ADDRESSES BY THE RIGHT REVEREND PHILLIPS BROOKS BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS PHILADELPHIA HENRY ALTEMUS 1895 CONTENTS. PAGE I. THE BEAUTY OF A LIFE OF SERVICE 9 II. THOUGHT AND ACTION 34 III. THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN BUSINESS MAN 63 IV. TRUE LIBERTY 88 V. THE CHRIST IN WHOM CHRISTIANS BELIEVE 110 VI. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 140 I. THE BEAUTY OF A LIFE OF SERVICE. I should like to read to you again the words of Jesus from the 8thchapter of the Gospel of St. John:-- "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, if ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest Thou, ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house forever, but the Son abideth ever. If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. " I want to speak to you to-day about the purpose and the result of thefreedom which Christ gives to His disciples and the freedom into whichman enters when he fulfils his life. The purpose and result of freedomis service. It sounds to us at first like a contradiction, like aparadox. Great truths very often present themselves to us in the firstplace as paradoxes, and it is only when we come to combine the twodifferent terms of which they are composed and see how it is only bytheir meeting that the truth does reveal itself to us, that the truthdoes become known. It is by this same truth that God frees our souls, not from service, not from duty, but into service and into duty, and hewho makes mistakes the purpose of his freedom mistakes the character ofhis freedom. He who thinks that he is being released from the work, andnot set free in order that he may accomplish that work, mistakes theChrist from whom the freedom comes, mistakes the condition into whichhis soul is invited to enter. For if I was right in saying what I saidthe other day, that the freedom of a man simply consists in the largeropportunity to be and to do all that God makes him in His creationcapable of being and doing, then certainly if man has been capable ofservice it is only by the entrance into service, by the acceptance ofthat life of service for which God has given man the capacity, that heenters into the fulness of his freedom and becomes the liberated childof God. You remember what I said with regard to the manifestations offreedom and the figures and the illustrations, perhaps some of themwhich we used, of the way in which the bit of iron, taken out of itsuselessness, its helplessness, and set in the midst of the greatmachine, thereby recognizes the purpose of its existence, and does thework for which it was appointed, for it immediately becomes the servantof the machine into which it was placed. Every part of its impulse flowsthrough all of its substance, and it does the thing which it was made todo. When the ice has melted upon the plain it is only when it finds itsway into the river and flows forth freely to do the work which the livewater has to do that it really attains to its freedom. Only then is itreally liberated from the bondage in which it was held while it wasfastened in the chains of winter. The same freed ice waits until it sofinds its freedom, and when man is set free simply into the enjoyment ofhis own life, simply into the realization of his own existence, he hasnot attained the purposes of his freedom, he has not come to thepurposes of his life. It is one of the signs to me of how human words are constantly becomingperverted that it surprises us when we think of freedom as a conditionin which a man is called upon to do, and is enabled to do, the duty thatGod has laid upon him. Duty has become to us such a hard word, servicehas become to us a word so full of the spirit of bondage, that itsurprises us at the first moment when we are called upon to realize thatit is in itself a word of freedom. And yet we constantly are loweringthe whole thought of our being, we are bringing down the greatness andrichness of that with which we have to deal, until we recognize that Goddoes not call us to our fullest life simply for ourselves. The spirit ofselfishness is continually creeping in. I think it may almost be saidthat there has been no selfishness in the history of man like that whichhas exhibited itself in man's religious life, showing itself in the wayin which man has seized upon spiritual privileges and rejoiced in thegood things that are to come to him in the hereafter, because he hadmade himself the servant of God. The whole subject of selfishness, andthe way in which it loses itself and finds itself again, is a veryinteresting one, and I wish that we had time to dwell upon it. It comesinto a sort of general law which we are recognizing everywhere--the wayin which a man very often, in his pursuit of the higher form of acondition in which he has been living, seems to lose that condition fora little while and only to reach it a little farther on. He seems to beabandoned by that power only that he may meet it by and by and entermore deeply into its heart and come more completely into its service. Soit is, I think, with the self-devotion, consecration, andself-forgetfulness in which men realize their life. Very often in thelower stages of man's life he forgets himself, with a slightlyemphasized individual existence, not thinking very much of the purposeof his life, till he easily forgets himself among the things that arearound him and forgets himself simply because there is so little ofhimself for him to forget; but do not you know perfectly well how veryoften when a man's life becomes intensified and earnest, when he becomescompletely possessed with some great passion and desire, it seems forthe time to intensify his selfishness? It does intensify hisselfishness. He is thinking so much in regard to himself that thethought of other persons and their interests is shut out of his life. And so very often when a man has set before him the great passion of thedivine life, when he is called by God to live the life of God, and toenter into the rewards of God, very often there seems to close aroundhis life a certain bondage of selfishness, and he who gave himselffreely to his fellow-men before now seems, by the very intensity, eagerness, and earnestness with which his mind is set upon the prize ofthe new life which is presented to him--it seems as if everything becameconcentrated upon himself, the saving of his soul, the winning of hissalvation. That seat in heaven seems to burn so before his eyes that hecannot be satisfied for a moment with any thought that draws him awayfrom it, and he presses forward that he may be saved. But by and by, ashe enters more deeply into that life, the self-forgetfulness comes tohim again and as a diviner thing. By and by, as the man walks up themountain, he seems to pass out of the cloud which hangs about the lowerslopes of the mountain, until at last he stands upon the pinnacle at thetop, and there is in the perfect light. Is it not exactly like themountain at whose foot there seems to be the open sunshine where men seeeverything, and on whose summit there is the sunshine, but on whosesides, and half way up, there seems to linger a long cloud, in which manhas to struggle until he comes to the full result of his life? So it iswith self-consecration, with service. You easily do it in some smallways in the lower life. Life becomes intensified and earnest with aserious purpose, and it seems as if it gathered itself together intoselfishness. Only then it opens by and by into the largest and noblestworks of men, in which they most manifest the richness of their humannature and appropriate the strength of God. Those are great andunselfish acts. We know it at once if we turn to Him who represents thefulness of the nature of our humanity. When I turn to Jesus and think of Him as the manifestation of His ownChristianity--and if men would only look at the life of Jesus to seewhat Christianity is, and not at the life of the poor representatives ofJesus whom they see around them, there would be so much more clearness, they would be rid of so many difficulties and doubts. When I look at thelife of Jesus I see that the purpose of consecration, of emancipation, is service of His fellow-men. I cannot think for a moment of Jesus asdoing that which so many religious people think they are doing when theyserve Christ, when they give their lives to Him. I cannot think of Himas simply saving His own soul, living His own life, and completing Hisown nature in the sight of God. It is a life of service from beginningto end. He gives himself to man because He is absolutely the Child ofGod, and He sets up service, and nothing but service, to be the ultimatepurpose, the one great desire, on which the souls of His followersshould be set, as His own soul is set, upon it continually. What is it that Christ has left to be His symbol in the world, that weput upon our churches, what we wear upon our hearts, that stands forthso perpetually us the symbol of Christ's life? Is it a throne from whicha ruler utters his decrees? Is it a mountain top upon which some raptseer sits, communing with himself and with the voices around him, andgathering great truth into his soul and delighting in it? No, not thethrone and not the mountain top. It is the cross. Oh, my brethren, thatthe cross should be the great symbol of our highest measure, that thatwhich stands for consecration, that that which stands for the divinestatement that a man does not live for himself and that a man loseshimself when he does live for himself--that that should be the symbol ofour religion and the great sign and token of our faith? What sort ofChristians are we that go about asking for the things of this lifefirst, thinking that it shall make us prosperous to be Christians, andthen a little higher asking for the things that pertain to the eternalprosperity, when the Great Master, who leaves us the great law, in whomour Christian life is spiritually set forth, has as His great symbol thecross, the cross, the sign of consecration and obedience? It is notsimply suffering too. Christ does not stand primarily for suffering. Suffering is an accident. It does not matter whether you and I suffer. "Not enjoyment and not sorrow" is our life, not sorrow any more thanenjoyment, but obedience and duty. If duty brings sorrow, let it bringsorrow. It did bring sorrow to the Christ, because it was impossible fora man to serve the absolute righteousness in this world and not tosorrow. If it had brought joy, and glory, and triumph, if it had beengreeted at its entrance and applauded on the way, He would have been astruly the consecrated soul that He was in the days when, over a roadthat was marked with the blood of His footprints, He found His way up atlast to the torturing cross. It is not suffering; it is obedience. It isnot pain; it is consecration of life. It is the joy of service thatmakes the life of Christ, and for us to serve Him, serving fellow-manand God--as he served fellow-man and God--whether it bring pain or joy, if we can only get out of our souls the thought that it matters not ifwe are happy or sorrowful, if only we are dutiful and faithful, andbrave and strong, then we should be in the atmosphere, we should be inthe great company of the Christ. It surprises me very often when I hear good Christian people talk aboutChrist's entrance into this world, Christ's coming to save this world. They say it was so marvellous that Jesus should be willing to come downfrom His throne in heaven and undertake all the strange sorrow anddistress that belonged to Him when He came to save the world from itssins. Wonderful? There was no wonder in it; no wonder if we enter upinto the region where Jesus lives and think of life as He must havethought of life. It is the same wonder that people feel about themiracles of Jesus. Is it a wonder that when a divine life is among men, nature should have a response to make to Him, and He should do thingsthat you and I, in our little humanity, find it impossible to do? No, indeed, there is no wonder that God loved the world. There is no wonderthat Christ, the Son of God, at any sacrifice undertook to save theworld. The wonder would have been if God, sitting in His heaven, thewonder would have been if Jesus, ready to come here to the earth andseeing how it was possible to save man from sin by suffering, had notsuffered. Do you wonder at the mother, when she gives her life without ahesitation or a cry, when she gives her life with joy, withthankfulness, for her child, counting it her privilege? Do you wonder atthe patriot, the hero, when he rushes into the battle to do the gooddeed which it is possible for him to do? No; read your own nature deeperand you will understand your Christ. It is no wonder that He should havedied upon the cross; the wonder would have been if, with the inestimableprivilege of saving man, He had shrunk from that cross and turned away. It sets before us that it is not the glories of suffering, it is not thenecessity of suffering, it is simply the beauty of obedience and thefulfilment of a man's life in doing his duty and rendering the servicewhich it is possible for him to render to his fellow-man. I said that a man when he did that left behind him all the thought ofthe life which he was willing to live within himself, even all thehighest thought. It is not your business and mine to study whether weshall get to heaven, even to study whether we shall be good men; it isour business to study how we shall come into the midst of the purposesof God and have the unspeakable privilege in these few years of doingsomething of His work. And yet so is our life all one, so is the kingdomof God which surrounds us and infolds us one bright and blessed unity, that when a man has devoted himself to the service of God and hisfellow-man, immediately he is thrown back upon his own nature, and hesees now--it is the right place for him to see--that he must be thebrave, strong, faithful man, because it is impossible for him to do hisduty and to render his service, except it is rendered out of a heartthat is full of faithfulness, that is brave and true. There is one wordof Jesus that always comes back to me as about the noblest thing thathuman lips have ever said upon our earth, and the most comprehensivething, that seems to sweep into itself all the commonplace experience ofmankind. Do you remember when He was sitting with His disciples, at thelast supper, how He lifted up His voice and prayed, and in the midst ofHis prayer there came these wondrous words: "For their sakes I sanctifymyself, that they also might be sanctified"? The whole of human life isthere. Shall a man cultivate himself? No, not primarily. Shall a manserve the world, strive to increase the kingdom of God in the world?Yes, indeed, he shall. How shall he do it? By cultivating himself, andinstantly he is thrown back upon his own life. "For their sakes Isanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified. " I am my best, notsimply for myself, but for the world. My brethren, is there anything inall the teachings that man has had from his fellow-man, all that hascome down to him from the lips of God, that is nobler, that is morefar-reaching than that--to be my best not simply for my own sake, butfor the sake of the world into which, setting my best, I shall make thatworld more complete, I shall do my little part to renew and to recreateit in the image of God? That is the law of my existence. And the manthat makes that the law of his existence neither neglects himself norhis fellow-men, neither becomes the self-absorbed student and cultivatorof his own life upon the one hand, nor does he become, abandoninghimself, simply the wasting benefactor of his brethren upon the other. You can help your fellow-men: you must help your fellow-men; but theonly way you can help them is by being the noblest and the best man thatit is possible for you to be. I watch the workman build upon thebuilding which by and by is to soar into the skies, to toss itspinnacles up to the heaven, and I see him looking up and wondering wherethose pinnacles are to be, thinking how high they are to be, measuringthe feet, wondering how they are to be built, and all the time he iscramming a rotten stone into the building just where he has set to work. Let him forget the pinnacles, if he will, or hold only the floatingimage of them in his imagination for his inspiration; but the thing thathe must do is to put a brave, strong soul, an honest and substantiallife into the building just where he is now at work. It seems to me that that comes home to us all. Men are questioning nowas they never have questioned before whether Christianity is indeed thetrue religion which is to be the salvation of the world. They arefeeling how the world needs salvation, how it needs regeneration, how itis wrong and bad all through and through, mixed with the good that is init everywhere. Everywhere there is the good and the bad, and the greatquestion that is on men's minds to-day, as I believe it has never beenupon men's minds before, is this: Is this Christian religion, with itshigh pretensions, this Christian life that claims so much for itself, isit competent for the task that it has undertaken to do? Can it meet allthese human problems, and relieve all these human miseries, and fulfilall these human hopes? It is the old story over again, when John theBaptist, puzzled in his prison, said to Jesus, "Art thou He that shouldcome? or look we for another?" It seems to me that the Christian Churchis hearing that cry in its ears to-day: "Art thou He that should come?"Can you do this which the world unmistakably needs to be done? Christian men, it is for us to give our bit of answer to that question. It is for us, in whom the Christian Church is at this moment partiallyembodied, to declare that Christianity, that the Christian faith, theChristian manhood, can do that for the world which the world needs. Yousay, "What can I do?" You can furnish one Christian life. You canfurnish a life so faithful to every duty, so ready for every service, sodetermined not to commit every sin, that the great Christian Churchshall be the stronger for your living in it, and the problem of theworld be answered, and a certain great peace come into this poor, perplexed phase of our humanity as it sees that new revelation of whatChristianity is. Yes, Christ can give the world the thing it needs inunknown ways and methods that we have not yet begun to suspect. Christianity has not yet been tried. My friends, no man dares to condemnthe Christian faith to-day, because the Christian faith has not beentried. Not until men get rid of the thought that it is a poor machine, an expedient for saving them from suffering and pain, not until they getthe grand idea of it as the great power of God present in and throughthe lives of men, not until then does Christianity enter upon its truetrial and become ready to show what it can do. Therefore we struggleagainst our sin in order that men may be saved around us, and not simplythat our own souls may be saved. Tell me you have a sin that you mean to commit this evening that isgoing to make this night black. What can keep you from committing thatsin? Suppose you look into its consequences. Suppose the wise man tellsyou what will be the physical consequences of that sin. You shudder andyou shrink, and, perhaps, you are partially deterred. Suppose you seethe; glory that might come to you, physical, temporal, spiritual, if youdo not commit that sin. The opposite of it shows itself to you--theblessing and the richness in your life. Again there comes a great powerthat shall control your lust and wickedness. Suppose there comes to yousomething even deeper than that, no consequence on consequence at all, but simply an abhorrence for the thing, so that your whole natureshrinks from it as the nature of God shrinks from a sin that ispolluting and filthy and corrupt and evil. They are all great powers. Let us thank God for them all. He knows that we are weak enough to needevery power that can possibly be brought to bear upon our feeble lives;but if, along with all of them, there could come this other power, ifalong with them there could come the certainty that if you refrain fromthat sin to-night you make the sum of sin that is in the world, and sothe sum of all temptation that is in the world, and so the sum of futureevil that is to spring out of temptation in the world, less, shall therenot be a nobler impulse rise up in your heart, and shall you not say: "Iwill not do it; I will be honest, I will be sober, I will be pure, atleast, to-night"? I dare to think that there are men here to whom thatappeal can come, men who, perhaps, will be all dull and deaf if onespeaks to them about their personal salvation; who, if one dares topicture to them, appealing to their better nature, trusting to theirnobler soul, that there is in them the power to save other men from sin, and to help the work of God by the control of their own passions andthe fulfilment of their own duty, will be stirred to the higher life. Men--very often we do not trust them enough--will answer to the higherappeal that seems to be beyond them when the poor, lower appeal thatcomes within the region of their selfishness is cast aside, and theywill have nothing to do with it. Oh, this marvellous, this awful power that we have over other people'slives! Oh! the power of the sin that you have done years and years ago!It is awful to think of it. I think there is hardly anything moreterrible to the human thought than this--the picture of a man who, having sinned years and years ago in a way that involved other souls inhis sin, and then, having repented of his sin and undertaken anotherlife, knows certainly that the power, the consequence of that sin isgoing on outside of his reach, beyond even his ken and knowledge. Hecannot touch it. You wronged a soul ten years ago. You taught a boy howto tell his first mercantile lie; you degraded the early standards ofhis youth. What has become of that boy to-day? You may have repented. Hehas passed put of your sight. He has gone years and years ago. Somewherein this great, multitudinous mass of humanity he is sinning and sinningand reduplicating and extending the sin that you did. You touched thefaith of some believing soul years ago with some miserable sneer ofyours, with some cynical and sceptical disparagement of God and of theman who is the utterance of God upon the earth. You taught the soul thatwas enthusiastic to be full of scepticisms and doubts. You wronged awoman years ago, and her life has gone out from your life, you cannotbegin to tell where. You have repented of your sin. You have bowedyourself, it may be, in dust and ashes. You have entered upon a newlife. You are pure to-day. But where is the sceptical soul? Where is theruined woman whom you sent forth into the world out of the shadow ofyour sin years ago? You cannot touch that life. You cannot reach it. Youdo not know where it is. No steps of yours, quickened with all yourearnestness, can pursue it. No contrition of yours can drawback itsconsequences. Remorse cannot force the bullet back again into the gunfrom which it once has gone forth. It makes life awful to the man whohas ever sinned, who has ever wronged and hurt another life because ofthis sin, because no sin ever was done that did not hurt another life. Iknow the mercy of our God, that while He has put us into each other'spower to a fearful extent, He never will let any soul absolutely go toeverlasting ruin for another's sin; and so I dare to see the love of Godpursuing that lost soul where you cannot pursue it. But that does notfor one moment lift the shadow from your heart, or cease to make youtremble when you think of how your sin has outgrown itself and isrunning far, far away where you can never follow it. Thank God the other thing is true as well. Thank God that when a mandoes a bit of service, however little it may be, of that too he cannever trace the consequences. Thank God that that which in some bettermoment, in some nobler inspiration, you did ten years ago to make yourbrother's faith a little more strong, to let your shop boy confirm andnot doubt the confidence in man which he had brought into his business, to establish the purity of a soul instead of staining it and shaking it, thank God, in this quick, electric atmosphere in which we live, that, too, runs forth. Do not say in your terror, "I will do nothing. " Youmust do something. Only let Christ tell you--let Christ tell you thatthere is nothing that a man rests upon in the moment, that he thinks of, as he looks back upon it when it has sunk into the past, with anysatisfaction, except some service to his fellow-man, some strengtheningand helping of a human soul. Two men are walking down the street together and talking away. See whatdifferent conditions those two men are in. One of them has his soulabsolutely