMACY OF LOVE. 67 ing of thine ear, or the throbs of thine heart. We pray that thus we may walk, f ulfllling 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, and 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 — Immauuel. 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 ui)on 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. PRAYEE AFTER THE SERMOK Otjb 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, he the Finisher, of the faith of thy peoi)le. And finally, when we have gone through our ov\u 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 li'ather, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. FOEETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. "IE 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. 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 earhest 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, tlie 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 (Easter) Sundat Morning, Apri. 6, 18Y4. Lesson: Col. iii. 1-17. Hyuns (Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 40, 364, 551. ij'2 FORETOKENS OF BESURBECTION. 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 concejition 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 liave been born among the Jews would seem strange to every nation upon tlie eartli 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- FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. -73 fiion. That lie 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- ^ 1 j 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 susi^icion, 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- dest, 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 bom 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. «3«^, 74 FORETOKENS OF RESURBECTION. 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, buf 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 beaut}-. 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 progi-ess 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 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. 75 of clie profoundest 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 may 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 alou'i 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 ou the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things ou the earth. For ye aie 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 narts 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 are 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 apjily 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, ia j^articles, in broken parts, that it is like the separate elements of a beautiful coronet. We arc 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 sijiritualizing 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 it, is going on in all this mortal struggle. In a few days now, when the hyacinth shoots its bold stalk of flowers into tlie air, and when the tulip, hardly waiting for the frost to let go, begins to expand its brilliant bud, do you a . J^ suppose tiiey will have organized all their work smce 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 those months there was being stored in the little invisible cells of the connus, 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 l>egins its wonderful flight from earth to heaven, from light to greater light, that flight will be a 78 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. miraculous, instantaneous creation ? All the yictories of that spirit will run back through its earthly years. All its attain- ments will have been gathering through its w^hole 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 ii seeking to be better, to purify his soul, to exalt and ennoble h.' mself — every such man, in everything that he is gaining of education, and of victory over that which is Ioav, is prej)aring 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 tUe 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 pro^Dortioned, 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. 79 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 immortality, growing in the midst of thorns ; and the thorns have been rent away ; and the hands have been torn in the 'Vk"/^ 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 .-T' 80 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. to it. It is most seemly in its bucl, and most exquisite in its blossom. Now, go and set it down by the side of a staiTeling, 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 coQie to itself in some slight degree. Men wlio, in adverse circumstances,, through moral resist- ance, and through aspiration, attain inferior results in the right direction are worthy of more i^raise than men who, in favoring circumstances, attain superior results in the same direction. How' easy is it for a general vi^ith 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 i>ulling 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 liim 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 yet more sublime emergence. FORETOKENS OF RESVBRECTION. 3^ 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 jjeace and jirosperity. 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, tliey 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, notliing to disturb them ; only ha^dng 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 higher ones. You are all dead to begin with. You are all entombed in the body. You are aJl, 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 FORETOKI]NS OF RESURRECTION: y^-j. are the blows of the Deliverer ou 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 ojjen 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 the birds pick it up ; but let me rij) up the ground, jiloughing -ieep, 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 froni 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 he is thinking unfor- getciugly of emancipating you from lower conditions, and bringing you up stejD 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 for the life to come ; every time a man is conscious that he has been lifted up by an invisible force to a higher level of 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 sliall 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, "1 will do better for you than you think." So the acorn is tlioroughly i^rotected for the W'inter. 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. §3 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 r.nd liigher, 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 jL^/i- 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 there ever 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 I 84 FORETOKENS OF RESURRECTION. Now, if men, instead of having these petty ilkimmations, would estabhsh 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 resiirrection. 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 so much like heaven, as the household, if it be held under the power and dominion of wisdom and love. Mothers oi^ening 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 land, 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 ? 0 thou that from morning to night art full of weariness, full of aching, full of watching, and full of anxiety ; 0 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 wlio took uj^on themselves mighty burdens, that those who were v/caker should have a ciuince 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 sufferinga have given birth to the souls of men. Then shall come many a poor village schoolmistress, pale and tremulous, who labored 86 FORETOKENS OF RESUBRECTIOlSr. hfird and faithfully and long for penurious wages, and at last, with broken health, went home to die. Tlien 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. Tliere 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 — 0 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 tliere life forever and fortver 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 ItEiSVBRECTION. 87 PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. We draw near to thee, our heavenly Father, as they "who watch in the night 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 in 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, and 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 this day of rejoicing all tho 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 side 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 B sense of what is going on in the spir;t-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 iu 88 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 iuflimities, and tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, that thou juight- 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 gi-ace to helj 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 stili 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 blessiugs 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 w^ 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 laults and bj^ 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 thou hast been present to them, and that thou hast given the strength and lii;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, iviay 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 BESURRECTION. §9 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 ou high. And we pray that thou wilt gi-aut 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 fidelit}', 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 ])lessing 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 jioor 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 tiuth and righteousness into fidel- ity, and that they may become a people raised up of God to i-ain the light of liberty and true piety on all the nations of the earth. Make haste to fulfill thy promises, to luiug 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. A.men. