NEW TABERNACLE SERMONSBYT. DE WITT TALMAGE, D. D. 

AUTHOR OF"_CRUMBS SWEPT UP_, " "_THE ABOMINATIONS OF MODERN SOCIETY_, " etc. 

Delivered in the Brooklyn Tabernacle. 

VOL. I

NEW YORK:GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 17 TO 27 VANDEWATER STREET. 1886. 

[Illustration: T. De Witt Talmage]

 _Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by_ GEORGE MUNRO, _in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C. _

CONTENTS. 

 PAGE BRAWN AND MUSCLE 7 THE PLEIADES AND ORION 21 THE QUEEN'S VISIT 34 VICARIOUS SUFFERING 45 POSTHUMOUS OPPORTUNITY 59 THE LORD'S RAZOR 72 WINDOWS TOWARD JERUSALEM 83 STORMED AND TAKEN 95 ALL THE WORLD AKIN 108 A MOMENTOUS QUEST 119 THE GREAT ASSIZE 134 THE ROAD TO THE CITY 147 THE RANSOMLESS 158 THE THREE GROUPS 171 THE INSIGNIFICANT 184 THE THREE RINGS 197 HOW HE CAME TO SAY IT 209 CASTLE JESUS 221 STRIPPING THE SLAIN 233 SOLD OUT 246 SUMMER TEMPTATIONS 259 THE BANISHED QUEEN 274 THE DAY WE LIVE IN 285 CAPITAL AND LABOR 297 DESPOTISM OF THE NEEDLE 311 TOBACCO AND OPIUM 325 WHY ARE SATAN AND SIN PERMITTED? 339

BRAWN AND MUSCLE. 

 "And Samson went down to Timnath. "--JUDGES xiv: 1. 

There are two sides to the character of Samson. The one phase of hislife, if followed into the particulars, would administer to thegrotesque and the mirthful; but there is a phase of his characterfraught with lessons of solemn and eternal import. To these graverlessons we devote our morning sermon. 

This giant no doubt in early life gave evidences of what he was to be. It is almost always so. There were two Napoleons--the boy Napoleon andthe man Napoleon--but both alike; two Howards--the boy Howard and theman Howard--but both alike; two Samsons--the boy Samson and the manSamson--but both alike. This giant was no doubt the hero of theplayground, and nothing could stand before his exhibitions of youthfulprowess. At eighteen years of age he was betrothed to the daughter ofa Philistine. Going down toward Timnath, a lion came out upon him, and, although this young giant was weaponless, he seized the monsterby the long mane and shook him as a hungry hound shakes a March hare, and made his bones crack, and left him by the wayside bleeding underthe smiting of his fist and the grinding heft of his heel. 

There he stands, looming up above other men, a mountain of flesh, hisarms bunched with muscle that can lift the gate of a city, taking anattitude defiant of everything. His hair had never been cut, and itrolled down in seven great plaits over his shoulders, adding to hisbulk, fierceness, and terror. The Philistines want to conquer him, andtherefore they must find out where the secret of his strength lies. 

There is a dissolute woman living in the valley of Sorek by the nameof Delilah. They appoint her the agent in the case. The Philistinesare secreted in the same building, and then Delilah goes to work andcoaxes Samson to tell what is the secret of his strength. "Well, " hesays, "if you should take seven green withes such as they fasten wildbeasts with and put them around me I should be perfectly powerless. "So she binds him with the seven green withes. Then she claps her handsand says: "They come--the Philistines!" and he walks out as thoughthey were no impediment. She coaxes him again, and says: "Now tell methe secret of this great strength?" and he replies: "If you shouldtake some ropes that have never been used and tie me with them Ishould be just like other men. " She ties him with the ropes, claps herhands, and shouts: "They come--the Philistines!" He walks out aseasily as he did before--not a single obstruction. She coaxes himagain, and he says: "Now, if you should take these seven long plaitsof hair, and by this house-loom weave them into a web, I could not getaway. " So the house-loom is rolled up, and the shuttle flies backwardand forward and the long plaits of hair are woven into a web. Then sheclaps her hands, and says: "They come--the Philistines!" He walks outas easily as he did before, dragging a part of the loom with him. 

But after awhile she persuades him to tell the truth. He says: "If youshould take a razor or shears and cut off this long hair, I should bepowerless and in the hands of my enemies. " Samson sleeps, and that shemay not wake him up during the process of shearing, help is called in. You know that the barbers of the East have such a skillful way ofmanipulating the head to this very day that, instead of waking up asleeping man, they will put a man wide awake sound asleep. I hear theblades of the shears grinding against each other, and I see the longlocks falling off. The shears or razor accomplishes what green withesand new ropes and house-loom could not do. Suddenly she claps herhands, and says: "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!" He rouses upwith a struggle, but his strength is all gone. He is in the hands ofhis enemies. 

I hear the groan of the giant as they take his eyes out, and then Isee him staggering on in his blindness, feeling his way as he goes ontoward Gaza. The prison door is open, and the giant is thrust in. Hesits down and puts his hands on the mill-crank, which, with exhaustinghorizontal motion, goes day after day, week after week, month aftermonth--work, work, work! The consternation of the world in captivity, his locks shorn, his eyes punctured, grinding corn in Gaza!

I. First of all, behold in this giant of the text that physical poweris not always an index of moral power. He was a huge man--the lionfound it out, and the three thousand men whom he slew found it out;yet he was the subject of petty revenges and out-gianted by lowpassion. I am far from throwing any discredit upon physical stamina. There are those who seem to have great admiration for delicacy andsickliness of constitution. I never could see any glory in weak nervesor sick headache. Whatever effort in our day is made to make the menand women more robust should have the favor of every good citizen aswell as of every Christian. Gymnastics may be positively religious. 

Good people sometimes ascribe to a wicked heart what they ought toascribe to a slow liver. The body and the soul are such near neighborsthat they often catch each other's diseases. Those who never saw asick day, and who, like Hercules, show the giant in the cradle, havemore to answer for than those who are the subjects of life-longinfirmities. He who can lift twice as much as you can, and walk twiceas far, and work twice as long, will have a double account to meet inthe judgment. 

How often it is that you do not find physical energy indicative ofspiritual power! If a clear head is worth more than one dizzy withperpetual vertigo--if muscles with the play of health in them areworth more than those drawn up in chronic "rheumatics"--if an eyequick to catch passing objects is better than one with vision dim anduncertain--then God will require of us efficiency just in proportionto what he has given us. Physical energy ought to be a type of moralpower. We ought to have as good digestion of truth as we have capacityto assimilate food. Our spiritual hearing ought to be as good as ourphysical hearing. Our spiritual taste ought to be as clear as ourtongue. Samsons in body, we ought to be giants in moral power. 

But while you find a great many men who realize that they ought to usetheir money aright, and use their intelligence aright, how few men youfind aware of the fact that they ought to use their physical organismaright! With every thump of the heart there is something saying, "Work! work!" and, lest we should complain that we have no tools towork with, God gives us our hands and feet, with every knuckle, andwith every joint, and with every muscle saying to us, "Lay hold and dosomething. "

But how often it is that men with physical strength do not serveChrist! They are like a ship full manned and full rigged, capable ofvast tonnage, able to endure all stress of weather, yet swinging idlyat the docks, when these men ought to be crossing and recrossing thegreat ocean of human suffering and sin with God's supplies of mercy. How often it is that physical strength is used in doing positivedamage, or in luxurious ease, when, with sleeves rolled up and bronzedbosom, fearless of the shafts of opposition, it ought to be layinghold with all its might, and tugging away to lift up this sunken wreckof a world. 

It is a most shameful fact that much of the business of the Church andof the world must be done by those comparatively invalid. RichardBaxter, by reason of his diseases, all his days sitting in the door ofthe tomb, yet writing more than a hundred volumes, and sending out aninfluence for God that will endure as long as the "Saints' EverlastingRest. " Edward Payson, never knowing a well day, yet how he preached, and how he wrote, helping thousands of dying souls like himself toswim in a sea of glory! And Robert M'Cheyne, a walking skeleton, yetyou know what he did in Dundee, and how he shook Scotland with zealfor God. Philip Doddridge, advised by his friends, because of hisillness, not to enter the ministry, yet you know what he did for the"rise and progress of religion" in the Church and in the world. 

Wilberforce was told by his doctors that he could not live afortnight, yet at that very time entering upon philanthropicenterprises that demanded the greatest endurance and persistence. Robert Hall, suffering excruciations, so that often in his pulpitwhile preaching he would stop and lie down on a sofa, then getting upagain to preach about heaven until the glories of the celestial citydropped on the multitude, doing more work, perhaps, than almost anywell man in his day. 

Oh, how often it is that men with great physical endurance are not asgreat in moral and spiritual stature! While there are achievements forthose who are bent all their days with sickness--achievements ofpatience, achievements of Christian endurance--I call upon men ofhealth to-day, men of muscle, men of nerve, men of physical power, todevote themselves to the Lord. Giants in body, you ought to be giantsin soul. 

II. Behold also, in the story of my text, illustration of the fact ofthe damage that strength can do if it be misguided. It seems to methat this man spent a great deal of his time in doing evil--thisSamson of my text. To pay a bet which he had lost by guessing of hisriddle he robs and kills thirty people. He was not only gigantic instrength, but gigantic in mischief, and a type of those men in allages of the world who, powerful in body or mind, or any faculty ofsocial position or wealth, have used their strength for iniquitouspurposes. 

It is not the small, weak men of the day who do the damage. Thesesmall men who go swearing and loafing about your stores and shops andbanking-houses, assailing Christ and the Bible and the Church--they donot do the damage. They have no influence. They are vermin that youcrush with your foot. But it is the giants of the day, the misguidedgiants, giants in physical power, or giants in mental acumen, orgiants in social position, or giants in wealth, who do the damage. 

The men with sharp pens that stab religion and throw their poison allthrough our literature; the men who use the power of wealth tosanction iniquity, and bribe justice, and make truth and honor bow totheir golden scepter. 

Misguided giants--look out for them! In the middle and the latter partof the last century no doubt there were thousands of men in Paris andEdinburgh and London who hated God and blasphemed the name of theAlmighty; but they did but little mischief--they were small men, insignificant men. Yet there were giants in those days. 

Who can calculate the soul-havoc of a Rousseau, going on with a veryenthusiasm of iniquity, with fiery imagination seizing upon all theimpulsive natures of his day? or David Hume, who employed his life asa spider employs its summer, in spinning out silken webs to trap theunwary? or Voltaire, the most learned man of his day, marshaling agreat host of skeptics, and leading them out in the dark land ofinfidelity? or Gibbon, who showed an uncontrollable grudge againstreligion in his history of one of the most fascinating periods of theworld's existence--the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire--a book inwhich, with all the splendors of his genius, he magnified the errorsof Christian disciples, while, with a sparseness of notice that nevercan be forgiven, he treated of the Christian heroes of whom the worldwas not worthy?

Oh, men of stout physical health, men of great mental stature, men ofhigh social position, men of great power of any sort, I want you tounderstand your power, and I want you to know that that power devotedto God will be a crown on earth, to you typical of a crown in heaven;but misguided, bedraggled in sin, administrative of evil, God willthunder against you with His condemnation in the day when millionaireand pauper, master and slave, king and subject, shall stand side byside in the judgment, and money-bags, and judicial ermine, and royalrobe shall be riven with the lightnings. 

Behold also, how a giant may be slain of a woman. Delilah started thetrain of circumstances that pulled down the temple of Dagon aboutSamson's ears. And tens of thousands of giants have gone down to deathand hell through the same impure fascinations. It seems to me that itis high time that pulpit and platform and printing-press speak outagainst the impurities of modern society. Fastidiousness and Pruderysay: "Better not speak--you will rouse up adverse criticism; you willmake worse what you want to make better; better deal in glitteringgeneralities; the subject is too delicate for polite ears. " But therecomes a voice from heaven overpowering the mincing sentimentalities ofthe day, saying: "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like atrumpet, and show my people their transgressions and the house ofJacob their sins. "

The trouble is that when people write or speak upon this theme theyare apt to cover it up with the graces of belles-lettres, so that thecrime is made attractive instead of repulsive. Lord Byron in "DonJuan" adorns this crime until it smiles like a May queen. Michelet, the great French writer, covers it up with bewitching rhetoric untilit glows like the rising sun, when it ought to be made loathsome as asmall-pox hospital. There are to-day influences abroad which, ifunresisted by the pulpit and the printing-press, will turn New Yorkand Brooklyn into Sodom and Gomorrah, fit only for the storm of fireand brimstone that whelmed the cities of the plain. 

You who are seated in your Christian homes, compassed by moral andreligious restraints, do not realize the gulf of iniquity that boundsyou on the north and the south and the east and the west. While Ispeak there are tens of thousands of men and women going over theawful plunge of an impure life; and while I cry to God for mercy upontheir souls, I call upon you to marshal in the defense of your homes, your Church and your nation. There is a banqueting hall that you havenever heard described. You know all about the feast of Ahasuerus, where a thousand lords sat. You know all about Belshazzar's carousal, where the blood of the murdered king spurted into the faces of thebanqueters. You may know of the scene of riot and wassail, when therewas set before Esopus one dish of food that cost $400, 000. But I speaknow of a different banqueting hall. Its roof is fretted with fire. Itsfloor is tesselated with fire. Its chalices are chased with fire. Itssong is a song of fire. Its walls are buttresses of fire. Solomonrefers to it when he says: "Her guests are in the depths of hell. "

Our American communities are suffering from the gospel of FreeLoveism, which, fifteen or twenty years ago, was preached on theplatform and in some of the churches of this country. I charge uponFree Loveism that it has blighted innumerable homes, and that it hassent innumerable souls to ruin. Free Loveism is bestial; it isworse--it is infernal! It has furnished this land with about onethousand divorces annually. In one county in the State of Indiana itfurnished eleven divorces in one day before dinner. It has roused upelopements, North, South, East, and West. You can hardly take up apaper but you read of an elopement. As far as I can understand thedoctrine of Free Loveism it is this: That every man ought to havesomebody else's wife, and every wife somebody else's husband. They donot like our Christian organization of society, and I wish they wouldall elope, the wretches of one sex taking the wretches of the other, and start to-morrow morning for the great Sahara Desert, until thesimoom shall sweep seven feet of sand all over them, and not onepassing caravan for the next five hundred years bring back onemiserable bone of their carcasses! Free Loveism! It is thedouble-distilled extract of nux vomica, ratsbane, and adder's tongue. Never until society goes back to the old Bible, and hears its eulogyof purity and its anathema of uncleanness--never until then will thisevil be extirpated. 

IV. Behold also in this giant of the text and in the giant of our owncentury that great physical power must crumble and expire. The Samsonof the text long ago went away. He fought the lion. He fought thePhilistines. He could fight anything, but death was too much for him. He may have required a longer grave and a broader grave; but the tombnevertheless was his terminus. 

If, then, we are to be compelled to go out of this world, where are weto go to? This body and soul must soon part. What shall be the destinyof the former I know--dust to dust. But what shall be the destiny ofthe latter? Shall it rise into the companionship of the white-robed, whose sins Christ has slain? or will it go down among the unbelieving, who tried to gain the world and save their souls, but were swindledout of both? Blessed be God, we have a Champion! He is so styled inthe Bible: A Champion who has conquered death and hell, and he isready to fight all our battles from the first to the last. "Who isthis that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, mighty tosave?" If we follow in the wake of that Champion death has no powerand the grave no victory. The worst man trusting in Him shall have hisdying pangs alleviated and his future illumined. 

V. In the light of this subject I want to call your attention to afact which may not have been rightly considered by five men in thishouse, and that is the fact that we must be brought into judgment forthe employment of our physical organism. Shoulder, brain, hand, foot--we must answer in judgment for the use we have made of them. Have they been used for the elevation of society or for itsdepression? In proportion as our arm is strong and our step elasticwill our account at last be intensified. Thousands of sermons arepreached to invalids. I preach this sermon this morning to stout menand healthful women. We must give to God an account for the right useof this physical organism. 

These invalids have comparatively little to account for, perhaps. Theycould not lift twenty pounds. They could not walk half a mile withoutsitting down to rest. In the preparation of this subject I have saidto myself, how shall I account to God in judgment for the use of abody which never knew one moment of real sickness? Rising up injudgment, standing beside the men and women who had only littlephysical energy, and yet consumed that energy in a conflagration ofreligious enthusiasm, how will we feel abashed!

Oh, men of the strong arm and the stout heart, what use are you makingof your physical forces? Will you be able to stand the test of thatday when we must answer for the use of every talent, whether it were aphysical energy, or a mental acumen, or a spiritual power?

The day approaches, and I see one who in this world was an invalid, and as she stands before the throne of God to answer she says, "I wassick all my days. I had but very little strength, but I did as well asI could in being kind to those who were more sick and moresuffering. " And Christ will say, "Well done, faithful servant. "

And then a little child will stand before the throne, and she willsay, "On earth I had a curvature of the spine, and I was very weak, and I was very sick; but I used to gather flowers out of the wild-woodand bring them to my sick mother, and she was comforted when she sawthe sweet flowers out of the wild-wood. I didn't do much, but I didsomething. " And Christ shall say, as He takes her up in His arm andkisses her, "Well done, well done, faithful servant; enter thou intothe joy of thy Lord. "

What, then, will be said to us--we to whom the Lord gave physicalstrength and continuous health? Hark! it thunders again. The judgment!the judgment!

I said to an old Scotch minister, who was one of the best friends Iever had, "Doctor, did you ever know Robert Pollock, the Scotch poet, who wrote 'The Course of Time'?" "Oh, yes, " he replied, "I knew himwell; I was his classmate. " And then the doctor went on to tell me howthat the writing of "The Course of Time" exhausted the health ofRobert Pollock, and he expired. It seems as if no man could have sucha glimpse of the day for which all other days were made as RobertPollock had, and long survive that glimpse. In the description of thatday he says, among other things:

 "Begin the woe, ye woods, and tell it to the doleful winds And doleful winds wail to the howling hills, And howling hills mourn to the dismal vales, And dismal vales sigh to the sorrowing brooks, And sorrowing brooks weep to the weeping stream, And weeping stream awake the groaning deep; Ye heavens, great archway of the universe, put sack-cloth on; And ocean, robe thyself in garb of widowhood, And gather all thy waves into a groan, and utter it. Long, loud, deep, piercing, dolorous, immense. The occasion asks it, Nature dies, and angels come to lay her in her grave. "

What Robert Pollock saw in poetic dream, you and I will see inpositive reality--the judgment! the judgment!

THE PLEIADES AND ORION. 

 "Seek Him that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion. "--AMOS. V. 8

A country farmer wrote this text--Amos of Tekoa. He plowed the earthand threshed the grain by a new threshing-machine just invented, asformerly the cattle trod out the grain. He gathered the fruit of thesycamore-tree, and scarified it with an iron comb just before it wasgetting ripe, as it was necessary and customary in that way to takefrom it the bitterness. He was the son of a poor shepherd, andstuttered; but before the stammering rustic the Philistines, andSyrians, and Phoenicians, and Moabites, and Ammonites, and Edomites, and Israelites trembled. 

Moses was a law-giver, Daniel was a prince, Isaiah a courtier, andDavid a king; but Amos, the author of my text, was a peasant, and, asmight be supposed, nearly all his parallelisms are pastoral, hisprophecy full of the odor of new-mown hay, and the rattle of locusts, and the rumble of carts with sheaves, and the roar of wild beastsdevouring the flock while the shepherd came out in their defense. Hewatched the herds by day, and by night inhabited a booth made out ofbushes, so that through these branches he could see the stars allnight long, and was more familiar with them than we who have tightroofs to our houses, and hardly ever see the stars except among thetall brick chimneys of the great towns. But at seasons of the yearwhen the herds were in special danger, he would stay out in the openfield all through the darkness, his only shelter the curtain of thenight, heaven, with the stellar embroideries and silvered tassels oflunar light. 

What a life of solitude, all alone with his herds! Poor Amos! And attwelve o'clock at night, hark to the wolf's bark, and the lion's roar, and the bear's growl, and the owl's te-whit-te-whos, and the serpent'shiss, as he unwittingly steps too near while moving through thethickets! So Amos, like other herdsmen, got the habit of studying themap of the heavens, because it was so much of the time spread outbefore him. He noticed some stars advancing and others receding. Heassociated their dawn and setting with certain seasons of the year. Hehad a poetic nature, and he read night by night, and month by month, and year by year, the poem of the constellations, divinely rhythmic. But two rosettes of stars especially attracted his attention whileseated on the ground, or lying on his back under the open scroll ofthe midnight heavens--the Pleiades, or Seven Stars, and Orion. Theformer group this rustic prophet associated with the spring, as itrises about the first of May. The latter he associated with thewinter, as it comes to the meridian in January. The Pleiades, or SevenStars, connected with all sweetness and joy; Orion, the herald of thetempest. The ancients were the more apt to study the physiognomy andjuxtaposition of the heavenly bodies, because they thought they had aspecial influence upon the earth; and perhaps they were right. If themoon every few hours lifts and lets down the tides of the AtlanticOcean, and the electric storms of last year in the sun, by allscientific admission, affected the earth, why not the stars haveproportionate effect?

And there are some things which make me think that it may not havebeen all superstition which connected the movements and appearance ofthe heavenly bodies with great moral events on earth. Did not a meteorrun on evangelistic errand on the first Christmas night, and designatethe rough cradle of our Lord? Did not the stars in their courses fightagainst Sisera? Was it merely coincidental that before the destructionof Jerusalem the moon was eclipsed for twelve consecutive nights? Didit merely happen so that a new star appeared in constellationCassiopeia, and then disappeared just before King Charles IX. OfFrance, who was responsible for St. Bartholomew massacre, died? Was itwithout significance that in the days of the Roman Emperor Justinianwar and famine were preceded by the dimness of the sun, which fornearly a year gave no more light than the moon, although there were noclouds to obscure it?

Astrology, after all, may have been something more than a brilliantheathenism. No wonder that Amos of the text, having heard these twoanthems of the stars, put down the stout rough staff of the herdsmanand took into his brown hand and cut and knotted fingers the pen of aprophet, and advised the recreant people of his time to return to God, saying: "Seek Him that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion. " Thiscommand, which Amos gave 785 years B. C. , is just as appropriate forus, 1885 A. D. 

In the first place, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who madethe Pleiades and Orion must be the God of order. It was not so much astar here and a star there that impressed the inspired herdsman, butseven in one group, and seven in the other group. He saw that nightafter night and season after season and decade after decade they hadkept step of light, each one in its own place, a sisterhood neverclashing and never contesting precedence. From the time Hesiod calledthe Pleiades the "seven daughters of Atlas" and Virgil wrote in hisÆneid of "Stormy Orion" until now, they have observed the orderestablished for their coming and going; order written not inmanuscript that may be pigeon-holed, but with the hand of the Almightyon the dome of the sky, so that all nations may read it. Order. Persistent order. Sublime order. Omnipotent order. 

What a sedative to you and me, to whom communities and nationssometimes seem going pell-mell, and world ruled by some fiend athap-hazard, and in all directions maladministration! The God who keepsseven worlds in right circuit for six thousand years can certainlykeep all the affairs of individuals and nations and continents inadjustment. We had not better fret much, for the peasant's argument ofthe text was right. If God can take care of the seven worlds of thePleiades and the four chief worlds of Orion, He can probably take careof the one world we inhabit. 

So I feel very much as my father felt one day when we were going tothe country mill to get a grist ground, and I, a boy of seven years, sat in the back part of the wagon, and our yoke of oxen ran away withus and along a labyrinthine road through the woods, so that I thoughtevery moment we would be dashed to pieces, and I made a terribleoutcry of fright, and my father turned to me with a face perfectlycalm, and said: "De Witt, what are you crying about? I guess we canride as fast as the oxen can run. " And, my hearers, why should we beaffrighted and lose our equilibrium in the swift movement of worldlyevents, especially when we are assured that it is not a yoke ofunbroken steers that are drawing us on, but that order and wisegovernment are in the yoke?

In your occupation, your mission, your sphere, do the best you can, and then trust to God; and if things are all mixed and disquieting, and your brain is hot and your heart sick, get some one to go out withyou into the starlight and point out to you the Pleiades, or, betterthan that, get into some observatory, and through the telescope seefurther than Amos with the naked eye could--namely, two hundred starsin the Pleiades, and that in what is called the sword of Orion thereis a nebula computed to be two trillion two hundred thousand billionsof times larger than the sun. Oh, be at peace with the God who madeall that and controls all that--the wheel of the constellationsturning in the wheel of galaxies for thousands of years without thebreaking of a cog or the slipping of a band or the snap of an axle. For your placidity and comfort through the Lord Jesus Christ I chargeyou, "Seek Him that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion. "

Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made these twogroups of the text was the God of light. Amos saw that God was notsatisfied with making one star, or two or three stars, but He makesseven; and having finished that group of worlds, makes anothergroup--group after group. To the Pleiades He adds Orion. It seems thatGod likes light so well that He keeps making it. Only one being in theuniverse knows the statistics of solar, lunar, stellar, meteoriccreations, and that is the--Creator Himself. And they have all beenlovingly christened, each one a name as distinct as the names of yourchildren. "He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all bytheir names. " The seven Pleiades had names given to them, and they areAlcyone, Merope, Celæno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete, and Maia. 