full of the desire to help his fellow-man. He peers intothose faces as he goes, and sees the divine possibility that is in them, and he sees the divine nature everywhere. They are talking about theidlest trifles, about the last bit of local Boston politics. But intheir souls one of those men has consecrated himself, with the newmorning, to the glorious service of God, and the other of them is askinghow he may be a little richer in his miserable wealth when the daysinks. Oh, we look into the other world and read the great words andhear it said, Between me and thee, this and that, there is a great gulffixed; and we think of something that is to come in the eternal life. Isthere any gulf in eternity, is there any gulf between heaven and hellthat is wider, and deeper, and blacker, that is more impassable thanthat gulf which lies between these two men going upon their daily way?Oh, friends, it is not that God is going to judge us some day. That isnot the awful thing. It is that God knows us now. If I stop an instantand know that God knows me through all these misconceptions and blundersof my brethren, that God knows me--that is the awful thing. The futurejudgment shall but tell it. It is here, here upon my conscience, now. Itis awful to think how the commonplace things that men can do, thecommonplace thoughts that men can think, the commonplace lives that mencan live, are but in the bosom of the future. The thing that impressesme more and more is this--that we only need to have extended to themultitude that which is at this moment present in the few, and the worldreally would be saved. There is but the need of the extension into amultitude of souls of that which a few souls have already attained intheir consecration of themselves to human good, and to the service ofGod, and I will not say the millennium would have come, I don't knowmuch about the millennium, but heaven would have come, the new Jerusalemwould be here. There are men enough in this church this morning, thereare men enough sitting here within the sound of my voice to-day, if theywere inspired by the spirit of God and counted it the great privilege oftheir life, to do the work of God--there are men enough here to savethis city, and to make this a glowing city of our Lord, to relieve itspoverty, to lighten its darkness, to lift up the cloud that is uponhearts, to turn it into a great, I will not say psalm-singing city, butGod-serving, God-abiding city, to touch all the difficult problems ofhow society and government ought to be organized then with a power withwhich they should yield their difficulty and open gradually. The lightto measure would be clear enough, if only the spirit is there. Give mefive hundred men, nay, give me one hundred men of the spirit that I knowto-day in three men that I well understand, and I will answer for itthat the city shall be saved. And you, my friend, are one of the fivehundred--you are one of the one hundred. "Oh, but, " you say, "is not this slavery over again? You have talkedabout freedom, and here I am once more a slave. I had about got freefrom the bondage of my fellow-men, and here I am right in the midst ofit again. What has become of my personality, of my independence, if I amto live thus?" Ay, you have got to learn what every noblest man hasalways learned, that no man becomes independent of his fellow-menexcepting in serving his fellow-men. You have got to learn thatChristianity comes to us not simply as a luxury but as a force, and noman who values Christianity simply as a luxury which he possesses reallygets the Christianity which he tries to value. Only when Christianity isa force, only when I seek independence of men in serving men, do I ceaseto be a slave to their whims. I must dress as they think I ought todress; I must walk in the streets as they think I ought to walk; I mustdo business just after their fashion; I must accept their standards; butwhen Christ has taken possession of me and I am a total man, I am moreor less independent of these men. Shall I care about their little whimsand oddities? Shall I care about how they criticise the outside of mylife? Shall I peer into their faces as I meet them in the street, to seewhether they approve of me or not? And yet am I not their servant? Thereis nothing now I will not do to serve them, there is nothing now I willnot do to save them. If the cross comes, I welcome the cross, and lookupon it with joy, if, by my death upon the cross in any way, I may echothe salvation of my Lord and save them. Independent of them? Surely. Andyet their servant? Perfectly. Was ever man so independent in Jerusalemas Jesus was? What cared He for the sneer of the Pharisee, for thelearned scorn of the Sadducee, for the taunt of the people and thelittle boys that had been taught to jeer at Him as He went down thestreet, and yet the very servant of all their life? He says there aretwo kinds of men--they who sit upon a throne and eat, and they whoserve. "I am among you as he that serveth. " Oh, seek independence. Insist upon independence. Insist that you will not be the slave of thepoor, petty standards of your fellow-men. But insist upon it only in theway in which it can be insisted upon, by becoming absolutely the servantof their needs. So only shall you be independent of their whims. Thereis one great figure, and it has taken in all Christian consciousness, that again and again this work with Christ has been asserted to be thetrue service in the army of a great master, of a great captain, who goesbefore us to his victory, that it is asserted that in that captain, inthe entrance into his army, every power is set free. Do you remember thewords that a good many of us read or heard yesterday in our churches, where Jesus was doing one of His miracles, and it is said that a devilwas cast out, the dumb spake? Every power becomes the man's possession, and he uses it in his freedom, and he fights with it with all his force, just as soon as the devil is cast out of him. I have tried to tell you the noblest motive in which you should be apure, an upright, a faithful, and a strong man. It is not for thesalvation of your life, it is not for the salvation of yourself. It isnot for the satisfaction of your tastes. It is that you may take yourplace in the great army of God and go forward having something to dowith the work that He is doing in the world. You remember the days ofthe war, and how ashamed of himself a man felt who never touched withhis finger the great struggle in which the nation was engaged. Oh, to gothrough this life and never touch with my finger the vast work thatChrist is doing, and when the cry of triumph arises at the end to standthere, not having done one little, unknown, unnoticed thing to bringabout that which is the true life of the man and of the world, that isawful. And I dare to believe that there are young men in this churchthis morning who, failing to be touched by every promise of their ownsalvation and every threatening of their own damnation, will still liftthemselves up and take upon them the duty of men, and be soldiers ofJesus Christ, and have a part in the battle, and have a part somewherein the victory that is sure to come. Don't be selfish anywhere. Don't beselfish, most of all, in your religion. Let yourselves free into yourreligion, and be utterly unselfish. Claim your freedom in service. II. THOUGHT AND ACTION. I want once more to read to you these words from the eighth chapter ofthe Gospel of St. John: "As He spake these words, many believed on Him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered Him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. " There are two great regions in which the life of every true man resides. They are the region of action and the region of thought. It isimpossible to separate these two regions from one another and to bidone man live in one of them alone and the other man live only in theother of them. It is impossible to say to the business man that he shalllive only in the region of action, it is impossible to say to thescholar that he shall live only in the region of thought, for thoughtand action make one complete and single life. Thought is not simply thesea upon which the world of action rests, but, like the air whichpervades the whole solid substance of our globe, it permeates and fillsit in every part. It is thought which gives to it its life. It isthought which makes the manifestation of itself in every differentaction of man. I hope we are not so deluded as men have been sometimes, as some men are to-day, that we shall try to separate these two livesfrom one another, and one man say, "Everything depends upon my action, and I care not what I think, " or, as men have said, at least, in othertimes, "If I think right, it matters not how I act. " But the rightthought and the right action make one complete and single man. Now we have been speaking, upon these Monday noons, with regard to thefreedom of that highest life which is lived under the inspiration ofJesus Christ and which we call the Christian life. We have claimed thatit is the highest of all lives because it is the freest of all lives, that it is the freest of all lives because it is the highest, and itmay be that we have thought that it was true with regard to the activelife in which men live, it may be that we have somehow persuadedourselves, that it has seemed to us as if there were evidence that a manwho lived his life in the following of Jesus Christ was a free man inregard to his activity. But now there comes to us the other thought, andit is impossible for us to meet together as we have met together againand again here without asking with regard to the other region of man'slife and how it is with man there, for there are a great many people, Ibelieve, who think that while the Christian faith offers to man a noblesphere of action and sets free powers that would otherwise remainunchanged, yet when we come to the region of thought or belief, there itis inevitable that man should know himself, when he accepts the faith ofJesus Christ, it is inevitable that there the man should become lessfree than it has been thought that he was before the blessed Saviourwas accepted as the Master and the ruler of his life. Men say tothemselves and to one another, "Yes, I shall be freer to act, I shall benobler in my action, but I shall certainly enchain mind and spirit, Ishall certainty bind myself to think, away from the rich freedom ofthought in which I have been inclined to live. " We make very much offree thought in these days. Let us always remember that free thoughtmeans the opportunity to think, and not the opportunity not to think. Werejoice in the way in which our fathers came to this country and intheir children perpetuated the purpose of their coming, in order thatthey might have freedom to worship God. Do we worship God? Simply tohave attained freedom and not to use freedom for its true purpose, notto live within the world of freedom according to the life which is givento us there--that is to do dishonor to the freedom, to disown thepurpose for which the freedom has been given to us. I want to speak toyou then, while I may speak to-day, with regard to the freedom of theChristian thought. I want to claim, that which I believe with all my soul, that he wholives in the faith of Jesus Christ lives in the freest action of hismental powers, and there sees before him and makes himself a part of thelarge world into which man shall enter, in which he has perfect libertyand can exercise his powers as he could never have exercised themwithout. It is not very strange to think that men should have sometimescome to think that the religion of Jesus Christ was a slavery that waslaid upon the mind of man, because very often those who have been thedisciples of that religion, those who have been the preachers andexponents of that religion, have claimed just exactly that thing. Theyhave seemed to say to themselves and to one another, to the world towhich they speak, that man does give up the powers of his reason when heenters into the powers of his faith, when he enters into the great realmof faith. Led by some sort of influence, led by some heresy with regardto the capacity of man, or with regard to the dealing of God with man, or with regard to the purposes of man's life upon the earth, they havebeen content to say that man must give up the power of thought in orderthat he might enter into the Christian life and attain to all thepurposes of the Christian discipline, they have been content to say thatman must give up the noblest power of his nature in order to enter uponthe highest life. Well might a man hesitate, hesitate whatever theblessings that were offered to him in the fulness of the Christianexperience, if he were called upon to give up that which made the verycentre and glory of his life, that which linked him most immediately tothe God from whom he sprang. It would be as if in the storm the shipshould cast over its engine in order to save its own life. The shipmight be saved a little while from going down in the depths of despair, but it never would reach the port to which it had been bound; it neverwould accomplish the purpose of the voyage upon which it had set forth. Let us put absolutely away from, us all such thoughts. Let us come underthe inspiration of Jesus Christ Himself, who says to us, in these wordswhich we have repeatedly read to one another, that it is the truth thatis to make us free, and that the entrance of the man therefore into thatfreedom is the largest freedom, of every region of man's life. I want to speak to you of the way in which my Master, Jesus Christ, appeals to the intelligence of man, of the way in which He comes to usin the noblest part of our nature, and claims us there for our true lifewithin Himself. I would feel altogether wrong if I let you depart, if Iallowed you to meet here with me week after week and say these wordswhich I am privileged to speak to you unless I did thus claim that theChristian life is the largest life of the human intellect, that in itthe noblest and central powers of man shall attain to their trueliberty. It is given for us perhaps to ask ourselves for one moment whyit is that man thinks, is ready to think, that he must give up the verynoblest part of his life, his powers of thinking, in order that he mayenter into Christianity. It seems to me that there are certain reasonsfor it which we can see; but how fallacious those reasons are! Is it notpartly because man, when he is called upon to live Jesus' life, when heis called upon to be a spiritual creature, immediately sees that he isentering into a new and different region from that in which his reasonhas always been exercised. He has been dealing with those things thatbelong to this earth, with the different duties and opportunities andpleasures that present themselves to him every day, and that higher andloftier region into which he has entered seems to have no capacity tocall forth those powers which he has been using in this lower region. And then I think again there is upon the souls of men who deal withChristianity one great conviction which is very deep and strong. It isthat the Christian religion cannot be absolutely that which it presentsitself to human mankind as being, because it is so rich in the blessingsthat it offers, because it comes with such a large enjoyment to ourhuman life, and opens such great opportunities for human living. Is itnot because it seems to us too good to be true that we sometimes turnaway from Christianity, and think that if we enter it at all we mustenter it in the dark, that it cannot possibly appeal to these humannatures and make them understand its truth, and let them take it intotheir intelligence that thence it may issue into the soul and become theguiding power of the life? Sometimes it seems as if Christianity wereso high that it was impossible that man should attain to it, as if itwere something altogether beyond our human powers. Do you want me, acreature with this human body and this human relationship, with thisbody and with these perpetual bindings and connections with myfellow-men, do you want me to mount up and live among the stars and holdcommunion with the God of all? And if you want me to, is there anypossibility of my doing it? Such a life is glorious, but not for me. Itgoes beyond any capacity that I possess. Ask yourselves, my friends, ifsomething like this which I have tried to describe is not very often inyour minds as you hear the magnificent invitations which Christ gives tothe human soul to live its fullest life, to man to be his fullest being. There are, no doubt, other reasons which present themselves to men, andof those I do not speak. I will not think that the men who are listeninghere to me now, in a base and low way shrink from the evidence ofChristianity and from the life of Christ because they do not want toenter into that religion because it would make too great demands uponthem in the sacrifices that they would be called upon to make. It issaid sometimes, and I doubt not that it is sometimes true, that men willnot see the power and truth of Christianity because they do not want tosee it. It seems to me that the other is also often true, and it isthat upon which we would much rather dwell. Men sometimes hesitate atChristianity and tremble, and will not enter into the great region thatis open to them, because they do not want it so intimately. Thecritical, the sceptical disposition is very often born just of man'sperception of the glory of the life that is offered to him, and of theintense desire that is at the bottom of his soul to enter into thatlife. Who is the man that criticises the ship most carefully as she liesat the wharf, that will see what capacity she has for the great voyagethat she has set before her? Is he the man who means to lingercarelessly upon the bank and never sail away, or the man who is obliged, if she can sail across the ocean, to go with her? Just in proportion tothe depth of interest with which we look upon all Christian truth wemust be deep questioners with regard to the truth of that truth. We mustsearch into all its evidence. We must try to understand how it commendsitself to all our minds. But first of all we want to know certainly whatChristianity is, if it is able to deal with the thing with which we arepuzzling or never to give an intelligent definition of it. How is it now? I go to a certain man and ask him, "Why do you notbelieve in Christianity?" and he says, "It is incredible. I cannotbelieve in it. " "What is it that you cannot believe in?" and then hetakes forsooth some little point of Christian doctrine, some speculationof some Christian teacher, some dogma of some Christian church, andsays, "That is incredible, " as if that were Christianity. Over and overagain men are telling that they do not believe in Christianity, when thereal thing that they do not believe in is something that is no essentialpart of Christian faith whatsoever. They never have given to themselvesa real definition of what the Christ and the Christianity in which theyare called upon to believe, into which they are invited to enter, reallyis. The lecturer goes up and down the land and in the face of mightyaudiences he denounces Christianity. He declares it to be unintelligibleand absurd, to be monstrous and brutal. And when you ask what it is thathe is thus denouncing, what it is that he is thus convicting over andover again, you find that it is something not simply which makes no partof Christianity, but which is absolutely hostile to the spirit ofChristianity itself. Many and many a sceptical lecturer is denouncingthat which Christian men would, with all their hearts, denounce; isdeclaring that to be untrue which no true Christian thinker reallybelieves, that which is no real part of the great Christian faith, whichis our glory. Do not think when I speak thus, when I say that there arethings attached to Christianity which men do not believe, that they donot believe in the great truth of Jesus, without them, which mendenouncing think that they are denouncing the religion which is savingthe world. Do not think that I am simply paring away our great Christianfaith, and making it mean just as little as possible in order that menmay accept it into their lives. I am coming to the heart and soul of it. I want to know, if my life is all bound up with this religion of JesusChrist, I want to know intrinsically what that religion is. I willscatter a thousand things which in the devout thought of men havefastened themselves to it. It is but clearing the ship for action, themaking it ready that it may do its work, the binding everything tightjust before the storm comes on, for that is just the moment when nothingessential to the ship itself must be cast away, when I make sure, if Ican, that every plank and timber, that every iron and brass is in itstrue place and ready for the strain that may be put upon it. But what, then, is the Christian religion? It is the simple following ofthe divine person, Jesus Christ, who, entering into our humanity, hasmade evident two things--the love of God for that humanity, and thepower of that humanity to answer to the love of God. The one thing thatthe eye of the Christian sees and never can lose is that majestic, simple figure, great in its simplicity, in its innocence, in its purityand in its unworldliness, that walked once on this earth and that walksforever through the lives of men, showing Himself to human kind, manifest in human kind. The power to receive it, the divine life wakenedin every child of man by the divine life manifested in Jesus Christ. That is the great Christian faith, and the man becomes a Christian inhis belief when he assures himself that that manifestation of the divinelife has been made and is perpetually being made, and he answers to thatappeal of the Christ. He manifests his belief in action when he giveshimself to the education and the guiding of that Christ, that in himthere may be awakened the life of divinity, which is his true humanlife. Is it not glorious, this absolute simplicity of the Christianfaith? It is not primarily a truth; it is a person, it is He who walkedin Galilee and Judea, who sat in the houses of mankind, who hung uponthe cross, in order that He might perfectly manifest how God could liveand how man could suffer in the obedience to the life of God, and thensent forth out of that inspiration and said, "Lo, I am with you always, doing this very thing, being this very Saviour, even to the end of theworld. " That which the Christian man believes to-day as a Christian, whatever else he may believe in his private speculation, in his personalopinion, is this: The life of God manifest in Jesus of Nazareth andthenceforth going out into the world wakening the divine capacity inevery man. You say, "How can a man believe that? What evidence is there of it?" Thepersonal evidence of Jesus Christ himself. It is the self testimony ofChrist that makes the assurance of the Christian faith. Does that soundto you all unreasonable? Do you turn here in your pew or in your aisleand say, "After all, it is the old story which I have tested and know tobe untrue. " Suppose yourself back there in Jerusalem. Suppose the self testimonycame to you from the very person of Jesus Christ. Suppose the words thatHe absolutely said and the deeds that He absolutely did bore to you atestimony that some greater than a human life was there, and that then, as you pressed close to Him and became a part of His life, you foundyour own life awakened and became a nobler man, ashamed to sin, aspiringafter holiness, thinking noble thoughts, lifting yourself not above theearth, but lifting yourself with the whole great earth, which then istaken up into the presence of God and made sacred through and through. Iknow no man in whom I trust except by the personal evidence that hebears to me of himself. I know no man's nature finally but by thattestimony which the nature gives me of him. Bring me all evidence thatthe man is trustworthy, and then when I am convinced I will go and standin the presence of that man himself, and he shall tell me. So the worldstood, so the world stands to-day in the presence of Jesus Christ. Hispresence on earth is an historic fact. The words that He spoke arewritten down in a true record. The deeds that He did are the history ofthe manifestations of His character, and the story of His christendom isthe continued manifestation of His life, the divine life in the life ofman, made divine through Him. Now, a question that comes in theChristian's mind is "Why don't people believe this?" Why should theynot? Is it not written in the historical record? Has it not manifesteditself in the experience of mankind? If it has, surely then it appealsto man's reason, and is not merely the act of the blind, stupid thingwhich we call faith, but it is the noblest action of that hour in