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMOK Our 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 rocli 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 FOBETOKENS OF RESlIRRECTtON^. 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 shall be the praise evermore. Amen. SUMMER IN THE SOUL. ** 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 Eomans, 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, aa 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, 1871. Lesson : Rom. xill. Htums (Plymouth Collection) • KuB. 2S5, 604. m» 94 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. pre-eminently lias the spirit of Christ in him into any sect (I do not care which one yon 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 not 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 educa'te, 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 tlie 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 tbcir 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 was thia SUMMER IN THE SOUL. 95 SO in tlic 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 r/iiw 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 liimself 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, this kingdom does not exist in men by nature. It comes 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 carried on step after step, hy 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 : tliat 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 seemg. And a man is born empty of hearing. We are told that men lack original 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 pamting, 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 born 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 jshrases 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, ench 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 the latest, it would be the most difficult. It is in fact, but not in philosophy; for there is in the develoi^ment 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 gesthetic 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 oace jDut 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 j)hysical_ 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, imj^leted and kei)t full, acts as a regulator ; but in the moral and spiutual realm, in the dispositions which are the hardest to attain, which are regarded by men almosi as shadowy, and sought for in a thousand difficult ways, there is this central regnlating 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 he gets twenty geraniums, he has to take twenty roots, and put them in twenty pots, in twenty places, under glass ; and has to keep them w\arm 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 tliem ; and he gets just what he seeks for, and nothing more ; and what he gets, he gets by tlie hardest. But when June and July come you do not get alone just what you plant in your garden. If you jmt in roses, and tulii)s, and hyacinths, and daisies, 3^ou will get these, to be sure ; but vou will not stoi) with these ; because the sun. SUMMER IN THE SOVL. 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 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 mast be this pilule or pill, as the case may be, r^/hich is special to that particular trouble. So men are -rymg 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 di\ine love has that witliin him which ministers to all 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. AVithout 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 conquermg benevolence which is of God, which is like God, which goes back to God, and which has in it something of the iufinite power of God ; if one can establish himself on 100 SUMMEB 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 tliat 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 attemj)ted 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 regulation, 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 bom 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 wliich 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 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. 101 of men in all their subordinate faculties — in their under- standing, in their social I'elations, 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 morahty, 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-\ane 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 tlie 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 ?" " Well, I don't know about blossoms. I have heard a great deal about blossoms ; but I believe in tough, hardy leaves. See my leaves. See hov/ 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 gi-eat 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 fi\x as you go ; but where are your blossoms ? Where is your fruit ? Men were born to be more than animals, more thai* 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 SUMMER 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 things which unite you to God are within you — higher and 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; specializiog of daily duty ; ill short, tlie 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 ui^on them. And it makes not only them, but those that are around about them, unhappy. (^ome 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 jjeace 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 X04 SUMMER IN THU 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 tliey 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. vA 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 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, iu degradation, and at enmity with him — that element of tlie 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 di\dne 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 noc 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 maybe rancorous, he may be cola-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 bim, 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 ordiuance 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 centur}^ There are now four Episcopal Churches in England. The Church of England has four divisions at least, and T 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 eases ; 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 flesh, 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 scon ring, 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, 1 think is fit to lead the church, and is ordained by the Holy Ghost. But if any man comes SUMMEB IN THE SOUL. nght straight down from the apostles, and has not the king- dom of God in him, I do not think he is fit to he a preacher of the Gospel. Therefore, while I believe in apostolicity, while I believe in the line of descent from the apostles, it is mward and spiritual, and not outward and physical. It is a thing 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 are 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, and the moment they are 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 through 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 feo good as usual this morning. Well, you cannot expect a 108 SUMMER IN THE SOtlL. 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 sleej). When they wake up, they wonder whether it would be wicked to read a newspaper. So they get the JVew 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 — ray slave. What are all these tilings 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 tliink I preach too much on this subject ? I believe and feci 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 sliould be borne by Christiaus, 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 tiie 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 life 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 God in peace and joy and lore j 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 intenser 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. m 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 haid, and straight, and narrow, yet at other times they are iiower-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 in their full we must needs come to thee. Their fragrance is of thy love and of thy kiudheartedness 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 can 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 w'lich 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 repiesent 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 aJl 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 Lord, our God, that we may have some conception of the kingdom of God that shall deliver us from the poorness and the bar- 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 ns 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-lilie in the production of all the fruits of righteousness. Grant that we may rise somewhat into that sphere where thou 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 abovt 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. fidflll 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 thai 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 victorj^ Give the victory of sorrow to those who are in aflBiction. 