But think of the billions and trillions of daughters of starry lightthat God calls by name as they sweep by Him with beaming brow andlustrous robe! So fond is God of light--natural light, moral light, spiritual light. Again and again is light harnessed forsymbolization--Christ, the bright and morning star; evangelization, the daybreak; the redemption of nations, Sun of Righteousness risingwith healing in His wings. Oh, men and women, with so many sorrows andsins and perplexities, if you want light of comfort, light of pardon, light of goodness, in earnest, pray through Christ, "Seek Him thatmaketh the Seven Stars and Orion. "

Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made these twoarchipelagoes of stars must be an unchanging God. There had been nochange in the stellar appearance in this herdsman's life-time, and hisfather, a shepherd, reported to him that there had been no change inhis life-time. And these two clusters hang over the celestial arbornow just as they were the first night that they shone on the Edenicbowers, the same as when the Egyptians built the Pyramids from the topof which to watch them, the same as when the Chaldeans calculated theeclipses, the same as when Elihu, according to the Book of Job, wentout to study the aurora borealis, the same under Ptolemaic system andCopernican system, the same from Calisthenes to Pythagoras, and fromPythagoras to Herschel. Surely, a changeless God must have fashionedthe Pleiades and Orion! Oh, what an anodyne amid the ups and downs oflife, and the flux and reflux of the tides of prosperity, to know thatwe have a changeless God, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 

Xerxes garlanded and knighted the steersman of his boat in themorning, and hanged him in the evening of the same day. Fifty thousandpeople stood around the columns of the national capitol, shoutingthemselves hoarse at the presidential inaugural, and in four months sogreat were the antipathies that a ruffian's pistol in Washington depotexpressed the sentiment of a great multitude. The world sits in itschariot and drives tandem, and the horse ahead is Huzza, and the horsebehind is Anathema. Lord Cobham, in King James' time, was applauded, and had thirty-five thousand dollars a year, but was afterwardexecrated, and lived on scraps stolen from the royal kitchen. Alexander the Great after death remained unburied for thirty days, because no one would do the honor of shoveling him under. The Duke ofWellington refused to have his iron fence mended, because it had beenbroken by an infuriated populace in some hour of politicalexcitement, and he left it in ruins that men might learn what a ficklething is human favor. "But the mercy of the Lord is from everlastingto everlasting to them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto thechildren's children of such as keep His covenant, and to those whoremember His commandments to do them. " This moment "seek Him thatmaketh the Seven Stars and Orion. "

Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made these twobeacons of the Oriental night sky must be a God of love and kindlywarning. The Pleiades rising in mid-sky said to all the herdsmen andshepherds and husbandmen: "Come out and enjoy the mild weather, andcultivate your gardens and fields. " Orion, coming in winter, warnedthem to prepare for tempest. All navigation was regulated by these twoconstellations. The one said to shipmaster and crew: "Hoist sail forthe sea, and gather merchandise from other lands. " But Orion was thestorm-signal, and said: "Reef sail, make things snug, or put intoharbor, for the hurricanes are getting their wings out. " As thePleiades were the sweet evangels of the spring, Orion was the warningprophet of the winter. 

Oh, now I get the best view of God I ever had! There are two kinds ofsermons I never want to preach--the one that presents God so kind, soindulgent, so lenient, so imbecile that men may do what they willagainst Him, and fracture His every law, and put the cry of theirimpertinence and rebellion under His throne, and while they arespitting in His face and stabbing at His heart, He takes them up inHis arms and kisses their infuriated brow and cheek, saying, "Of suchis the kingdom of heaven. " The other kind of sermon I never want topreach is the one that represents God as all fire and torture andthundercloud, and with red-hot pitch-fork tossing the human race intoparoxysms of infinite agony. The sermon that I am now preachingbelieves in a God of loving, kindly warning, the God of spring andwinter, the God of the Pleiades and Orion. 

You must remember that the winter is just as important as the spring. Let one winter pass without frost to kill vegetation and ice to bindthe rivers and snow to enrich our fields, and then you will have toenlarge your hospitals and your cemeteries. "A green Christmas makes afat grave-yard, " was the old proverb. Storms to purify the air. Thermometer at ten degrees above zero to tone up the system. Decemberand January just as important as May and June. I tell you we need thestorms of life as much as we do the sunshine. There are more menruined by prosperity than by adversity. If we had our own way in life, before this we would have been impersonations of selfishness andworldliness and disgusting sin, and puffed up until we would have beenlike Julius Cæsar, who was made by sycophants to believe that he wasdivine, and the freckles on his face were as the stars of thefirmament. 

One of the swiftest transatlantic voyages made last summer by the"Etruria" was because she had a stormy wind abaft, chasing her fromNew York to Liverpool. But to those going in the opposite directionthe storm was a buffeting and a hinderance. It is a bad thing to havea storm ahead, pushing us back; but if we be God's children andaiming toward heaven, the storms of life will only chase us the soonerinto the harbor. I am so glad to believe that the monsoons, andtyphoons, and mistrals, and siroccos of the land and sea are notunchained maniacs let loose upon the earth, but are under divinesupervision! I am so glad that the God of the Seven Stars is also theGod of Orion! It was out of Dante's suffering came the sublime "DivinaCommedia, " and out of John Milton's blindness came "Paradise Lost, "and out of miserable infidel attack came the "Bridgewater Treatise" infavor of Christianity, and out of David's exile came the songs ofconsolation, and out of the sufferings of Christ came the possibilityof the world's redemption, and out of your bereavement, yourpersecution, your poverties, your misfortunes, may yet come an eternalheaven. 

Oh, what a mercy it is that in the text and all up and down the BibleGod induces us to look out toward other worlds! Bible astronomy inGenesis, in Joshua, in Job, in the Psalms, in the prophets, major andminor, in St. John's Apocalypse, practically saying, "Worlds! worlds!worlds! Get ready for them!" We have a nice little world here that westick to, as though losing that we lose all. We are afraid of fallingoff this little raft of a world. We are afraid that some meteoriciconoclast will some night smash it, and we want everything to revolvearound it, and are disappointed when we find that it revolves aroundthe sun instead of the sun revolving around it. What a fuss we makeabout this little bit of a world, its existence only a short timebetween two spasms, the paroxysm by which it was hurled from chaosinto order, and the paroxysm of its demolition. 

And I am glad that so many texts call us to look off to other worlds, many of them larger and grander and more resplendent. "Look there, "says Job, "at Mazaroth and Arcturus and his sons!" "Look there, " saysSt. John, "at the moon under Christ's feet!" "Look there, " saysJoshua, "at the sun standing still above Gibeon!" "Look there, " saysMoses, "at the sparkling firmament!" "Look there, " says Amos, theherdsman, "at the Seven Stars and Orion!" Don't let us be so sad aboutthose who shove off from this world under Christly pilotage. Don't letus be so agitated about our own going off this little barge or sloopor canal-boat of a world to get on some "Great Eastern" of theheavens. Don't let us persist in wanting to stay in this barn, thisshed, this outhouse of a world, when all the King's palaces alreadyoccupied by many of our best friends are swinging wide open theirgates to let us in. 

When I read, "In my Father's house are many mansions, " I do not knowbut that each world is a room, and as many rooms as there are worlds, stellar stairs, stellar galleries, stellar hallways, stellar windows, stellar domes. How our departed friends must pity us shut up in thesecramped apartments, tired if we walk fifteen miles, when they somemorning, by one stroke of wing, can make circuit of the whole stellarsystem and be back in time for matins! Perhaps yonder twinklingconstellation is the residence of the martyrs; that group of twelveluminaries is the celestial home of the Apostles. Perhaps that steepof light is the dwelling-place of angels cherubic, seraphic, archangelic. A mansion with as many rooms as worlds, and all theirwindows illuminated for festivity. 

Oh, how this widens and lifts and stimulates our expectation! Howlittle it makes the present, and how stupendous it makes the future!How it consoles us about our pious dead, that instead of being boxedup and under the ground have the range of as many rooms as there areworlds, and welcome everywhere, for it is the Father's house, in whichthere are many mansions! Oh, Lord God of the Seven Stars and Orion, how can I endure the transport, the ecstasy, of such a vision! I mustobey my text and seek Him. I will seek Him. I seek Him now, for I callto mind that it is not the material universe that is most valuable, but the spiritual, and that each of us has a soul worth more than allthe worlds which the inspired herdsman saw from his booth on the hillsof Tekoa. 

I had studied it before, but the Cathedral of Cologne, Germany, neverimpressed me as it did this summer. It is admittedly the grandestGothic structure in the world, its foundation laid in 1248, only twoor three years ago completed. More than six hundred years in building. All Europe taxed for its construction. Its chapel of the Magi withprecious stones enough to purchase a kingdom. Its chapel of St. Agneswith masterpieces of painting. Its spire springing five hundred andeleven feet into the heavens. Its stained glass the chorus of all richcolors. Statues encircling the pillars and encircling all. Statuesabove statues, until sculpture can do no more, but faints and fallsback against carved stalls and down on pavements over which the kingsand queens of the earth have walked to confession. Nave and aisles andtransept and portals combining the splendors of sunrise. Interlaced, interfoliated, intercolumned grandeur. As I stood outside, looking atthe double range of flying buttresses and the forest of pinnacles, higher and higher and higher, until I almost reeled from dizziness, Iexclaimed; "Great doxology in stone! Frozen prayer of many nations!"

But while standing there I saw a poor man enter and put down his packand kneel beside his burden on the hard floor of that cathedral. Andtears of deep emotion came into my eyes, as I said to myself: "Thereis a soul worth more than all the material surroundings. That man willlive after the last pinnacle has fallen, and not one stone of all thatcathedral glory shall remain uncrumbled. He is now a Lazarus in ragsand poverty and weariness, but immortal, and a son of the Lord GodAlmighty; and the prayer he now offers, though amid manysuperstitions, I believe God will hear; and among the Apostles whosesculptured forms stand in the surrounding niches he will at last belifted, and into the presence of that Christ whose sufferings arerepresented by the crucifix before which he bows; and be raised in duetime out of all his poverties into the glorious home built for him andbuilt for us by 'Him who maketh the Seven Stars and Orion. '"

THE QUEEN'S VISIT. 

 "Behold, the half was not told me. "--I KINGS x: 7. 

Solomon had resolved that Jerusalem should be the center of allsacred, regal, and commercial magnificence. He set himself to work, and monopolized the surrounding desert as a highway for his caravans. He built the city of Palmyra around one of the principal wells of theEast, so that all the long trains of merchandise from the East wereobliged to stop there, pay toll, and leave part of their wealth in thehands of Solomon's merchants. He manned the fortress Thapsacus at thechief ford of the Euphrates, and put under guard everything thatpassed there. The three great products of Palestine--wine pressed fromthe richest clusters and celebrated all the world over; oil which inthat hot country is the entire substitute for butter and lard, and waspressed from the olive branches until every tree in the country becamean oil well; and honey which was the entire substitute forsugar--these three great products of the country Solomon exported, andreceived in return fruits and precious woods and the animals of everyclime. 

He went down to Ezion-geber and ordered a fleet of ships to beconstructed, oversaw the workmen, and watched the launching of theflotilla which was to go out on more than a year's voyage, to bringhome the wealth of the then known world. He heard that the Egyptianhorses were large and swift, and long-maned and round-limbed, and heresolved to purchase them, giving eighty-five dollars apiece for them, putting the best of these horses in his own stall, and selling thesurplus to foreign potentates at great profit. 

He heard that there was the best of timber on Mount Lebanon, and hesent out one hundred and eighty thousand men to hew down the forestand drag the timber through the mountain gorges, to construct it intorafts to be floated to Joppa, and from thence to be drawn by ox-teamstwenty-five miles across the land to Jerusalem. He heard that therewere beautiful flowers in other lands. He sent for them, planted themin his own gardens, and to this very day there are flowers found inthe ruins of that city such as are to be found in no other part ofPalestine, the lineal descendants of the very flowers that Solomonplanted. He heard that in foreign groves there were birds of richestvoice and most luxuriant wing. He sent out people to catch them andbring them there, and he put them into his cages. 

Stand back now and see this long train of camels coming up to theking's gate, and the ox-trains from Egypt, gold and silver andprecious stones, and beasts of every hoof, and birds of every wing, and fish of every scale! See the peacocks strut under the cedars, andthe horsemen run, and the chariots wheel! Hark to the orchestra! Gazeupon the dance! Not stopping to look into the wonders of the temple, step right on to the causeway, and pass up to Solomon's palace!

Here we find ourselves amid a collection of buildings on which theking had lavished the wealth of many empires. The genius of Hiram, thearchitect, and of the other artists is here seen in the long line ofcorridors and the suspended gallery and the approach to the throne. Traceried window opposite traceried window. Bronzed ornaments burstinginto lotus and lily and pomegranate. Chapiters surrounded by networkof leaves in which imitation fruit seemed suspended as in hangingbaskets. Three branches--so Josephus tells us--three branchessculptured on the marble, so thin and subtle that even the leavesseemed to quiver. A laver capable of holding five hundred barrels ofwater on six hundred brazen ox-heads, which gushed with water andfilled the whole place with coolness and crystalline brightness andmusical plash. Ten tables chased with chariot wheel and lion andcherubim. Solomon sat on a throne of ivory. At the seating place ofthe throne, on each end of the steps, a brazen lion. Why, my friends, in that place they trimmed their candles with snuffers of gold, andthey cut their fruits with knives of gold, and they washed their facesin basins of gold, and they scooped out the ashes with shovels ofgold, and they stirred the altar fires with tongs of gold. Goldreflected in the water! Gold flashing from the apparel! Gold blazingin the crown! Gold, gold, gold!

Of course the news of the affluence of that place went out everywhereby every caravan and by wing of every ship, until soon the streets ofJerusalem are crowded with curiosity seekers. What is that longprocession approaching Jerusalem? I think from the pomp of it theremust be royalty in the train. I smell the breath of the spices whichare brought as presents, and I hear the shout of the drivers, and Isee the dust-covered caravan showing that they come from far away. Crythe news up to the palace. The Queen of Sheba advances. Let all thepeople come out to see. Let the mighty men of the land come out on thepalace corridors. Let Solomon come down the stairs of the palacebefore the queen has alighted. Shake out the cinnamon, and thesaffron, and the calamus, and the frankincense, and pass it into thetreasure house. Take up the diamonds until they glitter in the sun. 

The Queen of Sheba alights. She enters the palace. She washes at thebath. She sits down at the banquet. The cup-bearers bow. The meatsmokes. The music trembles in the dash of the waters from the moltensea. Then she rises from the banquet, and walks through theconservatories, and gazes on the architecture, and she asks Solomonmany strange questions, and she learns about the religion of theHebrews, and she then and there becomes a servant of the Lord God. 

She is overwhelmed. She begins to think that all the spices shebrought, and all the precious woods which are intended to be turnedinto harps and psalteries and into railings for the causeway betweenthe temple and the palace, and the one hundred and eighty thousanddollars in money--she begins to think that all these presents amountto nothing in such a place, and she is almost ashamed that she hasbrought them, and she says within herself: "I heard a great dealabout this place, and about this wonderful religion of the Hebrews, but I find it far beyond my highest anticipations. I must add morethan fifty per cent. To what has been related. It exceeds everythingthat I could have expected. The half--the half was not told me. "

Learn from this subject what a beautiful thing it is when socialposition and wealth surrender themselves to God. When religion comesto a neighborhood, the first to receive it are the women. Some men sayit is because they are weak-minded. I say it is because they havequicker perception of what is right, more ardent affection andcapacity for sublimer emotion. After the women have received theGospel then all the distressed and the poor of both sexes, those whohave no friends, accept Jesus. Last of all come the people ofaffluence and high social position. Alas, that it is so!

If there are those here to-day who have been favored of fortune, or, as I might better put it, favored of God, surrender all you have andall you expect to be to the Lord who blessed this Queen of Sheba. Certainly you are not ashamed to be found in this queen's company. Iam glad that Christ has had His imperial friends in allages--Elizabeth Christina, Queen of Prussia; Maria Feodorovna, Queenof Russia; Marie, Empress of France; Helena, the imperial mother ofConstantine; Arcadia, from her great fortunes building public baths inConstantinople and toiling for the alleviation of the masses; QueenClotilda, leading her husband and three thousand of his armed warriorsto Christian baptism; Elizabeth of Burgundy, giving her jeweled gloveto a beggar, and scattering great fortunes among the distressed;Prince Albert, singing "Rock of Ages" in Windsor Castle, and QueenVictoria, incognita, reading the Scriptures to a dying pauper. 

I bless God that the day is coming when royalty will bring all itsthrones, and music all its harmonies, and painting all its pictures, and sculpture all its statuary, and architecture all its pillars, andconquest all its scepters; and the queens of the earth, in long lineof advance, frankincense filling the air and the camels laden withgold, shall approach Jerusalem, and the gates shall be hoisted, andthe great burden of splendor shall be lifted into the palace of thisgreater than Solomon. 

Again, my subject teaches me what is earnestness in the search oftruth. Do you know where Sheba was? It was in Abyssinia, or some sayin the southern part of Arabia Felix. In either case it was a greatway off from Jerusalem. To get from there to Jerusalem she had tocross a country infested with bandits, and go across blisteringdeserts. Why did not the Queen of Sheba stay at home and send acommittee to inquire about this new religion, and have the delegatesreport in regard to that religion and wealth of King Solomon? Shewanted to see for herself, and hear for herself. She could not do thisby work of committee. She felt she had a soul worth ten thousandkingdoms like Sheba, and she wanted a robe richer than any woven byOriental shuttles, and she wanted a crown set with the jewels ofeternity. Bring out the camels. Put on the spices. Gather up thejewels of the throne and put them on the caravan. Start now; no timeto be lost. Goad on the camels. When I see that caravan, dust-covered, weary, and exhausted, trudging on across the desert andamong the bandits until it reaches Jerusalem, I say: "There is anearnest seeker after the truth. "

But there are a great many of you, my friends, who do not act in thatway. You all want to get the truth, but you want the truth to cometo-you; you do not want to go to it. There are people who fold theirarms and say: "I am ready to become a Christian at any time; if I amto be saved I shall be saved, and if I am to be lost I shall be lost. "A man who says that and keeps on saying it, will be lost. Jerusalemwill never come to you; you must go to Jerusalem. The religion of theLord Jesus Christ will not come to you; you must go and get religion. Bring out the camels; put on all the sweet spices, all the treasuresof the heart's affection. Start for the throne. Go in and hear thewaters of salvation dashing in fountains all around about the throne. Sit down at the banquet--the wine pressed from the grapes of theheavenly Eschol, the angels of God the cup-bearers. Goad on thecamels; Jerusalem will never come to you; you must go to Jerusalem. The Bible declares it: "The Queen of the South"--that is, this verywoman I am speaking of--"the Queen of the South shall rise up injudgment against this generation and condemn it; for she came from theuttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon: and, behold! a greater than Solomon is here. " God help me to break up theinfatuation of those people who are sitting down in idleness expectingto be saved. "Strive to enter in at the strait gate. Ask, and itshall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall beopened to you. " Take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. Urge on thecamels!

Again, my subject impresses me with the fact that religion is asurprise to any one that gets it. This story of the new religion inJerusalem, and of the glory of King Solomon, who was a type ofChrist--that story rolls on and on, and is told by every travelercoming back from Jerusalem. The news goes on the wing of every shipand with every caravan, and you know a story enlarges as it is retold, and by the time that story gets down into the southern part of ArabiaFelix, and the Queen of Sheba hears it, it must be a tremendous story. And yet this queen declares in regard to it, although she had heard somuch and had her anticipations raised so high, the half--the half wasnot told her. 

So religion is always a surprise to any one that gets it. The story ofgrace--an old story. Apostles preached it with rattle of chain;martyrs declared it with arm of fire; death-beds have affirmed it withvisions of glory, and ministers of religion have sounded it throughthe lanes, and the highways, and the chapels, and the cathedrals. Ithas been cut into stone with chisel, and spread on the canvas withpencil; and it has been recited in the doxology of greatcongregations. And yet when a man first comes to look on the palace ofGod's mercy, and to see the royalty of Christ, and the wealth of thisbanquet, and the luxuriance of His attendants, and the loveliness ofHis face, and the joy of His service, he exclaims with prayers, withtears, with sighs, with triumphs: "The half--the half was not toldme!"

I appeal to those in this house who are Christians. Compare the ideayou had of the joy of the Christian life before you became a Christianwith the appreciation of that joy you have now since you have become aChristian, and you are willing to attest before angels and men thatyou never in the days of your spiritual bondage had any appreciationof what was to come. You are ready to-day to answer, and if I gave youan opportunity in the midst of this assemblage, you would speak outand say in regard to the discoveries you have made of the mercy andthe grace and the goodness of God: "The half--the half was not toldme!"

Well, we hear a great deal about the good time that is coming to thisworld, when it is to be girded with salvation. Holiness on the bellsof the horses. The lion's mane patted by the hand of a babe. Ships ofTarshish bringing cargoes for Jesus, and the hard, dry, barren, winter-bleached, storm-scarred, thunder-split rock breaking intofloods of bright water. Deserts into which dromedaries thrust theirnostrils, because they were afraid of the simoom--deserts bloominginto carnation roses and silver-tipped lilies. 

It is the old story. Everybody tells it. Isaiah told it, John told it, Paul told it, Ezekiel told it, Luther told it, Calvin told it, JohnMilton told it--everybody tells it; and yet--and yet when the midnightshall fly the hills, and Christ shall marshal His great army, andChina, dashing her idols into the dust, shall hear the voice of Godand wheel into line; and India, destroying her Juggernaut andsnatching up her little children from the Ganges, shall hear thevoice of God and wheel into line; and vine-covered Italy, andwheat-crowned Russia, and all the nations of the earth shall hear thevoice of God and fall into line; then the Church, which has beentoiling and struggling through the centuries, robed and garlanded likea bride adorned for her husband, shall put aside her veil and look upinto the face of her Lord the King, and say: "The half--the half wasnot told me. "

Well, there is coming a greater surprise to every Christian--a greatersurprise than anything I have depicted. Heaven is an old story. Everybody talks about it. There is hardly a hymn in the hymn-book thatdoes not refer to it. Children read about it in their Sabbath-schoolbook. Aged men put on their spectacles to study it. We say it is aharbor from the storm. We call it our home. We say it is the house ofmany mansions. We weave together all sweet, beautiful, delicate, exhilarant words; we weave them into letters, and then we spell it outin rose and lily and amaranth. And yet that place is going to be asurprise to the most intelligent Christian. Like the Queen of Sheba, the report has come to us from the far country, and many of us havestarted. It is a desert march, but we urge on the camels. What thoughour feet be blistered with the way? We are hastening to the palace. Wetake all our loves and hopes and Christian ambitions, as frankincenseand myrrh and cassia, to the great King. We must not rest. We must nothalt. The night is coming on, and it is not safe out here in thedesert. Urge on the camels. I see the domes against the sky, and thehouses of Lebanon, and the temples and the gardens. See the fountainsdance in the sun, and the gates flash as they open to let in the poorpilgrims. 

Send the word up to the palace that we are coming, and that we areweary of the march of the desert. The King will come out and say:"Welcome to the palace; bathe in these waters, recline on these banks. Take this cinnamon and frankincense and myrrh and put it upon a censerand swing it before the altar. " And yet, my friends, when heavenbursts upon us it will be a greater surprise than that--Jesus on thethrone, and we made like Him! All our Christian friends surrounding usin glory! All our sorrows and tears and sins gone by forever! Thethousands of thousands, the one hundred and forty-and-four thousand, the great multitudes that no man can number, will cry, world withoutend: "The half--the half was not told us!"

VICARIOUS SUFFERING. 

 "Without shedding of blood is no remission. "--HEB. Ix: 22. 

John G. Whittier, the last of the great school of American poets thatmade the last quarter of a century brilliant, asked me in the WhiteMountains, one morning after prayers, in which I had given outCowper's famous hymn about "The Fountain Filled with Blood, " "Do youreally believe there is a literal application of the blood of Christto the soul?" My negative reply then is my negative reply now. TheBible statement agrees with all physicians, and all physiologists, andall scientists, in saying that the blood is the life, and in theChristian religion it means simply that Christ's life was given forour life. Hence all this talk of men who say the Bible story of bloodis disgusting, and that they don't want what they call a"slaughter-house religion, " only shows their incapacity orunwillingness to look through the figure of speech toward the thingsignified. The blood that, on the darkest Friday the world ever saw, oozed, or trickled, or poured from the brow, and the side, and thehands, and the feet of the illustrious sufferer, back of Jerusalem, ina few hours coagulated and dried up, and forever disappeared; and ifman had depended on the application of the literal blood of Christ, there would not have been a soul saved for the last eighteencenturies. 

In order to understand this red word of my text, we only have toexercise as much common sense in religion as we do in everything else. Pang for pang, hunger for hunger, fatigue for fatigue, tear for tear, blood for blood, life for life, we see every day illustrated. The actof substitution is no novelty, although I hear men talk as though theidea of Christ's suffering substituted for our suffering weresomething abnormal, something distressingly odd, something wildlyeccentric, a solitary episode in the world's history; when I couldtake you out into this city, and before sundown point you to fivehundred cases of substitution and voluntary suffering of one in behalfof another. 

At two o'clock to-morrow afternoon go among the places of business ortoil. It will be no difficult thing for you to find men who, by theirlooks, show you that they are overworked. They are prematurely old. They are hastening rapidly toward their decease. They have gonethrough crises in business that shattered their nervous system, andpulled on the brain. They have a shortness of breath, and a pain inthe back of the head, and at night an insomnia that alarms them. Whyare they drudging at business early and late? For fun? No; it would bedifficult to extract any amusement out of that exhaustion. Becausethey are avaricious? In many cases no. Because their own personalexpenses are lavish? No; a few hundred dollars would meet all theirwants. The simple fact is, the man is enduring all that fatigue andexasperation, and wear and tear, to keep his home prosperous. Thereis an invisible line reaching from that store, from that bank, fromthat shop, from that scaffolding, to a quiet scene a few blocks, a fewmiles away, and there is the secret of that business endurance. He issimply the champion of a homestead, for which he wins bread, andwardrobe, and education, and prosperity, and in such battle tenthousand men fall. Of ten business men whom I bury, nine die ofoverwork for others. Some sudden disease finds them with no power ofresistance, and they are gone. Life for life. Blood for blood. Substitution!

At one o'clock to-morrow morning, the hour when slumber is mostuninterrupted and most profound, walk amid the dwelling-houses of thecity. Here and there you will find a dim light, because it is thehousehold custom to keep a subdued light burning: but most of thehouses from base to top are as dark as though uninhabited. A mercifulGod has sent forth the archangel of sleep, and he puts his wings overthe city. But yonder is a clear light burning, and outside on thewindow casement a glass or pitcher containing food for a sick child;the food is set in the fresh air. This is the sixth night that motherhas sat up with that sufferer. She has to the last point obeyed thephysician's prescription, not giving a drop too much or too little, ora moment too soon or too late. She is very anxious, for she has buriedthree children with the same disease, and she prays and weeps, eachprayer and sob ending with a kiss of the pale cheek. By dint ofkindness she gets the little one through the ordeal. After it is allover, the mother is taken down. Brain or nervous fever sets in, andone day she leaves the convalescent child with a mother's blessing, and goes up to join the three in the kingdom of heaven. Life for life. Substitution! The fact is that there are an uncounted number ofmothers who, after they have navigated a large family of childrenthrough all the diseases of infancy, and got them fairly started upthe flowering slope of boyhood and girlhood, have only strength enoughleft to die. They fade away. Some call it consumption; some call itnervous prostration; some call it intermittent or malarialdisposition; but I call it martyrdom of the domestic circle. Life forlife. Blood for blood. Substitution!