whichI believe, in the heavens above me and in the earth under my feet, inthe brother with whom I have to do in the long course of history, in thetotal humanity which has grandly lived. The reason that men do notbelieve it is that of course there seems to be to them some strange andprevious presumption with regard to it, something which makes the storyincredible. They say it is the supernatural in it, that it goes beyondthe ordinary experience of man. Ah! it seems also strange to me, theordinary experience of man. Who dares to dream that human life has livedits completest and shown the noblest power of receiving God into itself?Who dares to think that these few thousand years have exhausted thismajestic and mysterious being that we call man? Who dares to think ofhis own life that, in these few thirty, forty, fifty years that he haslived, he has known and shown all that God can do in and for him? Whodares to say that it is impossible, that it is improbable, that he whois the child of God shall receive some newer and closer access to hisfather, that there shall come some new revelation which shall be writtennot in a book, not upon the skies, not in the history of human kind, noton the rocks under our feet, but here in our human flesh, that thereshall be an incarnation, that the God who is perpetually trying tomanifest Himself to human kind should find at last, should take at lastthe most exquisite, the most sensitive, the most perfect, the mostdivine of all material on which to write His message, and in that humannature show at once what God was and what man is? Until there be someexhaustive sight of human nature as that, it is in no wise improbablethat there would be that which outgoes our observation, that once in thelong music of our human life the great key-note of humanity shall bestruck, that once in our great groping after the God who made us Heshall seem to draw the veil aside, nay, more than that, shall come andlike the sunlight crowd Himself through every cloud until He takespossession of our humanity. "Ay, " but you say, "those miracles in the life of Jesus Christ, howstrange those are; how strange that He should have touched the water andthe water become wine; how strange that He should have called to thedead man and he should have come forth from the tomb; how strange thatHe should have spoken to the waters and the storm grow still!" Ah, myfriends, it seems to me that there again we are dishonoring nature asjust before we did dishonor man. There again we are thinking that wehave exhausted the capacity of this wondrous world in which we live. What is the glory of that world? That it answers to human kind. In themystic tradition of the Book of Genesis it is told how, when God firstmade man, He set him master of this world and all its powers; and, eversince, the world has been answering to man, who is its master, and everymessage that comes back to him, every response that the field makes tothe farmer, or that the rock makes to the scientist, is but an assertionand the culmination and the fulfilment of that which God did back there. As man has been, so has the world responded to his touch and call. Suppose that to-morrow morning the perfect man should come, not the mansimply of the twentieth century or of the twenty-first, who shall begreater in his humanity than we, but suppose the perfect man, theperfect man because the divine man, comes. I cannot dream that natureshall not have words to say and a response to make to him that it willnot make to these poor hands of mine. I can do something with the rockand field, I can do something with the sea and sky. What shall he do whois to my humanity what the perfect is to the absolutely and dreadfullyimperfect? What shall the divine man do? When Paul speaks in that greatverse of his and tells us how the whole creation groaneth and travailethwaiting for the manifestation of the Son of God, the whole futurehistory of human science, of man's knowledge and use of the world, is inhis words. The world shall know man as fast as man shows himself, andwhen the Son of God shall be manifested, then the groaning andtravailing creation shall set all its powers free, and with theknowledge with which it floods him and with the usages and service withwhich it supplies him, it shall claim at last its glory as the servant, the obedient servant of man. The Son of man has come. You may at leastsuppose it if you do not believe it. And if He came to-morrow morning, would not this whole world lift itself up and answer Him? Who can saywhat the hills and valleys and trees and oceans and seas would have tosay to Him who at last manifested that which the world had been waitingand groaning for, the manifestation, the complete manifestation, of theSon of God? That is the reason why I claim that miracles--I do not knowthat there have not been fastened upon the miraculous power of Jesusstories of things, thinking that they were done miraculously, which Hedid by what we choose in our ignorance to call the ordinary powers ofnature--but I do know that the coming into the world must have been moreto this world, that it would have been the most unnatural and incrediblething if the divine man coming here had been to the world and the worldhad been to him only what it is to us. And now the question comes to each one of us--for I must hasten on--howshall a man get within the region of that which perhaps you recognize, which I do not see how you can help believing, how shall a man getwithin the region of that higher power and let it be the rule of hislife, let it manifest itself through him? How do you get within thepower of any force, my friends? Here is Christ, a force if He isanything, not a spectacle, not a miracle, not a marvel, not wonderful tolook at, but a force to feel. How do you get within the power of anyforce? You look out of your window, and men say the frost is freezing, and you see your neighbors wrapping their cloaks about them and goingdown the street as if they were cold. Men say that a storm is blowing, and you see them shelter themselves against the storm that blows. Howwill you make that storm a true thing for yourself? Go out into it. Letthe frost smite your cheek, let the rain beat into your face, let thewind blow upon your back, and then you know by personal experience whatyou had known by your observation before. And so I say that only when aman puts himself where he can feel the power of the Christ, where it ispossible for him, if there be a Christ, if Christ be all that theChristian religion claims that He is, only when a man puts himself wherehe needs and must have and must certainly feel that Christ, if there bea Christ, only then has he a right to disbelieve if the Christ be notthere, only then has he a right to believe if the Christ find him there. And where is that? When a man takes up the highest duties, when heaccepts the noblest life, when he lays open his soul to the greatexactions and obligations which belong to him in his spiritual nature, when he tries to be a pure man, a devoted man, a noble man, only thenhas he a chance to know that force which only then comes into itsactivity. Only when a man tries to live the divine life can the divineChrist manifest Himself to him. Therefore the true way for you to findChrist is not to go groping in a thousand books. It is not for you totry evidences about a thousand things that people have believed of Him, but it is for you to undertake so great a life, so devoted a life, sopure a life, so serviceable a life, that you cannot do it except byChrist, and then see whether Christ helps you. See whether there comesto you the certainty that you are a child of God, and the manifestationof the child of God becomes the most credible, the most certain thing toyou in all of history. It may have been that such moments have been in some of your lives. Think of the noblest moment that you ever passed, of the time when, lifted up to the heights of glory, or bowed down into the very depths ofsorrow, every power that was in you was called forth to meet theexigency or to do the work. Think of the time when you stood upon themountain top or plunged into the gulf. Remember that time--it may havebeen the death of your little child, it may have been your ownsickness, it may have been your failure in business, it may have beenthe moment of your complete success in business, when you weresolemnized as the great shower of wealth poured down upon you, and youfelt that now you really had some work for God to do in the world. Ah, look back to that moment and see if then it seemed so strange to youthat God should come into the presence and person of His universe, ofHis children, and take possession of their life. We grow so easily toforget our noblest and most splendid times. It seems to me there is nomaxim for a noble life like this: Count always your highest moments yourtruest moments. Believe that in the time when you were the greatest andmost spiritual man, then you were your truest self. Men do just theother thing. They say it was "an exception, a derangement of my nature, an exultation, a frenzy, it was something that I must not expect again. "How about the time when they plunged into baseness and made their soullike a dog's soul? They shudder at the thought of that because theythink it would come again. Nay, nay, shudder if you will at the thoughtof that, but believe that the highest you ever have been you may be allthe time, and vastly higher still if only the power of the Christ canoccupy you and fill your life all the time. I said that there were many things that people attached to Christianitythat did not belong to Christianity. I know there are. It is impossiblethat a great system like the system of Christ, a great person like thegreat person of Christ, should be in the world, and men not havespeculated and thought in regard to Him. Those are not Christianity. Iwant to-day, if I may do nothing else, to tell you absolutely how simpleand single the Christian faith, the Christ, really is. It is not theinspiration of this book or any theory in regard to its inspiration. Itis not the election of certain souls and the perdition of other souls. It is not the length of man's punishment, whether it is going to beforever and ever, or whether man is to go to his restoration. It is noteven the constitution of the divine life, the great truth of the way inwhich God lives within His own nature. None of these are the essence ofthe Christian faith, but simply this: The testimony of the divine in manto the divine in man that lifts the man up and says: "For me to bebrutal is unmanly; to be divine is to be my only true self. " Why do Ibelieve in God? If some man asked me, when on the street, I think Ishould have an answer to give him. I could give one great reason--twogreat reasons which are really but one great reason--why I believe inGod. I believe in God, my friends, I believe in God with all my soul, because this world is inexplicable without Him and explicable with Him, and because Jesus Christ believed in Him; and it was Jesus Christ thatshowed me that this world demanded God and was inexplicable without Him;that made certain every suspicion and dream that I had had before, andJesus Christ believed in Him. Shall I go to the expert about chemistryor geology and ask him the truth with regard to the structure of theworld and the meeting of its atoms and forces? And shall not I go to thespiritual expert, to him in whom the spiritual life of man has beenclearest, and say, "O Christ, tell me what is the centre and source andend of all?" When he says, "God, " shall I not believe Him? It is impossible, as I have suggested to you again and again in what Ihave been saying, that a man can have his mind open to the receipt ofthe truth of a person unless he be a certain kind of man himself. I donot know but the basest and the wickedest man who lives may believe inthe Copernican theory, or that two and two make four, yet I cannot helpbelieving that if he were a better and truer man he would believe eventhose truths, outside of himself, of science and arithmetic, more fullyand deeply. Men were not all astray in the first thing that they wereseeking after, though they were wofully astray in many things that theysaid about it, when they talked about faith and works. Faith enters inthrough the soul that does a noble deed, and in the coming in of thatfaith the higher deed becomes possible to him. Hear the words that Jesussaid, words that our age must take to itself until it shall be wiserthan it is to-day: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall seeGod. " "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God. " Ponder those words, my friends. See howreasonable they are. See how important they are. See how they have thesecret of your own life, of what it is to do, of what it is to be, forever and ever sealed up in them. These two things, I am sure, aretrue with regard to the method of belief--that no man can ever goforward to a higher belief until he is true to the faith which healready holds. Be the noblest man that your present faith, poor and weakand imperfect as it is, can make you to be. Live up to your presentgrowth, your present faith. So, and so only, as you take the nextstraight step forward, as you stand strong where you are now, so onlycan you think the curtain will draw back and there will be revealed toyou what lies beyond. And then live in your positives and not in yournegatives. I am tired of asking man what his religious faith is andhaving him tell me what he don't believe. He tells me that he don'tbelieve in baptism or inspiration or in the trinity. If I asked a manwhere he was going and he told me he was not going to Washington, whatcould I know about where he was going? He would not go anywhere so longas he simply rested in that mere negative. Be done with saying what youdon't believe, and find somewhere or other the truest, divinest thing toyour soul that you do believe to-day, and work that out: work it out inall the action and consecration of the soul in the doing of your work. This I take to be the real freedom of Christian thought--when the mangoes forward always into a fuller and fuller belief as he becomesobedient to that which he already holds. But yet I know I have not touched the opinion, the feeling, nay, I willsay the black prejudice that is upon many, many minds. "Ah, but you havebound yourself, " you say. "You have given your assent to a certaincreed, you believe certain dogmas. To put it as simply as you have putit to us this morning, you believe a certain person. I, I am free, Ibelieve nothing, I can go wandering here and everywhere and disbelieveto my heart's content. " Yes, I do believe something, and I thank God forit. But I deny with all my intelligence and soul the very idea that inbelieving that something I have shut my soul to evidence. I am ready tohear any man living, any man living to-day who will prove to me that theChrist has never lived and that he is not the Lord of men. I will listento any man who is in earnest and who is sincere. I will not listen toany trifler, caviller, who is merely trying to make a point and to getahead of the poor arguments that I can use; but let any fellow-man cometo me with an earnest face, either of puzzled doubt, or of earnest andconvinced unbelief, and say to me, "Are you not wrong?" or "I believethat you are wrong, " and I, of course, will talk to him. Do I want tobelieve anything that cannot be proved to be true, anything that myintelligence shall not receive? Why should I believe it? Shall I trustmyself to the ship merely because I have refused to examine its timbers, when men tell me that it is unsound? Shall I throw away my truthfulnesssimply for the sake of holding what I want, what I choose to call thetruth? It is not because it is safe, it is not because it is pleasant, it is because it seems to the Christian man to be true, that theChristian man believes in the presence, the life, the power of JesusChrist. Therefore come, let me hear every one of you what you have tosay. Let me see where that upon which my soul rests for its very lifebreaks down; but, until I hear, I will go forward, strong in theassurance of that which takes hold of all my life, convinces my reason, lays hold of my affections, enlarges my actions, and opens my wholebeing to the freedom of the child of God. And why should not you, my friends, why should not you? I honor thesceptic, the faithful and devout sceptic, with all my soul. I am noscorner of the man who, without scorn, finds it impossible to acceptthat which to my soul seems to be the absolute truth. I will scorn onlythat which God scorns. He scorns the scorner, and only the scorning manis worthy of the scorn of human kind. But while I honor the sceptic, while I invite him to make manifest his scepticism, not merely for hissake but for my own, I will not hold, I cannot hold that he is living alarger life than the man whom the Christ invites to every noble duty, toevery faithful fulfilment of himself. I will feel that he, perhaps bythe necessity of his nature, perhaps by his circumstances, perhaps bysomething which came down to him from his ancestors, is shut in, is acontained and hampered and hindered man, and I will long for the daywhen he, lifting up his eyes, sees that Christ walking in the midst ofhumanity, and yet at the head of humanity, manifesting our human nature, but outgoing our human nature, glorifying our streets while Heinterprets our streets for the first time into their full meaning, giving to our shops and houses a radiancy which they have expected anddreamed of, but never felt, and tempting us always into a deeper beliefin Him, which, embodying itself in a completer consecration to the rightand true, shall lead us on into the fulness which he fills. Can I, canyou, have Christ in human history, Christ in the world, and live as ifHe were not here? Will you not give yourself to that of Him which youknow to-day? Will you not at least lay hold of the very skirts of Hisgarment and say, "I see that Thou art good, I see that Thou art true. Lead me into the goodness and truth which by communion and sympathyshall know Thee more. Lord, I believe. I believe just a little. Lord, Iknow that that must come which Thou hast said has come in Thee. I wouldenter into Thee, to see whether it has indeed come in Thee, and Thoushalt lead me, Thou shalt teach me. Lord, I believe. I have not graspedThee. No man has grasped Thee. The man who says that he has grasped Theeproves thereby that he does not know Thee. I know that I have notgrasped Thee, but I will follow Thee by doing righteousness, by servingtruth, by knowing and acknowledging Thee until all of that shall becomeclear to me. I will follow Thee, and Thou shalt lead me into the glorywhich Thou Thyself abidest in. Lord, I believe, Lord, I believe, helpThou mine unbelief. " The story of the present, the hope, the pure, certain hope of the future is in those great words: "Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief. " III. THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN BUSINESS MAN. I will read to you once again the words which I have read before, thewords of Jesus in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of St. John: "As He spake these words, many believed on Him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, if ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered Him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house forever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. " I do not know how any man can stand and plead with his brethren for thehigher life, that they will enter into and make their own the life ofChrist and God, unless he is perpetually conscious that around them withwhom he pleads there is the perpetual pleading and the voice of GodHimself. Unless a man believes that, everything that he has to say mustseem, in the first place, impertinent, and, in the second place, almostabsolutely hopeless. Who is man that he shall plead with his fellow-manfor the change of a life, for the entrance into a whole new career, forthe alteration of a spirit, for the surrounding of himself with a newregion in which he has not lived before? But if it be so, that God ispleading with every one of His children to enter into the highest life;if it be so, that God is making His application and His appeal to everysoul to know Him, and in Him to know himself, then one may plead withearnestness and plead with great hopefulness before his brethren. And soit is. The great truth of Jesus Christ is that, that God is pleadingwith every soul, not merely in the words which we hear from one another, not merely in the words which we read from His book, but in everyinfluence of life; and, in those unknown influences which are too subtlefor us to understand or perceive, God is forever seeking after the soulsof His children. I cannot stand before you for the last time that I shall stand In thesemeetings, my friends, without reminding myself and without reminding youof that; without reminding myself also and without trying to remind youof how absolutely conformable it is to everything that man does in thisworld. The great richness of nature, the great richness of life, comeswhen we understand that behind every specific action of man there issome one of the more elemental and primary forces of the universe thatare always trying to express themselves. There is nothing that man doesthat finds its beginning within itself, but everything, every work ofevery trade, of every occupation, is simply the utterance of some one ofthose great forces which lie behind all life, and in the various ways ofthe different generations and of the different men are always trying tomake their mark upon the world. Behind the power that the man exercisesthere always lies the great power of life, the continual struggle ofnature to write herself in the life and work of man, the power of beautystruggling to manifest itself, the harmony that is always desiring tomake itself known. To the merchant there are the great laws of trade, ofwhich his works are but the immediate expression. To the mechanic thereare the continual forces of nature, gravitation uttering itself in allits majesty, made no less majestic because it simply takes itsexpression for the moment in some particular exercise of his art. To theship that sails upon the sea there are the everlasting winds that comeout of the treasuries of God and fulfil His purpose in carrying Hischildren to their destination. There is no perfection of the universeand of the special life of man in the universe until it comes to this. The greatest of all forces are ready without condescension, are ready asthe true expression of their life, to manifest themselves in theparticular activities which we find everywhere, and which are going oneverywhere. The little child digs his well in the sea-shore sand, andthe great Atlantic, miles deep, miles wide, is stirred all through andthrough to fill it for him. Shall it not be so then here to-day, andshall it not be the truth, upon which we let our minds especially dwell, and which we keep in our souls all the time that I am speaking and youare listening, that however He may be hidden from our sight God is theultimate fact and the final purpose and power of the universe, and thateverything that man tries to do for his fellow-man is but the expressionof that love of God which is everywhere struggling to utter itself inblessing, to give itself away to the soul of every one for whom Hecares? It is in this truth that I find the real secret, the deepest meaning, of the everlasting dissatisfaction of man that is always ready to bestirred. We moralize, we philosophize about the discontent of man. Wegive little reasons for it; but the real reason of it all is this, thatwhich everything lying behind it really signifies: that man is greaterthan his circumstances, and that God is always calling to him to come upto the fulness of his life. Dreadful will be the day when the worldbecomes contented, when one great universal satisfaction spreads itselfover the world. Sad will be the day for every man when he becomesabsolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughtsthat he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is notforever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to dosomething larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to dobecause he is the child of God. And there is the real secret of theman's struggle with his sins. It is not simply the hatefulness of thesin, as we have said again and again, but it is the dim perception, thedeep suspicion, the real knowledge at the heart of the man, that thereis a richer and a sinless region in which it is really meant for him todwell. Man stands separated from that life of God, as it were, by agreat, thick wall, and every effort to put away his sin, to make himselfa nobler and