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 jailo« 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 SUMJyrER IN THE SOUL. II3 defy, and put underneath their feet, that conscience which torments them. Let them ever be under the dominion of love in the reahn 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 thee, 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 inteUigence, 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 Zion 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 \hat 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 arc. 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 conceptions, sanctified, 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 reap an hundred- fold. 114 SUMMER IN THE SOUL. Bless thy ministers of every name. Clothe them to-day with the power of God, that they may make known the counsel of God for the welfare of men. We pray that thou wilt take away divisions between churches. Remove all separating wails. 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, srrant Intelligeuce, 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. Our 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 hast 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 blessed 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 stiuggles 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 thou mayest he 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- fcleuess, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there ia QO 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." — GaIu 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 60 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- SUTTUAT HORNINO, April 19, 1871 Lksson : Bom. x^ Hthns (Pljnioutl Collection) : Nus. 365, 66S, 660. 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 hfts 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 hira, 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 tlum the HINDERING 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 Ohrist-like life, and who are living as Christ lived. The fc/Tce 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 he 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 corporations ; 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 +^^endency, springing from the physical inclinations f 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 hoWi /i/jOYl^ many are its members, how advanced its intelligence, howl 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 Icmg ago. It has not been the church that has 120 HINDERING CHRISTIAN ^rT. preserved religion : it has been religion that has preserred the church. It has not been the priesthood that haye 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 waLt 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 with 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 HINDERINO CHRISTIANITY. 12] America ? What is the condition even of Christendom ? Look oyer 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 gi'eat deal done ; but compared with what was to be done, how very little has 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 m 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 aU, in the long run, makes strong citizens and multiplies the resources and increases the strength of the state. 122 HINDEBINQ CHRISTIANITY. ■L Now, liberty is just as necessary in the church as it is m 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 spht 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 ■fLSi up ; for an official cuj'se 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 I search-warrant bring it up. Nobody can make it grow. It (X' 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 wiU 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 I " and be obeyed. It will not blossom because you teU it to. HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 1J)2 And if you cannot exercise autlioritj ovei- these physical qualities, or attributes, or elements, how much less can yon exercise authority over the quality of love ! Can you cause love to spring forth at your will ? Can you go to another, and Bay, ** Love me I" 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 !" will he 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 oi 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 c^'. science authoritatively upon men, either in your individual 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 nonjinal and superficial — not real and vital. We liavo had an immense diffusion of Christianity; and it has been like 124 HINDERINO CHRISTIANITY, gold-leaf, spread thin ; and it has grown thinner and thinner. What we need more than anything else, to-day, is vertiqal 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 fonn, 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 relv, 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 gtep, such monstrous discords, such bitter quarrels,' such HINDERINa CHRISTIANITY, 328 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 A \h' 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 126 HINDERING CBRISTIANTTT gates of hell have often opened into this world out of cc clesiastical judicatories. Under the name of Christianit} 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 to introduce into theology those fiery animal passions which come lurid from the lower realms. And this whole Eoman, 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 devours ? And suppose HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 127 I should make some little temporary structure over them id 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 ? ^ly, the church dom- inant in bhe 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 or 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 **puSeth 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 ona swells him out so that he appears gi'eater than he really is. Tlie other developes him by actual increase. The one bloats, aud 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 of 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 Christian^y. 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 metliods 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 ; oi BINDEBINO CHRISTIANITY. 129 enlightening their judgment ; of removing their doubts ; ol inspiring their hope ; of doing all those things which are in- cluded in theology I 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 e;itirely 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. Why ? 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 Cliris- tian world is up in arms about ? About forms, and cere- monies and usages. It is, thank God, true that in the Roman 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 temporal possessions of the Pope ; it is ior the doctrine of the immacu- late conception of Mary ; it is for its external relations and 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 tent again ; but the strife is not for holiness. The concern \t 130 HINDERTNO CHRISTIANITT. is not that men are carnal, that pride and selfishness arc 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- ing 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 Ifivangelicals, 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 «^i 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 ministiy ; ; in binding them to minute and particular observances ; in f 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 doctrine. 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 Bapl-ist 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 raeekness and gentienecse f No, no 1 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY. 131 People have ideas whicli are peculiar to themselves or to the class to which they helong ; and they organize themselyea about these ideas as forces of Christianity, and convert them into a system, and make them despotic, and attempt to aovern 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 ; nd 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 loill 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- 3iple 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 orgaoize themselves. The sunlight draws up trees into infinite branches, each one seeking the shape in- herent in itself. K 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-hke 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 individuaHsm. Individuals are grander than churches. Churches are only jewel-cases ; men are the jewels. My idea of a trae 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 ghonld be liberty m the cburclies than that men should seeli 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 heayenlike- 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 doctriue. But the true conception of a 1 church organization is one in which men shall be like Christ, v /oi , 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 oi'dained 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 p L,! 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 abont 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 tbe apostle, who says, " The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance : agai7ist 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. f 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 dieciplined. 