Or perhaps the mother lingers long enough to see a son get on thewrong road, and his former kindness becomes rough reply when sheexpresses anxiety about him. But she goes right on, looking carefullyafter his apparel, remembering his every birthday with some memento, and when he is brought home worn out with dissipation, nurses him tillhe gets well and starts him again, and hopes, and expects, and prays, and counsels, and suffers, until her strength gives out and she fails. She is going, and attendants, bending over her pillow, ask her if shehas any message to leave, and she makes great effort to say something, but out of three or four minutes of indistinct utterance they cancatch but three words: "My poor boy!" The simple fact is she died forhim. Life for life. Substitution!

About twenty-four years ago there went forth from our homes hundredsof thousands of men to do battle for their country. All the poetry ofwar soon vanished, and left them nothing but the terrible prose. Theywaded knee-deep in mud. They slept in snow-banks. They marched tilltheir cut feet tracked the earth. They were swindled out of theirhonest rations, and lived on meat not fit for a dog. They had jaws allfractured, and eyes extinguished, and limbs shot away. Thousands ofthem cried for water as they lay dying on the field the night afterthe battle, and got it not. They were homesick, and received nomessage from their loved ones. They died in barns, in bushes, inditches, the buzzards of the summer heat the only attendants on theirobsequies. No one but the infinite God who knows everything, knows theten thousandth part of the length, and breadth, and depth, and heightof anguish of the Northern and Southern battlefields. Why did thesefathers leave their children and go to the front, and why did theseyoung men, postponing the marriage-day, start out into theprobabilities of never coming back? For the country they died. Lifefor life. Blood for blood. Substitution!

But we need not go so far. What is that monument in Greenwood? It isto the doctors who fell in the Southern epidemics. Why go? Were therenot enough sick to be attended in these Northern latitudes? Oh, yes;but the doctor puts a few medical books in his valise, and some vialsof medicine, and leaves his patients here in the hands of otherphysicians, and takes the rail-train. Before he gets to the infectedregions he passes crowded rail-trains, regular and extra, taking theflying and affrighted populations. He arrives in a city over which agreat horror is brooding. He goes from couch to couch, feeling ofpulse and studying symptoms, and prescribing day after day, nightafter night, until a fellow-physician says: "Doctor, you had better gohome and rest; you look miserable. " But he can not rest while so manyare suffering. On and on, until some morning finds him in a delirium, in which he talks of home, and then rises and says he must go and lookafter those patients. He is told to lie down; but he fights hisattendants until he falls back, and is weaker and weaker, and dies forpeople with whom he had no kinship, and far away from his own family, and is hastily put away in a stranger's tomb, and only the fifth partof a newspaper line tells us of his sacrifice--his name just mentionedamong five. Yet he has touched the furthest height of sublimity inthat three weeks of humanitarian service. He goes straight as an arrowto the bosom of Him who said: "I was sick and ye visited Me. " Life forlife. Blood for blood. Substitution!

In the legal profession I see the same principle of self-sacrifice. In1846, William Freeman, a pauperized and idiotic negro, was at Auburn, N. Y. , on trial for murder. He had slain the entire Van Nest family. The foaming wrath of the community could be kept off him only by armedconstables. Who would volunteer to be his counsel? No attorney wantedto sacrifice his popularity by such an ungrateful task. All weresilent save one, a young lawyer with feeble voice, that could hardlybe heard outside the bar, pale and thin and awkward. It was William H. Seward, who saw that the prisoner was idiotic and irresponsible, andought to be put in an asylum rather than put to death, the heroiccounsel uttering these beautiful words:

"I speak now in the hearing of a people who have prejudged prisonerand condemned me for pleading in his behalf. He is a convict, apauper, a negro, without intellect, sense, or emotion. My child withan affectionate smile disarms my care-worn face of its frown wheneverI cross my threshold. The beggar in the street obliges me to givebecause he says, 'God bless you!' as I pass. My dog caresses me withfondness if I will but smile on him. My horse recognizes me when Ifill his manger. What reward, what gratitude, what sympathy andaffection can I expect here? There the prisoner sits. Look at him. Look at the assemblage around you. Listen to their ill-suppressedcensures and their excited fears, and tell me where among my neighborsor my fellow-men, where, even in his heart, I can expect to find asentiment, a thought, not to say of reward or of acknowledgment, oreven of recognition? Gentlemen, you may think of this evidence whatyou please, bring in what verdict you can, but I asseverate beforeHeaven and you, that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, theprisoner at the bar does not at this moment know why it is that myshadow falls on you instead of his own. "

The gallows got its victim, but the post-mortem examination of thepoor creature showed to all the surgeons and to all the world that thepublic were wrong, and William H. Seward was right, and that hard, stony step of obloquy in the Auburn court-room was the first step ofthe stairs of fame up which he went to the top, or to within one stepof the top, that last denied him through the treachery of Americanpolitics. Nothing sublimer was ever seen in an American court-roomthan William H. Seward, without reward, standing between the fury ofthe populace and the loathsome imbecile. Substitution!

In the realm of the fine arts there was as remarkable an instance. Abrilliant but hypercriticised painter, Joseph William Turner, was metby a volley of abuse from all the art galleries of Europe. Hispaintings, which have since won the applause of all civilized nations, "The Fifth Plague of Egypt, " "Fishermen on a Lee Shore in SquallyWeather, " "Calais Pier, " "The Sun Rising Through Mist, " and "DidoBuilding Carthage, " were then targets for critics to shoot at. Indefense of this outrageously abused man, a young author of twenty-fouryears, just one year out of college, came forth with his pen, andwrote the ablest and most famous essays on art that the world eversaw, or ever will see--John Ruskin's "Modern Painters. " For seventeenyears this author fought the battles of the maltreated artist, andafter, in poverty and broken-heartedness, the painter had died, andthe public tried to undo their cruelties toward him by giving him abig funeral and burial at St. Paul's Cathedral, his old-time friendtook out of a tin box nineteen thousand pieces of paper containingdrawings by the old painter, and through many weary and uncompensatedmonths assorted and arranged them for public observation. People sayJohn Ruskin in his old days is cross, misanthropic, and morbid. Whatever he may do that he ought not to do, and whatever he may saythat he ought not to say between now and his death, he will leave thisworld insolvent as far as it has any capacity to pay this author's penfor its chivalric and Christian defense of a poor painter's pencil. John Ruskin for William Turner. Blood for blood. Substitution!

What an exalting principle this which leads one to suffer for another!Nothing so kindles enthusiasm or awakens eloquence, or chimes poeticcanto, or moves nations. The principle is the dominant one in ourreligion--Christ the Martyr, Christ the celestial Hero, Christ theDefender, Christ the Substitute. No new principle, for it was as oldas human nature; but now on a grander, wider, higher, deeper, and moreworld-resounding scale! The shepherd boy as a champion for Israel witha sling toppled the giant of Philistine braggadocio in the dust; buthere is another David who, for all the armies of churches militant andtriumphant, hurls the Goliath of perdition into defeat, the crash ofhis brazen armor like an explosion at Hell Gate. Abraham had at God'scommand agreed to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the same God just intime had provided a ram of the thicket as a substitute; but here isanother Isaac bound to the altar, and no hand arrests the sharp edgesof laceration and death, and the universe shivers and quakes andrecoils and groans at the horror. 

All good men have for centuries been trying to tell whom thisSubstitute was like, and every comparison, inspired and uninspired, evangelistic, prophetic, apostolic, and human, falls short, for Christwas the Great Unlike. Adam a type of Christ, because he came directlyfrom God; Noah a type of Christ, because he delivered his own familyfrom deluge; Melchisedec a type of Christ, because he had nopredecessor or successor; Joseph a type of Christ, because he was castout by his brethren; Moses a type of Christ, because he was adeliverer from bondage; Joshua a type of Christ, because he was aconqueror; Samson a type of Christ, because of his strength to slaythe lions and carry off the iron gates of impossibility; Solomon atype of Christ, in the affluence of his dominion; Jonah a type ofChrist, because of the stormy sea in which he threw himself for therescue of others; but put together Adam and Noah and Melchisedec andJoseph and Moses and Joshua and Samson and Solomon and Jonah, and theywould not make a fragment of a Christ, a quarter of a Christ, the halfof a Christ, or the millionth part of a Christ. 

He forsook a throne and sat down on His own footstool. He came fromthe top of glory to the bottom of humiliation, and changed acircumference seraphic for a circumference diabolic. Once waited on byangels, now hissed at by brigands. From afar and high up He came down;past meteors swifter than they; by starry thrones, Himself morelustrous; past larger worlds to smaller worlds; down stairs offirmaments, and from cloud to cloud, and through tree-tops and intothe earners stall, to thrust His shoulder under our burdens and takethe lances of pain through His vitals, and wrapped himself in all theagonies which we deserve for our misdoings, and stood on the splittingdecks of a foundering vessel, amid the drenching surf of the sea, andpassed midnights on the mountains amid wild beasts of prey, and stoodat the point where all earthly and infernal hostilities charged on Himat once with their keen sabers--our Substitute!

When did attorney ever endure so much for a pauper client, orphysician for the patient in the lazaretto, or mother for the child inmembranous croup, as Christ for us, and Christ for you, and Christ forme? Shall any man or woman or child in this audience who has eversuffered for another find it hard to understand this Christlysuffering for us? Shall those whose sympathies have been wrung inbehalf of the unfortunate have no appreciation of that one momentwhich was lifted out of all the ages of eternity as most conspicuous, when Christ gathered up all the sins of those to be redeemed under Hisone arm, and all their sorrows under His other arm, and said: "I willatone for these under my right arm, and will heal all those under myleft arm. Strike me with all thy glittering shafts, O Eternal Justice!Roll over me with all thy surges, ye oceans of sorrow"? And thethunderbolts struck Him from above, and the seas of trouble rolled upfrom beneath, hurricane after hurricane, and cyclone after cyclone, and then and there in presence of heaven and earth and hell, yea, allworlds witnessing, the price, the bitter price, the transcendentprice, the awful price, the glorious price, the infinite price, theeternal price, was paid that sets us free. 

That is what Paul means, that is what I mean, that is what all thosewho have ever had their heart changed mean by "blood. " I glory in thisreligion of blood! I am thrilled as I see the suggestive color insacramental cup, whether it be of burnished silver set on clothimmaculately white, or rough-hewn from wood set on table in log-hutmeeting-house of the wilderness. Now I am thrilled as I see the altarsof ancient sacrifice crimson with the blood of the slain lamb, andLeviticus is to me not so much the Old Testament as the New. Now I seewhy the destroying angel passing over Egypt in the night spared allthose houses that had blood sprinkled on their door-posts. Now I knowwhat Isaiah means when he speaks of "one in red apparel coming withdyed garments from Bozrah;" and whom the Apocalypse means when itdescribes a heavenly chieftain whose "vesture was dipped in blood;"and what Peter, the apostle, means when he speaks of the "preciousblood that cleanseth from all sin;" and what the old, worn-out, decrepit missionary Paul means when, in my text, he cries, "Withoutshedding of blood is no remission. " By that blood you and I will besaved--or never saved at all. In all the ages of the world God has notonce pardoned a single sin except through the Saviour's expiation, andHe never will. Glory be to God that the hill back of Jerusalem was thebattle-field on which Christ achieved our liberty!

The most exciting and overpowering day of last summer was the day Ispent on the battle-field of Waterloo. Starting out with the morningtrain from Brussels, Belgium, we arrived in about an hour on thatfamous spot. A son of one who was in the battle, and who had heardfrom his father a thousand times the whole scene recited, accompaniedus over the field. There stood the old Hougomont Château, the wallsdented, and scratched, and broken, and shattered by grape-shot andcannon-ball. There is the well in which three hundred dying and deadwere pitched. There is the chapel with the head of the infant Christshot off. There are the gates at which, for many hours, English andFrench armies wrestled. Yonder were the one hundred and sixty guns ofthe English, and the two hundred and fifty guns of the French. Yonderthe Hanoverian Hussars fled for the woods. Yonder was the ravine ofOhain, where the French cavalry, not knowing there was a hollow in theground, rolled over and down, troop after troop, tumbling into oneawful mass of suffering, hoof of kicking horses against brow andbreast of captains and colonels and private soldiers, the human andthe beastly groan kept up until, the day after, all was shoveled underbecause of the malodor arising in that hot month of June. 

"There, " said our guide, "the Highland regiments lay down on theirfaces waiting for the moment to spring upon the foe. In that orchardtwenty-five hundred men were cut to pieces. Here stood Wellington withwhite lips, and up that knoll rode Marshal Ney on his sixth horse, five having been shot under him. Here the ranks of the French broke, and Marshal Ney, with his boot slashed of a sword, and his hat off, and his face covered with powder and blood, tried to rally his troopsas he cried: 'Come and see how a marshal of French dies on thebattle-field. ' From yonder direction Grouchy was expected for theFrench re-enforcement, but he came not. Around those woods Blucher waslooked for to re-enforce the English, and just in time he came up. Yonder is the field where Napoleon stood, his arm through the reins ofthe horse's bridle, dazed and insane, trying to go back. " Scene of abattle that went on from twenty-five minutes to twelve o'clock, on theeighteenth of June, until four o'clock, when the English seemeddefeated, and their commander cried out; "Boys, can you think ofgiving way? Remember old England!" and the tides turned, and at eighto'clock in the evening the man of destiny, who was called by histroops Old Two Hundred Thousand, turned away with broken heart, andthe fate of centuries was decided. 

No wonder a great mound has been reared there, hundreds of feethigh--a mound at the expense of millions of dollars and many years inrising, and on the top is the great Belgian lion of bronze, and agrand old lion it is. But our great Waterloo was in Palestine. Therecame a day when all hell rode up, led by Apollyon, and the Captain ofour salvation confronted them alone. The Rider on the white horse ofthe Apocalypse going out against the black horse cavalry of death, andthe battalions of the demoniac, and the myrmidons of darkness. Fromtwelve o'clock at noon to three o'clock in the afternoon the greatestbattle of the universe went on. Eternal destinies were being decided. All the arrows of hell pierced our Chieftain, and the battle-axesstruck Him, until brow and cheek and shoulder and hand and foot wereincarnadined with oozing life; but He fought on until He gave a finalstroke with sword from Jehovah's buckler, and the commander-in-chiefof hell and all his forces fell back in everlasting ruin, and thevictory is ours. And on the mound that celebrates the triumph we plantthis day two figures, not in bronze or iron or sculptured marble, buttwo figures of living light, the Lion of Judah's tribe and the Lambthat was slain. 

POSTHUMOUS OPPORTUNITY. 

 "If the tree fall toward the south or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth there it shall be. "--ECCLES. Xi: 3. 

There is a hovering hope in the minds of a vast multitude that therewill be an opportunity in the next world to correct the mistakes ofthis; that, if we do make complete shipwreck of our earthly life, itwill be on a shore up which we may walk to a palace; that, as adefendant may lose his case in the Circuit Court, and carry it up tothe Supreme Court or Court of Chancery and get a reversal of judgmentin his behalf, all the costs being thrown over on the other party, so, if we fail in the earthly trial, we may in the higher jurisdiction ofeternity have the judgment of the lower court set aside, all the costsremitted, and we may be victorious defendants forever. 

My object in this sermon is to show that common sense, as well as mytext, declares that such an expectation is chimerical. You say thatthe impenitent man, having got into the next world and seeing thedisaster, will, as a result of that disaster, turn, the pain the causeof his reformation. But you can find ten thousand instances in thisworld of men who have done wrong and distress overtook them suddenly. Did the distress heal them? No; they went right on. 

That man was flung of dissipations. "You must stop drinking, " saidthe doctor, "and quit the fast life you are leading, or it willdestroy you. ". The patient suffers paroxysm after paroxysm; but, underskillful medical treatment, he begins to sit up, begins to walk aboutthe room, begins to go to business. And, lo! he goes back to the samegrog-shops for his morning dram, and his even dram, and the dramsbetween. Flat down again! Same doctor. Same physical anguish. Samemedical warning. 

Now, the illness is more protracted; the liver is more stubborn, thestomach more irritable, and the digestive organs are more rebellious. But after awhile he is out again, goes back to the same dram-shops, and goes the same round of sacrilege against his physical health. 

He sees that his downward course is ruining his household, that hislife is a perpetual perjury against his marriage vow, that thatbroken-hearted woman is so unlike the roseate young wife that hemarried, that her old schoolmates do not recognize her; that his sonsare to be taunted for a life-time by the father's drunkenness, thatthe daughters are to pass into life under the scarification of adisreputable ancestor. He is drinking up their happiness, theirprospects for this life, and, perhaps, for the life to come. Sometimesan appreciation of what he is doing comes upon him. His nervous systemis all a tangle. From crown of head to sole of foot he is one aching, rasping, crucifying, damning torture. Where is he? In hell on earth. Does it reform him?

After awhile he has delirium tremens, with a whole jungle of hissingreptiles let out on his pillow, and his screams horrify the neighborsas he dashes out of his bed, crying: "Take these things off me!" As hesits, pale and convalescent, the doctor says: "Now I want to have aplain talk with you, my dear fellow. The next attack of this kind youwill have you will be beyond all medical skill, and you will die. " Hegets better and goes forth into the same round again. This timemedicine takes no effect. Consultation of physicians agree in sayingthere is no hope. Death ends the scene. 

That process of inebriation, warning, and dissolution is going onwithin stone's throw of this church, going on in all the neighborhoodsof Christendom. Pain does not correct. Suffering does not reform. Whatis true in one sense is true in all senses, and will forever be so, and yet men are expecting in the next world purgatorial rejuvenation. Take up the printed reports of the prisons of the United States, andyou will find that the vast majority of the incarcerated have beenthere before, some of them four, five, six times. With a millionillustrations all working the other way in this world, people areexpecting that distress in the next state will be salvatory. You cannot imagine any worse torture in any other world than that which somemen have suffered here, and without any salutary consequence. 

Furthermore, the prospect of a reformation in the next world is moreimprobable than a reformation here. In this world the life startedwith innocence of infancy. In the case supposed the other life willopen with all the accumulated bad habits of many years upon him. Surely, it is easier to build a strong ship out of new timber than outof an old hulk that has been ground up in the breakers. If withinnocence to start with in this life a man does not become godly, whatprospect is there that in the next world, starting with sin, therewould be a seraph evoluted? Surely the sculptor has more prospect ofmaking a fine statue out of a block of pure white Parian marble thanout of an old black rock seamed and cracked with the storms of a halfcentury. Surely upon a clean, white sheet of paper it is easier towrite a deed or a will than upon a sheet of paper all scribbled andblotted and torn from top to bottom. Yet men seem to think that, though the life that began here comparatively perfect turned outbadly, the next life will succeed, though it starts with a deadfailure. 

"But, " says some one, "I think we ought to have a chance in the nextlife, because this life is so short it allows only small opportunity. We hardly have time to turn around between cradle and tomb, the woodof the one almost touching the marble of the other. " But do you knowwhat made the ancient deluge a necessity? It was the longevity of theantediluvians. They were worse in the second century of theirlife-time than in the first hundred years, and still worse in thethird century, and still worse all the way on to seven, eight, andnine hundred years, and the earth had to be washed, and scrubbed, andsoaked, and anchored, clear out of sight for more than a month beforeit could be made fit for decent people to live in. Longevity nevercures impenitency. All the pictures of Time represent him with ascythe to cut, but I never saw any picture of Time with a case ofmedicines to heal. Seneca says that Nero for the first five years ofhis public life was set up for an example of clemency and kindness, but his path all the way descended until at sixty-eight he became asuicide. If eight hundred years did not make antediluvians any better, but only made them worse, the ages of eternity could have no effectexcept prolongation of depravity. 

"But, " says some one, "in the future state evil surroundings will bewithdrawn and elevated influences substituted, and hence expurgation, and sublimation, and glorification. " But the righteous, all their sinsforgiven, have passed on into a beatific state, and consequently theunsaved will be left alone. It can not be expected that Doctor Duff, who exhausted himself in teaching Hindoos the way to heaven, andDoctor Abeel, who gave his life in the evangelization of China, andAdoniram Judson, who toiled for the redemption of Borneo, should besent down by some celestial missionary society to educate those whowasted all their earthly existence. Evangelistic and missionaryefforts are ended. The entire kingdom of the morally bankrupt bythemselves, where are the salvatory influences to come from? Can onespeckled and bad apple in a barrel of diseased apples turn the otherapples good? Can those who are themselves down help others up? Canthose who have themselves failed in the business of the soul pay thedebts of their spiritual insolvents? Can a million wrongs make oneright?

Poneropolis was a city where King Philip of Thracia put all the badpeople of his kingdom. If any man had opened a primary school atPoneropolis I do not think the parents from other cities would havesent their children there. Instead of amendment in the other world, all the associations, now that the good are evolved, will bedegenerating and down. You would not want to send a man to a choleraor yellow fever hospital for his health; and the great lazaretto ofthe next world, containing the diseased and plague-struck, will be apoor place for moral recovery. If the surroundings in this world werecrowded of temptation, the surroundings of the next world, after therighteous have passed up and on, will be a thousand per cent. Morecrowded of temptation. 

The Count of Chateaubriand made his little son sleep at night at thetop of a castle turret, where the winds howled and where specters weresaid to haunt the place; and while the mother and sisters almost diedwith fright, the son tells us that the process gave him nerves thatcould not tremble and a courage that never faltered. But I don't thinkthat towers of darkness and the spectral world swept by Sirocco andEuroclydon will ever fit one for the land of eternal sunshine. Iwonder what is the curriculum of that college of Inferno, where, afterproper preparation by the sins of this life, the candidate enters, passing on from freshman class of depravity to sophomore ofabandonment, and from sophomore to junior, and from junior to senior, and day of graduation comes, and with diploma signed by Satan, thepresident, and other professorial demoniacs, attesting that thecandidate has been long enough under their drill, he passes up toenter heaven! Pandemonium a preparative course for heavenly admission!Ah, my friends, Satan and his cohorts have fitted uncountedmultitudes for ruin, but never fitted one soul for happiness. 

Furthermore, it would not be safe for this world if men had anotherchance in the next. If it had been announced that, however wickedly aman might act in this world, he could fix it up all right in the next, society would be terribly demoralized, and the human race demolishedin a few years. The fear that, if we are bad and unforgiven here, itwill not be well for us in the next existence, is the chief influencethat keeps civilization from rushing back to semi-barbarism, andsemi-barbarism from rushing into midnight savagery, and midnightsavagery from extinction; for it is the astringent impression of allnations, Christian and heathen, that there is no future chance forthose who have wasted this. 

Multitudes of men who are kept within bounds would say, "Go to, now!Let me get all out of this life there is in it. Come, gluttony, andinebriation, and uncleanness, and revenge, and all sensualities, andwait upon me! My life may be somewhat shortened in this world bydissoluteness, but that will only make heavenly indulgence on a largerscale the sooner possible. I will overtake the saints at last, andwill enter the Heavenly Temple only a little later than those whobehaved themselves here. I will on my way to heaven take a littlewider excursion than those who were on earth pious, and I shall go toheaven _via_ Gehenna and _via_ Sheol. " Another chance in the nextworld means free license and wild abandonment in this. 

Suppose you were a party in an important case at law, and you knewfrom consultation with judges and attorneys that it would be triedtwice, and the first trial would be of little importance, but that thesecond would decide everything; for which trial would you make themost preparation, for which retain the ablest attorneys, for which bemost anxious about the attendance of witnesses? You would put all thestress upon the second trial, all the anxiety, all the expenditure, saying, "The first is nothing, the last is everything. " Give the raceassurance of a second and more important trial in the subsequent life, and all the preparation for eternity would be _post-mortem_, post-funeral, post-sepulchral, and the world with one jerk be pitchedoff into impiety and godlessness. 

Furthermore, let me ask why a chance should be given in the next worldif we have refused innumerable chances in this? Suppose you give abanquet, and you invite a vast number of friends, but one man declinesto come, or treats your invitation with indifference. You in thecourse of twenty years give twenty banquets, and the same man isinvited to them all, and treats them all in the same obnoxious way. After awhile you remove to another house, larger and better, and youagain invite your friends, but send no invitation to the man whodeclined or neglected the other invitations. Are you to blame? Has hea right to expect to be invited after all the indignities he has doneyou? God in this world has invited us all to the banquet of His grace. He invited us by His Providence and His Spirit three hundred andsixty-five days of every year since we knew our right hand from ourleft. If we declined it every time, or treated the invitation withindifference, and gave twenty or forty or fifty years of indignity onour part toward the Banqueter, and at last He spreads the banquet in amore luxurious and kingly place, amid the heavenly gardens, have we aright to expect Him to invite us again, and have we a right to blameHim if He does not invite us?

If twelve gates of salvation stood open twenty years or fifty yearsfor our admission, and at the end of that time they are closed, can wecomplain of it and say, "These gates ought to be open again. Give usanother chance"? If the steamer is to sail for Hamburg, and we want toget to Germany by that line, and we read in every evening and everymorning newspaper that it will sail on a certain day, for two weeks wehave that advertisement before our eyes, and then we go down to thedocks fifteen minutes after it has shoved off into the stream and say:"Come back. Give me another chance. It is not fair to treat me in thisway. Swing up to the dock again, and throw out planks, and let me comeon board. " Such behavior would invite arrest as a madman. 

And if, after the Gospel ship has lain at anchor before our eyes foryears and years, and all the benign voices of earth and heaven haveurged us to get on board, as she might sail away at any moment, andafter awhile she sails without us, is it common sense to expect her tocome back? You might as well go out on the Highlands at Neversink andcall to the "Aurania" after she has been three days out, and expecther to return, as to call back an opportunity for heaven when it oncehas sped away. All heaven offered us as a gratuity, and for alife-time we refuse to take it, and then rush on the bosses ofJehovah's buckler demanding another chance. There ought to be, therecan be, there will be no such thing as posthumous opportunity. Thus, our common sense agrees with my text--"If the tree fall toward thesouth, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, thereit shall be. "

You see that this idea lifts this world up from an unimportantway-station to a platform of stupendous issues, and makes all eternitywhirl around this hour. But one trial for which all the preparationmust be made in this world, or never made at all. That piles up allthe emphases and all the climaxes and all the destinies into lifehere. No other chance! Oh, how that augments the value and theimportance of this chance!

Alexander with his army used to surround a city, and then would lift agreat light in token to the people that, if they surrendered beforethat light went out, all would be well; but if once the light wentout, then the battering-rams would swing against the wall, anddemolition and disaster would follow. Well, all we need do for ourpresent and everlasting safety is to make surrender to Christ, theKing and Conqueror--surrender of our hearts, surrender of our lives, surrender of everything. And He keeps a great light burning, light ofGospel invitation, light kindled with the wood of the cross andflaming up against the dark night of our sin and sorrow. Surrenderwhile that great light continues to burn, for after it goes out therewill be no other opportunity of making peace with God through our LordJesus Christ. Talk of another chance! Why, this is a supernal chance!