a purer man, is simply his beating at the inside of thatdoor which stands between him and the life of God, which he knows thathe ought to be living. It is like the prisoner hidden in his cave, whofeels through all the thick wall that shuts him out from it the sunlightand the joyous life that is outside, who knows that his imprisonment isnot his true condition, and so with every tool that his hands can graspand with his bleeding hands themselves beats on the stone, that he mayfind his way out. And the glory and the beauty of it is that while he isbeating upon the inside of the wall there is also a noble power prayingupon the outside of that wall, The life to which he ought to come isstriving in its turn, upon its side, to break away the hindrance that iskeeping him from the thing he ought to be, that is keeping him from thelife he ought to live. God, with His sunshine and lightning, with thegreat majestic manifestations of Himself, and with all the peacefulexhibitions of His life, is forever trying, upon His side of the wall, to break away the great barrier that separates the sinner's life fromHim. Great is the power, great is the courage of the sinner, whenthrough the thickness of the walls he feels that beating life of God, when he knows that he is not working alone, when he is sure that God iswanting him just as truly, far more truly, than he wants God. He bearshimself to a nobler struggle with his enemy and a more determined effortto break down the resistance that stands between him and the higherlife. Our figure is all imperfect, as all our figures are so imperfect, because it seems to be the man all by himself, working by himself, untilhe shall come forth into the life of God, as if God waited there toreceive him when he came forth the freed man, and as if the working ofthe freedom upon the sinner's side had not something also of the purposeof God within him. God is not merely in the sunshine; God is in thecavern of the man's sin. God is with the sinner wherever he can be. There is no soul so black in its sinfulness, so determined in itsdefiant obstinacy, that God has abandoned his throne room at the centreof the sinner's life, and every movement is the God movement and everyeffort is the God force, with which man tries to break forth from hissin and come forth into the full sunlight of a life with God. Do you notthink how full of hope it is? Do you not see that when this greatconception of the universe, which is Christ's conception, which beamedin every look that He shed upon the world, which was told in every wordthat He spoke and which was in every movement of His hand--do you notsee how, when this great conception of the universe takes possession ofa man, then all his struggle with his sin is changed, it becomes astrong struggle, a glorious struggle. He hears perpetually the voice ofChrist, "Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. You shall overcomeit by the same strength which overcame with Me. " And then another thing. When a man comes forth into the fulness of thatlife with God, when at last he has entered God's service and theobedience to God's will, and the communion with God's life, then therecomes this wonderful thing, there comes the revelation of the man'spast. We dare to tell the man that if he enters into the divine life, ifhe makes himself a servant of God and does God's will out of obedientlove, he shall then be strong and wise. One great element of hisstrength is going to be this: A marvellous revelation that is to come tohim of how all his past has been filled with the power of that spiritwith which he has at last entered into communion, to which he has atlast submitted himself. Man becomes the child of God, becomes theservant of Jesus Christ, and this marvellous revelation amazes him. Hesees that back through all the years of his most obstinate and carelesslife, through all his wilfulness and resistance, through all hisprofligacy and black sin, God has been with him all the time, beatinghimself upon his life, showing him how He desired to call him toHimself, and that the final submission does not win God. It simplysubmits to the God who has been with the soul all the time. Can there beanything more winning to the soul than that, anything that brings adeeper shame to you, than to have it revealed to you, suddenly orslowly, that from the first day that you came into this world, nay, before your life was an uttered fact in this world, God has been lovingyou, and seeking you, and planning for you, and making every effort thatHe could make in consistency with the free will with which He endowedyou from the centre of His own life, that you might become His andtherefore might become truly yourself? Through all the years in whichyou were obstinate and rebellious, through all the years in which youdefied Him, nay, through the years in which you denied Him and said thatHe did not exist, He was with you all the time. What shall I say to myfriend who is an atheist? Shall I believe that until he comes to achange of his opinions and recognizes that there is indeed a rulinglove, a great and fatherly God for all the world, that he has nothing todo with that God? Shall I believe that God has nothing to do with himuntil he acknowledges God? God would be no God to me if He were that, ifHe left the man absolutely unhelped until the man beat at the doors ofHis divine helpfulness and said, "I believe in Thee at last. Now helpme. " And to the atheist there appears the light of the God whom hedenies. Into every soul, just so far and just so fast as it is possiblefor that soul to receive it, God beats His life and gives His help. Thatis what makes a man hopeful of all his fellow-men as he looks aroundupon them and sees them in all the conditions of their life. And this could only be if that were true, if that is true, which we aredwelling upon constantly, the absolute naturalness of the Christianlife, that it is man's true life, that it is no foreign region intowhich some man may be transported and where he lives an alien to all hisown essential nature and to all the natural habitudes in which he isintending to exist. There are two ideas of religion which always haveabounded, and our great hope is, our great assurance for the future ofthe world is, that the true and pure idea of religion some day shallgrow and take possession of the life of man. One idea, held by veryearnest people, embodied in very faithful and devoted lives, is thestrangeness of religion to the life of man, as if some morning somethingdropped out of the sky that had had no place upon our earth before, asif there came the summons to man to be something entirely different fromwhat the conditions of his nature prophesied and intended that heshould be. The other idea is that religion comet by the utterance of Godfrom the heavens, but comes up out of the human life of man; that man isessentially and intrinsically religious; that he does not becomesomething else than man when he becomes the servant of Jesus Christ, butthen for the first time he becomes man; that religion is not somethingthat is fastened upon the outside of his life, but is the awakening ofthe truth inside of his life; the Church is but the true fulfilment ofhuman life and society; heaven is but the New Jerusalem that completesall the old Jerusalem and Londons and Bostons that have been here uponour earth. Man, in the fulfilment of his nature by Jesus Christ, isman--not to be something else, our whole humanity is too dear to us. Iwill cling to this humanity of man, for I do love it, and I will knownothing else. But when man is bidden to look back into his humanity andsee what it means to be a man, that humanity means purity, truthfulness, earnestness, and faithfulness to that God of which humanity is a part, that God which manifested that humanity was a part of it, when theincarnation showed how close the divine and human belongedtogether--when man hears that voice, I do not know how he can resist, why he shall not lift himself up and say, "Now I can be a man, and I canbe man only as I share in and give my obedience to and enter intocommunion with the life of God, " and say to Christ, to Christ therevealer of all this, "Here I am, fulfil my manhood. " And do not you see how immediately this sweeps aside, as one gush of thesunlight sweeps aside the darkness, do not you see how it sweeps asideall the foolish and little things that people are saying? I say to myfriend, "Be a Christian. " That means to be a full man. And he says tome, "I have not time to be a Christian. I have not room. If my life wasnot so full. You don't know how hard I work from morning to night. Whattime is there for me to be a Christian? What time is there, what room isthere for Christianity in such a life as mine?" But does not it come toseem to us so strange, so absurd, if it was not so melancholy, that manshould say such a thing as that? It is as if the engine had said it hadno room for the steam. It is as if the tree had said it had no room forthe sap. It is as if the ocean had said it had no room for the tide. Itis as if the man said that he had no room for his soul. It is as if lifesaid that it had no time to live, when it is life. It is not somethingthat is added to life. It is life. A man is not living without it. Andfor a man to say that "I am so full in life that I have no room forlife, " you see immediately to what absurdity it reduces itself. And howa man knows what he is called upon by God's voice, speaking to him everyhour, speaking to him every moment, speaking to him out of everything, that which the man is called upon to do because it is the man's onlylife! Therefore time, room, that is what time, that is what room isfor--life. Life is the thing we seek, and man finds it in the fulfilmentof his life by Jesus Christ. Now, until we understand this and take it in its richness, all religionseems, becomes to us such a little thing that it is not religion at all. You have got to know that religion, the service of Christ, is notsomething to be taken in in addition to your life; it is your life. Itis not a ribbon that you shall tie in your hat, and go down the streetdeclaring yourself that you have accepted something in addition to thelife which your fellow-men are living. It is something which, taken intoyour heart, shall glow in every action so that your fellow-men shallsay, "Lo, how he lives! What new life has come into him?" It is thatinsistence upon the great essentialness of the religious life, it is theinsistence that religion is not a lot of things that a man does, but isa new life that a man lives, uttering itself in new actions because itis the new life. "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdomof God. " So Jesus said to Nicodemus the ruler, Nicodemus the amateur inreligions, who came and said, "Perhaps this teacher has something elsethat I can bind into my catalogue of truths and hold it. " Jesus lookedhim in the face and said: "It is not that, my friend, it is not that; itis to be a new man, it is to be born again. It is to have the new life, which is the old life, which is the eternal life. So alone does manenter into the kingdom of God. " I cannot help believing all the timethat if our young men knew this, religion would lift itself up and havea dignity and greatness--not a thing for weak souls, but a thing for themanliest soul. Just because of its manliness it is easy. "Is it easy oris it hard, this religion of yours?" people say to us. I am sure I donot know the easy and the hard things. I cannot tell the difference. What is easier than for a man to breathe? And yet, have you never seen abreathless man, a man in whom the breathing was almost stopped, adrowning man, an exhausted man? have you never seen, when the breath wasput once more to his nostrils and brought down once more into his emptylungs, the struggle with which he came back to it? It was the hardestthing for him to do, so much harder for him to live than it was for himto die. But by and by see him on his feet, going about his work, helpinghis fellow-men, living his life, rejoicing in his days, guardingagainst his dangers, full of life. Is life a hard thing for him? Youdon't talk about its being hard or easy any more than you talk aboutlife itself. The man who lives in God knows no life except the life ofGod. Let men know that it is not mere trifling, it is not a thing to bedallied with for an instant, it is not a thing for a man to convincehimself by an argument, and then keep as it were locked in a shelf: itis something that is so deep and serious, so deep and serious that whena man has once tested it there is no more chance of his going out of itthan there is of his going out of the friendship and the love whichholds him with its perpetual expression, with the continued deeper anddeeper manifestation of the way in which the living being belongs to himwho has a right to his life. Now in the few moments that remain I want to take it for granted mostseriously, most earnestly, that the men who are listening to me are inearnest, and I want to try to tell them as a brother might tell abrother, as I might tell to you or try to tell to you if sitting beforemy fireside, I want to try to answer the question which I know is uponyour hearts. "What shall I do about this?" I know you say; "Is this allin the clouds? Is there anything I can do in the right way?" If you arein earnest, I shall try to tell you what I should do, if I were in yourplace, that I might enter into that life and be the free man that wehave tried to describe, of whom we believe certain special and definitethings. What are they? In the first place I would put away my sin. Thereis not a man listening to me now who has not some trick of life, somehabit that has possession of him, which he knows is a wrong thing. Thevery first thing for a man to do is absolutely to set himself againstthem. If you are foul, stop being licentious, at least stop doinglicentious things. If you, in any part of your business, are tricky, andunsound, and unjust, cut that off, no matter what it costs you. There issomething clear and definite enough for every man. It is as clear forevery man as the sunlight that smites him in his eyes. Stop doing thebad thing which you are doing. It is drawing the bolt away to letwhatever mercy may come in come in. Stop doing your sin. You can do thatif you will. Stop doing your sin, no matter how mechanical it seems, andthen take up your duty, whatever you can do to make the world morebright and good. Do whatever you can to help every struggling soul, toadd new strength to any staggering cause, the poor sick man that is byyou, the poor wronged man whom you with your influence might vindicate, the poor boy in your shop that you may set with new hope upon the roadof life that is beginning already to look dark to him. I cannot tell youwhat it is. But you know your duty. No man ever looked for it and didnot find it. And then the third thing--pray. Yes, go to the God whom you but dimlysee and pray to Him in the darkness, where He seems to sit. Ask Him, asif He were, that He will give you that which, if He is, must come fromHim, can come from Him alone. Pray anxiously. Pray passionately, in thesimplest of all words, with the simplest of all thoughts. Pray, themanliest thing that a man can do, the fastening of his life to theeternal, the drinking of his thirsty soul out of the great fountain oflife. And pray distinctly. Pray upon your knees. One grows tiredsometimes of the free thought, which is yet perfectly true, that a mancan pray anywhere and anyhow. But men have found it good to make thewhole system pray. Kneel down, and the very bending of these obstinateand unused knees of yours will make the soul kneel down in the humilityin which it can be exalted in the sight of God. And then read your Bible. How cold that sounds! What, read a book tosave my soul? Read an old story that my life in these new days shall beregenerated and saved? Yes, do just that, for out of that book, if youread it truly, shall come the divine and human person. If you can readit with your soul as well as with your eyes, there shall come the Christthere walking in Palestine. You shall see Him so much greater than thePalestine in which he walks, that at one word of prayer, as you bendover the illuminated page, there shall lift up that body-being of theChrist, and come down through the centuries and be your helper at yourside. So read your Bible. And then seek the Church--oh, yes, the Church. Do you think, my friends, you who stand outside the Church, and blame her for her inconsistencies, and tell of her shortcomings, and point out the corruptions that are inher history, all that are in her present life to-day--do you reallybelieve that there is an earnest man in the Church that does not knowthe Church's weaknesses and faults just as well as you do? Do youbelieve that there is one of us living in the life and heart of theChurch who don't think with all his conscience, who don't in every dayin deep distress and sorrow know how the Church fails of the great lifeof the Master, how far she is from being what God meant she should be, what she shall be some day? But all the more I will put my life intothat Church, all the more I will drink the strength that she can give tome and make what humble contribution to her I can bring of theearnestness and faithfulness of my life. Come into the Church of JesusChrist. There is no other body on the face of the earth that representswhat she represents--the noble destiny of the human soul, the greatcapacity of human faith, the inexhaustible and unutterable love of God, the Christ, who stands to manifest them all. Now those are the things for a man to do who really cares about allthis. Those are the things for an earnest man to do. They have no powerin themselves, but they are the opening of the windows. And if thatwhich I believe is true, God is everywhere giving himself to us, theopening of the windows is a signal that we want Him and an invitationthat He will be glad enough to answer, to come. Into every window thatis open to Him and turned His way, Christ comes, God comes. That is theonly story. There is put aside everything else. Election, predestination, they can go where they please. I am sure that God givesHimself to every soul that wants Him and declares its want by the openreadiness of the signal which He knows. How did the sun rise on our citythis morning? Starting up in the east, the sun came in its majesty intothe sky. It smote on the eastward windows, and wherever the window wasall closed, even if it were turned eastward, on the sacred side of thecity's life, it could not come in; but wherever any eastward window hadits curtains drawn, wherever he who slept had left the blinds shut, sothat the sun when it came might find its way into his sleepiness, therethe sun came, and with a shout awoke its faithful servant who hadbelieved in him even before he had seen him, and said, "Arise, arisefrom the dead, and I will give thee life. " This is the simplicity of itall, my friends. A multitude of other things you need not troubleyourselves about. I amaze myself when I think how men go asking aboutthe questions of eternal punishment and the duration of man's torment inanother life, of what will happen to any man who does not obey JesusChrist. Oh, my friends, the soul is all wrong when it asks that. Notuntil the soul says, "What will come if I do obey Jesus Christ?" andopens its glorified vision to see all the great things that are given tothe soul that enters into the service of the perfect one, the perfectlove, not until then the perfect love, the perfect life, come in. A manmay be--I believe it with all my heart--so absolutely wrapped up in theglory of obedience, and the higher life, and the service of Christ, thathe never once asks himself, "What will come to me if I do not obey?" anymore than your child asks you what you will do to him if he is notobedient. Every impulse and desire of his life sets toward obedience. And so the soul may have no theory of everlasting or of limitedpunishment, or of the other life. Simply now, here, he must have that without which he cannot live, thatwithout which there is no life. Jesus the soul must have, the oneyesterday, to-day, and forever; He that is and was and is to be. Mendwell upon what He was, upon what He is; I rather think to-day of whatHe is to be. And when I see these young men here before me looking tothe future and not to the past, --nay, looking to the future and not tothe present, valuing the present only as it is the seed ground of thefuture, the foundation upon which the structure is to rise whosepinnacle shall some day pierce the sky, --I want to tell them of theJesus that shall be. In fuller comprehension of Him, with deeperunderstanding of His life, with a more entire impression of what He isand of what He may be to the soul, so men shall understand Him in thedays to be, and yet He shall be the same Christ still. The futurebelongs to Jesus Christ, yes, the same Christ that I believe in and thatI call upon you to believe in to-day, but a larger, fuller, morecompletely comprehended Christ, the Christ that is to be, the sameChrist that was and suffered, the same Christ that is and helps, butthe same Christ also who, being forever deeper and deeper and moredeeply received into the souls of men, regenerates their institutions, changes their life, opens their capacities, surprises them withthemselves, makes the world glorious and joyous every day, because ithas become the new incarnation, the new presence of the divine life inthe life of man. Men are talking about the institutions in which you are engaged, myfriends, about the business from which you have come here to worship forthis little hour. Men are questioning about what they care to do, whatthey can have to do with Christianity. They are asking everywhere thisquestion: "Is it possible for a man to be engaged in the activities ofour modern life and yet to be a Christian? Is it possible for a man tobe a broker, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a mechanic, is it possible for aman to be engaged in a business of to-day, and yet love his God and hisfellow-man as himself?" I do not know. I do not know whattransformations these dear businesses of yours have got to undergobefore they shall be true and ideal homes for the child of God; but I doknow that upon Christian merchants and Christian brokers and Christianlawyers and Christian men in business to-day there rests an awful and abeautiful responsibility: to prove, if you can prove it, that thesethings are capable of being made divine, to prove that a man can do thework that you have been doing this morning and will do this afternoon, and yet shall love his God and his fellow-man as himself. If he cannot, if he cannot, what business have you to be doing them? If he can, whatbusiness have you to be doing them so poorly, so carnally, sounspiritually, that men look on them and shake their heads with doubt?It belongs to Christ in men first to prove that man may be a Christianand yet do business; and, in the second place, to show how a man, as hebecomes a greater Christian, shall purify and lift the business that hedoes and make it the worthy occupation of the Son of God. What shall be our universal law of life? Can we give it as we drawtoward our last moment? I think we can. I want to live, I want to live, if God will give me help, such a life that, if all men in the world wereliving it, this world would be regenerated and saved. I want to livesuch a life that, if that life changed into new personal peculiaritiesas it went to different men, but the same life still, if every man wereliving it, the millennium would be here; nay, heaven would be here, theuniversal presence of God. Are you living that life now? Do you wantyour life multiplied by the thousand million so that all men shall belike you, or don't you shudder at the thought, don't you give hope thatother men are better than you are? Keep that fear, but only that it maybe the food of a diviner hope, that all the world may see in you thething that man was meant to be, that is, the Christ. Ah, you say, thatgreat world, it is too big; how can I stretch my thought and imaginationand conscience to the poor creatures in Africa and everywhere? Thenbring it home. Ah, this dear city of ours, this city that we love, thiscity in which many of us were born, in which all of us are finding therich and sweet associations of our life, this city, whose very streetswe love because they come so close to everything we do and are, cannotwe do something for it? Cannot we make its life diviner? Cannot wecontribute something that it has not to-day? Cannot you put in it, somelittle corner of it, a life which others shall see and say, "Ah, thatour lives may be like that!" And then the good Boston in which we sorejoice, which we so love, which we would so fain make a part of