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 shouldliave 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 l>im the form of a seiTant, 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 gin, and wrong, and hideous cruelties, and detestable iniqui- ties have swarmed, and bring them up from thence, 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 y yCSC on Calvary, and with that I would make the heavens glow ae clouds do when storms are pierced and driven by the con- 136 HINDERING CHRISTIANITY, quering sun ; blood, not as the emblem of cruelty, but afa the emblem of mercy. Do not 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, revehng 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 /\yr 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 1 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 weii 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 PEAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. AwAKKN in us, our Father, some sense of those mercies which, anasked, are descending upon us. It is not because of their supplica- tion that the flowers receive thy dews by night and thy sun liy 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. So 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 thee. But how much greater art thou than our thought of thee! 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 ia 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 ■^e 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 mspiring 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 ex pen 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 I 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 iti our temper; we are strong in our will ; we are strong in our physical reason; we are strong in the ihings which build up the visi- ble and the outward in human life; but in all 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 teraptations 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 hare 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 and^ fishes. We have been unworthy of the name of disciples, of pupils, or of children. Lord, thou hast had a slothful, self-indulgent housahold, hard to bear. We have been fractious, disobedient, unloving and unlovely. How few claspings and how many buffets hast thou had from our hands! How little have we followed thee in the day of desolation and abandonment, and how have we crowded about thee in the day of triumph I We have come in at the eastern gate, shouting Hosannal and we have let tbet ^<» out at the western gate amid cries of, Cruoif y BINDERING CHRISTIANITY, 139 him 1 Elding In our places aud refusing to bear with Chriat, 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 fldblity, by their industry, and by their success. We pray that thou wilt grant, more and more, to aU 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 assemoled. We beseech of thee that the spirit of wisdom may be breathei 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, ol 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 and 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 great Civilizer, may come and reign among 140 BINDERINQ CHRISTIANITY. men. Let thy kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth a« it i« ta heaven. And to thy name shall be the praise. Father, Son, and Spirit Amen. 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 miud ; 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 Qowers 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 iu, 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 neitlier 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 ( in both, of these passages stands out the same general thought — namely, the highest measure of relationships which is employed in tlie 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 STTTmAT Morning, April 2G, 1874. liESSON: Eph. L Hyhns (Flymoatb CoUectionj : Noa. 1298. 816. 123a A promise." — Gal. iii., 26-29. ' / r "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. [44 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 man}' 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 siie 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 so UL-RELA TIONSHIP. 145 is not true"; or you can say, " Yes, it is true." Do you not know that sometimes au untruth is truer than a truth ? — I do not mean in the thing itself, but in the impression which it produces on p)ersons' 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. Wlien 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 5 46 SO UL-BELA TIONSHIP. 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 relationshii^ 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 swejjt 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 sjiirit-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 wliicli 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 relationshij)s 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, aU those enclosures in which men live in this mortal state, all those household divisions which exist here, in the higher SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. 147 Btate 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 coiidition, 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 tliat 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-acd-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, ho2v do you do?" He is glad to see you, too, though he ratlier 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. Tlie 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 Q^y 150 SOUL-BELATIONSHIP. quite so high as yon 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, sir\d. yon are sensuons. You believe as far as your sight can go in the lower animal sphere ; you beheve 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 emmently 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 dow^n the soul goes up ; and these qualities which join men to each other are imperishable. They survive time and the grave, and the .toucli 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 truer 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. We are, in God's universe, not foreigners to any, nor strangers any^diere. 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 whicli 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- plain 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 highei* 153 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 jjaiued at the harshness and hardness of social life ; at its narrow scoj^e 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-though ted 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. 15g 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 liye 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 affinitieg — than hope, and joy, and love, and peace, and generout 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, f 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 i*V 154 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. in summer you watcli ants as they are riinnmg along on the bark of a tree in search of sweet juices, 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 deiug 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, — tliat'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 liow 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 lo 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 "\asible 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-BELATIONSHIP. 155 oomes, and measure him, and sit in judgment on wbat he says and does. The spirit of j)eace 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'Tiigher 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 hfe, every noble man and every noble woman that ever lived on earth were my brother and my sister, or mj ancestors. No 156 SOUL-RELATIONSHIP. man ever thonglit nobly and lived nobly of wliom onr 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 sj^here 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. J[ 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 mouths 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, imd 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 Jjere 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 l^rashed 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. 167 ever in him is good and true and pure and right makes him my brother. ! The Catholic Church — that great extended organization — I c'bnsider, 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 Home 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- "-.- (j^*- mg 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 ? " -^-v*-' "I do." *' Do you hate the Catholics?" "I do." Step in, ] then — you are all right." I beheve 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, or Swedenbor- gian, or TJniversalist, or Unitarian. I do not care what hat ^ X58 SOU L-BELATION SHIP. a man wears. It is the man under the hat that I care for. 1 do not care what name you pnt 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 hy my lower manhood I am incited to contend against them. 3 I do not preach Calvinism ; I ahhor the central idea of it ; hut 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 th.em ? 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 miiltitude 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 sjurit 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 ratlier that they should have it all than that nobody should have it. Thcugli it will be a good thing also to start some other church in their neighborhood ; for I think it better for all the sects that other sects should stand near to them. I think that the action of tlie sects upon each other is wholesome. At any rate, it keeps them in order and stirs them up. AU 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 rivaky 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 churclies, 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 casta 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-BELATIONSHIP. who tliiuks 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 I 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 anclior 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 sj^ent 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 wliat it is to be a son of God. Now, I look forward to the other life, and to dying, not as to the piitting 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-born : it is that I am to come into blessed SOUL-RELATTONSHIP. 