In the time of Edward the Sixth, at the battle of Musselburgh, aprivate soldier, seeing that the Earl of Huntley had lost his helmet, took off his own helmet and put it upon the head of the earl; and thehead of the private soldier uncovered, he was soon slain, while hiscommander rode safely out of the battle. But in our case, instead of aprivate soldier offering helmet to an earl, it is a King putting Hiscrown upon an unworthy subject, the King dying that we might live. Tell it to all points of the compass. Tell it to night and day. Tellit to all earth and heaven. Tell it to all centuries, all ages, allmillenniums, that we have such a magnificent chance in this world thatwe need no other chance in the next. 

I am in the burnished Judgment Hall of the Last Day. A great whitethrone is lifted, but the Judge has not yet taken it. While we arewaiting for His arrival I hear immortal spirits in conversation. "Whatare you waiting here for?" says a soul that went up from Madagascar toa soul that ascended from America. The latter says: "I came fromAmerica, where forty years I heard the Gospel preached, and Bibleread, and from the prayer that I learned in infancy at my mother'sknee until my last hour I had Gospel advantage, but, for some reason, I did not make the Christian choice, and I am here waiting for theJudge to give me a new trial and another chance. " "Strange!" says theother; "I had but one Gospel call in Madagascar, and I accepted it, and I do not need another chance. "

"Why are you here?" says one who on earth had feeblest intellect toone who had great brain, and silvery tongue, and scepters ofinfluence. The latter responds: "Oh, I knew more than my fellows. Imastered libraries, and had learned titles from colleges, and my namewas a synonym for eloquence and power. And yet I neglected my soul, and I am here waiting for a new trial. " "Strange, " says the one of thefeeble earthly capacity; "I knew but little of worldly knowledge, butI knew Christ, and made Him my partner, and I have no need of anotherchance. "

Now the ground trembles with the approaching chariot. The greatfolding-doors of the Hall swing open. "Stand back!" cry the celestialushers. "Stand back, and let the Judge of quick and dead passthrough!" He takes the throne, and, looking over the throng ofnations, He says: "Come to judgment, the last judgment, the onlyjudgment!" By one flash from the throne all the history of each oneflames forth to the vision of himself and all others. "Divide!" saysthe Judge to the assembly. "Divide!" echo the walls. "Divide!" cry theguards angelic. 

And now the immortals separate, rushing this way and that, and afterawhile there is a great aisle between them, and a great vacuumwidening and widening, and the Judge, turning to the throng on oneside, says: "He that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and hethat is holy, let him be holy still;" and then, turning toward thethrong on the opposite side, He says: "He that is unjust, let him beunjust still, and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still;" andthen, lifting one hand toward each group, He declares: "If the treefall toward the south or toward the north, in the place where thetree falleth, there it shall be. " And then I hear something jar with agreat sound. It is the closing of the Book of Judgment. The Judgeascends the stairs behind the throne. The hall of the last assize iscleared and shut. The high court of eternity is adjourned forever. 

THE LORD'S RAZOR. 

 "In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the King of Assyria. "--ISAIAH vii: 20. 

The Bible is the boldest book ever written. There are no similitudesin Ossian or the Iliad or the Odyssey so daring. Its imagery sometimesseems on the verge of the reckless, but only seems so. The fact isthat God would startle and arouse and propel men and nations. A tameand limping similitude would fail to accomplish the object. Whilethere are times when He employs in the Bible the gentle dew and themorning cloud and the dove and the daybreak in the presentation oftruth, we often find the iron chariot, the lightning, the earthquake, the spray, the sword, and, in my text, the razor. 

This keen-bladed instrument has advanced in usefulness with the ages. In Bible times and lands the beard remained uncut save in the seasonsof mourning and humiliation, but the razor was always a suggestivesymbol. David says of Doeg, his antagonist: "Thy tongue is a sharprazor working deceitfully;" that is, it pretends to clear the face, but is really used for deadly incision. In this morning's text theweapon of the toilet appears under the following circumstances: Judeaneeded to have some of its prosperities cut off, and God sendsagainst it three Assyrian kings--first Sennacherib, then Esrahaddon, and afterward Nebuchadnezzar. Those three sharp invasions, that cutdown the glory of Judea, are compared to so many sweeps of the razoracross the face of the land. And these circumstances were called ahired razor because God took the kings of Assyria, with whom He had nosympathy, to do the work, and paid them in palaces and spoils andannexations. These kings were hired to execute the divine behests. Andnow the text, which on its first reading may have seemed trivial orinapt, is charged with momentous import: "In the same day shall theLord shave with a razor that is hired--namely, by them beyond theriver, by the King of Assyria. "

Well, if God's judgments are razors, we had better be careful how weuse them on other people. In careful sheath these domestic weapons areput away, where no one by accident may touch them, and where the handsof children may not reach them. Such instruments must be carefullyhandled or not handled at all. But how recklessly some people wieldthe judgments of God! If a man meet with business misfortune, how manythere are ready to cry out: "That is a judgment of God upon himbecause he was unscrupulous, or arrogant, or overreaching, or miserly. I thought he would get cut down! What a clean sweep of everything! Hiscity house and country house gone! His stables emptied of all the finebays and sorrels and grays that used to prance by his door! All hisresources overthrown, and all that he prided himself on tumbled intodemolition! Good for him!" Stop, my brother. Don't sling around toofreely the judgments of God, for they are razors. 

Some of the most wicked business men succeed, and they live and die inprosperity, and some of the most honest and conscientious are driveninto bankruptcy. Perhaps his manner was unfortunate, and he was notreally as proud as he looked to be. Some of those who carry their headerect and look imperial are humble as a child, while many a man inseedy coat and slouch hat and unblacked shoes is as proud as Lucifer. You can not tell by a man's look. Perhaps he was not unscrupulous inbusiness, for there are two sides to every story, and everybody thataccomplishes anything for himself or others gets industriously liedabout. Perhaps his business misfortune was not a punishment, but thefatherly discipline to prepare him for heaven, and God may love himfar more than He loves you, who can pay dollar for dollar, and are putdown in the commercial catalogues as A1. Whom the Lord loveth He givesfour hundred thousand dollars and lets die on embroidered pillows? No:whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. Better keep your hand off theLord's razors, lest they cut and wound people that do not deserve it. If you want to shave off some of the bristling pride of your own heartdo so; but be very careful how you put the sharp edge on others. 

How I do dislike the behavior of those persons who, when people areunfortunate, say: "I told you so--getting punished--served him right. "If those I-told-you-so's got their desert they would long ago havebeen pitched over the battlements. The mote in their neighbor'seyes--so small that it takes a microscope to find it--gives them moretrouble than the beam which obscures their own optics. With airsometimes supercilious and sometimes Pharisaical, and alwaysblasphemous, they take the razor of the divine judgment and sharpen iton the hone of their own hard hearts, and then go to work on mensprawled out at full length under disaster, cutting mercilessly. Theybegin by soft expressions of sympathy and pity and half praise, and, lather the victim all over before they put on the sharp edge. 

Let us be careful how we shoot at others lest we take down the wrongone, remembering the servant of King William Rufus who shot at a deer, but the arrow glanced against a tree and killed the king. Instead ofgoing out with shafts to pierce, and razors to cut, we had betterimitate the friend of Richard Coeur de Lion, who, in the war of theCrusades, was captured and imprisoned, but none of his friends knewwhere. So his loyal friend went around the land from stronghold tostronghold, and sung at each window a snatch of song that RichardCoeur de Lion had taught him in other days. And one day, coming beforea jail where he suspected his king might be incarcerated, he sung twolines of song, and immediately King Richard responded from his cellwith the other two lines, and so his whereabouts were discovered, andimmediately a successful movement was made for his liberation. So letus go up and down the world with the music of kind words andsympathetic hearts, serenading the unfortunate, and trying to get outof trouble men who had noble natures, but, by unforeseencircumstances, have been incarcerated, thus liberating kings. Morehymn-book and less razor. 

Especially ought we to be apologetic and merciful toward those who, while they have great faults, have also great virtues. Some people arebarren of virtues. No weeds verily, but no flowers. I must not be toomuch enraged at a nettle along the fence if it be in a fieldcontaining forty acres of ripe Michigan wheat. At the present time, naturalists tell us, there is on the sun a spot twenty thousand mileslong, but from the brightness and warmth I conclude it is a good dealof a sun yet. 

Again, when I read in my text that the Lord shaves with the hiredrazor of Assyria the land of Judea, I bethink myself of the precisionof God's providence. A razor swung the tenth part of an inch out ofthe right line means either failure or laceration, but God's dealingsnever slip, and they do not miss by the thousandth part of an inch theright direction. People talk as though things in this world were atloose ends. Cholera sweeps across Marseilles and Madrid and Palermo, and we watch anxiously. Will the epidemic sweep Europe and America?People say, "That will entirely depend on whether inoculation is asuccessful experiment; that will depend entirely on quarantineregulations; that will depend on the early or late appearance offrost; that epidemic is pitched into the world, and it goes blunderingacross the continents, and it is all guess-work and an appallingperhaps. "

My friends, I think, perhaps, that God had something to do with it, and that His mercy may have in some way protected us--that He may havedone as much for us as the quarantine and the health officers. It wasright and a necessity that all caution should be used, but there hascome enough macaroni from Italy, and enough grapes from the south ofFrance, and enough rags from tatterdemalions, and hidden in thesearticles of transportation enough choleraic germs to have left by thistime all Brooklyn mourning at Greenwood, and all Philadelphia atLaurel Hill, and all Boston at Mount Auburn. I thank all the doctorsand quarantines; but, more than all, and first of all, and last ofall, and all the time, I thank God. In all the six thousand years ofthe world's existence there has not one thing merely "happened so. "God is not an anarchist, but a King, a Father. 

When little Tod, the son of President Lincoln, died, all the landsympathized with the sorrow in the White House. He used to rush intothe room where the cabinet was in session, and while the most eminentmen of the land were discussing the questions of national existence. But the child had no care about those questions. Now God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are in perpetual session inregard to this world and kindred worlds. Shall you, His child, rush into criticise or arraign or condemn the divine government? No; theCabinet of the Eternal Three can govern and will govern in the wisestand best way, and there never will be a mistake, and like razorskillfully swung, shall cut that which ought to be cut, and avoid thatwhich ought to be avoided. Precision to the very hair-breadth. Earthlytime-pieces may get out of order and strike wrong, saying that it isone o'clock when it is two, or two when it is three. God's clock isalways right, and when it is one it strikes one, and when it is twelveit strikes twelve, and the second hand is as accurate as the minutehand. 

Further, my text tells us that God sometimes shaves nations: "In thesame day shall the Lord shave with the razor that is hired. " With onesharp sweep He went across Judea and down went its pride and itspower. In 1861 God shaved our nation. We had allowed to grow Sabbathdesecration, and oppression, and blasphemy, and fraud, and impurity, and all sorts of turpitude. The South had its sins, and the North itssins, and the East its sins, and the West its sins. We had been warnedagain and again, and we did not heed. At length the sword of war cutfrom the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, and from Atlantic seaboard toPacific seaboard. The pride of the land, not the cowards, but theheroes, on both sides went down. And that which we took for the swordof war was the Lord's razor. 

In 1862, again, it went across the land. In 1863 again. In 1864 again. Then the sharp instrument was incased and put away. Never in thehistory of the ages was any land more thoroughly shaved than duringthose four years of civil combat; and, my brethren, if we do not quitsome of our individual sins, national sins, the Lord will again takeus in hand. He has other razors within reach besides war: epidemics, droughts, deluges, plagues--grasshopper and locust; or ourovertowering success may so far excite the jealousy of other landsthat, under some pretext, the great nations of Europe and Asia maycombine to put us down. This nation, so easily approached on northand south and from both oceans, might have on hand at once morehostilities than were ever arrayed against any power. 

We have recently been told by skillful engineers that all ourfortresses around New York harbor could not keep the shells from beinghurled from the sea into the heart of these great cities. InsulatedChina, the wealthiest of all nations, as will be realized when herresources are developed, will have adopted all the modes of modernwarfare, and at the Golden Gate may be discussing whether Americansmust go. If the combined jealousies of Europe and Asia should comeupon us, we should have more work on hand than would be pleasant. Ihope no such combination against us will ever be formed, but I want toshow that, as Assyria was the hired razor against Judea, and Cyrus thehired razor against Babylon, and the Huns the hired razor against theGoths, there are now many razors that the Lord could hire if, becauseof our national sins, He should undertake to shave us. In 1870, Germany was the razor with which the Lord shaved France. England isthe razor with which very shortly the Lord will shave Russia. Butnations are to repent in a day. May a speedy and world-wide coming toGod hinder, on both sides the sea, all national calamity. But do notlet us, as a nation, either by unrighteous law at Washington, or badlives among ourselves, defy the Almighty. 

One would think that our national symbol of the eagle might sometimessuggest another eagle, that which ancient Rome carried. In the talonsof that eagle were clutched at one time Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Dalmatia, Rhactia, Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia, Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt, andall Northern Africa, and all the islands of the Mediterranean, indeed, all the world that was worth having, an hundred and twenty millions ofpeople under the wings of that one eagle. Where is she now? AskGibbon, the historian, in his prose poem, the "Decline and Fall of theRoman Empire. " Ask her gigantic ruins straggling their sadness throughthe ages, the screech owl at windows out of which world-wideconquerors looked. Ask the day of judgment when her crowneddebauchees, Commodus and Pertinax, and Caligula and Diocletian, shallanswer for their infamy? As men and as nations let us repent, and haveour trust in a pardoning God, rather than depend on former successesfor immunity! Out of thirteen greatest battles of the world, Napoleonhad lost but one before Waterloo. Pride and destruction often ride inthe same saddle. 

But notice once more, and more than all in my text, that God is sokind and loving, that when it is necessary for Him to cut, He has togo to others for the sharp-edged weapon. "In the same day shall theLord shave with a razor that is hired. " God is love. God is pity. Godis help. God is shelter. God is rescue. There are no sharp edges aboutHim, no thrusting points, no instruments of laceration. If you wantbalm for wounds, He has that. If you want salve for divine eyesight, He has that. But if there is sharp and cutting work to do whichrequires a razor, that He hires. God has nothing about Him that hurts, save when dire necessity demands, and then He has to go clear off tosome one else to get the instrument. 

This divine geniality will be no novelty to those who have ponderedthe Calvarean massacre, where God submerged Himself in human tears, and crimsoned Himself from punctured arteries, and let the terrestrialand infernal worlds maul Him until the chandeliers of the sky had tobe turned out, because the universe could not endure the indecency. Illustrious for love He must have been to take all that as oursubstitute, paying out of His own heart the price of our admission atthe gates of heaven. 

King Henry II. , of England, crowned his son as king, and on the day ofcoronation put on a servant's garb and waited, he, the king, at theson's table, to the astonishment of all the princes. But we know of amore wondrous scene, the King of heaven and earth offering to put onyou, His child, the crown of life, and in the form of a servantwaiting on you with blessing. Extol that love, all painting, allsculpture, all music, all architecture, all worship! In Dresdeniangallery let Raphael hold Him up as a child, and in Antwerp Cathedrallet Rubens hand Him down from the cross as a martyr, and Handel makeall his oratorio vibrate around that one chord--"He was wounded forour transgressions, bruised for our iniquity. " But not until all theredeemed get home, and from the countenances of all the piled-upgalleries of the ransomed shall be revealed the wonders of redemption, shall either man or seraph or archangel know the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of God. 

At our national capital, a monument in honor of him who did more thanany one to achieve our American Independence, was for scores of yearsin building, and most of us were discouraged and said it never wouldbe completed. And how glad we all were when in the presence of thehighest officials of the nation, the work was done! But will themonument to Him who died for the eternal liberation of the human raceever be completed? For ages the work has been going up; evangelistsand apostles and martyrs have been adding to the heavenly pile, andevery one of the millions of the redeemed going up from earth, hasmade to it contribution of gladness, and weight of glory is swung tothe top of other weight of glory, higher and higher as the centuriesgo by, higher and higher as the whole millenniums roll, sapphire onthe top of jasper, sardonyx on the top of chalcedony, and chrysoprasusabove topaz, until, far beneath shall be the walls and towers anddomes of the great capitol, a monument forever and forever rising, andyet never done. "Unto Him who hath loved us and washed us from oursins in His own blood, and made us kings and priests forever. "

Allelujah, amen. 

WINDOWS TOWARD JERUSALEM. 

 "His windows being open and his chamber toward Jerusalem. "--DAN. Vi: 10. 

The scoundrelly princes of Persia, urged on by political jealousyagainst Daniel, have succeeded in getting a law passed that whosoeverprays to God shall be put under the paws and teeth of the lions, whoare lashing themselves in rage and hunger up and down the stone cage, or putting their lower jaws on the ground, bellowing till the earthtrembles. But the leonine threat did not hinder the devotion ofDaniel, the Coeur-de-Lion of the ages. His enemies might as well havea law that the sun should not draw water or that the south wind shouldnot sweep across a garden of magnolias or that God should beabolished. They could not scare him with the red-hot furnaces, andthey can not now scare him with the lions. As soon as Daniel hears ofthis enactment he leaves his office of Secretary of State, with itsupholstery of crimson and gold, and comes down the white marble stepsand goes to his own house. He opens his window and puts the shuttersback and pulls the curtain aside so that he can look toward the sacredcity of Jerusalem, and then prays. 

I suppose the people in the street gathered under and before hiswindow, and said: "Just see that man defying the law; he ought to bearrested. " And the constabulary of the city rush to the policehead-quarters and report that Daniel is on his knees at the wide-openwindow. "You are my prisoner, " says the officer of the law, dropping aheavy hand on the shoulder of the kneeling Daniel. As the constablesopen the door of the cavern to thrust in their prisoner, they see theglaring eyes of the monsters. But Daniel becomes the first lion-tamer, and they lick his hand and fawn at his feet, and that night he sleepswith the shaggy mane of a wild beast for his pillow, while the kingthat night, sleepless in the palace, has on him the paw and teeth of alion he can not tame--the lion of a remorseful conscience. 

What a picture it would be for some artist; Darius, in the early duskof morning, not waiting for footmen or chariot, hastening to the den, all flushed and nervous and in dishabille, and looking through thecrevices of the cage to see what had become of his prime-minister!"What, no sound!" he says: "Daniel is surely devoured, and the lionsare sleeping after their horrid meal, the bones of the poor manscattered across the floor of the cavern. " With trembling voice Dariuscalls out, "Daniel!" No answer, for the prophet is yet in profoundslumber. But a lion, more easily awakened, advances, and, with hotbreath blown through the crevice, seems angrily to demand the cause ofthis interruption, and then another wild beast lifts his mane fromunder Daniel's head, and the prophet, waking up, comes forth to reporthimself all unhurt and well. 

But our text stands us at Daniel's window, open toward Jerusalem. Whyin that direction open? Jerusalem was his native land, and all thepomp of his Babylonish successes could not make him forget it. Hecame there from Jerusalem at eighteen years of age, and he nevervisited it, though he lived to be eighty-five years. Yet, when hewanted to arouse the deepest emotions and grandest aspirations of hisheart, he had his window open toward his native Jerusalem. There aremany of you to-day who understand that without any exposition. This isgetting to be a nation of foreigners. They have come into alloccupations and professions. They sit in all churches. It may betwenty years ago since you got your naturalization papers, and you maybe thoroughly Americanized, but you can't forget the land of yourbirth, and your warmest sympathies go out toward it. Your windows areopen toward Jerusalem. Your father and mother are buried there. It mayhave been a very humble home in which you were born, but your memoryoften plays around it, and you hope some day to go and see it--thehill, the tree, the brook, the house, the place so sacred, the doorfrom which you started off with parental blessing to make your own wayin the world; and God only knows how sometimes you have longed to seethe familiar places of your childhood, and how in awful crises of lifeyou would like to have caught a glimpse of the old, wrinkled face thatbent over you as you lay on the gentle lap twenty or forty or fiftyyears ago. You may have on this side of the sea risen in fortune, and, like Daniel, have become great, and may have come into prosperitieswhich you never could have reached if you had stayed there, and youmay have many windows to your house--bay-windows, andsky-light-windows, and windows of conservatory, and windows on allsides--but you have at least one window open toward Jerusalem. 

When the foreign steamer comes to the wharf, you see the long line ofsailors, with shouldered mail-bags, coming down the planks, carryingas many letters as you might suppose would be enough for a year'scorrespondence, and this repeated again and again during the week. Multitudes of them are letters from home, and at all the post-officesof the land people will go to the window and anxiously ask for them, hundreds of thousands of persons finding that window of foreign mailsthe open window toward Jerusalem. Messages that say: "When are youcoming home to see us? Brother has gone into the army. Sister is dead. Father and mother are getting very feeble. We are having a greatstruggle to get on here. Would you advise us to come to you, or willyou come to us? All join in love, and hope to meet you, if not in thisworld, then in a better. Good-bye. "

Yes, yes; in all these cities, and amid the flowering westernprairies, and on the slopes of the Pacific, and amid the Sierras, andon the banks of the lagoon, and on the ranches of Texas there is anuncounted multitude who, this hour, stand and sit and kneel with theirwindows open toward Jerusalem. Some of them played on the heather ofthe Scottish hills. Some of them were driven out by Irish famine. Someof them, in early life, drilled in the German army. Some of them wereaccustomed at Lyons or Marseilles or Paris to see on the street VictorHugo and Gambetta. Some chased the chamois among the Alpineprecipices. Some plucked the ripe clusters from Italian vineyard. Some lifted their faces under the midnight sun of Norway. It is nodishonor to our land that they remember the place of their nativity. Miscreants would they be if, while they have some of their windowsopen to take in the free air of America and the sunlight of anatmosphere which no kingly despot has ever breathed, they forgotsometime to open the window toward Jerusalem. 

No wonder that the son of the Swiss, when far away from home, hearingthe national air of his country sung, the malady of home-sicknesscomes on him so powerfully as to cause his death. You have the exampleof the heroic Daniel of my text for keeping early memories fresh. Forget not the old folks at home. Write often; and, if you havesurplus of means and they are poor, make practical contribution, andrejoice that America is bound to all the world by ties of sanguinityas is no other nation. Who can doubt but it is appointed for theevangelization of other lands? What a stirring, melting, gospelizingtheory that all the doors of other nations are open toward us, whileour windows are open toward them!

But Daniel, in the text, kept this port-hole of his domestic fortressunclosed because Jerusalem was the capital of sacred influences. Therehad smoked the sacrifice. There was the Holy of Holies. There was theArk of the Covenant. There stood the temple. We are all tempted tokeep our windows open on the opposite side, toward the world, that wemay see and hear and appropriate its advantages. What does the worldsay? What does the world think? What does the world do? Worshipers ofthe world instead of worshipers of God. Windows open toward Babylon. Windows open toward Corinth. Windows open toward Athens. Windows opentoward Sodom. Windows open toward the flats, instead of windows opentoward the hills. Sad mistake, for this world as a god is likesomething I saw the other day in the museum of Strasburg, Germany--thefigure of a virgin in wood and iron. The victim in olden time wasbrought there, and this figure would open its arms to receive him, and, once infolded, the figure closed with a hundred knives and lancesupon him, and then let him drop one hundred and eighty feet sheerdown. So the world first embraces its idolaters, then closes upon themwith many tortures, and then lets them drop forever down. The highesthonor the world could confer was to make a man Roman emperor; but, outof sixty-three emperors, it allowed only six to die peacefully intheir beds. 

The dominion of this world over multitudes is illustrated by the namesof coins of many countries. They have their pieces of money which theycall sovereigns and half sovereigns, crowns and half crowns, Napoleonsand half Napoleons, Fredericks and double Fredericks, and ducats, andIsabellinos, all of which names mean not so much usefulness asdominion. The most of our windows open toward the exchange, toward thesalon of fashion, toward the god of this world. In olden times thelength of the English yard was fixed by the length of the arm of KingHenry I. , and we are apt to measure things by a variable standard andby the human arm that in the great crises of life can give us no help. We need, like Daniel, to open our windows toward God and religion. 

But, mark you, that good lion-tamer is not standing at the window, butkneeling, while he looks out. Most photographs are taken of those instanding or sitting posture. I now remember but one picture of a mankneeling, and that was David Livingstone, who in the cause of God andcivilization sacrificed himself; and in the heart of Africa hisservant, Majwara, found him in the tent by the light of a candle, stuck on the top of a box, his head in his hands upon the pillow, anddead on his knees. But here is a great lion-tamer, living under thedash of the light, and his hair disheveled of the breeze, praying. Thefact is, that a man can see further on his knees than standing ontiptoe. Jerusalem was about five hundred and fifty statute miles fromBabylon, and the vast Arabian Desert shifted its sands between them. Yet through that open window Daniel saw Jerusalem, saw all between it, saw beyond, saw time, saw eternity, saw earth, and saw heaven. Wouldyou like to see the way through your sins to pardon, through yourtroubles to comfort, through temptation to rescue, through diresickness to immortal health, through night to day, through thingsterrestrial to things celestial, you will not see them till you takeDaniel's posture. No cap of bone to the joints of the fingers, no capof bone to the joints of the elbow, but cap of bone to the knees, madeso because the God of the body was the God of the soul, and especialprovision for those who want to pray, and physiological structurejoins with spiritual necessity in bidding us pray, and pray, and pray. 

In olden time the Earl of Westmoreland said he had no need to pray, because he had enough pious tenants on his estate to pray for him;but all the prayers of the church universal amount to nothing unless, like Daniel, we pray for ourselves. Oh, men and women, bounded on oneside by Shadrach's red-hot furnace, and the other side by devouringlions, learn the secret of courage and deliverance by looking at thatBabylonish window open toward the south-west! "Oh, " you say, "that isthe direction of the Arabian Desert!" Yes; but on the other side ofthe desert is God, is Christ, is Jerusalem, is heaven. 

The Brussels lace is superior to all other lace, so beautiful, somultiform, so expensive--four hundred francs a pound. All the worldseeks it. Do you know how it is made? The spinning is done in a darkroom, the only light admitted through a small aperture, and that lightfalling directly on the pattern. And the finest specimens of Christiancharacter I have ever seen or ever expect to see are those to be foundin lives all of whose windows have been darkened by bereavement andmisfortune save one, but under that one window of prayer theinterlacing of divine workmanship went on until it was fit to deck athrone, a celestial embroidery which angels admired and God approved. 