thekingdom of God, a true city of Jesus Christ, we shall not die withouthaving done something for it. I linger, and yet I must not linger. Oh, my friends, oh, my fellow-men, it is not very long that we shall be here. It is not very long. Thislife for which we are so careful--it is not very long; and yet it is solong, because, long, long after we have passed away out of men's sightand out of men's memory, the world, with something that we have leftupon it, that we have left within it, will be going on still. It is solong because, long after the city and the world have passed away, weshall go on somewhere, somehow, the same beings still, carrying into thedepths of eternity something that this world has done for us that noother world could do, something of goodness to get now that will be ofvalue to us a million years hence, that we never could get unless we gotit in the short years of this earthly life. Will you know it? Will youlet Christ teach it to you? Will you let Christ tell you what is theperfect man? Will you let Him set His simplicity and graciousness closeto your life, and will you feel their power? Oh! be brave, be true, bepure, be men, be men in the power of Jesus Christ. May God bless you!May God bless you! Let us pray. IV. TRUE LIBERTY. An earnest appeal to all that enter that Liberty. May I read to you afew words from the eighth chapter of St. John? "Then said Jesus to thoseJews which believed on Him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye mydisciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall makeyou free. " Let us not think, my friends, that there is anything strange about thespectacle which we witnessed this morning. The only strange thing thatthere could be about it is that anybody should think that it is strangethat men should turn aside for half an hour from their ordinary businesspursuits, that they should come from the details of life to inquire inregard to the principles, the everlasting principles and purposes oflife; that they should turn aside from those things which are occupyingthem from day to day and make one single hour in the week consecrated tothe service of those great things which underlie all life--surely thereis nothing very strange. There is nothing more absolutely natural. Everyman does it in his own sort of way, in his own choice of time. We havechosen to do it together, on one day of the week during these few weekswhich the Christian Church has so largely set apart for special thoughtand prayer and earnest attempt to approach the God to whom we belong. Itis simply as if the stream turned back again to its fountain, that itmight refresh itself and make itself strong for the great work that ithad to do in watering the fields and turning the wheels of industry. Itis simply as if men plodding along over the flat routine of their lifechose once in a while to go up into the mountain top, whence they mightonce in a while look abroad over their life, and understand more fullythe way in which they ought to work. These are the principles, these arethe pictures which represent that which we have in mind as we cometogether for a little while each Monday in these few weeks, in orderthat we may think about things of God and try to realize the depth ofour own human life. The first thing that we ought to understand about itis that when we turn aside from life it is only that we go deeper intolife. This hour does not stand apart from the rest of the hours of theweek, in that we are dealing with things in which the rest of the weekhas no concern. He who understands life deeply and fully, understandslife truly; he has forever renewed his life; and if there comes into ourhearts, in the life which we are living, a perpetual sense that lifeneeds renewal, a richening and refreshing, then it is in order that wemay go down into the depths and see what lies at the root ofthings--things that we are perpetually doing and thinking. It is thisthat brought us together here: it is that we may open to ourselves somenewer, higher life. It is that we may understand the life that we maylive, along side of and as a richer development of that life which weare living from day to day, which we have been living during the yearsof our life. How that idea has haunted men in every period of theirexistence, how it is haunting you, that there is some higher life whichit is possible to live! There has never been a religion that has notstarted there, lifted up its eyes and seen, afar off, what it waspossible for man to do from day to day, in contrast with the thingswhich men immediately and presently are. There is not any moment of thehuman soul which has not rested upon some great conception that man wasa nobler being than he was ordinarily conceiving himself to be; that hewas not destined to the things which were ordinarily occupying his life;that he might be living a greater and nobler life. It is because theChristian Scriptures have laid most earnestly hold of this idea, it isbecause it was represented not simply in the words which Christ said, but in the very being which Christ was, that we go to them to get theinspiration and the indication, the revelation and the enlightenmentwhich we need. I have read to you these few words in which Christdeclares the whole subject, the whole character of which His life is andwhat His work is about to do, because it seems to me that they strike atonce the key-note of that which we want to understand. They let us enterinto the full conception of that which the new life which is offered toman really is. There are two conceptions which come to every man when heis entering upon a new life, changing his present life to something thatis different from the present life, and being a different sort ofcreature and living in a different sort of a way. The first way in whichit presents itself to him--almost always at the beginning of everyreligion, perhaps--is in the way of restraint and imprisonment. Manthinks of every change that is to come to him as in the nature of denialof something that he is at the present doing and being, as the layinghold upon himself of some sort of restraint, bringing to him somethingwhich says: "I must not do the thing which I am doing. I must lay uponmyself restraints, restrictions, commandments, and prohibitions. I mustnot let myself be the man that I am. " You see how the Old Testamentcomes before the New Testament, the law ringing from the mountain topwith the great denials, the great prohibitions, that come from the mouthof God. "Thou shalt not do this, that, or the other--Thou shalt notmurder. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shaltnot covet thy neighbor's goods. " That is the first conception whichcomes to a man of the way in which he is to enter upon a new life, ofthe way in which the denial in his experience is to take effect. It isas if the hands were stretched out in order that fetters might be placedupon them. The man says, "Let some power come that is to hinder me frombeing this thing that I am. " And the whole notion is the notion ofimprisonment, restraint So it is with all civilization. It is perfectlypossible for us to represent civilization as compared with barbarism, asaccepted by mankind, as a great mass of restrictions and prohibitionsthat have been laid upon human life, so that the freedom of life hasbeen cast aside, and man has entered into restricted, restrained, andimprisoned condition. So it is with every fulfilment of life. It ispossible for a man always to represent it to himself as if it were therestriction, restraint, and prohibition of his life. The man passesonward into the fuller life which belongs to a man. He merges hisselfishness into that richer life which is offered to human kind. Hemakes himself, instead of a single, selfish man, a man of family; and itis easy enough to consider that marriage and the family life bringimmediately restraints and prohibitions. The man may not have thefreedom which he used to have. So all development of education, in thefirst place, offers itself to man, or seems to offer itself to man, asprohibition and imprisonment and restraint. There is no doubt truth insuch an idea. We never lose sight of it. No other richer and fuller ideawhich we come to by and by ever does away with the thought that man'sadvance means prohibition and self-denial, that in order that man shallbecome the greater thing he must cease to be the poorer and smallerthing he has been. But yet there is immediately a greater and fuller. When we hear those words of Jesus, we see immediately that not the ideaof imprisonment but the idea of liberty, not the idea of restraint butthat of setting free, is the idea which is really in His mind when heoffers the fullest life to human kind. Have you often thought of how thewhole Bible is a Book of Liberty, of how It rings with liberty frombeginning to end, of how the great men are the men of liberty, of howthe Old Testament, the great picture which forever shines, is theemancipator, leading forth out of imprisonment the people of God, whowere to do the great work of God in the very much larger and freer lifein which they were to live? The prophet, the psalmist, are everpreaching and singing about liberty, the enfranchisement of the life ofman, that man was not imprisoned in order to fulfil himself, but shallopen his life, and every new progress shall be into a new region ofexistence which lie has not touched as yet. When we turn from the OldTestament to the New Testament, how absolutely clear that idea is!Christ is the very embodiment of human liberty. In His own personal lifeand in everything that He did and said, He was forever uttering thegreat gospel that man, in order to become his completest, must becomehis freest, that what a man did when he entered into a new life was toopen a new region in which new powers were to find their exercise, inwhich he was to be able to be and do things which he could not be and doin more restricted life. It is the acceptance of that idea, it seems tome, that makes us true disciples of Christ and of that great gospel, andthat transfigures everything. When my friend turns over some new leaf, as we say, and begins to live a new life, what shall we think of him? Ilearn that he has become a Christian man, that he is doing something, that he is working in a way and living a life which I have not knownbefore. What is my impression in regard to him? Is not your impression, as you look upon that man, that somehow or other he has entered into aslavery or bondage, that he has taken upon his life restrictions andimprisonments which he did not have before? And you think of him, perhaps, as a man who has done a wise and prudent thing, who has donesomething that is going to be for his benefit some day in some distantand half-realized world, but as a man who, for the present, has laid aburden and bondage upon his life. That is never the tone of Christ; itis never the tone of the Christian gospel. When a man turns away fromhis sins and enters into energetic holiness, when a man sacrifices hisown self-indulgence and goes forth a pure servant of his God and hisfellow-men, there is only one cry in the whole gospel of that man, andthat is the cry of freedom. As soon as he can catch that, as soon as Ican feel about my friend, who has become a better man, that he hasbecome a larger and not a smaller, a freer and not a more imprisonedman, as soon as I lift up my voice and say that the man is free, then Iunderstand him more fully, and he becomes a revelation to me in thehigher and richer life which is possible for me to live. But think ofit for yourselves, for a moment, and ask what freer life really is. Tryto give a definition of liberty, and I know not what it can be said tobe except something of this kind: Liberty is the fullest opportunity forman to be and do the very best that is possible for him. I know of nodefinition of liberty, that oldest and dearest phrase of men, andsometimes the vaguest also, except that. It has been perverted, it hasbeen distorted and mystified, but that is what it really means: thefullest opportunity for a man to do and be the very best that is in hispersonal nature to do and to be. It immediately follows that everythingwhich is necessary for the full realization of a man's life, even thoughit seems to have the character of restraint for a moment, is really apart of the process of his enfranchisement, is the bringing forth of himto a fuller liberty. You see a man coming forward and offering himselfas one of the defenders of his country in his country's need. You seehim standing at the door where men are being received as recruits intothe army of the country. He wants liberty. He wants to be able to dothat which he cannot do in his poor, personal isolation here at home. Hewants the badge which will give him the right to go forth and meet theenemies of his country, and he enrolls himself among these men. He makeshimself subject to obligations, duties, and drill. They are a part ofhis enfranchisement. They are really the breaking of the fetters uponhis slavery, the sending him forth into freedom. He is like a bit ofiron or steel that lies upon the ground. It lies neglected and perfectlyfree. You see it is made by the adjustment of the end of it so that itcan be set into a great machine and become part of a great workingsystem. But there it lies. Will you call it free? It is bound to benothing there. It is absolutely separate, and with its own personalitydistinct and individual and all alone. What is to make that bit of irona free bit of iron, to let it go forth and do the thing which it wasmeant to do, but the taking of it and the binding of it at both endsinto the structure of which it was made to be a part? It seems to me thebinding of a man, --it seems to me that the binding of the iron is notthe yielding of its freedom. It is not merely after finding its placewithin the system that it first achieves its freedom and so joins in themusic and partakes of the courses with which the whole enginery isfilled. Is not it, then, for the first time a free bit of iron, havingaccomplished all that it was made to do when it came forth from theforge of the master, who had this purpose in his mind? This, then, isfreedom; everything is part of the enfranchisement of a man which helpsto put him in the place where he can live his best. Therefore everyduty, every will of God, every commandment of Christ, everyself-surrender that a man is called upon to obey or to make--do notthink of it as if it were simply a restraint to liberty, but think of itas the very means of freedom, by which we realize the very purpose ofGod and the fulfilment of our life. It is interesting to see how allthat is true in regard to the matter of belief, doctrine, and opinionswhich we are apt to accept. How strange it very often seems that men goto the Church, or to one another, and say: "Must I believe this doctrinein order that I can enter into the Church?" "Must I believe thisdoctrine in order that I may be saved?" men say, with a strange sort ofnotion about what salvation is. How strange it seems, when we reallyhave got our intelligence about us and know what it is to believe! Tobelieve a new truth, if it be really truth and we really believe it, isto have entered into a new region, in which our life shall find a newexpansion and a new youth. Therefore, not "Must we believe?" but "May Ibelieve?" is the true cry of the human creature who is seeking for therichest fulfilment of his life, who is working that his whole nature mayfind its complete expansion and so its completest exercise. We talk agreat deal in these days and in this place about a liberal faith. Whatis a liberal faith, my friends? It seems to me that by every truemeaning of the word, by every true thought of the idea, a liberal faithis a faith that believes much, and not a faith that believes little. Themore a man believes, the more liberally he exercise his capacity offaith, the more he sends forth his intelligence into the mysteries ofGod, the more he understands those things which God chooses to reveal tohis creatures, the more liberally he believes. Let yourselves neverthink that you grow liberal in faith by believing less; always be surethat the true liberality of faith can only come by believing more. It istrue, indeed, that as soon as a man becomes eager for belief, for thetruth of God and for the mysteries with which God's universe is filled, he becomes all the more critical and careful. He will hot any longer, ifhe were before, be simply greedy of things to believe, so that if anysuperstition comes offering itself to him he will not gather it inindiscriminately and believe it without evidence, without examination. He becomes all the more critical and careful, the more he becomesassured that belief, and not unbelief, is the true condition of hislife. The truth that God has entered into this world in wondrous waysand filled its life with Jesus Christ, the truth that man has a soul andnot simply a body, that he has a spiritual need, that God cares for himand he is to care for himself, that there is an immortal life, and thatthat which we call faith is but the opening of a gate, the pushing backof a veil, --shall a man believe those things as imprisonments of hisnature, and shall it not make him larger? Shall it not be the indulgenceof his life when he enters into the great certainties which so areoffered to his belief, believing them in his own way? Let us always feelthat to accept a new belief is no to build a wall beyond which we cannotpass, but is to open the door to a great fresh, free region, in whichour souls are to live. And just so it is when we come to the moralthings of life. The man puts aside some sinfulness. He breaks down thewall that has been shutting his soul out of its highest life. He hasbeen a drunkard, and he becomes a sober man. He has been a cheat, andbecomes a faithful man. He has been a liar, and becomes a truthful man. He has been a profligate, and he becomes a pure man. What has happenedto that man? Shall he simply think of himself as one who has crushedthis passion, shut down this part of his life? Shall he simply think ofhimself as one who has taken a course of self-denial? Nay. It isself-indulgence that a man has really entered upon. It is an indulgenceof the deepest part of his own nature, not of his unreal nature. He hasrisen and shaken himself like a lion, so that the dust has fallen fromhis mane, and all the great range of that life which God gave him tolive lies before him. This is the everlasting inspiration. This is theillumination. I don't wonder that men refuse to give up evil if itsimply seems to them to be giving up the evil way, and no vision opensbefore them of the thing that they may be and do. I don't wonder that, if the negative, restricting, imprisoning conception of the new life isall that a man gets hold of, he lingers again and again in the old life. But just as soon as the great world opens before him then it is like aprisoner going out of the prison door. Is there no lingering? Does notthe baser part of him cling to the old prison, to the ease and theprovision for him, to the absence of anxiety and of energy? I thinkthere can hardly be a prisoner who, with any leap of heart, goes out ofthe prison door, when his term is finished, and does not even look intothat black horror where he has been living, cast some lingering, longinglook behind. He comes to the exigencies, to the demands of life, to thenecessity of making himself once more a true man among his fellow-men. But does he stop? He comes forth, and if there be the soul of a man inhim still, he enters into the new life with enthusiasm, and finds thenew powers springing in him to their work. And if it be so with everyspecial duty, then with that great thing which you and I are called uponto do--the total acceptance by our nature of the will of God, the totalacceptance by our nature of the mastery of Jesus Christ. Oh! how thisworld has perverted words and meanings, that the mastery of Jesus Christshould seem to be the imprisonment and not the enfranchisement of thesoul! When I bring a flower out of the darkness and set it in the sun, and let the sunlight come streaming down upon it, and the flower knowsthe sunlight for which it was made and opens its fragrance and beauty;when I take a dark pebble and put it into the stream and let the silverwater go coursing down over it and bringing forth the hidden color thatwas in the bit of stone, opening the nature that is in them, the flowerand stone rejoice. I can almost hear them sing in the field and in thestream. What then? Shall not man bring his nature out into the fullestillumination, and surprise himself by the things that he might do? Oh!the littleness of the lives that we are living! Oh! the way in which wefail to comprehend, or when we do comprehend, deny to ourselves thebigness of that thing which it is to be a man, to be a child of God!Sometimes it dawns upon us that we can see it opening into the vision ofthese men and women in the New Testament. Sometimes there opens to usthe picture of this thing that we might be, and then there are truly thetrial moments of our life. Then we lift up ourselves and claim ourliberty or, dastardly or cowardly, slink back into the sluggishimprisonment in which we have been living. How does all this affect thatwhich we are continually conscious of, urging upon ourselves and uponone another? How does it affect the whole question of a man's sins? Oh!these sins, the things we know so well! As we sit here and stand hereone entire hour, as we talk in this sort of way, everybody knows theweaknesses of his own nature, the sins of his own soul. Don't you knowit? What shall we think about those sins? It seems to me, my friends, that all this great picture of the liberty into which Christ sets man, in the first place does one thing which we are longing to see done inthe world. It takes away the glamour and the splendor from sin. Itbreaks that spell by which men think that the evil thing is the gloriousthing. If the evil thing be that which Christ has told us that the evilthing is--which I have no time to tell you now--if every sin that you dois not simply a stain upon your soul, but is keeping you out from somegreat and splendid thing which you might do, then is there any sort ofsplendor and glory about sin? How about the sins that you did when youwere young men? How can you look back upon those sins and think whatyour life might have been if it had been pure from the beginning, thinkwhat you might have been if from the very beginning you had caught sightof what it was to be a man? And then your boy comes along. What are themen in this town doing largely in many and many a house, but lettingtheir boys believe that the sins of their early life are gloriousthings, except that those things which they did, the base and wretchedthings that they were doing when they were fifteen and twenty andtwenty-five and thirty years old, are the true career of a human nature, are the true entrance into human life? The miserable talk about sowingwild oats, about getting through the necessary conditions of life beforea man comes to solemnity! Shame upon any man who, having passed throughthe sinful conditions and habits and dispositions of his earlier life, has not carried out of them an absolute shame for them, that shall lethim say to his boy, by word and by every utterance of his life withinthe house where he and the boy live together, "Refrain, for they areabominable things!" To get rid of the glamour of sin, to get rid of theidea that it is a glorious thing to be dissipated instead of beingconcentrated to duty, to get rid of the idea that to be drunken and tobe lustful are true and noble expressions of our abounding human life, to get rid of any idea that sin is aught but imprisonment, is to makethose who come after us, and to make ourselves in what of life is leftfor us, gloriously ambitious for the freedom of purity, for a fullentrance into that life over which sin has no dominion. And yet, at thesame time, don't you see that while sin thus becomes contemptible whenwe think about the great illustration of the will of God and JesusChrist, don't you see how also it puts on a new horror? That which Ithought I was doing in the halls of my imprisonment I have really beendoing within the possible world of God in which I might have been free. The moment I see what life might have been to me, then any sin becomesdreadful to me. Have you ever thought of how the world has stood inglory and honor before the sinless humanity of Jesus Christ? If any lifecould prove, if any argument could show on investigation to-day thatJesus did one sin in all his life, that the perfect liberty which washis perfect purity was not absolutely perfect, do you realize what ahorror would seem to fall down from the heavens, what a constraint andburden would be laid upon the lives of men, how the