161 acquaintanceship and fellowship with the noblest men ■who have lived on the earth since it had au existence ; it is that 1 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 gi-eat 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 clieerfully 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 you 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 fniit unless the burr in some way is made to open ? And so the frost bites the burr, and lets out the nut, that it may come to hfe again. And bow shall we be liberated from the restrictions and hindranoM )ec^ih 162 SOUL-BELATIONSHTP. 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 stejDS 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 bis ear detects the sound of tramping in the court-yard, and hears some gate creak and crash back, and the key tarn 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 comas 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 Clirist, 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, " Wliy did I fear and push from me the beatitude and blessedness of my real life ?" 0 aged matron ! rejoice in your growing infirmities ; the jailor is drawing nearer and nearer to let you out. 0 vener- so VL-RELA TIONSHIP. 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. 0 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-BELATIONSHIP. PRAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON. Thou 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 should st 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 piayer, 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 t^ouls 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 hi 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 hindeiing 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 fchanksjdvinj? and praise. May those who have, through thy good- ness, achieved the ends which they have long sought, rejoice because they cau associate thy foresight and guardianship with ail 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 coming 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 withiu. 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 that knowledge that maketh wise unto salvation, that shall be imparted and received. We thauk 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 unsearc^hable riches of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, in the waste places, in the by-ways, among the i>oor and sick, along our wharves, in jails, and prisons, and poor-honses. May tliose 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 jomed with him in author- ity, and the Congress assembled. Grant that all their counselings may be wise, hispired 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 th3 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 trae 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. PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. Our 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? Hovr long shall we believe in things which belong to the body, and not in things which belong to the soul ? Blessed Spiri r, 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 affecition 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 is impaired. And pain or suffering is either cautionary, indicating that we SUNDAY Morning, May 3, 18T4. tiESSON : Bph. 1. 11-23; il. 1-7. Hymns (Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 217, 922. 170 CHBISTIAN 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 t3 despised. Nor are we to sup2:»ose 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 CHRTSTIAN JOTFULNESS. 171 freedom from bondage. It may be, like a time, 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 173 CHRISTIAN JOTFULNESS. 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. Eeligion 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 resjionsibility. 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 corner, might lead him toward a religious life ; but if a man is in good health, in the full performance of life's real duties, joyous and happy, I can hardly understand how he could have a greater damp thrown uj)on 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 JOVFULNESS. 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, thea rejoice in hope. " But," it is asked, " can you rejoice in the hope of anything which you know nothing about ? " Yes. " But it may not come to pass." Very well, then you will have so 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 jDimples. 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 behiud 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 spirit 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 suflScient. 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 boly, 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 neigliborhood 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 no 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 CHBISTiAN JOYFULNESS. dered by its limitations and misconstructions and narrownese of teaching. There are very few men who have power to make themselves happy by meditation. Men say, '' Chris- tians ought to be jo}^ul 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. NoAV, if a man behoves 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 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. 179 find it in your every-day life at home and in society. Yon are to find it in your intercourse one with another. Tlie great truths of Grod'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 have 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 UoU^ 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-twentieth s 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 Avith 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 he dead, comes home, and brings tidings of ample capital, and greets him over night, and says to him, " Well, it is all right now. Everythingis 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 CHBISTIAN' 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 he 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 wearied 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 JOTFULNESS. 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 reahzation of the life to come, of the grandeur of liberty in God and of sympathy in Christ Jesus, that when troubles come upon them they have no resource — nowhere to fly. There are httle 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 tribula- 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. Eight 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 jesterday does not annoy him to-day. That which yes- 182 CHBISTIAN JOYFVLNESS. 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 wlio 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. Wliat 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 with 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 ev^ery 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 CHBISTIAN JOYFUL^TESS. 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 j^erse- oute 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 ui^on 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 tlie same thougli 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. Aud 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: CHRISTIAir JOTFULNESS. called to undergo are the means by whicli 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 1 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, " Wbere 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 Ch^'istiaL , and go into a shop, and not only avoid evil and folltw good, in a general way, but be cheerful under all circum.itaLoes : 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 JOTFULNESS. 18S 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 1 should ?iave 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 guifle. 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 W'^*^!^'*' which belongs to Christianity, what a proclamation we should f be to everybody ! One true Christian 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 shacje that Christianity has so little power among 186 CHBISTIAN 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, " [ must do such and such things so that I may have ray 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. T 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 jo3"s 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 jjerfect 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 in the Lord alway, and a^ain I say, Rejoice." After the blessing is pronounced we shall sit together and nartake of the emblems of the broken body of Christ, 188 CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS. and of Ills blood shed. To me tliis is a very joyful service ; because, although here is defeat, we also have the rebound of victory. I invite every one in this congregation Avho 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 Avilling 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 PRAYEK BEFORE THE SERMON.