But it is another Jerusalem toward which we now need to open ourwindows. The exiled evangelist of Ephesus saw it one day as the surfof the Icarian sea foamed and splashed over the bowlders at his feet, and his vision reminded me of a wedding-day when the bride by sisterand maid was having garlands twisted for her hair and jewels strungfor her neck just before she puts her betrothed hand into the hand ofher affianced: "I, John, saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, comingdown from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for herhusband. " Toward that bridal Jerusalem are our windows opened?

We would do well to think more of heaven. It is not a mere annex ofearth. It is not a desolate outpost. As Jerusalem was the capital ofJudae, and Babylon the capital of the Babylonian monarchy, and Londonis the capital of Great Britain, and Washington is the capital of ourown republic, the New Jerusalem is the capital of the universe. Theking lives there, and the royal family of the redeemed have theirpalaces there, and there is a congress of many nations and theparliament of all the worlds. Yea, as Daniel had kindred in Jerusalemof whom he often thought, though he had left home when a very youngman, perhaps father and mother and brothers and sisters still living, and was homesick to see them, and they belonged to the high circles ofroyalty, Daniel himself having royal blood in his veins, so we have inthe New Jerusalem a great many kindred, and we are sometimes homesickto see them, and they are all princes and princesses, in them theblood imperial, and we do well to keep our windows open toward theireternal residence. 

It is a joy for us to believe that while we are interested in themthey are interested in us. Much thought of heaven makes one heavenly. The airs that blow through that open window are charged with life, andsweep up to us aromas from gardens that never wither, under skies thatnever cloud, in a spring-tide that never terminates. Compared with itall other heavens are dead failures. 

Homer's heaven was an elysium which he describes as a plain at theend of the earth or beneath, with no snow nor rainfall, and the sunnever goes down, and Rhadamanthus, the justest of men, rules. Hesiod'sheaven is what he calls the islands of the blessed, in the midst ofthe ocean, three times a year blooming with most exquisite flowers, and the air is tinted with purple, while games and music andhorse-races occupy the time. The Scandinavian's heaven was the hall ofWalhalla, where the god Odin gave unending wine-suppers to earthlyheroes and heroines. The Mohammedan's heaven passes its disciples inover the bridge Al-Sirat, which is finer than a hair and sharper thana sword, and then they are let loose into a riot of everlastingsensuality. 

The American aborigines look forward to a heaven of illimitablehunting-ground, partridge and deer and wild duck more than plentiful, and the hounds never off the scent, and the guns never missing fire. But the geographer has followed the earth round, and found no Homer'selysium. Voyagers have traversed the deep in all directions, and foundno Hesiod's islands of the blessed. The Mohammedan's celestialdebauchery and the Indian's eternal hunting-ground for vast multitudeshave no charm. But here rolls in the Bible heaven. No more sea--thatis, no wide separation. No more night--that is, no insomnia. No moretears--that is, no heart-break. No more pain--that is, dismissal oflancet and bitter draught and miasma, and banishment of neuralgias andcatalepsies and consumptions. All colors in the wall except gloomyblack; all the music in the major-key, because celebrative andjubilant. River crystalline, gate crystalline, and skies crystalline, because everything is clear and without doubt. White robes, and thatmeans sinlessness. Vials full of odors, and that means pure regalementof the senses. Rainbow, and that means the storm is over. Marriagesupper, and that means gladdest festivity. Twelve manner of fruits, and that means luscious and unending variety. Harp, trumpet, grandmarch, anthem, amen, and hallelujah in the same orchestra. Choralmeeting solo, and overture meeting antiphon, and strophe joiningdithyramb, as they roll into the ocean of doxologies. And you and Imay have all that, and have it forever through Christ, if we will letHim with the blood of one wounded hand rub out our sin, and with theother wounded hand swing open the shining portals. 

Day and night keep your window open toward that Jerusalem. Sing aboutit. Pray about it. Think about it. Talk about it. Dream about it. Donot be inconsolable about your friends who have gone into it. Do notworry if something in your heart indicates that you are not far offfrom its ecstasies. Do not think that when a Christian dies he stops, for he goes on. 

An ingenious man has taken the heavenly furlongs as mentioned inRevelation, and has calculated that there will be in heaven onehundred rooms sixteen feet square for each ascending soul, though thisworld should lose a hundred millions yearly. But all the rooms ofheaven will be ours, for they are family rooms; and as no room in yourhouse is too good for your children, so all the rooms of all thepalaces of the heavenly Jerusalem will be free to God's children andeven the throne-room will not be denied, and you may run up the stepsof the throne, and put your hand on the side of the throne, and sitdown beside the king according to the promise: "To him that overcomethwill I grant to sit with me in my throne. "

But you can not go in except as conquerors. Many years ago the Turksand Christians were in battle, and the Christians were defeated, andwith their commander Stephen fled toward a fortress where the motherof this commander was staying. When she saw her son and his army indisgraceful retreat, she had the gates of the fortress rolled shut, and then from the top of the battlement cried out to her son, "You cannot enter here except as conqueror!" Then Stephen rallied his forcesand resumed the battle and gained the day, twenty thousand drivingback two hundred thousand. For those who are defeated in the battlewith sin and death and hell nothing but shame and contempt; but forthose who gain the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ the gates ofthe New Jerusalem will hoist, and there shall be an abundant entranceinto the everlasting kingdom of our Lord, toward which you do well tokeep your windows open. 

STORMED AND TAKEN. 

 "And Abimelech gat him up to Mount Zalmon, he and all the people that were with him, and Abimelech took an ax in his hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it, and laid it on his shoulder. .. . And all the people likewise cut down every man his bough, and followed Abimelech, and put them to the hold, and set the hold on fire upon them; so that all the men of the tower of Shechem died also, about a thousand men and women. "--JUDGES ix: 48, 49. 

Abimelech is a name malodorous in Bible history, and yet full ofprofitable suggestion. Buoys are black and uncomely, but they tellwhere the rocks are. The snake's rattle is hideous, but it givestimely warning. From the piazza of my summer home, night by night Isaw a lighthouse fifteen miles away, not placed there for adornment, but to tell mariners to stand off from that dangerous point. So allthe iron-bound coast of moral danger is marked with Saul, and Herod, and Rehoboam, and Jezebel, and Abimelech. These bad people arementioned in the Bible, not only as warnings, but because there weresometimes flashes of good conduct in their lives worthy of imitation. God sometimes drives a very straight nail with a very poor hammer. 

The city of Shechem had to be taken, and Abimelech and his men were todo it. I see the dust rolling up from their excited march. I hear theshouting of the captains and the yell of the besiegers. The swordsclack sharply on the parrying shields, and the vociferation of twoarmies in death-grapple is horrible to hear. The battle goes on allday, and as the sun is setting Abimelech and his army cry "Surrender!"to the beaten foe. And, unable longer to resist, the city of Shechemfalls; and there are pools of blood, and dissevered limbs, and glazedeyes looking up beggingly for mercy that war never shows, and dyingsoldiers with their head on the lap of mother, or wife, or sister, whohave come out for the last offices of kindness and affection: and agroan rolls across the city, stopping not, because there is no spotfor it to rest, so full is the place of other groans. A city wounded!A city dying! A city dead! Wail for Shechem, all ye who know thehorrors of a sacked town!

As I look over the city I can find only one building standing, andthat is the temple of the god Berith. Some soldiers outside of thecity, in a tower, finding that they can no longer defend Shechem, nowbegin to look out for their own personal safety, and they fly to thistemple of Berith. They get within the door, shut it, and they say, "Now we are safe. Abimelech has taken the whole city, but he can nottake this temple of Berith. Here we shall be under the protection ofthe gods. " Oh, Berith, the god! do your best now for these refugees. If you have eyes, pity them. If you have hands, help them. If you havethunderbolts, strike for them. 

But how shall Abimelech and his army take this temple of Berith andthe men who are there fortified? Will they do it with sword? Nay. Will they do it with spear? Nay. With battering-ram, rolled up byhundred-armed strength, crashing against the walls? Nay. Abimelechmarches his men to a wood in Zalmon. With his ax he hews off a limb ofa tree, and puts that limb upon his own shoulder, and then he says tohis men, "You do the same. " They are obedient to their commander. 

Oh, what a strange army, with what strange equipment! They come to thefoot of the temple of Berith, and Abimelech takes his limb of a treeand throws it down; and the first platoon of soldiers come up and theythrow down their branches; and the second platoon, and the third, until all around about the temple of Berith there is a pile oftree-branches. The Shechemites look out from the windows of the templeupon what seems to them childish play on the part of their enemies. But soon the flints are struck, and the spark begins to kindle thebrush, and the flame comes up all through the pile, and the redelements leap to the casement, and the woodwork begins to blaze, andone arm of flame is thrown up on the right side of the temple, andanother arm of flame is thrown up on the left side of the temple, until they clasp their lurid palms under the wild night sky, and thecry of "Fire!" within, and "Fire!" without announces the terror, andthe strangulation, and the doom of the Shechemites, and the completeoverthrow of the temple of the god Berith. Then there went up a shout, long and loud, from the stout lungs and swarthy chests of Abimelechand his men, as they stood amid the ashes and the dust, crying:"Victory! Victory!"

Now, I learn first from this subject the folly of depending upon anyone form of tactics in anything we have to do for this world or forGod. Look over the weaponry of olden times--javelins, battle-axes, habergeons--and show me a single weapon with which Abimelech and hismen could have gained such complete victory. It is no easy thing totake a temple thus armed. I saw a house where, during revolutionarytimes, a man and his wife kept back a whole regiment hour after hour, because they were inside the house, and the assaulting soldiers wereoutside the house. Yet here Abimelech and his army come up, theysurround this temple, and they capture it without the loss of a singleman on the part of Abimelech, although I suppose some of the oldIsraelitish heroes told Abimelech: "You are only going up there to becut to pieces. " Yet you are willing to testify to-day that by no othermode--certainly not by ordinary modes--could that temple so easily, sothoroughly have been taken. Fathers and mothers, brethren and sistersin Jesus Christ, what the Church most wants to learn this day is thatany plan is right, is lawful, is best, which helps to overthrow thetemple of sin, and capture this world for God. We are very apt tostick to the old modes of attack. 

We put on the old-style coat of mail. We come up with the sharp, keen, glittering steel spear of argument, expecting in that way to take thecastle, but they have a thousand spears where we have ten. And so thecastle of sin stands. Oh, my friends, we will never capture this worldfor God by any keen saber of sarcasm, by any glittering lances ofrhetoric, by any sapping and mining of profound disquisition, by anygunpowdery explosions of indignation, by sharp shootings of wit, byhowitzers of mental strength made to swing shell five miles, bycavalry horses gorgeously caparisoned pawing the air. In vain all theattempts on the part of these ecclesiastical foot soldiers, lighthorsemen, and grenadiers. 

My friends, I propose this morning a different style of tactics. Leteach one go to the forest of God's promise and invitation, and hewdown a branch and put it on his shoulder, and let us all come aroundthese obstinate iniquities, and then, with this pile, kindled by thefires of a holy zeal and the flames of a consecrated life, we willburn them out. What steel can not do, fire may. And I, this morning, announce myself in favor of any plan of religious attack thatsucceeds--any plan of religious attack, however radical, however odd, however unpopular, however hostile to all the conventionalities ofChurch and State. We want more heart in our song, more heart in ouralms-giving, more heart in our prayers, more heart in our preaching. Oh, for less of Abimelech's sword, and more of Abimelech'sconflagration! I have often heard

 "There is a fountain filled with blood"

sung artistically by four birds perched on their Sunday roost in thegallery, until I thought of Jenny Lind, and Nilsson, and Sontag, andall the other warblers; but there came not one tear to my eye, nor onemaster emotion to my heart. But one night I went down to the AfricanMethodist meeting-house in Philadelphia, and at the close of theservice a black woman, in the midst of the audience, began to singthat hymn, and all the audience joined in, and we were floated somethree or four miles nearer heaven than I have ever been since. I sawwith my own eyes that "fountain filled with blood"--red, agonizing, sacrificial, redemptive--and I heard the crimson plash of the wave aswe all went down under it:

 "For sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains. "

Oh, my friends, the Gospel is not a syllogism; It is not casuistry, itis not polemics, or the science of squabble. It is blood-red fact; itis warm-hearted invitation; it is leaping, bounding, flying good news;it is efflorescent with all light; it is rubescent with all glow; itis arborescent with all sweet shade. I have seen the sun rise on MountWashington, and from the Tip-top House; but there was no beauty inthat compared with the day-spring from on high when Christ gives lightto a soul. I have heard Parepa sing; but there was no music in thatcompared with the voice of Christ when He said: "Thy sins are forgiventhee; go in peace. " Good news! Let every one cut down a branch of thistree of life and wave it. Let him throw it down and kindle it. Let allthe way from Mount Zalmon to Shechem be filled with the tossing joy. Good news! This bonfire of the Gospel shall consume the last temple ofsin, and will illumine the sky with apocalyptic joy that Jesus Christcame into the world to save sinners. Any new plan that makes a manquit his sin, and that prostrates a wrong, I am as much in favor of asthough all the doctors, and the bishops, and the archbishops, and thesynods, and the academical gownsmen of Christianity sanctioned it. Thetemple of Berith must come down, and I do not care how it comes. 

Still further, I learn from this subject the power of example. IfAbimelech had sat down on the grass and told his men to go and get theboughs, and go out to the battle, they would never have gone at all, or, if they had, it would have been without any spirit or effectiveresult; but when Abimelech goes with his own ax and hews down abranch, and with Abimelech's arm puts it on Abimelech's shoulder, andmarches on--then, my text says, all the people did the same. Hownatural that was! What made Garibaldi and Stonewall Jackson the mostmagnetic commanders of this century? They always rode ahead. Oh, theovercoming power of example! Here is a father on the wrong road; allhis boys go on the wrong road. Here is a father who enlists forChrist; his children enlist. 

I saw, in some of the picture-galleries of Europe, that before many ofthe great works of the masters--the old masters--there would besometimes four or five artists taking copies of the pictures. Thesecopies they were going to carry with them, perhaps to distant lands;and I have thought that your life and character are a masterpiece, andit is being copied, and long after you are gone it will bloom or blastin the homes of those who knew you, and be a Gorgon or a Madonna. Lookout what you say. Look out what you do. Eternity will hear the echo. The best sermon ever preached is a holy life. The best music everchanted is a consistent walk. 

I saw, near the beach, a wrecker's machine. It was a cylinder withsome holes at the side, made for the thrusting in of some long poleswith strong leverage; and when there is a vessel in trouble or goingto pieces out in the offing, the wreckers shoot a rope out to thesuffering men. They grasp it, and the wreckers turn the cylinder, andthe rope winds around the cylinder, and those who are shipwrecked aresaved. So at your feet to-day there is an influence with a tremendousleverage. The rope attached to it swings far out into the billowyfuture. Your children, your children's children, and all thegenerations that are to follow, will grip that influence and feel thelong-reaching pull long after the figures on your tombstone are sonear worn out that the visitor can not tell whether it was in 1885, or1775, or 1675 that you died. 

Still further, I learn from this subject the advantages of concertedaction. If Abimelech had merely gone out with a tree-branch the workwould not have been accomplished, or if ten, twenty, or thirty men hadgone; but when all the axes are lifted, and all the sharp edges fall, and all these men carry each his tree-branch down and throw it aboutthe temple, the victory is gained--the temple falls. My friends, wherethere is one man in the Church of God at this day shouldering hiswhole duty there are a great many who never lift an ax or swing ablow. 

Oh, we all want our boat to get over to the golden sands, but the mostof us are seated either in the prow or in the stern, wrapped in ourstriped shawl, holding a big-handled sunshade, while others areblistered in the heat, and pull until the oar-locks groan, and theblades bend till they snap. Oh, religious sleepy-heads, wake up! Whilewe have in our church a great many who are toiling for God, there aresome too lazy to brush the flies off their heavy eyelids. 

Suppose, in military circles, on the morning of battle the roll iscalled, and out of a thousand men only a hundred men in the regimentanswered. What excitement there would be in the camp! What would thecolonel say? What high talking there would be among the captains, andmajors, and the adjutants! Suppose word came to head-quarters thatthese delinquents excused themselves on the ground that they hadoverslept themselves, or that the morning was damp and they wereafraid of getting their feet wet, or that they were busy cookingrations. My friends, this is the morning of the day of God Almighty'sbattle! Do you not see the troops? Hear you not all the trumpets ofheaven and all the drums of hell? Which side are you on? If you are onthe right side, to what cavalry troop, to what artillery service, towhat garrison duty do you belong? In other words, in whatSabbath-school do you teach? in what prayer-meeting do you exhort? towhat penitentiary do you declare eternal liberty? to what almshouse doyou announce the riches of heaven? What broken bone of sorrow have youever set? Are you doing nothing? Is it possible that a man or womansworn to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ is doing nothing? Thenhide the horrible secret from the angels. Keep it away from the bookof judgment. If you are doing nothing do not let the world find itout, lest they charge your religion with being a false-face. Do notlet your cowardice and treason be heard among the martyrs about thethrone, lest they forget the sanctity of the place and curse yourbetrayal of that cause for which they agonized and died. 

May the eternal God rouse us all to action! As for myself, I feel Iwould be ashamed to die now and enter heaven until I have accomplishedsomething more decisive for the Lord that bought me. I would like tojoin with you in an oath, with hand high uplifted to heaven, swearingnew allegiance to Jesus Christ, and to work more for His kingdom. Areyou ready to join with me in some new work for Christ? I feel thatthere is such a thing as claustral piety, that there is such a thingas insular work; but it seems to me that what we want now is concertedaction. The temple of Berith is very broad, and it is very high. Ithas been going up by the hands of men and devils, and no humanenginery can demolish it; but if the fifty thousand ministers ofChrist in this country should each take a branch of the tree of life, and all their congregations should do the same, and we should march onand throw these branches around the great temples of sin, andworldliness and folly, it would need no match, or coal, or torch ofours to touch off the pile; for, as in the days of Elijah, fire wouldfall from heaven and kindle the bonfire of Christian victory overdemolished sin. It is kindling now! Huzzah! The day is ours!

Still further, I learn from this subject the danger of false refuges. As soon as these Shechemites got into the temple they thought theywere safe. They said: "Berith will take care of us. Abimelech maybatter down everything else; he can not batter down this temple wherewe are now hid. " But very soon they heard the timbers crackling, andthey were smothered with smoke, and they miserably died. And you and Iare just as much tempted to false refuges. The mirror this morning mayhave persuaded you that you have a comely cheek; your best friendsmay have persuaded you that you have elegant manners. Satan may havetold you that you are all right; but bear with me if I tell you that, if unpardoned, you are all wrong. I have no clinometer by which tomeasure how steep is the inclined plane you are descending, but I knowit is very steep. "Well, " you say, "if the Bible is true I am asinner. Show me some refuge; I will step right into it. "

I suppose every person in this audience this moment is stepping intosome kind of refuge. Here you step in the tower of good works. Yousay: "I shall be safe here in this refuge. " The battlements areadorned; the steps are varnished; on the wall are pictures of all thesuffering you have alleviated, and all the schools you haveestablished, and all the fine things you have ever done. Up in thattower you feel you are safe. But hear you not the tramp of yourunpardoned sins all around the tower? They each have a match. They arekindling the combustible material. You feel the heat and thesuffocation. Oh, may you leap in time, the Gospel declaring: "By thedeeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified. "

"Well, " you say, "I have been driven out of that tower; where shall Igo?" Step into this tower of indifference. You say: "If this tower isattacked, it will be a great while before it is taken. " You feel atease. But there is an Abimelech, with ruthless assaults, coming on. Death and his forces are gathering around, and they demand that yousurrender everything, and they clamor for your immortal overthrow, andthey throw their skeleton arms in the windows, and with their ironfists they beat against the door; and while you are trying to keepthem out you see the torches of judgment kindling, and every forest isa torch, and every mountain a torch, and every sea a torch; and whilethe Alps, the Pyrenees, and Himalayas turn into a live coal, blownredder and redder by the whirlwind breath of a God omnipotent, whatwill become of your refuge of lies?

"But, " says some one, "you are engaged in a very mean business, driving us from tower to tower. " Oh, no. I want to tell you of aGibraltar that never has been and never will be taken; of a wall thatno satanic assault can scale; of a bulwark that the judgmentearthquakes can not budge. The Bible refers to it when it says: "InGod is thy refuge, and underneath thee are the everlasting arms. " Oh, fling yourself into it! Tread down unceremoniously everything thatintercepts you. Wedge your way there. There are enough hounds of deathand peril after you to make you hurry. Many a man has perished justoutside the tower, with his foot on the step, with his hand on thelatch. Oh, get inside! Not one surplus second have you to spare. Quick, quick, quick!

Great God, is life such an uncertain thing? If I bear a little toohard with my right foot on the earth, does it break through into thegrave? Is this world, which swings at the speed of thousands of milesan hour around the sun, going with tenfold more speed toward thejudgment-day? Oh, I am overborne with the thought; and in theconclusion I cry to one and I cry to the other: "Oh, time! Oh, eternity! Oh, the dead! Oh, the judgment-day! Oh, Jesus! Oh, God!"But, catching at the last apostrophe, I feel that I have something tohold on to: for "in God is thy refuge, and underneath thee are theeverlasting arms. " And, exhausted with my failure to save myself, Ithrow my whole weight of body, mind, and soul on this divine promise, as a weary child throws itself into the arms of its mother; as awounded soldier throws himself on the hospital pillow; as a pursuedman throws himself into the refuge; for "in God is thy refuge, andunderneath thee are the everlasting arms. " Oh, for a flood of tearswith which to express the joy of this eternal rescue!

ALL THE WORLD AKIN. 

 "And hath made of one blood all nations of men. "--ACTS xvii: 26. 

Some have supposed that God originally made an Asiatic Adam and aEuropean Adam and an African Adam and an American Adam, but thattheory is entirely overthrown by my text, which says that all nationsare blood relatives, having sprung from one and the same stock. Adifference in climate makes much of the difference in national temper. 

An American goes to Europe and stays there a long while, and finds hispulse moderating and his temper becoming more calm. The air on thisside the ocean is more tonic than on the other side. An Americanbreathes more oxygen than a European. A European coming to Americafinds a great change taking place in himself. He walks with more rapidstrides, and finds his voice becoming keener and shriller. TheEnglishman who walks in London Strand at the rate of three miles thehour, coming to America and residing for a long while here, walksBroadway at the rate of four miles the hour. Much of the differencebetween an American and a European, between an Asiatic and an African, is atmospheric. The lack of the warm sunlight pales the Greenlander. The full dash of the sunlight darkens the African. 

Then, ignorance or intelligence makes its impression on the physicalorganism--in the one case ignorance flattening the skull, as with theEgyptian; in the other case intelligence building up the great dome ofthe forehead, as with the German. Then the style of god that thenation worships decides how much it shall be elevated or debased, sothat those nations that worship reptiles are themselves only asuperior form of reptile, while those nations that worship the naturalsun in the heavens are the noblest style of barbaric people. Butwhatever be the difference of physiognomy, and whatever the differenceof temperament, the physiologist tells us that after careful analysishe finds out that the plasma and the disk in the human blood have thesame characteristics: so that if you should put twenty men from twentynationalities abreast in line of battle, and a bullet should flythrough the hearts of the twenty men, the blood flowing forth would, through analysis, prove itself to be the same blood in every instance. In other words, the science of the day confirming the truth of my textthat "God hath made of one blood all nations of men. "

I have thought, my friends, it might be profitable this morning if Igave you some of the moral and religious impressions which I receivedwhen, through your indulgence, I had transatlantic absence. First, Iobserve that the majority of people in all lands are in a mightystruggle for bread. While in nearly all lands there are only a fewcases of actual starvation reported, there is a vast population inevery country I visited who have a limited supply of food, or suchfood as is incompetent to sustain physical vigor. This struggle insome lands is becoming more agonizing, while here and there it islightened. I have joy in reporting that Ireland, about the sufferingsof which we have heard so much, has far better prospects than I haveseen there in previous visits. In 1879, coming home from that land, Iprophesied the famine that must come upon, and did come upon, thedeluged fields of that country. This year the crops are large, andboth parties--those who like the English Government and those whodon't like it--are expecting relief. I said to one of the intelligentmen of Ireland: "Tell me in a few words what are the sufferings ofIreland, and what is the Land Relief enactment?" He replied: "I willtell you. Suppose I am a landlord and you a tenant. You rent from me aplace for ten pounds a year. You improve it. You turn it from a boginto a garden. You put a house upon it. After a while I, the landlord, come around, and I say to my agent: 'How much rent is this manpaying;' He answers, 'Ten pounds. ' 'Is that all? Put his rent up totwenty pounds. ' The tenant goes on improving his property, and afterawhile I come around and I say to my agent, 'How much rent is this manpaying?' He says, 'Twenty pounds. ' 'Put his rent up to twenty-fivepounds. ' The tenant protests and says, 'I can't pay it. ' Then I, thelandlord, say, 'Pay it or get out;' and the tenant is helpless, and, leaving the place, the property in its improved condition turns overto the landlord. Now, to stop that outrage the Relief Enactment comesin and appoints commissioners who shall see that if the tenant isturned out, he shall receive the difference of value between the farmas he got it and the farm as he surrenders it. Moreover, thegovernment loans money to the tenant, so that he may buy the propertyout and out if the landlord will sell. " Mighty advancement toward therighting of a great wrong! But there and in all lands, not exceptingour own, there is a far-reaching distress. And let those who broketheir fast this morning, and those who shall dine to-day, rememberthose who are in want, and by prayer and practical beneficence do allthey can to alleviate the hunger swoon of nations. 

Another impression was--indeed the impression carried with me all thesummer--the thought already suggested, the brotherhood of man. Thefact is that the differences are so small between nations that theymay be said to be all alike. Though I spent the most of the summer insilence, I spoke a few times and to people of different nations, andhow soon I noticed that they were very much alike! If a man knows howto play the piano, it does not make any difference whether he finds itin New Orleans or San Francisco or Boston or St. Petersburg or Moscowor Madras; it has so many keys, and he puts his fingers right on them. And the human heart is a divine instrument, with just so many keys inall cases, and you strike some of them and there is joy, and youstrike some of them and there is sorrow. Plied by the same motives, lifted up by the same success, depressed by the same griefs. Thecab-men of London have the same characteristics as the cab-men of NewYork, and are just as modest and retiring. The gold and silver drivePiccadilly and the Boulevards just as they drive Wall Street. If therebe a great political excitement in Europe, the Bourse in Paris howlsjust as loudly as ever did the American gold-room. 