gates of men'spossibilities would seem to close in upon them? It is because there hasbeen that one life which, because absolutely pure from sin, wasabsolutely free; it is because man may look up and see in that life therevelation and possibility of his own; it is because that life, echoingthe great cry throughout the world that man everywhere is the son ofGod, offers the same purity--and so the same freedom--to all mankind; itis for that reason that a man rejoices to cling to, to believe in, however impure his life is, the perfect purity, the sinlessness of thelife of Jesus. When you sin, my friends, it is a man that sins, and aman is a child of God; and for a child of God to sin is an awful thing, not simply for the stain that he brings into the divine nature that isin him, but for the life from which it shuts him out, for the libertywhich he abandons, for the inthrallment which it lays upon the soul. There is one thing that people say very carelessly that always seems tome to be a dreadful thing for a man to say. They say it when they talkabout their lives to one another, and think about their lives tothemselves, and by and by very often say it upon their death-bed withthe last gasp, as though their entrance into the eternal world hadbrought them no deeper enlightenment. One wonders what is the revelationthat comes to them when they stand upon the borders of the other sideand are in the full life and eternity of God. The thing men say is, "Ihave done the very best I can. " It is an awful thing for a man to say. The man never lived, save he who perfected our humanity, who ever didthe very best he could. You dishonor your life, you not simply shut youreyes to certain facts, you not simply say an infinitely absurd andfoolish thing, but you dishonor your human life if you say that you havedone in any day of your life or in all the days of your life puttogether, the very best that you could, or been the very best man thatyou could be. You! what are you? Again I say, The child of God, and thiswhich you have been, what is it? Look over it, see how selfish it hasbeen, see how material it has been, how it has lived in the depths whenit might have lived on the heights, see how it has lived in the littlenarrow range of selfishness when it might have been as broad as allhumanity, nay, when it might have been as the God of humanity. Don'tdare to say that in any day of your life, or in all your life together, you have done the best that you could. The Pharisee said it when he wentup into the temple, and all the world has looked on with mingled pityand scorn at the blindness of the man who stood there and paraded hisfaithfulness; while all the world has bent with a pity that was near tolove, a pity that was full of sympathy because man recognized hiscondition and experience, for the poor creature grovelling upon thepavement, unwilling and unable even to look upon the altar, but who, standing afar off, said, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" Whatever elseyou say, don't say, "I have been the very best I could. " That means thatyou have not merely lived in the rooms of your imprisonment, but thatyou have been satisfied to count them the only possible rooms of yourlife, and that the great halls of your liberty have never openedthemselves before you. Shall not they open themselves somehow to usto-day, my friends? Shall we not turn away from this hour and go backinto our business, into our offices, into the shops, into the crowdedstreets, bearing new thoughts of the lives that we might live, feelingthe fetters on our hands and feet, feeling many things as fetters whichwe have thought of as the ornament and glory of our life, determined tobe unsatisfied forever until these fetters shall be stricken off and wehave entered into the full liberty which comes to those alone who arededicated to the service of God, to the completion of their own nature, to the acceptance of the grace of Christ, and to the attainment of theeternal glory of the spiritual life, first here and then hereafter, never hereafter, it may be, except here and now, certainly here and now, as the immediate, pressing privilege and duty of our lives? So let usstand up on our feet and know ourselves in all the richness and in allthe awfulness of our human life. Let us know ourselves children of God, and claim the liberty which God has given to every one of his childrenwho will take it. God bless you and give some of you, help some of us, to claim, as we have never claimed before, that freedom with which theSon makes free! V. THE CHRIST IN WHOM CHRISTIANS BELIEVE. I want to read to you again the words of Jesus in the eighth chapter ofthe Gospel of St. John: "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed onHim, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and yeshall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answeredhim, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: howsayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And theservant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. Ifthe Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. " Theservice of God is not self-restraint, but self-indulgence. That is thefirst truth of all religion. That is the truth which we found uttered inthose words of Jesus when we were thinking of them the other day. Thatis the truth to which we return as we come back again to think of thosewords and all that they mean and all that the speaker of them means tous and to our lives. When we remember that truth, when we recognize thatno man is ever to be saved except by the fulfilment of his own nature, and not by the restraint of his nature, when we recognize that no man, no personal, individual man, is ever to be ransomed from his sins exceptby having opened to him a larger and fuller life into which he hasentered, we seem to have displayed to us a large region, into which weare tempted to enter, and which is so rich and inviting to us that weimmediately begin to ask ourselves if it is possible that there shouldbe such a region. It is simply a great dream that we set before us. Itis something that we imagine, something that comes out of theimaginations and anticipations of our own hearts, simply stimulated bythe possibilities of the life in which we are living. It would be verymuch indeed, if it were only that. It would bear a certain testimony ofitself, if it simply came out of the perpetual dissatisfaction of men'ssouls, even if there were no distinct manifestation of that life and nopossibility of entering into it at once with our own personalconsecration, with the resolution of our own wills. But if it weresimply a dream, ultimately it must fade away out of the thoughts ofmen. It is impossible that men should keep on, year after year, ageafter age, this simple dream of something which does not exist. It wouldbe like those pictures which the poet has drawn, something which appealsto nothing in our human nature and stands only as a parable of somethingthat is a great deal lower than itself. The poet pictures to us in hisimagination those things which do not appeal to our life, because theyfind nothing to correspond to their high portraits, to show thosetransformations of nature into something that is entirely different andforeign to itself. If religion be simply the dream that some men hold itto be, if it simply be the cheating of man's soul with that which has noreality to correspond to it, then it will be no more than this. Is thereany assurance that is given to us, that is before the soul of man, ofsome great new life which it is given for man to seek, without which itis given for no man to be satisfied? I do not know where any man couldfind that assurance absolutely and entirely, unless there had stoodforth before us the person of Him who spoke these words and whomanifested them in His life. And therefore it is that, having picturedto you the richness of the life which is open to every man, his own truelife, the large freedom into which he may go if, giving up his sins heenters into the fulness of the life of God, I cannot help now callingyou to think about Him who gives, not merely by His words, but by thewhole of His own person and life, that manifestation of the reality ofthe divine existence and tempts us to follow after Him. In other words, we come to-day to think of Christ, Christ who claims to be the master ofthe world, Christ from whom the revelation of that higher life has come, not in its first instance in the manifestation of the words which hespoke, for it had been the dream of human hearts through all the ages, but who made it so distinct and clear that ever since the time of Christmen have been able to cease to seek after it, men have never been ableto give up the hope and dream that it was there. It is our Christ inwhom we Christians believe. It is the Christ in whom a great many of youlistening to me now claim to believe--I do myself--in whom many of youdo believe, whom many of you have followed into that newer life. I wouldto God that I could so set Him before you to-day, could so make you feelhis actual presence in the life which we are living, which we may beliving, that there should be no question in any man of the power that isopen before him to enter into the higher life and to fulfil his soul toGod. What I want to do, in the few moments which I may speak to you thismorning, is--laying aside all the theological conceptions regardingHim, laying aside everything that attaches to the complications andmysteries in which His nature has been involved in men's dreams of Him, laying aside everything which the churches are holding as the specialdoctrine of their especial creed--to go back to the very beginning andsee if we can understand anything of what it is--this personal Christ, who lives here in the world and manifests the power of God and opens thepossibility of every man. Surely it is good that we should knowsomething about Him of whom we speak so much, that there should be someclear and directest conception of one whose name has been upon the lipsof men for eighteen hundred years; and it is possible for us, in thesimplest way, to understand how His power has come into the world and tosee where it is possible that it should come and enrich our lives andmake us different men. We go back, then, to the very beginning of theaspiration after God, which is in the heart of man everywhere. There hasnever been a race that has been without it. There has never been ageneration that has not reached forward and thought there was a higherlife, a fuller liberty, to which it could come. It has been in all thereligions which have been not simply fears, but which have been thehighest utterances of all the different races in all the differentgenerations of mankind and all the different countries of the world; andthere was one especial race in one especial part of the world in whomthat aspiration was especially strong. We will not ask how it came to bethere. There it was in this strange people living on the eastern shoreof the Mediterranean Sea, and in all its history marked out by thestrange peculiarity that it was a spiritual people, that in the midst ofall its sins, blunders, and weaknesses it was forever lifting up itssoul to God and striving to find Him out. Very often it blunderedstrangely and sadly. Very often it failed to get that for which it wasseeking, by the very impetuousness, rashness, and earnestness of search. But it was always seeking after Him. And the years rolled by, and by andby in the midst of that great nation there was a little company of menwho, accompanying one another from the beginning of their lives, hadbeen searching after this God and trying everywhere if they could findHim. And one day they heard that down by the river which ran throughtheir country, which was sacred to them from the multitude of oldnational associations, there was a great teacher come, who was declaringthat for which the human soul was forever reaching after, the need ofescaping from sin and entering upon and leading a higher life. Thislittle company went down and met two disciples of John the Baptist, andlearned from them everything that they had to teach them. Their soulswere stirred by that which he had to say. But one day, while he wasteaching them, it seemed as if they had come to an end of that which hecould teach them. He looked up, and there upon the hill just above theriver there was passing one upon whom the gaze of the fishermen by theriver immediately kindled, and he lifted his hand and said, "He is theone who is to teach you now. You must go after him. Behold the Lamb ofGod, which taketh away the sin of the world. " Great and mysteriouswords, that filled in that which men had believed in all the recordsthey had read and the thinking they had done before! And they turnedaway from John and went after this new teacher and, following to Hishouse, there they abode with Him during that day and the days thatfollowed after. Little by little, as we read the story of their beingwith him, we can see them taken into His power, we can see how there wasa certain fascination in His presence which laid hold upon them. Itseemed at first to be purely human, to be the way in which one strongman takes possession of his fellow-man and compels him to rely upon him. It was upon purely human ground. It was in the manifestation of theexcellence of this human nature of ours that they believed in Jesus andgradually became His disciples. Little by little it so commanded themthat at last the moment came when it was impossible for them to separatethemselves from Him; and one day, when the people were turning away fromHim when He was preaching and saying things that it was hard for them tounderstand, He looked around upon them and said, "Are you going also, will you leave me now?" And then there burst forth from the lips of oneof them, the most strong and characteristic act of the little company, those great words that declared how He had become necessary to them:"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. " Yousee the power that Jesus had acquired over these men. You see the way inwhich He had taken them absolutely into His dominion, simply because ofthe manifestation of character and life, simply because He had shownthem what man might be and opened the springs of the better life inthemselves by the words He had spoken to them. And then they lived onwith Him still, and by and by they had become so convinced by His truthand wisdom, His character had so taken possession of them, that theywere ready to believe anything that He said. One day He lifted up Hisvoice and declared that which had gradually been dawning upon them allthe time, that He was more than they were, that He had brought in somemysterious way a divine life into this world and had much to communicateto them. He told them that He was the Father from whom His life andtheir life had come. He told them that He and the Father were one. Hetold them, not in theological statement, not as men have worked outsince in their desire to know it fully, but in the simple statement ofthe truth that could be the inspiration of their life, that in Hispresence there was here the very presence of God among them. It was notstrange to them, though human creatures, though men, that the highestaspiration of their humanity had never thought God so far from thisworld that it seemed to them strange that there should be in very humanpresence the divine life here with them. They could not explain it anddid not try to explain it. Here it was, that which they had seenshadowed in the divinest men whom they had known, that which they hadrecognized. Here it was before them in this being who had won such apower over them that they were ready to accept His testimony with regardto Himself. Oh! my friends, let us not feel that the evidence of ourChristian faith fails when it is seen to rest upon the word of ChristHimself. My neighbor knows more of himself than I know of him. I knowmore of myself than any man can know of me, if only I be earnest andsincere. And that the greatest of men who ever trod this earth shouldnot know more of His nature than any other man should know, and thattherefore His word should not be the richest revelation of that which isin His life and makes His power over mankind, that is incredible. Therefore the men were right when they believed Jesus' own word andlooked to Him for the divinity which He said was present with Him uponthe earth. Then His life went on, and by and by fulfilled itself in theone great action in which He declared those two things which He longedto know, the life and newness of God and the power of their humannature. He gave His life for them, indeed, in the awful suffering thatpreceded and that culminated upon the cross. He gave His life incrucifixion for them, and in that crucifixion opened the divinest doorsof His life, when opening a sanctuary of sorrow; and He bade them enterin and know there the absolute life of God and the great capacity ofhuman nature to sacrifice itself for God. And before He died, andafterward, He again appeared to them. He spoke great words which saidthat this was not the end of things, that after they had ceased to seeHim and touch Him and hear His voice He still was to be present in theworld. He said that the mysterious presence of those who had passedaway, which all had known, was to culminate and be fulfilled in Him. "Iam with you alway, even unto the end of the world. " Wherever you "aretogether in my name, there am I. " Words and words and words again likethose He spoke, in which He declared that He was to be an everlastingpresence among mankind, and therefore that which had taken place in thelife of those disciples might forever take place; that that which Jesushad done in the days when He was present upon the earth should becontinually repeated, in that He was forever to do that which He hadbeen doing, giving Himself to human kind for their inspiration, fortheir elevation, for their correction, for their reproof, as He had beendoing, their salvation, as He had been doing in those days in which Hewas here among them. Men have believed that simply. They have recognizedthat word of Christ, and found the fulfilment of it in their own lives;and that has been the Christian religion, --just exactly what it was inthe old days when Jesus was present in Jerusalem and Galilee. Justexactly what men did then men have been doing in all the generationsthat have come since. Just exactly what was possible then is possiblefor them now--that we may become the followers of that same Christ andthe receivers through Him of the divine life, by which alone the humanlife is perfected and fulfilled. That is the Christian religion. That is the Christian faith. Is it notclear and simple, whether it be true or not? My friends, you may believeit or you may disbelieve it, but the Christian faith is clear and simpleenough surely in this statement, stripped of a thousand difficulties, perplexities, and bewilderments. That is it, that there is in the worldto-day the same Christ who was in the world eighteen hundred and moreyears ago, and that men may go to Him and receive His life and theinspiration of His presence and the guidance of His wisdom just exactlyas they did then. If you and I had been in Jerusalem in those old days, what would we have done, if we were more than mere creatures of others, more than men merely absorbed in our business, if there were anystirring in our souls after the deeper and diviner desires, could we, would we have been satisfied until we had gone wherever He might be, --inthe temple, in the courts, or on the country road, --and found thatJesus, and entered into some sympathy with His life, that He might giveto us what revelation of life and what guidance of will it might bepossible should come from Him to men who trusted Him, until we hadentered into sympathy with Him and the fascinations of His character?That is the Christian life, my friends, the thing we make so vague andmysterious and difficult. That is the Christian life, the following ofJesus Christ. What is the Christian? Everywhere the man who, so far as he comprehendsJesus Christ, so far as he can get any knowledge of Him, is His servant, the man who makes Christ a teacher of his intelligence and the guide ofhis soul, the man who obeys Christ as far as he has been able tounderstand Him. What, you say, the man who imperfectly understandsChrist, who don't know anything about His divinity, who denies the greatdoctrines of the Church in regard to Him, is he a Christian? Certainlyhe is, my friends. There is no other test than this, the following ofJesus Christ. So far as any soul deeply consecrated to Him, and wantingthe influence that it feels that He has to give, follows Christ, entersinto His obedience and His company, and receives His blessings, just sofar He is able to bestow it. I cannot sympathize with any feeling thatdesires to make the name of Christian a narrower name. I would spread itjust as wide as it can be possibly made to spread. I would know any manas a Christian, rejoice to know any man as a Christian, whom Jesus wouldrecognize as a Christian, and Jesus Christ, I am sure, in those old daysrecognized His followers even if they came after Him with the blindestsight, with the most imperfect recognition and acknowledgment of whatHe was and of what He could do. And then, again, is it not very strange, certainly, that there shouldbe, in these later days, in all these centuries that have passed betweenthe day of Jesus Christ and us, that there should have come a vastaccumulation of speculation and conjecture, of theorizing and thoughtwith regard to Christ and what He was, and that a great deal of itshould have been very strange and should seem to us to-day to have beenvery silly, a great part of it should have seemed to be but a work ofintelligences that were half dulled and blinded, full of prejudice, andshrinking from the error and the danger in which they stood? What doesit mean--all these complicated theologies that we say are keeping usaway from the simple following of the grandest figure that has everpresented Himself before human kind? I know not how else it can be whenI see what has been the power of Jesus over thoughts and homes andhearts of men through all these years. It seems to be a previousnecessity that He who most fastens the heart and life of man, who seemsto be most necessary to the soul of men, shall so attract their thought, shall so draw them all to Himself that their crudest speculations, thattheir most erroneous conceptions, shall fasten upon him, and they shallbe in some true way a testimony of the way in which He has always heldthe human heart. This is the way in which all crudities of theology, allthe weaknesses of speculation, all even of the most strange and foulthoughts in regard to the life of Jesus and His manifestation in theworld, have accumulated around that gracious figure, so simple andstrong, which walks through our human life and manifests to us the God. Surely it is in one conception of it, and the true conception of it, thegreat perpetual testimony of how men have cared about Jesus, that theyhave speculated about Him in such strange perplexing ways. But He aboutwhom the world does not care walks through the world and bears Hissimple being. There is nothing that fastens upon Him, that perplexes Hislife, that makes mysterious and strange the life He lives. But where isthe great man in all the history of human kind that has not gatheredabout his person and work the speculations of those whom we find, withtheir crude and unguided minds, have formed their theories in regard toHim? It is the very abundance of the strange speculations with regard toChrist, it is the very strangeness of the theories that have been formedwith regard to Him, that has shown me how He has drawn the hearts ofmen, how He has not let them go, but compelled them to fasten themselvesto Him, to think about Him and try to follow Him in such poor, blindways as they were able to give themselves to Him in. This, then, is theChristian faith. This is the way in which the larger life opens beforemankind, by the following of a person, by the giving of the life intothe dominion and the guidance and the obedience of one who goes forwardinto that life, himself thoroughly believing in it--for Jesus believedin it with all His human soul. But then, we ask ourselves, is it possible that we can gather from sucha life as Jesus lived so long ago, a life that was lived back in thevery dust of history and that has come down to us in records which seemsometimes to be flecked with tradition and obscured with the distance inwhich they lived, is it possible that I should get from him a guidanceof my daily life here? Am I, a man of the nineteenth century, wheneverything has changed, in Boston, in this modern civilization, --canJesus really be my teacher, my guide, in the