* OiTR heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou hast permitted us to live and behold these blessed scenes; that thou hast created such joy within the sauetuary; 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, andtliatall 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 purposes of thy dear children who have this morn- ing been vmited 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 be 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 sufBcient 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 he strength- eued 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 loug dearer to them thau their owu 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 ]ieople— those who have beheld in the consecration of these souls the fruit of their prayers, and watching, and fidelity. And we 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 r.re 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 mtn mad' 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 pov>-er 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 eve»- lasting. Amen, LIBERTY m THE CHURCHES. "But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way." — 1 Cor. 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 methodc — 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, aud 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 Cfliristianity. 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. SUNDAT MoBNiNG, May 10, 1874. Lesson: Rom. xlv. 1-19; Htmns (Plymouth ColleotioQ) : Nos. 119, 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 admiuistration [governments, and so on], but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations [tiie phenomena attending the whole work of God in the human soiil is infinitely various], but it is the same God which worketh all in all [all these things in 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, wisdoin 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 tliat 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 woj'd 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 sjjirit; to another the working of mii^acles; to another prophecy [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 manj , are one body, so also is Christ." The unity of the Church is in Jesu« 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, apjDarently, and tliey scratch. They have different functions. " For [aTid this is a most radical and revolutionary passage, when you considei' that it was spoken in the eyes and face of the Jews — a LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 195 bigoted and angry nation who ■vroulcl not listen — and that it was cou- sidered to be almost as much as a man's life was worth to say to them that a Gentile had any considei-able rights] by oue 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 spiiit." The essential unity of all men who arc endeavorin-^ to de- velop in themselves the life of Christ is here declared. Now, having asserted the reality of all these externalities, these gifts, these instruments, the apostle says, '^Seek the best of them." You may have a preference ; you may take tliC best ; " And yet," he says, "there is something which is better than they are ; which ranks higher than they do ; which has dominion over them." Wliat 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 docti-ine, then, is this : that the mood to which love 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 in our day, when so many events are taking place wiiich cannot be rightly judged of except by tlie free, lofty principles that are laid down by that apostle. First, there is ample recognition in the l^ew Testament of the need and wisdom of church institutions. It is true that our Master did not command his disciples to form a church. It is true that there is not on record one single line or word from him which prescribes a new church as distinct from tlie Jewish church. He lived in the Jfwish church himself. He died a member and communicant of that church. Nor did liis 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 tlie 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 the original Jewish Church. It would seem to be the height of liistorical phantasy, there- fore, to declare that the Christian Church was outlined and prescribed by the Lord Jesus Oln-ist, understood to be so by his apostles, and taught by them to be so. A greater mis- take can scarcely be imagined. 196 LIBEBTY IN THE CHURCHES. Isevertlieless, there was a churcli. Tlieie weie religious institutions. They were accepted. They were implied. And the moment the apostles hegan to preach outside of Judsea where there was no temple, and where there were no synagogues, they were organized, chey were officered, and there came to be laws and mcdiods and usages ; and the 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, tlie laws, the customs, and the instructing methods of the New Testament. You can make your election among them. You can avail yourselyes 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 tlie 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. Tlie personal freedom of man sacrificed to ordinances LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 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 is to be 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 enougb 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 ujjon 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 libei-ty 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 dei^artment 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 wdth 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 Arminianism ; LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 19<^ to Pelagianism, if they believe in Pelagiaiiism ; 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 C-alvinism, 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 precei3ts, which forbids men to separate themselves into bodies, or to make others understand the advantages of particular ordinances. Now, so long 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 a 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. And 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 reason 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 tliem 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. 301 mands this," but, " Your conscience shall demand it, or I will jjunish 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; but 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, wlio shall say to them, " You shall not have it"? Who shall interfere with their liberty? I hold it to be not alone the liberty 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 meana radical ideas of government. The forms of worship are ac- 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 wliich they can administer it most to the edification of their people ; and I defend the right of their peoj)le 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 wliich 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 roason 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 aj)pointed 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 havt 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 CHURCHES. g03 yonr canon-law ; but you shall not turn round and say, " This is Christianity, and unless you take it you shall be damned." 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 tlieir 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 wh}^ 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 tlie 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 sfcraighter 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 tliey 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 tliat 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- terianisn:? i^ T can through your church," that I consider 204 LIBERTY IX THE CHURCHES. to be right. On that ground there is ample Hberty. 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 resj)onsible 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 faitbful 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^Spirit of God in the souli of men. Thirdly, no man has a right to impugn the motives oi 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 Hberty 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." JVeed is a sufficient reason for a man's going into any Christian church. Well, should he go without making known his dissent ? If the ciiurch 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 does not choose to defend itself from persons holding doctrines different from its own, it is not your 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 com^iromising 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 tlie 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 IX THE CHTTBCHES. 207 put out a fire, or do auytliing 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 jDower, 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 sucli 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 clnirchmen at all ; and I perceive that the Low churchman dislikes the High churchman immensely — that he likes the Presb3^terian 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 IX THE CHURCHES. cimrcliism ; and why do tliose who do nofc want ib stay here to rex 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. 1 assert the right of a man to stay there as a teacher, so that lie 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 ai'e 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 Sony 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 tliat 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. Eor 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 engineiy. For instance, in Europe the civil and political institutions for the most part represent the aristocratic and monarchic element; and tlirough them the want of mankind for this element is satisfied. The churches of Europe, for the most LIBERTY IN THE CHUBCHES. 