The same grief that we saw in our country in 1864 you may find now inthe military hospitals of England containing the wounded and sick fromthe Egyptian wars. The same widowhood and orphanage that sat down indespair after the battles of Shiloh and South Mountain poured theirgrief in the Shannon and the Clyde and the Dee and the Thames. Oh, yemen and women who know how to pray, never get up from your knees untilyou have implored God in behalf of the fourteen hundred millions ofthe race just like yourselves, finding life a tremendous struggle! Forwho knows but that as the sun to-day draws up drops of water from theCaspian and the Black seas and from the Amazon and the Mississippi, after a while to distill the rain, these very drops on the fields--whoknows but that the sun of righteousness may draw up the tears of yoursympathy, and then rain them down in distillation of comfort o'er allthe world?

Who is that poor man, carried on a stretcher to the Afghan ambulance?He is your brother. If in the Pantheon at Paris you smite your handagainst the wall among the tombs of the dead, you will hear a verystrange echo coming from all parts of the Pantheon just as soon as yousmite the wall. And I suppose it is so arranged that every stroke ofsorrow among the tombs of bereavement ought to have loud, long, andoft-repeated echoes of sympathy all around the world. Oh, what abeautiful theory it is--and it is a Christian theory--that Englishman, Scotchman, Irishman, Norwegian, Frenchman, Italian, Russian, are allakin. Of one blood all nations. That is a very beautiful inscriptionthat I saw a few days ago over the door in Edinburgh, the door of thehouse where John Knox used to live. It is getting somewhat dim now, but there is the inscription, fit for the door of any household--"LoveGod above all, and your neighbor as yourself. "

I was also impressed in journeying on the other side the sea with thedifference the Bible makes in countries. The two nations of Europethat are the most moral to-day and that have the least crime areScotland and Wales. They have by statistics, as you might find, fewerthefts, fewer arsons, fewer murders. What is the reason? A bad bookcan hardly live in Wales. The Bible crowds it out. I was told by oneof the first literary men in Wales: "There is not a bad book in theWelsh language. " He said: "Bad books come down from London, but theycan not live here. " It is the Bible that is dominant in Wales. Andthen in Scotland just open your Bible to give out your text, and thereis a rustling all over the house almost startling to an American. Whatis it? The people opening their Bibles to find the text, looking atthe context, picking out the referenced passages, seeing whether youmake right quotation. Scotland and Wales Bible-reading people. Thataccounts for it. A man, a city, a nation that reads God's Word must bevirtuous. That Book is the foe of all wrong-doing. What makesEdinburgh better than Constantinople? The Bible. 

Oh, I am afraid in America we are allowing the good book to be coveredup with other good books! We have our ever-welcome morning and eveningnewspapers, and we have our good books on all subjects--geologicalsubjects, botanical subjects, physiological subjects, theologicalsubjects--good books, beautiful books, and so many good books that wehave not time to read the Bible. Oh, my friends, it is not a matter ofvery great importance that you have a family Bible on the center-tablein your parlor! Better have one pocket New Testament, the passagesmarked, the leaves turned down, the binding worn smooth with muchusage, than fifty pictorial family Bibles too handsome to read! Oh, let us take a whisk-broom and brush the dust off our Bibles! Do youwant poetry? Go and hear Job describe the war-horse, or David tell howthe mountains skipped like lambs. Do you want logic? Go and hear Paulreason until your brain aches under the spell of his mighty intellect. Do you want history? Go and see Moses put into a few pages stupendousinformation which Herodotus, Thucydides, and Prescott never preachedafter. And, above all, if you want to find how a nation struck down bysin can rise to happiness and to heaven, read of that blood which canwash away the pollution of a world. There is one passage in the Bibleof vast tonnage: "God so loved the world that He gave His onlybegotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, buthave everlasting life. " Oh, may God fill this country with Bibles andhelp the people to read them!

I was also impressed in my transatlantic journeys with the wonderfulpower that Christ holds among the nations. The great name in Europeto-day is not Victoria, not Marquis of Salisbury, not William theEmperor, not Bismarck; the great name in Europe to-day is Christ. Youfind the crucifix on the gate-post, you find it in the hay field, youfind it at the entrance of the manor, you find it by the side of theroad. 

The greatest pictures in all the galleries of Italy, Germany, France, England, and Scotland are Bible pictures. What were the subjects ofRaphael's great paintings? "The Transfiguration, " "The MiraculousDraught of Fishes, " "The Charge to Peter, " "The Holy Family, " "TheMassacre of the Innocents, " "Moses at the Burning Bush, " "TheNativity, " "Michael the Archangel, " and the four or five exquisite"Madonnas. " What are Tintoretto's great pictures? "Fall of Adam, ""Cain and Abel, " "The Plague of the Fiery Serpent, " "Paradise, " "Agonyin the Garden, " "The Temptation, " "The Adoration of the Magi, " "TheCommunication, " "Baptism, " "Massacre of the Innocents, " "The Flightinto Egypt, " "The Crucifixion, " "The Madonna. " What are Titian's greatpictures? "The Flagellation of Christ, " "The Supper at Emmaus, " "TheDeath of Abel, " "The Assumption, " "The Entombment, " "Faith, " "TheMadonna. " What are Michael Angelo's great pictures? "TheAnnunciation, " "The Spirits in Prison, " "At the feet of Christ, " "TheInfant Christ, " "The Crucifixion, " "The Last Judgment. " What are PaulVeronese's great pictures? "Queen of Sheba, " "The Marriage in Cana, ""Magdalen Washing the Feet of Christ, " "The Holy Family. " Who has notheard of Da Vinci's "Last Supper"? Who has not heard of Turner's"Pools of Solomon"? Who has not heard of Claude's "Marriage of Isaacand Rebecca"? Who has not heard of Dürer's "Dragon of theApocalypse"? The mightiest picture on this planet is Rubens'"Scourging of Christ. " Painter's pencil loves to sketch the face ofChrist. Sculptor's chisel loves to present the form of Christ. Organslove to roll forth the sorrows of Christ. 

The first time you go to London go into the Doré picture gallery. As Iwent and sat down before "Christ Descending the Steps of thePrætorium, " at the first I was disappointed. I said: "There isn'tenough majesty in that countenance, not enough tenderness in thateye;" but as I sat and looked at the picture it grew upon me until Iwas overwhelmed with its power, and I staggered with emotion as I wentout into the fresh air, and said; "Oh, for that Christ I must live, and for that Christ I must be willing to die!" Make that Christ yourpersonal friend, my sister, my brother. You may never go to Milan tosee Da Vinci's "Last Supper;" but, better than that, you can haveChrist come and sup with you. You may never get to Antwerp to seeRubens' "Descent of Christ from the Cross, " but you can have Christcome down from the mountain of His suffering into your heart and abidethere forever. Oh, you must have Him! We are all so diseased with sinthat we want that which hurts us, and we won't have that which curesus. The best thing for you and for me to do to-day is to get down onour bended knees before God and say: "Oh, Almighty Son of God, I amblind! I want to see. My arms are palsied. I want to take hold of thycross. Have mercy on me, O Lord Jesus!" Why will you live on huskswhen you may sit down to this white bread of heaven? Oh, with such aGod, and with such a Christ, and with such a Holy Spirit, and withsuch an immortal nature, wake up!

Once more, I was impressed greatly on the other side the sea with thewonderful triumphs of the Christian religion. The tide is rising, thetide of moral and spiritual prosperity in the world. I think that anyman who keeps his eyes open, traveling in foreign lands, will come tothat conclusion. More Bibles than ever before, more churches, moreconsecrated men and women, more people ready to be martyrs now thanever before, if need be; so that instead of there being, as peoplesometimes say, less spirit of martyrdom now than ever before, Ibelieve where there was once one martyr there would be a thousandmartyrs if the fires were kindled--men ready to go through flood andfire for Christ's sake. Oh, the signs are promising! The world is onthe way to millennial brightness. All art, all invention, allliterature, all commerce will be the Lord's. 

These ships that you see going up and down New York harbor are to bebrought into the service of God. All those ships I saw at Liverpool, at Southampton, at Glasgow, are to be brought into the service ofChrist. What is that passage, "Ships of Tarshish shall bringpresents"? That is what it means. Oh, what a goodly fleet when thevessels of the sea come into the service of God! No guns frowningthrough the port-holes, no pikes hung in the gangway, nothing fromcut-water to taffrail to suggest atrocity. Those ships will come fromall parts of the seas. Great flocks of ships that never met on thehigh sea but in wrath, will cry, "Ship ahoy!" and drop down besideeach other in calmness, the flags of Emmanuel streaming from thetop-gallants. The old slaver, with decks scrubbed and washed andglistened and burnished--the old slaver will wheel into line; and theChinese junk and the Venetian gondola, and the miners' and thepirates' corvette, will fall into line, equipped, readorned, beautified, only the small craft of this grand flotilla which shallfloat out for the truth--a flotilla mightier than the armada of Xerxesmoving in the pomp and pride of Persian insolence; mightier than theCarthaginian navy rushing with forty thousand oarsmen upon the Romangalleys, the life of nations dashed out against the gunwales. 

Rise, O sea! and shine, O heavens! to greet this squadron of light andvictory! On the glistening decks are the feet of them that bring goodtidings, and songs of heaven float among the rigging. Crowd on all thecanvas. Line-of-battle ship and merchantmen wheel into the way. It isnoon. Strike eight bells. From all the squadron the sailors' songsarise. "Surely the isles shall wait for thee, and the ships ofTarshish to bring thy sons from afar, their silver and their gold withthem, to the name of the Lord thy God, and the Holy One of Israel. "

A MOMENTOUS QUEST. 

 "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. "--ISA. Lv: 6. 

Isaiah stands head and shoulders above the other Old Testament authorsin vivid descriptiveness of Christ. Other prophets give an outline ofour Saviour's features. Some of them present, as it were, the sideface of Christ; others a bust of Christ; but Isaiah gives us thefull-length portrait of Christ. Other Scripture writers excel in somethings. Ezekiel more weird, David more pathetic, Solomon moreepigrammatic, Habakkuk more sublime; but when you want to see Christcoming out from the gates of prophecy in all His grandeur and glory, you involuntarily turn to Isaiah. So that if the prophecies in regardto Christ might be called the "Oratorio of the Messiah, " the writingof Isaiah is the "Hallelujah Chorus, " where all the batons wave andall the trumpets come in. Isaiah was not a man picked up out ofinsignificance by inspiration. He was known and honored. Josephus, andPhilo, and Sirach extolled him in their writings. What Paul was amongthe apostles, Isaiah was among the prophets. 

My text finds him standing on a mountain of inspiration, looking outinto the future, beholding Christ advancing and anxious that all menmight know Him; his voice rings down the ages: "Seek ye the Lord whileHe may be found. " "Oh, " says some one: "that was for olden times. "No, my hearer. If you have traveled in other lands you have taken acircular letter of credit from some banking-house in New York, and inSt. Petersburg, or Venice, or Rome, or Antwerp, or Brussels, or Paris;you presented that letter and got financial help immediately. And Iwant you to understand that the text, instead of being appropriate forone age, or for one land, is a circular letter for all ages and forall lands, and wherever it is presented for help, the help comes:"Seek ye the Lord while He may be found. "

I come, to-day, with no hair-spun theories of religion, with no nicedistinctions, with no elaborate disquisition; but with a plain talk onthe matters of personal religion. I feel that the sermon I preach thismorning will be the savor of life unto life, or of death unto death. In other words, the Gospel of Christ is a powerful medicine: it eitherkills or cures. There are those who say: "I would like to become aChristian, I have been waiting a good while for the right kind ofinfluences to come;" and still you are waiting. You are wiser inworldly things than you are in religious things. If you want to get toAlbany, you go to the Grand Central Depot, or to the steam-boat wharf, and, having got your ticket, you do not sit down on the wharf or sitin the depot; you get aboard the boat or train. And yet there are menwho say they are waiting to get to heaven--waiting, waiting, but notwith intelligent waiting, or they would get on board the line ofChristian influences that would bear them into the kingdom of God. 

Now you know very well that to seek a thing is to search for it withearnest endeavor. If you want to see a certain man in New York, andthere is a matter of $10, 000 connected with your seeing him, and youcan not at first find him, you do not give up the search. You look inthe directory, but can not find the name; you go in circles where youthink, perhaps, he may mingle, and, having found the part of the citywhere he lives, but perhaps not knowing the street, you go throughstreet after street, and from block to block, and you keep onsearching for weeks and for months. 

You say: "It is a matter of $10, 000 whether I see him or not. " Oh, that men were as persistent in seeking for Christ! Had you one halfthat persistence you would long ago have found Him who is the joy ofthe forgiven spirit. We may pay our debts, we may attend church, wemay relieve the poor, we may be public benefactors, and yet all ourlife disobey the text, never seek God, never gain heaven. Oh, that theSpirit of God would help this morning while I try to show you, incarrying out the idea of my text, first, how to seek the Lord, and inthe next place, when to seek Him. "Seek ye the Lord while He may befound. "

I remark, in the first place, you are to seek the Lord through earnestand believing prayer. God is not an autocrat or a despot seated on athrone, with His arms resting on brazen lions, and a sentinel pacingup and down at the foot of the throne. God is a father seated in abower, waiting for His children to come and climb on His knee, and getHis kiss and His benediction. Prayer is the cup with which we go tothe "fountain of living water, " and dip up refreshment for ourthirsty soul. Grace does not come to the heart as we set a cask at thecorner of the house to catch the rain in the shower. It is a pulleyfastened to the throne of God, which we pull, bringing the blessing. 

I do not care so much what posture you take in prayer, nor how largean amount of voice you use. You might get down on your face beforeGod, if you did not pray right inwardly, and there would be noresponse. You might cry at the top of your voice, and unless you had abelieving spirit within, your cry would not go further up than theshout of a plow-boy to his oxen. Prayer must be believing, earnest, loving. You are in your house some summer day, and a shower comes up, and a bird, affrighted, darts into the window, and wheels about theroom. You seize it. You smooth its ruffled plumage. You feel itsfluttering heart. You say, "Poor thing, poor thing!" Now, a prayergoes out of the storm of this world into the window of God's mercy, and He catches it, and He feels its fluttering pulse, and He puts itin His own bosom of affection and safety. Prayer is a warm, ardent, pulsating exercise. It is the electric battery which, touched, thrillsto the throne of God! It is the diving-bell in which we go down intothe depths of God's mercy and bring up "pearls of great price. " Therewas an instance where prayer made the waves of the Gennesaret solid asRuss pavement. Oh, how many wonderful things prayer has accomplished!Have you ever tried it? In the days when the Scotch Covenanters werepersecuted, and the enemies were after them, one of the head menamong the Covenanters prayed: "Oh, Lord, we be as dead men unless Thoushalt help us! Oh, Lord, throw the lap of Thy cloak over these poorthings!" And instantly a Scotch mist enveloped and hid the persecutedfrom their persecutors--the promise literally fulfilled: "While theyare yet speaking I will hear. "

Oh, impenitent soul, have you ever tried the power of prayer? Godsays: "He is loving, and faithful, and patient. " Do you believe that?You are told that Christ came to save sinners. Do you believe that?You are told that all you have to do to get the pardon of the Gospelis to ask for it. Do you believe that? Then come to Him and say: "Oh, Lord! I know Thou canst not lie. Thou hast told me to come for pardon, and I could get it. I come, Lord. Keep Thy promise, and liberate mycaptive soul. "

Oh, that you might have an altar in the parlor, in the kitchen, in thestore, in the barn, for Christ will be willing to come again to themanger to hear prayer. He would come in your place of business, as Heconfronted Matthew, the tax commissioner. If a measure should comebefore Congress that you thought would ruin the nation, how you wouldsend in petitions and remonstrances! And yet there has been enough sinin your heart to ruin it forever, and you have never remonstrated orpetitioned against it. If your physical health failed, and you had themeans, you would go and spend the summer in Germany, and the winter inItaly, and you would think it a very cheap outlay if you had to go allround the earth to get back your physical health. Have you made anyeffort, any expenditure, any exertion for your immortal and spiritualhealth? No, you have not taken one step. 

O that you might now begin to seek after God with earnest prayer. Someof you have been working for years and years for the support of yourfamilies. Have you given one half day to the working out of yoursalvation with fear and trembling? You came here this morning with anearnest purpose, I take it, as I have come hither with an earnestpurpose, and we meet face to face, and I tell you, first of all, ifyou want to find the Lord, you must pray, and pray, and pray. 

I remark again, you must seek the Lord through Bible study. The Bibleis the newest book in the world. "Oh, " you say, "it was made hundredsof years ago, and the learned men of King James translated it hundredsof years ago. " I confute that idea by telling you it is not fiveminutes old, when God, by His blessed Spirit, retranslates it into theheart. If you will, in the seeking of the way of life throughScripture study, implore God's light to fall upon the page, you willfind that these promises are not one second old, and that they dropstraight from the throne of God into your heart. 

There are many people to whom the Bible does not amount to much. Ifthey merely look at the outside beauty, why it will no more lead themto Christ than Washington's farewell address or the Koran of Mohammedor the Shaster of the Hindoos. It is the inward light of God's Wordyou must get or die. I went up to the church of the Madeleine, inParis, and looked at the doors which were the most wonderfullyconstructed I ever saw, and I could have stayed there for a wholeweek; but I had only a little time, so, having glanced at thewonderful carving on the doors, I passed in and looked at the radiantaltars, and the sculptured dome. Alas, that so many stop at theoutside door of God's Holy Word, looking at the rhetorical beauties, instead of going in and looking at the altars of sacrifice and thedome of God's mercy and salvation that hovers over penitent andbelieving souls!

O my friends! if you merely want to study the laws of language, do notgo to the Bible. It was not made for that. Take "Howe's Elements ofCriticism"--it will be better than the Bible for that. If you want tostudy metaphysics, better than the Bible will be the writings ofWilliam Hamilton. But if you want to know how to have sin pardoned, and at last to gain the blessedness of Heaven, search the Scriptures, "for in them ye have eternal life. "

When people are anxious about their souls--and there are some suchhere to-day--there are those who recommend good books. That is allright. But I want to tell you that the Bible is the best book undersuch circumstances. Baxter wrote "A Call to the Unconverted, " but theBible is the best call to the unconverted. Philip Doddridge wrote "TheRise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, " but the Bible is the bestrise and progress. John Angell James wrote "Advice to the AnxiousInquirer, " but the Bible is the best advice to the anxious inquirer. 

O, the Bible is the very book you need, anxious and inquiring soul! Adying soldier said to his mate: "Comrade, give me a drop!" The comradeshook up the canteen, and said: "There isn't a drop of water in thecanteen. " "Oh, " said the dying soldier, "that's not what I want; feelin my knapsack for my Bible, " and his comrade found the Bible, andread him a few of the gracious promises, and the dying soldier said:"Ah, that's what I want. There isn't anything like the Bible for adying soldier, is there, my comrade?" O blessed book while we live!Blessed book when we die!

I remark, again, we must seek God through church ordinances. "What, "say you, "can't a man be saved without going to church?" I reply, there are men, I suppose, in glory, who have never seen a church: butthe church is the ordained means by which we are to be brought to God;and if truth affects us when we are alone, it affects us more mightilywhen we are in the assembly--the feelings of others emphasizing ourown feelings. The great law of sympathy comes into play, and a truththat would take hold only with the grasp of a sick man, beats mightilyagainst the soul with a thousand heart-throbs. 

When you come into the religious circle, come only with one notion, and only for one purpose--to find the way to Christ. When I see peoplecritical about sermons, and critical about tones of voice, andcritical about sermonic delivery, they make me think of a man inprison. He is condemned to death, but an officer of the governmentbrings a pardon and puts it through the wicket of the prison, andsays: "Here is your pardon. Come and get it. " "What! Do you expect meto take that pardon offered with such a voice as you have, with suchan awkward manner as you have? I would rather die than so compromisemy rhetorical notions!" Ah, the man does not say that; he takes it! Itis his life. He does not care how it is handed to him. And if, thismorning, that pardon from the throne of God is offered to our souls, should we not seize it, regardless of all criticism, feeling that itis a matter of heaven or hell?

But I come now to the last part of my text. It tells us when we are toseek the Lord. "While He may be found. " When is that? Old age? You maynot see old age. To-morrow? You may not see to-morrow. To-night? Youmay not see to-night. Now! O if I could only write on every heart inthree capital letters, that word N-O-W--Now!

Sin is an awful disease. I hear people say with a toss of the head andwith a trivial manner: "Oh, yes, I'm a sinner. " Sin is an awfuldisease. It is leprosy. It is dropsy. It is consumption. It is allmoral disorders in one. Now you know there is a crisis in a disease. Perhaps you have had some illustration of it in your family. Sometimesthe physician has called, and he has looked at the patient and said:"That case was simple enough; but the crisis has passed. If you hadcalled me yesterday, or this morning, I could have cured the patient. It is too late now; the crisis has passed. " Just so it is in thespiritual treatment of the soul--there is a crisis. Before that, life!After that, death! O my dear brother, as you love your soul do not letthe crisis pass unattended to!

There are some here who can remember instances in life when, if theyhad bought a certain property, they would have become very rich. A fewacres that would have cost them almost nothing were offered them. They refused them. Afterward a large village or city sprung up onthose acres of ground, and they see what a mistake they made in notbuying the property. There was an opportunity of getting it. It nevercame back again. And so it is in regard to a man's spiritual andeternal fortune. There is a chance; if you let that go, perhaps itnever comes back. Certainly, that one never comes back. 

A gentleman told me that at the battle of Gettysburg he stood upon aheight looking off upon the conflicting armies. He said it was themost exciting moment of his life; now one army seeming to triumph, andnow the other. After awhile the host wheeled in such a way that heknew in five minutes the whole question would be decided. He said theemotion was almost unbearable. There is just such a time to-day withyou, O impenitent soul!--the forces of light on the one side, and thesiege-guns of hell on the other side, and in a few moments the matterwill be settled for eternity. 

There is a time which mercy has set for leaving port. If you are onboard before that, you will get a passage for heaven. If you are noton board, you miss your passage for heaven. As in law courts a case issometimes adjourned from term to term, and from year to year till thebill of costs eats up the entire estate, so there are men who areadjourning the matter of religion from time to time, and from year toyear, until heavenly bliss is the bill of costs the man will have topay for it. 

Why defer this matter, oh, my dear hearer? Have you any idea that sinwill wear out? that it will evaporate? that it will relax its grasp?that you may find religion as a man accidentally finds a lostpocket-book? Ah, no! No man ever became a Christian by accident, or bythe relaxing of sin. The embarrassments are all the time increasing. The hosts of darkness are recruiting, and the longer you postpone thismatter the steeper the path will become. I ask those men who arebefore me this morning, whether, in the ten or fifteen years they havepassed in the postponement of these matters, they have come any nearerGod or heaven?

I would not be afraid to challenge this whole audience, so far as theymay not have found the peace of the Gospel, in regard to the matter. Your hearts, you are willing frankly to tell me, are becoming harderand harder, and that if you come to Christ it will be more of anundertaking now than it ever would have been before. Oh, fly forrefuge! The avenger of blood is on the track! The throne of judgmentwill soon be set; and, if you have anything to do toward your eternalsalvation, you had better do it now, for the redemption of your soulis precious, and it ceaseth forever!

Oh, if men could only catch just one glimpse of Christ, I know theywould love Him! Your heart leaps at the sight of a glorious sunrise orsunset. Can you be without emotion as the Sun of Righteousness risesbehind Calvary, and sets behind Joseph's sepulcher? He is a blessedSaviour! Every nation has its type of beauty. There is German beauty, and Swiss beauty, and Italian beauty, and English beauty; but I carenot in what land a man first looks at Christ, he pronounces Him "chiefamong ten thousand, and the One altogether lovely. " O my blessedJesus! Light in darkness! The Rock on which I build! The Captain ofSalvation! My joy! My strength! How strange it is that men can notlove Thee!

The diamond districts of Brazil are carefully guarded, and a man doesnot get in there except by a pass from the government; but the love ofChrist is a diamond district we may all enter, and pick up treasuresfor eternity. Oh, cry for mercy! "To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts. " There is a way of opposing the mercy of Godtoo long, and then there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but afearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devourthe adversary. My friends, my neighbors, what can I say to induce youto attend to this matter--to attend to it now? Time is flying, flying--the city clock joining my voice this moment, seeming to say toyou, "Now is the time! Now is the time!" Oh, put it not off!

Why should I stand here and plead, and you sit there? It is yourimmortal soul. It is a soul that shall never die. It is a soul thatmust soon appear before God for review. Why throw away your chance forheaven? Why plunge off into darkness when all the gates of glory areopen? Why become a castaway from God when you can sit upon the throne?Why will ye die miserably when eternal life is offered you, and itwill cost you nothing but just willingness to accept it? "Come, forall things are now ready. " Come, Christ is ready, pardon is ready! TheChurch is ready. Heaven is ready. You will never find a moreconvenient season, if you should live fifty years more, than thisvery one. Reject this, and you may die in your sins. Why do I saythis? Is it to frighten your soul? Oh, no! It is to persuade you. Ishow you the peril. I show you the escape. Would I not be a cowardbeyond all excuse, if, believing that this great audience must soon belaunched into the eternal world, and that all who believe in Christshall be saved, and that all who reject Christ will be lost--would Inot be the veriest coward on earth to hide that truth or to standbefore you with a cold, or even a placid manner? My dear brethren, nowis the day of your redemption. 

It is very certain that you and I must soon appear before God injudgment. We can not escape it. The Bible says: "Every eye shall seeHim, and they also which pierced Him, and all the kindreds of theearth shall wail because of Him. " On that day all our advantages willcome up for our glory or for our discomfiture--every prayer, everysermon, every exhortatory remark, every reproof, every call of grace;and while the heavens are rolling away like a scroll, and the world isbeing destroyed, your destiny and my destiny will be announced. Alas!alas! if on that day it is found that we have neglected these matters. We may throw them off now. We can not then. We will all be in earnestthen. But no pardon then. No offer of salvation then. No rescue then. Driven away in our wickedness--banished, exiled, forever!