actual duties andperplexities of my daily life and lead me into the larger land in whichI know he lives? Ah! the man knows very little about the everlastingidentity of human nature, little of how the world in all thesechangeless ages is the same, who asks that; very little, also, of how inevery largest truth there are all particulars and details of human lifeinvolved; little of how everything that a man is to-day, upon everymoment, rests upon some eternal foundation and may be within the powerof some everlasting law. The wonder of the life of Jesus is this--andyou will find it so and you have found it so if you have ever taken yourNew Testament and tried to make it the rule of your daily life--thatthere is not a single action that you are called upon to do of which youneed be, of which you will be, in any serious doubt for ten minutes asto what Jesus Christ, if He were here, Jesus Christ being here, wouldhave you do under those circumstances and with the material upon whichyou are called to act. Men have tried to go back and imitate the veryactivities of the life of Jesus Christ, to do the very things that Hedid. Souls have fled across the sea and tried upon the hills and in theplains where Jesus lived to reproduce the life that has so fascinatedthem. They were poor and unphilosophic souls. The soul that takes inJesus' word, the soul that through the words of Jesus enters into thevery person of Jesus, the soul that knows Him as its daily presence andits daily law--it never hesitates. Do I doubt--I, who see myself calledupon to be the slave of these conditions which are around me--to do thisthing? Because it is the custom of the business in which I am engaged, do I doubt fora moment if I turn aside and open this New Testament, which is Jesus' law with regard to that thing? I, with my passionboiling in my veins, leading me to do some foul act of outrageous lust, have I a single moment's doubt what Jesus would have me do if He werehere--what Jesus, being here, really wants me to do? There is no singleact of your life, my friend, there is no single dilemma in which youfind yourself placed, in which the answer is not in Jesus Christ. I donot say that you will find some words in Jesus' teachings in the Gospelof Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that will detail exactly the conditionin which you find yourself placed; but I do say that if, with your humansympathies and your devoted love, you can feel the presence of thatJesus behind the words that He said, the personal perfectness, thedivine life manifested in the human life, there is not a single sin ortemptation to sin that will not be convicted. There is where we rest when we claim that Jesus Christ is the master ofthe world, that He opens the great richness and infinite distances ofthe human life, that He shows us what it is to be men. It would belittle if He did that simply with the painting of some glorious visionupon the skies beyond; but that He comes into your life and mine, intoour homes and our shops, into our offices and on our streets, and theremakes known in the actual circumstances of our daily life what we oughtto do and what we ought not to do--that is the wonder of his revelation;that is what proclaims him to be the Son of God and the Son of man. Think, as you sit here, of anything that you are doing that is wrong, ofany habit of your life, of your self-indulgence, or of that great, pervasive habit of your life which makes you a creature of the presentinstead of the eternities, a creature of the material earth instead ofthe glorious skies. Ask of yourself of any habit that belongs to yourown personal life, and bring it face to face with Jesus Christ and seeif it is not judged. A judgment day that is far away, that is off in thedim distance when this world is done--it shall come, no doubt. I knownone of us can know much with regard to it, except that it is sure. Butthe judgment day that is here now is Christ; the judgment day that isright close to your life and rebukes you, if you will let Him rebuke youevery time you sin, the judgment day that is here and praises you andbids you be of good courage, when you do a thing that men disown anddespise, is Christ. Therefore it is no figure of speech, it is no mereecstasy of the imagination of the preacher, when we say that in themidst of these streets of ours, more real than the men that walk inthem, more real than the sidewalks that are under our feet, and thebuildings that tower over us, there walks an unseen presence. An unseenpresence? Yes. Are you and I going to be such creatures of our sensesthat we shall not believe that there are powers that touch us that wecannot see? Am I going to be so bound down to these poor fingers and tothese poor eyes that I shall know myself in no larger connection withthe great, unseen world? I will not. No great man, no manly man, hasever allowed such a limitation of himself. There is the unseen presencein the midst of our life, and he who will feel it may feel it, and thatunseen presence speaks to him continually. It knows every one of us. Itknows the rich man and knows what his wealth has made of him. It knowswhether it has made him selfish. Shall I say it? He, the Christ, thepresent Christ, knows whether the rich man's riches have made himselfish and base and mean, covetous and poor and little-souled, orwhether he has been glad to rise to the greatness of his privilege, andbe the very utterance of the beneficence of God upon the earth. He knowsthe poor man and his struggles, he knows the poor man and hisself-respect. He speaks to the poor man's soul, who has been kept poorbecause he will not enter into the baser methods and motives of ourmodern life, and is despised, and says to him, "Be of good courage, forI know what you are. " He speaks to the poor in distress and poverty. Hespeaks to the wretched in their disappointment and their pain. He istheir comforter. He knows every sin. He knows every sorrow of our life. He goes, unseen on earth, into the chambers where the dead lie dead, andwhere the sick lie dying, and He speaks His words of consolation, Heopens up the glory of the perfect life. He lays his hand upon themourner whose soul is bowed down to the earth and says, "Look up, " andpoints into eternity and heaven. All these things Christ can do notmerely, but Christ is doing. He is the inspiring power of this life, that keeps it from rotting in its corruption and degradation. We dwelltoo much, I think, upon some of these things; we cannot dwell too much, perhaps, but we dwell out of proportion, it may be, to the thought ofJesus Christ, the comforter of sorrow. He is the comforter of sorrow, for he knew and he knows what sorrow is. In His own crucifixion, in thatwhich came before His crucifixion, He knew the suffering of this earthlylife. There is no human being who ever has known the misery of man asJesus knows it, and so He comes to all sorrows with tender consolation. God grant, God grant He may come to any of you who have come into thesedoors to-day with a sorrow, with a fear, with a dread upon your hearts, with souls that are wrung, with bodies that are suffering! God grantthat the Christ may comfort you, may comfort you! But not only that. Shall there be no Christ for those who for the moment seem to need nocomfort? Shall there be no Christ for the strong men who have before them theduties of their life, and who want the strength with which to do them?Shall there be no Christ for the young men, the young men standing indanger, but also standing in such magnificent and splendid chances? Itis great to think of Christ standing by the sorrowing and comfortingthem. It is great, --we will not say it is greater, --it is very great, when by the side of the young man just entering into life there standsthe Christ, saying to his soul, with the voice that he cannot fail tohear: "Be pure, be strong, be wise, be independent; rejoice in Me and Myappreciation. Let the world go, if it is necessary that the world shouldgo. Serve the world, but do not be the servant of the world. Make theworld your servant by helping the world in every way in which you canminister to its life. Be brave, be strong, be manly by My strength. " Oh!young man, if you can hear the Christ speak to you like that behind allthe traditions of the street, behind the teachings of the books, behindall that the wise and successful men say to you, behind all the cynicsand sneerers say to you, the great, strong, healthy voice of JesusChrist, who believes in man because He has known man filled withdivinity, and believes in you because He knows that which has been setbefore you by your Father in the sending out of your life, and who longsand prays and waits to strengthen you, that you may do your work, thatyou may escape from sin, that you may live your life, this great figureof the present Christ that Christianity can produce--it is not thememory of something that is away back in the past, it is not theanticipation of something to come in the future. We talk about Christthe Saviour, and think about Calvary long ago. We talk about the Christthe Judge, and think of a great white throne set in some mystic valleyof Jehoshaphat, where some day the world is to be judged. We do not soget hold of Christ. The Christ who is in the past is not our Christunless His power holds forth, the power of His spirit, which is thewhole knowledge of the life in which we live. We think of the Christ ofthe future, for whom all the world is waiting. He will never enter intous and lead us unless we know that He is here and now. It does seem tome sometimes that if men would only take religion as a real and presentthing, and if, instead of worshipping it in the past and expecting itwith fear and dread and vain hope in the future, it could be a realthing with them here and now, something in which they are to live, notto which they are to flee in moments of doubt, not of which they shouldmake rescue, but in which they should do all their work and live, thenreligion would be to the soul of man so that it could not be cast aside, so that they must enter into it and take it into themselves and make ittheir own. Religion is not the simple fire-escape that you build, inanticipation of a possible danger, upon the outside of your dwelling andleave there until danger comes. You go to it some morning when a firebreaks out in your house, and the poor old thing that you built upthere, and thought you could use some day, is so rusty and broken, andthe weather has so beaten upon it, and the sun so turned its hinges, that it will not work. That is the condition of a man who has builthimself what seems to be a creed of faith, a trust in God inanticipation of the day when danger is to overtake him, and has said tohimself, I am safe, for I will take refuge in it then. But religion isthe house in which we live, it is the table at which we sit, it is thefireside to which we draw near, the room that arches its graceful andfamiliar presence over us; it is the bed on which we lie and think ofthe past and anticipate the future and gather our refreshment. There isno Christ except the present Christ for every man, unto whom all thepower of the historic Christ is always appearing, and who is great withall the sweet solemnity that comes from the knowledge of what in thefuture He is to be to the world and to the soul. I am anxious to-day toimpress this upon you: that the Christian faith is not a dogma, it isnot primarily a law, but is a personal presence and an immediate lifethat is right here and now. I am anxious to have you know that to be aChristian does not mean primarily to believe this or that. It does notmean primarily, although it means necessarily afterward, to do this orthat. But it means to know the presence of a true personal Christ amongus and to follow. Here is the only true power by which a religion canbecome perpetual. Men outgrow many dogmas which they hold. The lines inwhich they try to live change their application to their lives. But Iknow a person with a deep, true life; I enter into a friendship with onewho is worthy I should be his friend, and he is mine always. What is themeaning of this sort of talk that we hear about a faith that they heldonce, but they have outgrown? What is the reason of this expectationthat seems to have spread itself abroad, of necessity that the boy whohad a religion should lose his religion some time or other, and that byand by he should take up a man's religion somewhere upon the other sideof the gulf of infidelity and godlessness, through which he has passedin the mean while? You expect your boy of ten years old to be religiouswith a child's sweet, trusting faith; and you hope that your man offorty and fifty, beaten by the world, is to have found a God who can behis salvation. But the years between? What do you think of your youngmen of fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and thirty years old? To haveoutgrown the boy's faith, and not to have come to the man's faith? Thatseems almost to be an awful fate and destiny which you expect for them. But if our faith be this, then there shall be no need, no chance that aman shall outgrow it. Know Christ with the first conceptions, imperfectand crude, of his boy's life, and he shall go on knowing more and moreof that Christ. That friend, the Christ he knows at twenty-five, shallbe different from the Christ he knew at ten, just exactly as the friendI know at fifty is different from the friend I knew at thirty, twentyyears ago; and yet He is the same friend still, forever opening therichness of an ever richer life, filling it with new experiences, withnew manifestations of Himself. Let him drop something which seemed tohim to be a part of the religion, but was only a temporary phase orcondition of it, going forward with the soul all through the openingstages of life, and at last going forward with the soul into the lifewhere it shall see as all along it has been seen, and know as it hasbeen known. The old legend was that the clothes of the Israelites, whichthe Bible said waxed not old upon them in the desert during those fortyyears, not merely waxed not old those forty years, but grew with theirgrowth, so that the little Hebrew who crossed the Red Sea in his boy'sclothes wore the same clothes when he entered into the Promised Land. Itis the parable of that which comes to the man who has a true Christianfaith, a faith which comes in the personal friendship of Christ, a faithwhich comes not in the belief of certain things about Him, not in thedoing slavishly of certain things which it seemed as if it had been saidby Him that we must do, but in the personal entrance into His nature ina life for Him, in which He is able to send His life down into us. Then there is another thing that people are always thinking, that I hearvery often from men, and that I have no doubt that I should hear frommany of you, one by one. You talk about your earlier religion as if ithad been some sort of a bondage from which you had escaped. How commonit is to hear men, especially in this region, say: "I would be, perhaps, religious, except that there was so much religion forced upon me in myearliest days. I was driven to church when I was a boy, in those oldPuritan days. I went to school, where they forced prayers upon me allthe time. I was made to be religious, so now I cannot be religious. " Wasthere ever a more dreadful thing than for a soul to say that, because, it may be, of the unwisdom, or the imprudence, the overzeal and themistaken zeal of other men, we have not got the full blessing of thatrich, open, free life with Christ which the youth may have, andtherefore we will abandon the privileges of our higher life which isgiven to us in our manlier years? It all comes of this awful way oftalking as if religion were the duty and not the inestimable privilegeof human kind. The Christ stands before us and says, "Come to me. " Yousay, "Must I?" And He answers, "You may. " He will not even say, "Youmust. " You may. And duty loses itself in privilege, and the soul entersinto independence and escapes from its sins, fulfils its life, lays holdof its salvation, becomes eternal, begins to live an eternal life in theaccepted and loving service of Christ. Now just one word, my friends. If this be so, whether you to-day areready to make Christ your master and your friend or not, do not, I begyou, let yourself say that it is a silly or unreasonable belief, thus toknow of a spiritual presence which is here among us, in which God isreally in humanity. Do not let yourselves say, my friends, that the manwho gives himself to Jesus Christ and earnestly tries to enter in deeperand deeper into his life and tries to do his will, that he may know theChrist and know himself in the Christ more and more--dare not call thatbrother a fool, as you have sometimes called your Christian man whowatched scrupulously over his life and prayed, yes, prayed, the thingyou think perhaps the foolishest thing that man can do, the thing thatis the most reasonable act that any man does upon God's earth. If man isman and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing:it is an infinitely foolish thing. When a man for the first time bowsdown upon his knees and prays, "Oh! Christ, come unto me, reveal Thyselfto me, make me to know Thee, that I may receive Thee, make me to beobedient that I may take Thee into my life, " then that man has claimedhis manhood. I beg you, I implore you, I adjure you that, if you be notready to be Christian, you at least will know that the Christian life isthe only true human life, and that the man who becomes thoroughly aChristian sets his face toward the fulfilment of his humanity, and sofor the first time truly is a man. "As many as received Him, "--so thegreat Scripture word runs of this Christ of whom we have beentalking, --"As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become thesons of God. " Just think of it!--the sons of God! The power to become that to as manyas will receive the present Christ. VI. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. [1] "He chose David also His servant, and took him away from the sheepfolds;that he might feed Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance. So hefed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them prudently withall his power. "--PSALM lxxviii. 71, 72, 73. While I speak to you to-day, the body of the President who ruled thispeople, is lying, honored and loved, in our city. It is impossible withthat sacred presence in our midst for me to stand and speak of ordinarytopics which occupy the pulpit. I must speak of him to-day; and Itherefore undertake to do what I had intended to do at some future time, to invite you to study with me the character of Abraham Lincoln, theimpulses of his life and the causes of his death. I know how hard it isto do it rightly, how impossible it is to do it worthily. But I shallspeak with confidence, because I speak to those who love him, and whoseready love will fill out the deficiencies in a picture which my wordswill weakly try to draw. We take it for granted, first of all, that there is an essentialconnection between Mr. Lincoln's character and his violent and bloodydeath. It is no accident, no arbitrary decree of Providence. He lived ashe did, and he died as he did, because he was what he was. The more wesee of events, the less we come to believe in any fate or destiny exceptthe destiny of character. It will be our duty, then, to see what therewas in the character of our great President that created the history ofhis life, and at last produced the catastrophe of his cruel death. Afterthe first trembling horror, the first outburst of indignant sorrow, hasgrown calm, these are the questions which we are bound to ask andanswer. It is not necessary for me even to sketch the biography of Mr. Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky fifty-six years ago, when Kentucky was a pioneerState. He lived, as boy and man, the hard and needy life of abackwoodsman, a farmer, a river boatman, and, finally, by his ownefforts at self-education, of an active, respected, influential citizen, in the half-organized and manifold interests of a new and energeticcommunity. From his boyhood up he lived in direct and vigorous contactwith men and things, not as in older States and easier conditions withwords and theories; and both his moral convictions and his intellectualpinions gathered from that contact a supreme degree of that character bywhich men knew him, that character which is the most distinctivepossession of the best American nature, that almost indescribablequality which we call in general clearness or truth, and which appearsin the physical structure as health, in the moral constitution ashonesty, in the mental structure as sagacity, and in the region ofactive life as practicalness. This one character, with many sides, allshaped by the same essential force and testifying to the same innerinfluences, was what was powerful in him and decreed for him the life hewas to live and the death he was to die. We must take no smaller viewthan this of what he was. Even his physical conditions are not to beforgotten in making up his character. We make too little always of thephysical; certainly we make too little of it here if we lose out ofsight the strength and muscular activity, the power of doing andenduring, which the backwoods-boy inherited from generations ofhard-living ancestors, and appropriated for his own by a long disciplineof bodily toil. He brought to the solution of the question of labor inthis country not merely a mind, but a body thoroughly in sympathy withlabor, full of the culture of labor, bearing witness to the dignity andexcellence of work in every muscle that work had toughened and everysense that work had made clear and true. He could not have brought themind for his task so perfectly, unless he had first brought the bodywhose rugged and stubborn health was always contradicting to him thefalse theories of labor, and always asserting the true. As to the moral and mental powers which distinguished him, allembraceable under this general description of clearness of truth, themost remarkable thing is the way in which they blend with one another, so that it is next to impossible to examine them in separation. A greatmany people have discussed very crudely whether Abraham Lincoln was anintellectual man or not; as if intellect were a thing always of the samesort, which you could precipitate from the other constituents of a man'snature and weigh by itself, and compare by pounds and ounces in this manwith another. The fact is, that in all the simplest characters that linebetween the mental and moral natures is always vague and indistinct. They run together, and in their best combinations you are unable todiscriminate, in the wisdom which is their result, how much is moral andhow much is intellectual. You are unable to tell whether in the wiseacts and words which issue from such a life there is more of therighteousness that comes of a clear conscience, or of the sagacity thatcomes of a clear brain. In more complex characters and under morecomplex conditions, the moral and the mental lives come to be lesshealthily combined. They co-operate, they help each other less. Theycome even to stand over against each other as antagonists; till we havethat vague but most melancholy notion which pervades the life of allelaborate civilization, that goodness and greatness, as we call them, are not to be looked for together, till we expect to see and so do see afeeble and narrow conscientiousness on the one hand, and a bad, unprincipled intelligence on the other, dividing the suffrages of men. It is the great boon of such characters as Mr. Lincoln's, that theyreunite what God has joined together and man has put asunder. In him wasvindicated the greatness of real goodness and the goodness of realgreatness. The twain were one flesh. Not one of all the multitudes whostood and looked up to him for direction with such a loving and implicittrust can tell you to-day whether the wise judgments that he gave camemost from a strong head or a sound heart. If you ask them, they arepuzzled. There are men as good as he, but they do bad things. There aremen as intelligent as he, but they do foolish things. In him goodnessand intelligence combined and made their best result of wisdom. Forperfect truth consists not merely in the right constituents ofcharacter, but in their right and intimate conjunction. This union ofthe mental and moral into a life of admirable simplicity is what we mostadmire in children; but in them it is unsettled and unpractical. Butwhen it is preserved into manhood, deepened into reliability andmaturity, it is that glorified childlikeness, that high and reverendsimplicity, which shames and baffles the most accomplished astuteness, and is chosen by God to fill his purposes when he needs a ruler for hispeople, of faithful