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 oar political institutions, and that the aristocratic element there is supplied by their pohtical 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 peopl6^; and that will be aU 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 nearl}' 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 vrhicli are going on in the Episcopal Church. There are men w'ho 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; 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 Eome ;" and the High churchman says, " You are going off to Independency ;" and each of them is attem])ting to administer the same house- hold in accordance with his own great psychological tendencies. It is said often (I see it in the newsj)apers, 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 seventli-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, " Tliere are dif- ferences in your family ; why don't you clear out and leave the old house altogether?" Wliat ! 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 born in a cliurch, it is not simply like gomg 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 h.undred years old and have it live and thrive. I believe that young peojole 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 Eoman 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 feelmgs. 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, tluit a man cannot transplant himself from one church to another with perfect ease. And it is a burning shame to any church, or bishop, or bishopric, when a truly holy and godly man is willing to seek the welfare of those who are under his charge, if that church or bishop or Disnopric is not tolerant enough to 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 tnie 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 TN THE CHUBCHES. honored names wliicli 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 '' Eegene ration." Stand for your liberties, for your God, and for the sjoirit of Christianity which is at stake in the conduct of the church ! If there 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 cliangcd to David Sling. May he take other smooth stones from the brook Kidron, and Bmite another Goliath — the Goliath of religious despotism — between the eyes, and overthrow him, and leave him lying dead ujion 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 i^roj^ounds 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 tlie doc- trines of the confession of faith of the Presbyterian church m the United States ; and I think that trial exhibited as LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 213 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 interj)retation, 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 D wight, 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 ^ 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 ia 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 slaA'ery these diSer- 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 }wpe 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 Reformed, 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 sliall love brethren as I loved those men in the wilderness with whom I wronglit in desolate places, going from log-cabin to log-cabin, preaching in the forest, and holding camp-meetings, They were mm CloilJg God'g wQJ'k LlBEnTT IN THE CBUnCHES. 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 deai- 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 chui'ch, 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- 21 G 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 filling 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 Lorri. 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 following the baptism"of children. 218 LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. afflictions of vaiious kinds may Hud iu thy presence, iu thy truth, in thy sympathy, and iu the sceues, aud prayeis, aud gladuess of thiiie house, cheer aud cousolatiou; that they may rest from their labor, that they may be healed of their soirow, aud that they may, by faith, by hope, by foieiookiug aud by upward looking, leave behind them the drudgiug burdeus of this lite, aud siaud iu their own appreheusion as sous of Uod aud heirs uf immortality. We pray for thy blessing to rest upou every one in thy presence — upon those who aie burdened with tlie cares of life; upou those who do not know what duty is; upou those who find duty difflcult when it hath beeu interpreted to them ; upou all that are endeavoring, in lOugh, rude places, still to maiutaiu consistently the walk aud con- versation of true disciples of Christ. Give thy Spirit to evejy oue according to his need aud infirmity. Deal with us, we beseech of thee, u(jt accjoidiug to our desert, but according to thy geuei-osity. 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 iu the laljors 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, aud wherever the truth of Christ is made kuown— 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 l)h'ssed termination of it, bright, and growing brighter ; aud that Ave 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 eud shall be saved. Grant that we may have unfaltering patience and fidelity in the lot to which thou hast ap- pointed us. y Bless thy cause everywhere. Give strength to those who seek the purification of morals. Remember those who go forth to make kuown the truths of Christ in destitute or Avaste places. Be with those who sacrifice pleasure and comfort that they may teach the poor aud hum- ble and unfortunate among us. Grant, we pray thee, that our whole land may become Immau- uel's. May it be evangelized. May the public conscience be intoned to a higher uol)ility aud 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 iu them. Grant that they may, in their perilous duties, whether by land or by sea, know thy protectiug 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 iu 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 li))erty, nnd for those things which con- spire to make nations strong, and intelligent, aud free. Overthrow superstition, aud drive away ignorance; and at last advance the LIBERTY IN THE CHURCHES. 219 whole race to the light and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Let thy king- dom come, let thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen. PRAYEK AFTER THE SERMON. OxjR 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 deliver 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. AviC7i. 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."— 1 Cok. vi. 19, 20. The Christian obligations which lie upon ns 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 afiPections and api^etites and jjassions, 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 joower 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 ScTNDAT- Evening, April 12, 1874. 'Lesson : Psalm six., Htmns (Plymouth Col- lection) : Nos. 1008, 1001, 1020, '^24 "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 body. It is a part of our Christian duty to honor 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- stances ; and the other is the i(se 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. Tliis depends, not on anything tliat is inherent in it, but on this: 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 Bociety. 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 foi'bid that men shall carry concealed weapons, to maintain the 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 ujj in itself almost every other evil which is known to humau 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 woik, 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 kmd which you cmmt 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 de^al was not caught nor bridled nor saddled that time. Well, it is thought that local opfio7i 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-houses 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 loill have, you can have ; 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 ; but they are as you are. If you hide yourself, if no moral in-^ fluence goes out from you, you might as well expect that your Jl water-mill would run without any river to turn the wheel, or I y 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. .J 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 traflBc 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 Ave 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 228 TH^E 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 u]yon 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 j)hysiological 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 tliat pepper is extremely bad. I am told in another quarter that 1 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. 