Have you ever imagined what will be the soliloquy of the soul on thatday unpardoned, as it looks back upon its past life? "Oh, " says thesoul, "I had glorious Sabbaths! There was one Sabbath in autumn whenI was invited to Christ. There was a Sabbath morning when Jesus stoodand spread out His arm and invited me to His holy heart. I refusedHim. I have destroyed myself. I have no one else to blame. Ruincomplete! Darkness unpitying, deep, eternal! I am lost!Notwithstanding all the opportunities I have had of being saved, I amlost! O Thou long-suffering Lord God Almighty, I am lost! O day ofjudgment, I am lost! O father, mother, brother, sister, child inglory, I am lost!" And then as the tide goes out, your soul goes outwith it--further from God, further from happiness, and I hear yourvoice fainter, and fainter, and fainter: "Lost! Lost! Lost! Lost!Lost!" O ye dying, yet immortal men, "seek the Lord while He may befound. "

But I want you to take the hint of the text that I have no time todwell on--the hint that there is a time when He can not be found. There is a man in New York, eighty years of age, who said to aclergyman who came in, "Do you think that a man at eighty years of agecan get pardoned?" "Oh, yes, " said the clergyman. The old man said: "Ican't; when I was twenty years of age--I am now eighty years--theSpirit of God came to my soul, and I felt the importance of attendingto these things, but I put it off. I rejected God, and since then Ihave had no feeling. " "Well, " said the minister, "wouldn't you like tohave me pray with you?" "Yes, " replied the old man, "but it will do nogood. You can pray with me if you like to. " The minister knelt downand prayed, and commended the man's soul to God. It seemed to have noeffect upon him. After awhile the last hour of the man's life came, and through his delirium a spark of intelligence seemed to flash, andwith his last breath he said; "I shall never be forgiven!" "O seek theLord while He may be found. "

THE GREAT ASSIZE. 

DOCTOR TALMAGE'S SERMON, PREACHED AT CORK, IRELAND, SUNDAY MORNING, SEPT 6th, 1885. 

 "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: and before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. "--MATTHEW xxv: 31, 32. 

Half-way between Chamouny, Switzerland, and Martigny, I reined in thehorse on which I was riding, and looked off upon the most wonderfulnatural amphitheater of valley and mountain and rock, and I said to mycompanion, "What an appropriate place this would be for the lastjudgment. Yonder overhanging rock the place for the judgment seat. These galleries of surrounding hills occupied by attendant angels. This vast valley, sweeping miles this way and miles that, theaudience-room for all nations. " But sacred geography does not pointout the place. Yet we know that somewhere, some time, somehow, anaudience will be gathered together stupendous beyond all statistics, and just as certainly as you and I make up a part of this audienceto-day, we will make up a part of that audience on that day. 

A common sense of justice in every man's heart demands that thereshall be some great winding-up day, in which that which is nowinexplicable shall be explained. 

Why did that good man suffer, and that bad man prosper? You say, "Idon't know, but I must know. " Why is that good Christian woman dyingof what is called a spider cancer, while that daughter of folly sitswrapped in luxury, ease, and health? You say, "I don't know, but Imust know. " There are so many wrongs to be righted that if there werenot some great righting-up day in the presence of all ages, therewould be an outcry against God from which His glory would neverrecover. If God did not at last try the nations, the nations would tryHim. We are, therefore, ready for the announcement of the text. Theworld never saw Christ except in disguise. If once when He was onearth He had let out His glory, instead of the blind eyes beinghealed, all visions would have been extinguished. No human eye couldhave endured it. And instead of bringing the dead to life, all aroundabout him would have been the slain under that overpoweringeffulgence. Disguise of human flesh. Disguise of seamless robe. Disguise of sandal. Disguise of voice. From Bethlehem caravansary tomausoleum in the rock, a complete disguise. 

But on the day of which I speak the Son of Man will come in His glory. No hiding of luster. No sheathing of strength. No suppression ofgrandeur. No wrapping out of sight of the Godhead. Any fifty of themost brilliant sunsets that you ever saw on land or sea would be dimas compared with the cerulean appearance on that day when Christrolls through, and rolls on, and rolls down in His glory. The air willbe all abloom with His presence, and everything from horizon tohorizon aflame with His splendor. 

Elijah rode up the sky-steep in a chariot, the wheels of whirling fireand the horses of galloping fire, and the charioteer drawing reins offire on bits of fire; but Christ will need no such equipage, for thelaw of gravitation will be laid aside, and the natural elements willbe laid aside, and Christ will descend swiftly enough to make speedyarrival, but slowly enough to allow the gaze of millions ofspectators. In his glory! Glory of form, glory of omnipotence, gloryof holiness, glory of justice, glory of love. In His glory! Anunveiled, an uncovered God descending to meet the human race in aninterview which will be prolonged only for a few hours, and yet whichshall settle all the past and all the present and all the future, andbe closed before the end of that day, which will close, not withsetting sun, but with the destruction of the planet as a snufferstakes off the top of a burned wick. 

It is a solemn time in a court-room when there is an important case onhand, and the judge of the Supreme Court enters, and he sits down, andwith gavel strikes on the desk commanding bar and jury and witnessesand audience into silence. All voices are hushed, all heads areuncovered. But how much more impressive when Christ shall take thejudgment seat on the last day of the last week of the last month ofthe last year of the world's existence, and with gavel of thunder-boltshall smite the mountains, commanding all the land and all the seainto silence. 

Can you have any doubt about who it is on the seat on the judgmentday? Better make investigation, to see whether there are any scarsabout Him that reveal His person. Apparel may change. You can notalways tell by apparel. But scars will tell the story after all elsefails. I find under His left arm a scar, and on His right hand a scar, and on His left hand a scar, and on His right foot a scar, and on Hisleft foot a scar. Oh, yes, He is the Son of Man in His glory. Everymark of wound now a badge of victory, every ridge showing the fearfulgash now telling the story of pain and sacrifice which He suffered inbehalf of the human race. 

But what is all that commotion and flutter, and surging to and froabove Him and on either side of Him? It is a detailed regiment ofheaven, a constabulary angelic, sent forth to take part in that scene, and to execute the mandates that shall be issued. Ten regiments, ahundred regiments, a thousand regiments of angels; for on that day allheaven will be emptied of its inhabitants to let them attend thescene. All the holy angels. From what a center to what acircumference. Widening out and widening out, and higher up and higherup. Wings interlocking wings. Galleries of cloud above galleries ofcloud, all filled with the faces of angels come to listen and come towatch, and come to help on that day for which all other days weremade. Who are those two taller and more conspicuous angels? The one isMichael, who is the commander of all those who come out to destroysin. The other is Gabriel, who is announced as commander of all thosewho come forth to help the righteous. Who is that mighty angel nearthe throne? That is the resurrection angel, his lips still aquiver andhis cheek aflush with the blast that shattered the cemeteries and wokethe dead. Who is that other great angel, with dark and overshadowingbrow? That is the one who in one night, by one flap of his wing, turned one hundred and eighty-five thousand of Sennacherib's host intocorpses. 

Who are those bright immortals near the throne, their faces partlyturned toward each other as though about to sing? Oh, they are theBethlehem chanters of the first Christmas night! Who are this othergroup standing so near the throne? They are the Saviour's especialbodyguard, which hovered over Him in the wilderness and administeredto Him in the hour of martyrdom, and heaved away the rock of Hissarcophagus, and escorted Him upward on Ascension Day, nowappropriately escorting Him down. Divine glory flanked on both sidesby angelic radiance. 

But now lower your eye from the divine and angelic to the human. Theentire human race is present. All nations, says my text. Before thattime the American Republic, the English Government, the FrenchRepublic, all modern modes of government may be obliterated forsomething better; but all nations, whether dead or alive, will bebrought up into that assembly. Thebes and Tyre and Babylon and Greeceand Rome as wide awake in that assembly as though they had neverslumbered amid the dead nations. Europe, Asia, Africa, North and SouthAmerica, and all the nineteenth century, the eighteenth century, thetwelfth century, the tenth century, the fourth century--all centuriespresent. Not one being that ever drew the breath of life but will bein that assembly. 

No other audience a thousandth part as large. No other audience amillionth part as large. No human eye could look across it. Wing ofalbatross and falcon and eagle not strong enough to fly over it. Acongregation, I verily believe, not assembled on any continent, because no continent would be large enough to hold it. But, as theBible intimates, in the air. The law of gravitation unanchored, theworld moved out of its place. As now sometimes on earth a great tentis spread for some great convention, so over that great audience ofthe judgment shall be lifted the blue canopy of the sky, andunderneath it for floor the air made buoyant by the hand of AlmightyGod. An architecture of atmospheric galleries strong enough to hold upworlds. Surely the two arms of God's almightiness are two pillarsstrong enough to hold up any auditorium. 

But that audience is not to remain in session long. Most audiences onearth after an hour or two adjourn. Sometimes in court-rooms anaudience will tarry four or five hours, but then it adjourns. So thisaudience spoken of in the text will adjourn. My text says, "He willseparate them one from another as a shepherd divideth the sheep fromthe goats. "

"No, " says my Universalist friend, "let them all stay together. " Butthe text says, "He shall separate them. " "No, " say the kings of thisworld, "let men have their choice, and if they prefer monarchicalinstitutions, let them go together, and if they prefer republicaninstitutions, let them go together. " "No, " say the conventionalitiesof this world, "let all those who moved in what are called highcircles go together, and all those who on earth moved in low circlesgo together. The rich together, the poor together, the wise together, the ignorant together. " Ah! no. Do you not notice in that assembly theking is without his scepter, and the soldier without his uniform, andthe bishop without his pontifical ring, and the millionaire withouthis certificates of stock, and the convict without his chain, and thebeggar without his rags, and the illiterate without his badorthography, and all of us without any distinction of earthlyinequality? So I take it from that as well as from my text that themere accident of position in this world will do nothing towarddeciding the questions of that very great day. 

"He will separate them as a shepherd divideth the sheep from thegoats. " The sheep, the cleanliest of creatures, here made a symbol ofthose who have all their sins washed away in the fountain of redeemingmercy. The goat, one of the filthiest of creatures, here a type ofthose who in the last judgment will be found never to have had anydivine ablution. Division according to character. Not only characteroutside, but character inside. Character of heart, character ofchoice, character of allegiance, character of affection, characterinside as well as character outside. 

In many cases it will be a complete and immediate reversal of allearthly conditions. Some who in this world wore patched apparel willtake on raiment lustrous as a summer noon. Some who occupied a palacewill take a dungeon. Division regardless of all earthly caste, andsome who were down will be up, and some who were up will be down. Oh, what a shattering of conventionalities! What an upheaval of all socialrigidities, what a turning of the wheel of earthly condition, athousand revolutions in a second! Division of all nations, of allages, not by the figure 9, nor the figure 8, nor the figure 7, nor thefigure 6, nor the figure 5, nor the figure 4; but by the figure 2. 

Two! Two characters, two destinies, two estates, two dominions, twoeternities, a tremendous, an all-comprehensive, an all-decisive, andeverlasting two!

I sometimes think that the figure of the book that shall be openedallows us to forget the thing signified by the symbol. Where is thebook-binder that could make a volume large enough to contain the namesof all the people who have ever lived? Besides that, the calling ofsuch a roll would take more than fifty years, more than a hundredyears, and the judgment is to be consummated in less time than passesbetween sunrise and sunset. Ah! my friends, the leaves of that book ofjudgment are not made out of paper, but of memory. One leaf in everyhuman heart. You have known persons who were near drowning, but theywere afterward resuscitated, and they have told you that in the two orthree minutes between the accident and the resuscitation, all theirpast life flashed before them--all they had ever thought, all they hadever done, all they had ever seen, in an instant came to them. Thememory never loses anything. It is only a folded leaf. It is only aclosed book. 

Though you be an octogenarian, though you be a nonagenarian, all thethoughts and acts of your life are in your mind, whether you recallthem now or not, just as Macaulay's history is in two volumes, although the volumes may be closed, and you can not see a word ofthem, and will not until they are opened. As in the case of thedrowning man, the volume of memory was partly open, or the leaf partlyunrolled; in the case of the judgment the entire book will be opened, so that everything will be displayed from preface to appendix. 

You have seen self-registering instruments which recorded how manyrevolutions they had made and what work they had done, so themanufacturer could come days after and look at the instrument and findjust how many revolutions had been made, or how much work had beenaccomplished. So the human mind is a self-registering instrument, andit records all its past movements. Now that leaf, thatall-comprehensive leaf in your mind and mine this moment, the leaf ofjudgment, brought out under the flash of the judgment throne, you caneasily see how all the past of our lives in an instant will be seen. And so great and so resplendent will be the light of that throne thatnot only this leaf in my heart and that leaf in your heart will berevealed at a flash, but all the leaves will be opened, and you willread not only your own character and your own history, but thecharacter and history of others. 

In a military encampment the bugle sounded in one way means one thing, and sounded in another way it means another thing. Bugle sounded inone way means, "Prepare for sudden attack. " Bugle sounded in anotherway means, "To your tents, and let all the lights be put out. " I haveto tell you, my brother, that the trumpet of the Old Testament, thetrumpet that was carried in the armies of olden times, and the trumpeton the walls in olden times, in the last great day will givesignificant reverberation. Old, worn-out, and exhausted Time, havingmarched across decades and centuries and ages, will halt, and the sunand the moon and the stars will halt with it. The trumpet! thetrumpet!

Peal the first: Under its power the sea will stretch itself out dead, the white foam on the lip, in its crystal sarcophagus, and themountains will stagger and reel and stumble, and fall into the valleysnever to rise. Under one puff of that last cyclone all the candles ofthe sky will be blown out. The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the second: The alabaster halls of the air will be filled withthose who will throng up from all the cemeteries of all the ages--fromGreyfriar's Churchyard and Roman Catacomb, from Westminster Abbey andfrom the coral crypts of oceanic cave, and some will rend off thebandage of Egyptian mummy, and others will remove from their brow thegarland of green sea-weed. From the north and the south and the eastand the west they come. The dead! The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the third: Amid surging clouds and the roar of attendant armiesof heaven, the Lord comes through, and there are lightnings andthunder-bolts, and an earthquake, and a hallelujah, and a wailing. Thetrumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the fourth: All the records of human life will be revealed. Theleaf containing the pardoned sin, the leaf containing the unpardonedsin. Some clapping hands with joy, some grinding their teeth withrage, and all the forgotten past becomes a vivid present. The trumpet!the trumpet!

Peal the last: The audience breaks up. The great trial is ended. Thehigh court of heaven adjourns. The audience hie themselves to theirtwo termini. They rise, they rise! They sink, they sink! Then the bluetent of the sky will be lifted and folded up and put away. Then theauditorium of atmospheric galleries will be melted. Then the foldedwings of attendant angels will be spread for upward flight. The fierythrone of judgment will become a dim and a vanishing cloud. Theconflagration of divine and angelic magnificence will roll back andoff. The day for which all other days are made has closed, and theworld has burned down, and the last cinder has gone out, and an angelflying on errand from world to world will poise long enough over thedead earth to chant the funeral litany as he cries, "Ashes to ashes!"

That judgment leaf in your heart I seize hold of this moment forcancellation. In your city halls the great book of mortgages has alarge margin, so that when the mortgagor has paid the full amount tothe mortgagee, the officer of the law comes, and he puts down on thatmargin the payment and the cancellation; and though that mortgagedemanded vast thousands before, now it is null and void. So I have totell you that that leaf in my heart and in your heart, that leaf ofjudgment, that all-comprehensive leaf, has a wide margin forcancellation. 

There is only one hand in all the universe that can touch that margin. That hand this moment lifted to make the record null and void forever. It may be a trembling hand, for it is a wounded hand, the nerves werecut and the muscles were lacerated. That record on that leaf was madein the black ink of condemnation; but if cancellation take place, itwill be made in the red ink of sacrifice. O judgment-bound brother andsister! let Christ this moment bring to that record complete andglorious cancellation. This moment, in an outburst of impassionedprayer, ask for it. You think it is the fluttering of your heart. Oh, no! it is the fluttering of that leaf, that judgment leaf. 

I ask you not to take from your iron safe your last will andtestament, but I ask for something of more importance than that. I askyou not to take from your private papers that letter so sacred thatyou have put it away from all human eyesight, but I ask you forsomething of more meaning than that. That leaf, that judgment leaf inmy heart, that judgment leaf in your heart, which will decide ourcondition after this world shall have five thousand million years beenswept out the heavens, an extinct planet, and time itself will be solong past that on the ocean of eternity it will seem only as now seemsa ripple on the Atlantic. 

When the goats in vile herd start for the barren mountains of death, and the sheep in fleeces of snowy whiteness and bleating with joy moveup the terraced hills to join the lambs already playing in the highpastures of celestial altitude, oh, may you and I be close by theShepherd's crook! "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, andall the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of Hisglory; and before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shallseparate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep fromthe goats. "

Oh, that leaf, that one leaf in my heart, that one leaf in your heart!That leaf of judgment! Oh, those two tremendous words at the last, "Come!" "Go!" As though the overhanging heavens were the cup of agreat bell, and all the stars were welded into a silvery tongue andswung from side to side until it struck, "Come!" As though all thegreat guns of eternal disaster were discharged at once, and theyboomed forth in one resounding cannonade of "Go!" Arithmetical sum insimple division. Eternity the dividend. The figure two the divisor. Your unalterable destiny the quotient. 

THE ROAD TO THE CITY. 

 "And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there; and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. "--ISAIAH xxxv: 8-10. 

There are hundreds of people in this house this morning who want tofind the right road. You sometimes see a person halting at crossroads, and you can tell by his looks that he wishes to ask a questionas to what direction he had better take. And I stand in your presencethis morning conscious of the fact that there are many of you here whorealize that there are a thousand wrong roads, but only one right one;and I take it for granted that you have come in to ask which one itis. Here is one road that opens widely, but I have not much faith init. There are a great many expensive toll-gates scattered all alongthat way. Indeed at every road you must pay in tears, or pay ingenuflexions, or pay in flagellations. On that road, if you getthrough it at all, you have to pay your own way; and since thisdiffers so much from what I have heard in regard to the right way, Ibelieve it is the wrong way. 

Here is another road. On either side of it are houses of sinfulentertainment, and invitations to come in, and dine and rest; but, from the looks of the people who stand on the piazza I am very certainthat it is the wrong house and the wrong way. Here is another road. Itis very beautiful and macadamized. The horses' hoofs clatter and ring, and they who ride over it spin along the highway, until suddenly theyfind that the road breaks over an embankment, and they try to halt, and they saw the bit in the mouth of the fiery steed, and cry "Ho!ho!" But it is too late, and--crash!--they go over the embankment. Weshall turn, this morning, and see if we can not find a different kindof a road. 

You have heard of the Appian Way. It was three hundred and fifty mileslong. It was twenty-four feet wide, and on either side the road was apath for foot passengers. It was made out of rocks cut in hexagonalshape and fitted together. What a road it must have been! Made ofsmooth, hard rock, three hundred and fifty miles long. No wonder thatin the construction of it the treasures of a whole empire wereexhausted. Because of invaders, and the elements, and time--the oldconqueror who tears up a road as he goes over it--there is nothingleft of that structure excepting a ruin. But I have this morning totell you of a road built before the Appian Way, and yet it is as goodas when first constructed. Millions of souls have gone over it. Millions more will come. 

 "The prophets and apostles, too, Pursued this road while here below; We therefore will, without dismay Still walk in Christ, the good old way. "

"An highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the wayof holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be forthose: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lionshall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shallnot be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there; and theransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs andeverlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away!"

I. First, this road of the text is the King's highway. In thediligence you dash over the Bernard pass of the Alps, mile after mile, and there is not so much as a pebble to jar the wheels. You go overbridges which cross chasms that make you hold your breath; underprojecting rock; along by dangerous precipices; through tunnels adripwith the meltings of the glaciers; and, perhaps for the first time, learn the majesty of a road built and supported by governmentauthority. Well, my Lord the King decided to build a highway fromearth to heaven. It should span all the chasms of human wretchedness;it should tunnel all the mountains of earthly difficulty; it should bewide enough and strong enough to hold fifty thousand millions of thehuman race, if so many of them should ever be born. It should beblasted out of the "Rock of Ages, " and cemented with the blood of theCross, and be lifted amid the shouting of angels and the execration ofdevils. 

The King sent His Son to build that road. He put head and hand andheart to it, and, after the road was completed, waved His blisteredhand over the way, crying, "It is finished!" Napoleon paid fifteenmillion francs for the building of the Simplon Road, that his cannonmight go over for the devastation of Italy; but our King, at a greaterexpense, has built a road for a different purpose, that the banners ofheavenly dominion might come down over it, and all the redeemed ofearth travel up over it. 

Being a King's highway, of course it is well built. Bridges splendidlyarched and buttressed have given way and crushed the passengers whoattempted to cross them. But Christ, the King, would build no suchthing as that. The work done, He mounts the chariot of His love, andmultitudes mount with Him, and He drives on and up the steep of heavenamid the plaudits of gazing worlds! The work is done--welldone--gloriously done--magnificently done. 

II. Still further: this road spoken of is a clean road. 

Many a fine road has become miry and foul because it has not beenproperly cared for; but my text says the unclean shall not walk onthis one. Room on either side to throw away your sins. Indeed, if youwant to carry them along, you are not on the right road. That bridgewill break, those overhanging rocks will fall, the night will comedown, leaving you at the mercy of the mountain bandits, and at thevery next turn of the road you will perish. But if you are really onthis clean road of which I have been speaking, then you will stopever and anon to wash in the water that stands in the basin of theeternal rock. Ay, at almost every step of the journey you will becrying out: "Create within me a clean heart!" If you have no suchaspirations as that, it proves that you have mistaken your way; and ifyou will only look up and see the finger-board above your head, youmay read upon it the words: "There is a way that seemeth right unto aman, but the end thereof is death. " Without holiness no man shall seethe Lord; and if you have any idea that you can carry along your sins, your lusts, your worldliness, and yet get to the end of the Christianrace, you are so awfully mistaken that, in the name of God, thismorning I shatter the delusion. 

III. Still further, the road spoken of is a plain road. "The wayfaringmen, though fools, shall not err therein. " That is, if a man is threefourths an idiot, he can find this road just as well as if he were aphilosopher. The imbecile boy, the laughing-stock of the street, andfollowed by a mob hooting at him, has only just to knock once at thegate of heaven, and it swings open: while there has been many a manwho can lecture about pneumatics, and chemistry, and tell the story ofFarraday's theory of electrical polarization, and yet has been shutout of heaven. There has been many a man who stood in an observatoryand swept the heavens with his telescope, and yet has not been able tosee the Morning Star. Many a man has been familiar with all the higherbranches of mathematics, and yet could not do the simple sum, "Whatshall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his ownsoul?" Many a man has been a fine reader of tragedies and poems, andyet could not "read his title clear to mansions in the skies. " Many aman has botanized across the continent, and yet not know the "Rose ofSharon and the Lily of the Valley. " But if one shall come in the rightspirit, crying the way to heaven, he will find it a plain way. Thepardon is plain. The peace is plain. Everything is plain. 

He who tries to get on the road to heaven through the New Testamentteaching will get on beautifully. He who goes through philosophicaldiscussion will not get on at all. Christ says: "Come to Me, and Iwill take all your sins away, and I will take all your troubles away. "Now what is the use of my discussing it any more? Is not that plain?If you wanted to go to Albany, and I pointed you out a highwaythoroughly laid out, would I be wise in detaining you by a geologicaldiscussion about the gravel you will pass over, or a physiologicaldiscussion about the muscles you will have to bring into play? No. After this Bible has pointed you the way to heaven, is it wise for meto detain you with any discussion about the nature of the human will, or whether the atonement is limited or unlimited? There is theroad--go on it. It is a plain way. 

"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that ChristJesus came into the world to save sinners. " And that is you and thatis me. Any little child here can understand this as well as I can. "Unless you become as a little child, you can not see the kingdom ofGod. " If you are saved, it will not be as a philosopher, it will be asa little child. "Of such is the kingdom of Heaven. " Unless you getthe spirit of little children, you will never come out at theirglorious destiny. 

IV. Still further: this road to heaven is a safe road. Sometimes thetraveler in those ancient highways would think himself perfectlysecure, not knowing there was a lion by the way, burying his head deepbetween his paws, and then, when the right moment came, under thefearful spring the man's life was gone, and there was a mauled carcassby the roadside. But, says my text, "No lion shall be there. " I wish Icould make you feel, this morning, your entire security. I tell youplainly that one minute after a man has become a child of God, he isas safe as though he had been ten thousand years in heaven. He mayslip, he may slide, he may stumble; but he can not be destroyed. Keptby the power of God, through faith, unto complete salvation. Everlastingly safe. 

The severest trial to which you can subject a Christian man is to killhim, and that is glory. In other words, the worst thing that canhappen a child of God is heaven. The body is only the old slippersthat he throws aside just before putting on the sandals of light. Hissoul, you can not hurt it. No fires can consume it. No floods candrown it. No devils can capture it. 

 "Firm and unmoved are they Who rest their souls on God; Fixed as the ground where David stood, Or where the ark abode. "

His soul is safe. His reputation is safe. Everything is safe. "But, "you say, "suppose his store burns up?" Why, then, it will be only achange of investments from earthly to heavenly securities. "But, " yousay, "suppose his name goes down under the hoof of scorn andcontempt?" The name will be so much brighter in glory. "Suppose hisphysical health fails?" God will pour into him the floods ofeverlasting health, and it will not make any difference. Earthlysubtraction is heavenly addition. The tears of earth are the crystalsof heaven. As they take rags and tatters and put them through thepaper-mill, and they come out beautiful white sheets of paper, so, often, the rags of earthly destitution, under the cylinders of death, come out a white scroll upon which shall be written eternalemancipation. 

There was one passage of Scripture, the force of which I neverunderstood until one day at Chamounix, with Mont Blanc on one side, and Montanvent on the other, I opened my Bible and read: "As themountains are around about Jerusalem, so the Lord is around about themthat fear Him. " The surroundings were an omnipotent commentary. 