and true heart, such as he had who was ourPresident. Another evident quality of such a character as this will be itsfreshness or newness; if we may so speak. Its freshness orreadiness--call it what you will--its ability to take up new duties anddo them in a new way, will result of necessity from its truth andclearness. The simple natures and forces will always be the most pliantones. Water bends and shapes itself to any channel. Air folds and adaptsitself to each new figure. They are the simplest and the most infinitelyactive things in nature. So this nature, in very virtue of itssimplicity, must be also free, always fitting itself to each new need. It will always start from the most fundamental and eternal conditions, and work in the straightest even although they be the newest ways, tothe present prescribed purpose. In one word, it must be broad andindependent and radical. So that freedom and radicalness in thecharacter of Abraham Lincoln were not separate qualities, but thenecessary results of his simplicity and childlikeness and truth. Here then we have some conception of the man. Out of this character camethe life which we admire and the death which we lament to-day. He wascalled in that character to that life and death. It was just the nature, as you see, which a new nation such as ours ought to produce. All theconditions of his birth, his youth, his manhood, which made him what hewas, were not irregular and exceptional, but were the normal conditionsof a new and simple country. His pioneer home in Indiana was a type ofthe pioneer land in which he lived. If ever there was a man who was apart of the time and country he lived in, this was he. The same simplerespect for labor won in the school of work and incorporated into bloodand muscle; the same unassuming loyalty to the simple virtues oftemperance and industry and integrity; the same sagacious judgmentwhich had learned to be quick-eyed and quick-brained in the constantpresence of emergency; the same direct and clear thought about things, social, political, and religious, that was in him supremely, was in thepeople he was sent to rule. Surely, with such a type-man for ruler, there would seem to be but a smooth and even road over which he mightlead the people whose character he represented into the new region ofnational happiness and comfort and usefulness, for which that characterhad been designed. But then we come to the beginning of all trouble. Abraham Lincoln wasthe type-man of the country, but not of the whole country. Thischaracter which we have been trying to describe was the character of anAmerican under the discipline of freedom. There was another Americancharacter which had been developed under the influence of slavery. Therewas no one American character embracing the land. There were twocharacters, with impulses of irrepressible and deadly conflict. Thiscitizen whom we have been honoring and praising represented one. Thewhole great scheme with which he was ultimately brought in conflict, andwhich has finally killed him, represented the other. Beside this nature, true and fresh and new, there was another nature, false and effete andold. The one nature found itself in a new world, and set itself todiscover the new ways for the new duties that were given it. The othernature, full of the false pride of blood, set itself to reproduce in anew world the institutions and the spirit of the old, to build anew thestructure of the feudalism which had been corrupt in its own day, andwhich had been left far behind by the advancing conscience and needs ofthe progressing race. The one nature magnified labor, the other naturedepreciated and despised it. The one honored the laborer, and the otherscorned him. The one was simple and direct; the other, complex, full ofsophistries and self-excuses. The one was free to look all that claimedto be truth in the face, and separate the error from the truth thatmight be in it; the other did not dare to investigate, because its ownestablished prides and systems were dearer to it than the truth itself, and so even truth went about in it doing the work of error. The one wasready to state broad principles, of the brotherhood of man, theuniversal fatherhood and justice of God, however imperfectly it mightrealize them in practice; the other denied even the principles, and sodug deep and laid below its special sins the broad foundation of aconsistent, acknowledged sinfulness. In a word, one nature was full ofthe influences of Freedom, the other nature was full of the influencesof Slavery. In general, these two regions of our national life were separated by ageographical boundary. One was the spirit of the North, the other wasthe spirit of the South. But the Southern nature was by no means all aSouthern thing. There it had an organized, established form, a certaindefinite, established institution about which it clustered. Here, lacking advantage, it lived in less expressive ways and so lived moreweakly. There, there was the horrible sacrament of slavery, the outwardand visible sign round which the inward and spiritual temper gatheredand kept itself alive. But who doubts that among us the spirit ofslavery lived and thrived? Its formal existence had been swept away fromone State after another, partly on conscientious, partly on economicalgrounds, but its spirit was here, in every sympathy that Northern windscarried to the listening ear of the Southern slave-holder, and in everyoppression of the weak by the strong, every proud assumption of idlenessover labor which echoed the music of Southern life back to us. Here inour midst lived that worse and falser nature, side by side with the trueand better nature which God meant should be the nature of Americans, ofwhich he was shaping out the type and champion in his chosen David ofthe sheepfold. Here then we have the two. The history of our country for many years isthe history of how these two elements of American life approachedcollision. They wrought their separate reactions on each other. Mendebate and quarrel even now about the rise of Northern Abolitionism, about whether the Northern Abolitionists were right or wrong, whetherthey did harm or good. How vain the quarrel is! It was inevitable. Itwas inevitable in the nature of things that two such natures living heretogether should be set violently against each other. It is inevitable, till man be far more unfeeling and untrue to his convictions than he hasalways been, that a great wrong asserting itself vehemently shouldarouse to no less vehement assertion the opposing right. The only wonderis that there was not more of it. The only wonder is that so few wereswept away to take by an impulse they could not resist their stand ofhatred to the wicked institution. The only wonder is, that only onebrave, reckless man came forth to cast himself, almost single-handed, with a hopeless hope, against the proud power that he hated, and trustto the influence of a soul marching on into the history of hiscountrymen to stir them to a vindication of the truth he loved. At anyrate, whether the Abolitionists were wrong or right, there grew upabout their violence, as there always will about the extremism ofextreme reformers, a great mass of feeling, catching their spirit andasserting it firmly, though in more moderate degrees and methods. Aboutthe nucleus of Abolitionism grew up a great American Anti-Slaverydetermination, which at last gathered strength enough to take its standto insist upon the checking and limiting the extension of the power ofslavery, and to put the type-man, whom God had been preparing for thetask, before the world, to do the work on which it had resolved. Thencame discontent, secession, treason. The two American natures, longadvancing to encounter, met at last, and a whole country, yet tremblingwith the shock, bears witness how terrible the meeting was. Thus I have tried briefly to trace out the gradual course by which Godbrought the character which He designed to be the controlling characterof this new world into distinct collision with the hostile characterwhich it was to destroy and absorb, and set it in the person of itstype-man in the seat of highest power. The character formed under thediscipline of Freedom and the character formed under the discipline ofSlavery developed all their difference and met in hostile conflict whenthis war began. Notice, it was not only in what he did and was towardsthe slave, it was in all he did and was everywhere that we accept Mr. Lincoln's character as the true result of our free life andinstitutions. Nowhere else could have come forth that genuine love ofthe people, which in him no one could suspect of being either the cheapflattery of the demagogue or the abstract philanthropy of thephilosopher, which made our President, while he lived, the centre of agreat household land, and when he died so cruelly, made every humblesthousehold thrill with a sense of personal bereavement which the death ofrulers is not apt to bring. Nowhere else than out of the life of freedomcould have come that personal unselfishness and generosity which made sogracious a part of this good man's character. How many soldiers feel yetthe pressure of a strong hand that clasped theirs once as they lay sickand weak in the dreary hospital! How many ears will never lose thethrill of some kind word he spoke--he who could speak so kindly topromise a kindness that always matched his word! How often he surprisedthe land with a clemency which made even those who questioned his policylove him the more for what they called his weakness, --seeing how the manin whom God had most embodied the discipline of Freedom not only couldnot be a slave, but could not be a tyrant! In the heartiness of hismirth and his enjoyment of simple joys; in the directness and shrewdnessof perception which constituted his wit; in the untired, undiscouragedfaith in human nature which he always kept; and perhaps above all in theplainness and quiet, unostentatious earnestness and independence of hisreligious life, in his humble love and trust of God--in all, it was acharacter such as only Freedom knows how to make. Now it was in this character, rather than in any mere politicalposition, that the fitness of Mr. Lincoln to stand forth in the struggleof the two American natures really lay. We are told that he did not cometo the Presidential chair pledged to the abolition of Slavery. When willwe learn that with all true men it is not what they intend to do, but itis what the qualities of their natures bind them to do, that determinestheir career! The President came to his power full of the blood, strongin the strength of Freedom. He came there free, and hating slavery. Hecame there, leaving on record words like these spoken three years beforeand never contradicted. He had said, "A house divided against itselfcannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently, halfslave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do notexpect the house to fall; but I expect it will cease to be divided. Itwill become all one thing or all the other. " When the question came, heknew which thing he meant that it should be. His whole nature settledthat question for him. Such a man must always live as he used to say helived (and was blamed for saying it) "controlled by events, notcontrolling them. " And with a reverent and clear mind, to be controlledby events means to be controlled by God. For such a man there was nohesitation when God brought him up face to face with Slavery and put thesword into his hand and said, "Strike it down dead. " He was a willingservant then. If ever the face of a man writing solemn words glowed witha solemn joy, it must have been the face of Abraham Lincoln, as he bentover the page where the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was growinginto shape, and giving manhood and freedom as he wrote it to hundreds ofthousands of his fellow-men. Here was a work in which his whole naturecould rejoice. Here was an act that crowned the whole culture of hislife. All the past, the free boyhood in the woods, the free youth uponthe farm, the free manhood in the honorable citizen's employments--allhis freedom gathered and completed itself in this. And as the swarthymultitudes came in, ragged, and tired, and hungry, and ignorant, butfree forever from anything but the memorial scars of the fetters and thewhip, singing rude songs in which the new triumph of freedom struggledand heaved below the sad melody that had been shaped for bondage; as intheir camps and hovels there grew up to their half-superstitious eyesthe image of a great Father almost more than man, to whom they owedtheir freedom, --were they not half right? For it was not to one man, driven by stress of policy, or swept off by a whim of pity, that thenoble act was due. It was to the American nature, long kept by God inhis own intentions till his time should come, at last emerging intosight and power, and bound up and embodied in this best and mostAmerican of all Americans, to whom we and those poor frightened slavesat last might look up together and love to call him, with one voice, ourFather. Thus, we have seen something of what the character of Mr. Lincoln was, and how it issued in the life he lived. It remains for us to see how itresulted also in the terrible death which has laid his murdered bodyhere in our town among lamenting multitudes to-day. It is not a hardquestion, though it is sad to answer. We saw the two natures, the natureof Slavery and the nature of Freedom, at last set against each other, come at last to open war. Both fought, fought long, fought bravely; buteach, as was perfectly natural, fought with the tools and in the wayswhich its own character had made familiar to it. The character ofSlavery was brutal, barbarous, and treacherous; and so the whole historyof the slave power during the war has been full of ways of warfarebrutal, barbarous, and treacherous, beyond anything that men bred infreedom could have been driven to by the most hateful passions. It isnot to be marvelled at. It is not to be set down as the special sin ofthe war. It goes back beyond that. It is the sin of the system. It isthe barbarism of Slavery. When Slavery went to war to save its life, what wonder if its barbarism grew barbarous a hundred-fold! One would be attempting a task which once was almost hopeless, but whichnow is only needless, if he set himself to convince a Northerncongregation that Slavery was a barbarian institution. It would behardly more necessary to try to prove how its barbarism has shown itselfduring this war. The same spirit which was blind to the wickedness ofbreaking sacred ties, of separating man and wife, of beating women tillthey dropped down dead, of organizing licentiousness and sin intocommercial systems, of forbidding knowledge and protecting itself withignorance, of putting on its arms and riding out to steal a State at thebeleaguered ballot-box away from freedom--in one word (for its simplestdefinition is its worst dishonor), the spirit that gave man theownership in man in time of peace, has found out yet more terriblebarbarisms for the time of war. It has hewed and burned the bodies ofthe dead. It has starved and mutilated its helpless prisoners. It hasdealt by truth, not as men will in a time of excitement, lightly andwith frequent violations, but with a cool, and deliberate, andsystematic contempt. It has sent its agents into Northern towns to firepeaceful hotels where hundreds of peaceful men and women slept. It hasundermined the prisons where its victims starved, and made all ready toblow with one blast their wretched life away. It has delighted in thelowest and basest scurrility even on the highest and most honorablelips. It has corrupted the graciousness of women and killed out thetruth of men. I do not count up the terrible catalogue because I like to, nor becauseI wish to stir your hearts to passion. Even now, you and I have no rightto indulge in personal hatred to the men who did these things. But weare not doing right by ourselves, by the President that we have lost, or by God who had a purpose in our losing him, unless we know thoroughlythat it was this same spirit which we have seen to be a tyrant in peaceand a savage in war, that has crowned itself with the working of thisfinal woe. It was the conflict of the two American natures, the falseand the true. It was Slavery and Freedom that met in their tworepresentatives, the assassin and the President; and the victim of thelast desperate struggle of the dying Slavery lies dead to-day inIndependence Hall. Solemnly, in the sight of God, I charge this murder where it belongs, onSlavery. I dare not stand here in His sight, and before Him or you speakdoubtful and double-meaning words of vague repentance, as if we hadkilled our President. We have sins enough, but we have not done thissin, save as by weak concessions and timid compromises we have let thespirit of Slavery grow strong and ripe for such a deed. In the barbarismof Slavery the foul act and its foul method had their birth. By all thegoodness that there was in him; by all the love we had for him (and whoshall tell how great it was); by all the sorrow that has burdened downthis desolate and dreadful week, --I charge this murder where it belongs, on Slavery. I bid you to remember where the charge belongs, to write iton the door-posts of your mourning houses, to teach it to yourwondering children, to give it to the history of these times, that alltimes to come may hate and dread the sin that killed our noblestPresident. If ever anything were clear, this is the clearest. Is there the manalive who thinks that Abraham Lincoln was shot just for himself; that itwas that one man for whom the plot was laid? The gentlest, kindest, mostindulgent man that ever ruled a State! The man who knew not how to speaka word of harshness or how to make a foe! Was it he for whom themurderer lurked with a mere private hate? It was not he, but what hestood for. It was Law and Liberty, it was Government and Freedom, against which the hate gathered and the treacherous shot was fired. AndI know not how the crime of him who shoots at Law and Liberty in thecrowded glare of a great theatre differs from theirs who have levelledtheir aim at the same great beings from behind a thousand ambuscades andon a hundred battle-fields of this long war. Every general in the field, and every false citizen in our midst at home, who has plotted andlabored to destroy the lives of the soldiers of the Republic, is brotherto him who did this deed. The American nature, the American truths, ofwhich our President was the anointed and supreme embodiment, have beenembodied in multitudes of heroes who marched unknown and fell unnoticedin our ranks. For them, just as for him, character decreed a life and adeath. The blood of all of them I charge on the same head. Slavery armedwith Treason was their murderer. Men point out to us the absurdity and folly of this awful crime. Againand again we hear men say, "It was the worst thing for themselves theycould have done. They have shot a representative man, and the cause herepresented grows stronger and sterner by his death. Can it be that sowise a devil was so foolish here? Must it not have been the act of onepoor madman, born and nursed in his own reckless brain?" My friends, letus understand this matter. It was a foolish act. Its folly was onlyequalled by its wickedness. It was a foolish act. But when did sin beginto be wise? When did wickedness learn wisdom? When did the fool stopsaying in his heart, "There is no God, " and acting godlessly in theabsurdity of his impiety? The cause that Abraham Lincoln died for shallgrow stronger by his death, --stronger and sterner. Stronger to set itspillars deep into the structure of our nation's life; sterner to executethe justice of the Lord upon his enemies. Stronger to spread its armsand grasp our whole land into freedom; sterner to sweep the last poorghost of Slavery out of our haunted homes. But while we feel the follyof this act, let not its folly hide its wickedness. It was thewickedness of Slavery putting on a foolishness for which its wickednessand that alone is responsible, that robbed the nation of a President andthe people of a father. And remember this, that the folly of the Slavepower in striking the representative of Freedom, and thinking thatthereby it killed Freedom itself, is only a folly that we shall echo ifwe dare to think that in punishing the representatives of Slavery whodid this deed, we are putting Slavery to death. Dispersing armies andhanging traitors, imperatively as justice and necessity may demand themboth, are not killing the spirit out of which they sprang. The traitormust die because he has committed treason. The murderer must die becausehe has committed murder. Slavery must die, because out of it, and italone, came forth the treason of the traitor and the murder of themurderer. Do not say that it is dead. It is not, while its essentialspirit lives. While one man counts another man his born inferior for thecolor of his skin, while both in North and South prejudices andpractices, which the law cannot touch, but which God hates, keep alivein our people's hearts the spirit of the old iniquity, it is not dead. The new American nature must supplant the old. We must grow like ourPresident, in his truth, his independence, his religion, and his widehumanity. Then the character by which he died shall be in us, and by itwe shall live. Then peace shall come that knows no war, and law thatknows no treason; and full of his spirit a grateful land shall gatherround his grave, and in the daily psalm of prosperous and righteousliving, thank God forever for his life and death. So let him lie here in our midst to-day, and let our people go and bendwith solemn thoughtfulness and look upon his face and read the lessonsof his burial. As he paused here on his journey from the Western homeand told us what by the help of God he meant to do, so let him pauseupon his way back to his Western grave and tell us with a silence moreeloquent than words how bravely, how truly, by the strength of God, hedid it. God brought him up as he brought David up from the sheepfolds tofeed Jacob, his people, and Israel, his inheritance. He came up inearnestness and faith, and he goes back in triumph. As he pauses hereto-day, and from his cold lips bids us bear witness how he has met theduty that was laid on him, what can we say out of our full hearts butthis--"He fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled themprudently with all his power. " The _Shepherd of the People_! that oldname that the best rulers ever craved. What ruler ever won it like thisdead President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us withcounsel when we were in doubt, with inspiration when we sometimesfaltered, with caution when we would be rash, with calm, clear, trustfulcheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts were dark. He fedhungry souls all over the country with sympathy and consolation. Hespread before the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion andpatriotism, on which the land grew strong. He fed us with solemn, solidtruths. He taught us the sacredness of government, the wickedness oftreason. He made our souls glad and vigorous with the love of libertythat was in his. He showed us how to love truth and yet becharitable--how to hate wrong and all oppression, and yet not treasureone personal injury or insult. He fed _all_ his people, from the highestto the lowest, from the most privileged down to the most enslaved. Bestof all, he fed us with a reverent and genuine religion. He spread beforeus the love and fear of God just in that shape in which we need themmost, and out of his faithful service of a higher Master who of us hasnot taken and eaten and grown strong? "He fed them with a faithful andtrue heart. " Yes, till the last. For at the last, behold him standingwith hand reached out to feed the South with mercy and the North withcharity, and the whole land with peace, when the Lord who had sent himcalled him and his work was done! He stood once on the battle-field of our own State, and said of thebrave men who had saved it words as noble as any countryman of ours everspoke. Let us stand in the country he has saved, and which is to be hisgrave and monument, and say of Abraham Lincoln what he said of thesoldiers who had died at Gettysburg. He stood there with their gravesbefore him, and these are the words he said:-- "We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men who struggled here have consecrated it far beyond our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; and this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth. " May God make us worthy of the memory of Abraham Lincoln! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: A sermon preached in Philadelphia, while the body of thePresident was lying in the city. ]