229 going to draw men into their school on the general doctrine tliat stimulants are bad. Now, there is nothing that yon 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, Avill 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 Avhole 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, tlie 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 mtelligent 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 . ^ p 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. ' " 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 tX\i' 232 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. must be a part of tlie 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, and 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, b'ut that state of mind and body by which they shall be enabled to work more eflBciently 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 jou 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 ior 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 tliem 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 advise the disuse of intoxicating drinks on the part of men 231: THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. in health and vigor, yet I repeat again, that it is hetter that they should understand the real physiology of tilings, 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 doctrine 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 inrst exhortation would be, " If you are in health and strength and vigor, steer clear of all intox- icating drinks, everywhere, and always ; but 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 ujjon men that must be organized and made into active forces before we shall gain a great deal of head- 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 there are more devils in indigestible food than in all the lux- 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. Tlie great majority of blue-devils with which men have 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. Reform the table, 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, aud 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 i? 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. 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 trjang 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 months 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 338 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. tliem 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 wall 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 be the doctrine of the omnipotence of the divine Will ; I de- fine Christianity to be the doctrine of the omni^^otence of the divine Love ; and from Calvinism, Avhich is the religion of na- ture unenlightened, sjirings 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, to bring a man liomo 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 tlie 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 j^eople 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 not introduced the family element — for I noticed that a man would go with his good f ran, and 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 our people is that our young men do not want to go out with their sisters. There is nothing less reputable, I think, in our social customs, than the habits of a young man Avho is not proud to wait iipon 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 take his sister or his mother with him ; but for him to go alone and seek his pleasure away from the influences of the 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 jieoiDle 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. 240 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 Ksten 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 ! " 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 QUESTIOlSr. 241 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 dei^artment, is jiart and parcel of universal human nature. So, every time you set 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 he receded from that jiosition ; and so, unmannerly in- vectives and ejiithets 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 saj'S, *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 jjersuade 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 judgmient, takes a course different from that which I hold to be 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 onlv to a certain degree are considered as non-temperance men, because they do not go so far as others would have them. But the higotry of one side among those who are laboring for the suppression of intemperance against 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 af 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 you 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 wlien a Avoman 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 laud 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 tiie 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 it is evident to me that it will have a powerful effect on the cause of woman. I hail it ; for now, if a woman may go out, and 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 sbe 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 exhib- 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, tliey 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 thiugs 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 tliat 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 to 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 which are THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 243 leading so many men into ways wliich 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-resiraint, 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 anothei-'s light and strength. May God keep away from you the blight in yourselves j 246 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. and as jou grow up to be parents, may lie, 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. Never give up a man. 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 Grod, at last, bring us all into his kingdom. May he purify our hear-ts, 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. 24? PEAYER BEFOEE THE SERMON. We beseech of thee, om^ Father, to graut us that inspiration by which all that is like thee in us may rise into power, that we may dis- cern thy presence. By our inward sensibility, by all those affections iu 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. May 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, and 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 laud. Help those who are seeking better ways for meu. 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 the greatest unto the least, when thy kingdom shall come, and when tby will shall be done in earth as it is done in heaven. And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit, evermore. Amen, PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON". Ottr Vather, 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 may 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 m^Y use this world as a means of preparing for the world to come. Mav 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 bouse, through riches of grace in Christ Jesus. Amen, GOD'S GRACE. " For by grace are ye saved through faith ; and that not of your- selves : it is the gift of God."— Eph. ii., 8. The solvation 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 efEect 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 Cliristianity 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 SUNDAT Morning, May 24, 1874. TjESSON : Isaiah Iv., Hymns (Plymouth Collec- tion) : Nos. 13U, 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 di^dne law — that on which we are to reason in determining right and wrong respecting life and tlie 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 shij)'s liull 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 Grod 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 bo accomplished in some sense against nature. Consider, in other words, that il GOD'S GRACE. 253 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 har- mony 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 way — if we take that reasoning we despatch the question very 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 unon the creative care of God is absolute and inevitable. 854 OOD'S GRACE. Men are bom into the world empty. There is nothing of fchem 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 ou 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 things 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 born 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 diflBcult 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 unreachable as the GOD'S GRACE. 251 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 jolay 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 ? JS'ot 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. Tn other words, the alphabet w^hich spells out each man is found in father and mother, in grandfather and grandmother ; and the lines which come dowTi to the formation of each individual one, select, from long reaches backward, qualities in different degrees, in differ- ent ]3roportions, and with different susceptibilities. Every man, differently, for himself, inherits, in varying degi'ees, 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 and has excessive practicalness. In tlie 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 Id that direction. In the same brood of children, representing the same father and 856 GOD'S GRACE. aiother, 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. AU 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 tlie 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 ; ov until the minister discovers it ; or until the man, stum- GOD'S GRACE. 257 bling this way or tliat way, driven by forces wliicli 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 exjDerience, 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 is 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 j^lace ! How many there are whose parents are their perverfcers ! 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 an ACE. 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, for 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 treadinff 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 tilings 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 tai