 "Though troubles assail, and dangers affright; Though friends should all fail, and foes all unite; Yet one thing secures us, whatever betide, The Scriptures assure us the Lord will provide. "

V. Still further: the road spoken of is a pleasant road. God gives abond of indemnity against all evil to every man that treads it. "Allthings work together for good to those who love God. " No weapon formedagainst them can prosper. That is the bond, signed, sealed, anddelivered by the President of the whole universe. What is the use ofyour fretting, O child of God, about food? "Behold the fowls of theair: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns;yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. " And will He take care of thesparrow, will He take care of the hawk, and let you die? What is theuse of your fretting about clothes? "Consider the lilies of the field. Shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" What is theuse worrying for fear something will happen to your home? "He blesseththe habitation of the just. " What is the use of your fretting lest youwill be overcome of temptations? "God is faithful, who will not sufferyou to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptationalso make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. "

O this King's highway! Trees of life on either side, bending overuntil their branches interlock and drop midway their fruit and shade. Houses of entertainment on either side the road for poor pilgrims. Tables spread with a feast of good things, and walls adorned withapples of gold in pictures of silver. I start out on this King'shighway, and I find a harper, and I say: "What is your name?" Theharper makes no response, but leaves me to guess, as, with his eyestoward heaven and his hand upon the trembling strings this tune comesrippling on the air: "The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whomshall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I beafraid?" I go a little further on the same road and meet a trumpeterof heaven, and I say: "Haven't you got some music for a tiredpilgrim?" And wiping his lip and taking a long breath, he puts hismouth to the trumpet and pours forth this strain: "They shall hungerno more, neither shall they thirst any more, neither shall the sunlight on them, nor any heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst of thethrone shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shallwipe away all tears from their eyes. " I go a little distance furtheron the same road, and I meet a maiden of Israel. She has no harp, butshe has cymbals. They look as if they had rusted from sea-spray; and Isay to the maiden of Israel: "Have you no song for a tired pilgrim?"And like the clang of victors' shields the cymbals clap as Miriambegins to discourse: "Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphedgloriously; the horse and the rider hath He thrown into the sea. " Andthen I see a white-robed group. They come bounding toward me, and Isay: "Who are they? The happiest, and the brightest, and the fairestin all heaven--who are they?" And the answer comes: "These are theywho came out of great tribulations, and had their robes washed andmade white with the blood of the Lamb. "

I pursue this subject only one step further. What is the terminus? Ido not care how fine a road you may put me on, I want to know where itcomes out. My text declares it: "The redeemed of the Lord come toZion. " You know what Zion was. That was the King's palace. It was amountain fastness. It was impregnable. And so heaven is the fastnessof the universe. No howitzer has long enough range to shell thosetowers. Let all the batteries of earth and hell blaze away; they cannot break in those gates. Gibraltar was taken, Sebastopol was taken, Babylon fell; but these walls of heaven shall never surrender eitherto human or Satanic besiegement. The Lord God Almighty is the defenseof it. Great capital of the universe! Terminus of the King's highway!

Doctor Dick said that, among other things, he thought in heaven weshould study chemistry, and geometry, and conic sections. Southeythought that in heaven he would have the pleasure of seeing Chaucerand Shakespeare. Now, Doctor Dick may have his mathematics for alleternity, and Southey his Shakespeare. Give me Christ and my oldfriends--that is all the heaven I want, that is heaven enough for me. O garden of light, whose leaves never wither, and whose fruits neverfail! O banquet of God, whose sweetness never palls the taste, andwhose guests are kings forever! O city of light, whose walls aresalvation, and whose gates are praise! O palace of rest, where God isthe monarch and everlasting ages the length of His reign! O songlouder than the surf-beat of many waters, yet soft as the whisper ofcherubim!

O my heaven! When my last wound is healed, when the last heart-breakis ended, when the last tear of earthly sorrow is wiped away, and whenthe redeemed of the Lord shall come to Zion, then let all the harperstake down their harps, and all the trumpeters take down theirtrumpets, and all across heaven there be chorus of morning stars, chorus of white-robed victors, chorus of martyrs from under thethrone, chorus of ages, chorus of worlds, and there be but one songsung, and but one name spoken, and but one throne honored--that ofJesus only. 

THE RANSOMLESS. 

 "Beware lest He take thee away with His stroke: then a great ransom can not deliver thee. "--JOB xxxvi: 18. 

Trouble makes some men mad. It was so with Job. He had lost hisproperty, he had lost his physical health, he had lost his dearchildren, and the losses had led to exasperation instead of anyspiritual profit. I suppose that he was in the condition that many arenow in who sit before me. There are those here whose fortunes havebegun to flap their wings, as though to fly away. There is a hollowcough in some of your dwellings. There is a subtraction of comfort andhappiness, and you feel disgusted with the world, and impatient withmany events that are transpiring in your history, and you are in thecondition in which Job was when the words of my text accosted him:"Beware lest He take thee away with His stroke and then a ransom cannot deliver thee. "

I propose to show you that sometimes God suddenly removes from us ourgospel opportunities, and that, when He has done so, our case isransomless. "Beware lest He take thee away with His stroke: then agreat ransom can not deliver thee. "

I. Sometimes the stroke comes in the removal of the intellect. 

"Oh, " says some man, "as long as I keep my mind I can afford toadjourn religion. " But suppose you do not keep it? A fever, thehurling of a missile, the falling of a brick from a scaffolding, theaccidental discharge of a gun--and your mind is gone. If you have everbeen in an anatomical room, and have examined the human brain, youknow what a delicate organ it is. And can it be possible that oureternity is dependent upon the healthy action of that which can be soeasily destroyed?

"Oh, " says some one, "you don't know how strong a mind I have. " Ireply: Losses, accident, bereavement, and sickness may shipwreck thebest physical or mental condition. There are those who have been tenyears in lunatic asylums who had as good a mind as you. While they hadtheir minds they neglected God, and when their intellect went, with itwent their last opportunity for heaven. Now they are not responsiblefor what they do, or for what they say; but in the last day they willbe held responsible for what they did when they were mentally well;and if, on that day, a soul should say: "Oh, God, I was demented, andI had no responsibility, " God will say: "Yes, you were demented; butthere were long years when you were not demented. That was your chancefor heaven, and you missed it. " Oh, better be, as the Scotch say, alittle "daft, " nevertheless having grace in the heart; better be likepoor Richard Hampson, the Cornish fool, whose biography has justappeared in England--a silly man he was, yet bringing souls to JesusChrist by scores and scores--giving an account of his own conversion, when he said: "The mob got after me, and I lost my hat, and climbedup by a meat-stand, in order that I might not be trampled under foot, and while I was there, my heart got on fire with love toward those whowere chasing me, and, springing to my feet, I began to exhort and topray. " Oh, my God, let me be in the last, last day the Cornish fool, rather than have the best intellect God ever created unillumined bythe Gospel of Jesus Christ!

Consider what an uncertain possession you have in your intellect, whenthere are so many things around to destroy it; and beware, lest beforeyou use it in making the religious choice, God takes it away with astroke. I know a good many of my friends who are putting off religionuntil the last hour. They say when they get sick they will attend toit, but generally the intellect is beclouded; and oh; what a dolefulthing it is to stand by a dying bed, and talk to a man about his soul, and feel, from what you see of the motion of his head, and the glareof his eye, and from what you hear of the jargon of his lips, that hedoes not understand what you are saying to him. I have stood besidethe death-bed of a man who had lived a sinful life, and was asunprepared for eternity as it is possible for a man to be, and I triedto make him understand my pastoral errand; but all in vain. He couldnot understand it, and so he died. 

Oh! ye who are putting off until the sick hour preparation foreternity, let me tell you that in all probability, you will not beable in your last hour to attend to it at all. There are a great manypeople who say they will repent on the death-bed. 

I have no doubt there are many who have repented on the death-bed, butI think it is the exception. Albert Barnes, who was one of the coolestof men, and gave no rash statistics, said thus: that in a ministry ofnearly half a century--he was over seventy when he went up toglory--he had known a great many people who said they repented on thedying bed, but, unexpectedly to themselves, got well; and he says, Howmany of those, do you suppose, who thought it was their dying bed, andwho, after they repented on that dying bed, having got well, livedconsistently, showing that it was real repentance, and not mockrepentance--how many? not one! not one!

II. Again: this stroke may come to you in the withdrawal of God'sspirit. 

I see people before me who were, twenty years ago, serious about theirsouls. They are not now. They have no interest in what I am saying. They will never have any anxiety in what any minister of the Gospelsays about their souls. Their time seems to have passed. I know a man, seventy-five years of age, who, in early life, became almost aChristian, but grieved away the spirit of God, and he has neverthought earnestly since, and he can not be roused. I do not believe hewill be roused until eternity flashes on his astonished vision. 

It does seem as if sometimes, in quite early life, the Holy Spiritmoves upon a heart, and being grieved away and rejected, never comesback. You say that is all imaginary? A letter, the address of which Iwill not give, dated last Monday morning, came to me on Tuesday, saying this: "Your sermon last night (that is, last Sabbath night)did not fit my case, although I believe it did all others in theAcademy; but your sermon of a week ago did fit my case, for I am 'pastfeeling. ' I am not ashamed to be a Christian. I would as soon be knownto be a Christian as anything else. Indeed, I wish I was, but I havenot the least power to become one. Don't you know that with somepersons there is a tide in their spiritual natures which, if taken atthe flood, leads on to salvation? Such a tide I felt two years ago. Iwant you to pray for me, not that I may be led to Christ--for thatprayer would not be answered--but that I may be kept from thetemptation to suicide!"

What I had to say to the author of that I said in a private letter;but what I have to say to this audience is: Beware lest you grieve theHoly Ghost, and He be gone, and never return. Next Wednesday, at twoor three o'clock, a Cunard steamer will put out from Jersey City wharffor Liverpool. After it has gone one hour, and the vessel is down bythe Narrows, or beyond, go out on the Jersey City wharf, and wave yourhand, and shout, and ask that steamer to come back to the wharf. Willit? Yes, sooner than the Holy Ghost will come back when once He hastaken his final flight from thy soul. With that Holy Spirit some ofyou have been in treaty, my dear friends. 

The Holy Spirit said: "Come, come to Christ. " You said: "No, I won't. "The Spirit said, more importunately: "Come to Christ. " You said:"Well, I will after awhile, when I get my business fixed up; when myfriends consent to my coming; when they won't laugh at me--then I'llcome. " But the Holy Spirit more emphatically said: "Come now. " Yousaid: "No, I can't. I can't come now. " And that Holy Spirit stands inyour heart to-night, with His hand on the door of your soul, ready tocome out. Will you let Him depart? If so, then, with a pen of light, dipped in ink of eternal blackness, the sentence may be now writing:"Ephraim is joined to his idols. Let him alone! Let him alone!" Whenthat fatal record is made, you might as well brace yourselves upagainst the sorrows of the last day, against the anguish of anunforgiven death-bed, against the flame and the overthrow of an undoneeternity; for though you might live thirty years after that in theworld, your fate would be as certain as though you had already enteredthe gates of darkness. That is the dead line. Look out how you crossit!

 "'There is a line by us unseen, That crosses every path; The hidden boundary between God's patience and His wrath. '"

And some of you, to-night, have come up to that line. Ay, you havelifted your foot, and when you put it down, it will be on the otherside! Look out how you cross it! Oh, grieve not the Spirit of God, lest He never come back!

III. This fatal stroke spoken of in the text may be our exit from thisworld. I hear aged people sometimes saying: "I can't live muchlonger. " But do you know the fact that there are a hundred youngpeople and middle-aged people who go out of this life to one agedperson, for the simple reason that there are not many aged people toleave life? The aged seem to stand around like stalks--separate stalksof wheat at the corner of the field; but when death goes a-mowing, helikes to go down amid the thick of the harvest. What is more to thepoint: a man's going out of this world is never in the way heexpects--it is never at the time he expects. The moment of leavingthis world is always a surprise. If you expect to go in the winter, itmay be in the summer; if in the summer, it may be in the winter; if inthe night, it maybe in the day-time; if you think to go in theday-time, it may be in the night. Suddenly the event will rush uponyou, and you will be gone. Where? If a Christian--into joy. If not aChristian--into suffering. 

The Gospel call stops outside of the door of the sepulcher. Thesleeper within can not hear it. If that call should be sounded outwith clarion voice louder than ever rang through the air, that sleepercould not hear it. I suppose every hour of the day, and now, while Iam speaking, there are souls rushing into eternity unprepared. Theyslide from the pillow, or they slip from the pavement, and in aneye-twinkling they are gone. Elegant and eloquent funeral oration willnot do them any good. Epitaph, cut on polished Scotch granite, willnot do them any good. Wailing of beloved kindred can not call themback. 

But, says some one: "I'll keep out of peril; I will not go on the sea, I will not go into battle--I'll keep out of all danger. " That is nodefense. Thousands of people, last night, on their couches, with thefront door locked, and no armed assassin anywhere around, surroundedby all defended circumstances, slipped out of this life into thenext. If time had been on one side of the shuttle and eternity on theother side of the shuttle, they could not have shot quicker across it. A man was saying: "My father was lost at sea, and my grandfather, andmy great-grandfather. Wasn't it strange?" A man, talking to him, said:"You ought never to venture on the sea, lest you, yourself, be lost atsea. " The man turned to the other, and said: "Where did your fatherdie?" He replied: "In his bed. " "Where did your grandfather die?" "Inhis bed. " "Where did your great-grandfather die?" "In his bed. ""Then, " he said, "be careful, lest some night, while you are asleep onyour couch, your time may come!"

Death alone is sure. Suddenly, you and I will go out of life. I am notsaying anything to your soul that I am not going to say to my ownsoul. We have got to go suddenly out of this life. If I am preparedfor that change, I do not care where my body is taken from--at whatpoint I am taken out of this life. If I am ready, all is well. If I amnot ready, though I might be at home, and though my loved ones mightbe standing around me, and though there might be the best surgical andmedical ability in the room, I tell you, if I were not prepared, Iwould be frightened more than tongue can tell. It may seem likecowardice, but I am not ashamed to say that I should have the mostindescribable horror about going out of this world if I thought I wasunprepared for the next--if I had no Christ in my soul; for it wouldbe a plunge compared with which a leap from the top of Mont Blancwould be nothing. 

But this brings me to the most tremendous thought of my text. The textsupposes that a man goes into ruin, and that an effort is madeafterward for his rescue, and then says the thing can not be done. Isthat so? After death seizes upon that soul, is there no resurrection?If a man topples off the edge of life, is there nothing to break hisfall? If an impenitent man goes overboard, are there nograppling-hooks to hoist him into safety? The text says distinctly:"Then a great ransom can not deliver thee. "

I know there are people who call themselves "Restorationists, " andthey say a sinful man may go down into the world of the lost; he staysthere until he gets reformed, and then comes up into the world oflight and blessedness. It seems to me to be a most unreasonabledoctrine--as though the world of darkness were a place where a mancould get reformed. Is there anything in the society of the lostworld--the abandoned and the wretched of God's universe--to elevate aman's character and lift him at last to heaven? Can we go intocompanionship of the Neroes and the Herods, and the Jim Fisks, andspend a certain number of years in that lost world, and then by thatsociety be purified and lifted up? Is that the kind of society thatreforms a man and prepares him for heaven? Would you go to Shreveportor Memphis, with the yellow fever there, to get your physical healthrestored? Can it be that a man may go down into the diseased world--aworld overwhelmed by an epidemic of transgressions--and by thatprocess, and in that atmosphere, be lifted up to health and glory?Your common sense says: "No! no!" In such society as that, instead ofbeing restored, you would go down worse and worse, plunging every hourinto deeper depths of suffering and darkness. What your common sensesays the Bible reaffirms, when it says: "These shall go away intothree months of punishment. " I have quoted it wrong. "These shall goaway into ten years of punishment. " I have quoted it wrong. "Theseshall go into a thousand years of punishment. " I have quoted it wrong. "These shall go into _everlasting_ punishment. " And now I have quotedit right; or, if you prefer, in the words of my text: "Then a greatransom can not deliver thee. "

Now just suppose that a spirit should come down from heaven and knockat the gates of woe and say: "Let that man out! Let me come in andsuffer in his stead. I will be the sacrifice. Let him come out. " Thegrim jailer would reply: "No, you don't know what a place this is, oryou would not ask to come in; besides that, this man had full warningand full opportunity of escape. He did not take the warning, and now agreat ransom shall not deliver him. "

Sometimes men are sentenced to imprisonment for life. There comesanother judge on the bench, there comes another governor in the chair, and in three or four years you find the man who was sentenced for lifein the street. You say: "I thought you were sentenced for life. " "Oh!"he says, "politics are changed, and I am now a free man. " But it willnot be so for a soul at the last. There will be no new judge or newgovernor. If at the end of a century a soul might come out, it wouldnot be so bad. If at the end of a thousand years it might come out, it would not be so bad. If there were any time in all the future, inquadrillions and quadrillions of years, that the soul might come out, it would not be so bad; but if the Bible be true, it is a state ofunending duration. 

Far on in the ages one lost soul shall cry out to another lost soul:"How long have you been here?" and the soul will reply: "The years ofmy ruin are countless. I estimated the time for thousands of years;but what is the use of estimating when all these rolling cycles bringus no nearer the terminus. " Ages! Ages! Ages! Eternity! Eternity!Eternity! The wrath to come! The wrath to come! The wrath to come! Nomedicine to cure that marasmus of the soul. No hammer to strike offthe handcuff of that incarceration. No burglar's key to pick the lockswhich the Lord hath fastened. Sir Francis Newport, in his last moment, caught just one glimpse of that world. He had lived a sinful life. Before he went into the eternal world he looked into it. The lastwords he ever uttered were, as he gathered himself up on his elbows inthe bed: "Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell!" The lost soul will cryout: "I can not stand this! I can not stand this! Is there no wayout?" and the echo will answer: "No way out. " And the soul will cry:"Is this forever?" and the echo will answer: "Forever!"

Is it all true? "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, while the righteous go into life eternal. " Are there two destinies?and must all this audience share one or the other? Shall I give anaccount for what I have told you to-night? Have I held back any truth, though it were plain, though it were unpalatable? Must I meet youthere, oh, you dying but immortal auditory? I wish that my text, withall its uplifted hands of warning, could come upon your souls: "Bewarelest He take thee away with His stroke: then a great ransom can notdeliver thee. "

Glory be to God, there is a ransom that can now deliver you, braverthan Grace Darling putting out in a life-boat from EddystoneLight-house for the rescue of the crew of the Forfarshiresteamer--Christ the Lord launched from heaven, amid the shouting ofthe angels. Thirty-three years afterward, Christ the Lord launchedfrom earth to heaven, amid human and infernal execration; yet stayinghere long enough to save all who will believe in Him. Do you hearthat? To save all who will believe in Him. Oh, that pierced side! Oh, that bleeding brow! Oh, that crushed foot! Oh, that broken heart! Thatis your hope, sinner. That is your ransom from sin, and death, andhell. 

Why have I told you all these things to-night, plainly and frankly? Itis because I know there is redemption for you, and I would have younow come and get it. Oh, men and women long prayed for, and strivenwith, and coaxed of the mercy of God--have you concentrated all yourphysical, mental, and spiritual energies in one awful determination tobe lost? Is there nothing in the value of your soul, in thegraciousness of Christ, in the thunders of the last day, in theblazing glories of heaven, and the surging wrath of an undone eternityto start you out of your indifference, and make you pray? Oh, must Godcome upon you in some other way? Must He take another darling childfrom your household? Must He take another installment from yourworldly estate? Must life come upon you with sorrow after sorrow, andsmite you down with sickness before you will be moved, and before youwill feel?

Oh, weep now, while Jesus will count the tears! Sigh, now inrepentance, while Jesus will hear the grief. Now clutch the cross ofthe Son of God before it be swept away. Beware, lest the Holy Spiritleave thy heart. Beware, lest this night thy soul be required of thee. "Beware, lest he take thee away with His stroke: then a great ransomcan not deliver thee. " Oh, Lord God of Israel, see these impenitentsouls on the verge of death ready to topple over! See them! Is thereno help? Is this plea all in vain? I can not believe it, blessed God. Oh, thou mighty One, whose garments are red with the wine-press ofThine own sufferings, in the greatness of Thy strength ride throughthis audience, and may all this people fall into line, the willingcaptives of Thy grace. Men and women immortal! I lay hold of youto-night with both hands of entreaty and of prayer, and I beg of you, prepare for death, judgment, and eternity. 

THE THREE GROUPS. 

 "And they sat down in ranks by hundreds and by fifties. "--MARK vi: 40. 

The sun was far down in the west, night was coming on, and there werefive thousand people tired, hungry, shelterless. You know howWashington felt at Valley Forge, when his army was starving andfreezing. You may imagine how any great-hearted general would feelwhile his troops were suffering. Imagine, then, how Christ, with Hisgreat heart, must have felt as He saw these five thousandhunger-bitten people. Yes, I suppose there were ten thousand there, for the Bible says there were five thousand men, besides women andchildren. The case is put in that way, not because the women andchildren were of less importance than the men, but because they wouldeat less; and the whole force of the miracle turns on the amount offood required. 

How shall this great multitude be supplied? I see a selfish man inthat crowd pulling a luncheon out of his own pocket, and saying: "Letthe people starve. They had no business to come out here in the desertwithout any provisions. They are improvident, and the improvidentought to suffer. " There is another man, not quite so heartless, whosays: "Go up into the village and buy bread. " What a foolishproposition! There is not enough food in all the village for thiscrowd; besides that, who has the money to pay for it? Xerxes' army, one million strong, was fed by a private individual of great wealthfor only one day, but it broke him. Who, then, shall feed thismultitude?

I see a man rising in that great crowd and asking: "Is there any onehere who has bread or meat?" A kind of moan goes through the wholethrong. "No bread--no meat. " But just at that time a lad steps up. Youknow when a great crowd goes off upon an excursion, there are alwaysmen and boys to go along for the purpose of merchandise and to strikea bargain: and so, I suppose, this boy had gone along for the purposeof merchandise; but he was nearly all sold out, having only fiveloaves and two fishes left. He is a generous boy, and he turns themover to Christ. 

But these loaves would not feed twenty people, how much less tenthousand! Though the action was so generous on the part of the boy, sofar as satisfying the multitude, it was a dead failure. Then Jesuscomes to the rescue. He is apt to come when there is a dead lift. Hecommands the people that they sit down "in ranks, by hundreds and byfifties, " as much as to say: "Order! order! so that none be missed. "It was fortunate that that arrangement was made; otherwise, at thevery first appearance of bread, the strong ones would have clutchedit, while the feeble and the modest would have gone unsupplied. 

I suppose it was no easy work to get that crowd seated, for they allwanted to be in the front row, lest the bread give out before theirturn come. No sooner are they seated than there comes a great hushover all the people. Jesus stands there, His light complexion andauburn locks illumined by the setting sun. Every eye is on Him. Theywonder what He will do next. He takes one of the loaves that the boyfurnished and breaks off it a piece, which immediately grows to aslarge a size as the original loaf, the original loaf staying as largeas it was before the piece was broken off. And they leaned forwardwith intense scrutiny, saying: "Look! look!" When some one, anxious tosee more minutely what is going on, rises in front, they cry: "Sitdown in front! Let us look for ourselves. "

And then, when the bread is passed around, they taste of itskeptically and inquiringly, as much as to say: "Is it bread? Really, is it bread?" Yes, the best bread that was ever made, for Christ madeit. Bread for the first fifty and second fifty. Bread for the firsthundred and the second hundred. Bread for the first thousand and thesecond thousand. Pass it all around the circle: there, where that agedman sits leaning on his staff, and where that woman sits with thechild in her arms. Pass it all around. Are you all fed? "Ay! ay!"respond the ten thousand voices; "all fed. " One basket would have heldthe loaves before the miracle; it takes twelve baskets now. Sound itthrough all the ages of earth and heaven, that Christ the Lord comesto our suffering race with the bread of this life in one hand, and thebread of eternal life in the other hand. 

You have all immediately run out the analogy between that scene andthis. There were thousands there; there are thousands here. They werein the desert; many of you are in the desert of trouble and sin. Nohuman power could feed them; no human power can feed you. Christappeared to them; Christ appears to you. Bread enough for all in thedesert; bread enough for all who are here. And, as on that occasion, so in this: we have the people "sit down in ranks by hundreds and byfifties;" for the fact that many of you stand is no fault of ours, forwe have tried to give you seats. As Christ divided that company intogroups, so I divide this audience into three groups: the pardoned, theseeking, the careless. 

I. And, first, I speak to the pardoned. 

It is with some of you half past five in the morning, and some faintstreaks of light. With others it is seven o'clock, and thus full dawn. With others it is twelve o'clock at noon, and you sit in full blaze ofGospel pardon. I bring you congratulation. Joseph delivered fromPotiphar's dungeon; Daniel lifted from the lion's den; Saul arrestedand unhorsed on the road to Damascus. Oh, you delivered captives, howyour eyes should gleam, and your souls should bound, and your lipsshould sing in this pardon! From what land did you come? A land ofdarkness. What is to be your destiny? A land of light. Who got youout? Christ, the Lord. Can you sit so placidly and unmoved while allheaven comes to your soul with congratulation, and harps are strung, and crowns are lifted, and a great joy swings round the heavens at thenews of your disinthrallment? If you could realize out of what a pityou have been dug, to what height you are to be raised, and to whatglory you are destined, you would spring to your feet with "Hosanna!"

In 1808 there was a meeting of the emperors of France and Russia atErfurt. There were distinguished men there also from other lands. Itwas so arranged that when any of the emperors arrived at the door ofthe reception-room, the drum should beat three times; but when alesser dignitary should come, then the drum would sound but twice. After awhile the people in the audience-chamber heard two taps of thedrum. They said: "A prince is coming. " But after awhile there werethree taps, and they cried: "The emperor!" Oh, there is a moreglorious arrival at your soul to-night! The drum beats twice at thecoming in of the lesser joys and congratulations of your soul; but itbeats once, twice, thrice at the coming in of a glorious King--Jesusthe Saviour, Jesus the God! I congratulate you. All are yours--thingspresent and things to come. 

II. I come now to speak of the second division--those who are seeking;some of you with more earnestness, some of you with less earnestness. But I believe that to-night, if I should ask all those who wish tofind the way to heaven to rise, and the world did not scoff at you, and your own proud heart did not keep you down, there would be athousand souls who would cry out as they rose up: "Show me the way toheaven!" That young man who smiled to the one next to him, as thoughhe cared for none of these things, would be on his knees crying formercy. Why this anxious look? Why this deep disquietude in the soul?Why, at the beginning of this service, did you do what you have notdone for years--bow your head in prayer? You are seeking. 

"I am a gambler, " says one man. There is mercy for you. "I am alibertine, " says another. There is mercy for you. "I have plunged intoevery abomination. " Mercy for you. The door of grace does not standajar to-night, nor half swung around on the hinges. It is wide, wideopen; and there is nothing in the Bible, or in Christ, or God, orearth, or heaven, or hell, to keep you out of the door of safety, ifyou want to go in. Christ has borne your burdens, fought your battles, suffered for your sins. The debt is paid, and the receipt is handed toyou, written in the blood of the Son of God--will you have it? Oh, decide the matter now! Decide it here! Fling your exhausted soul downat the feet of an all-compassionate, all-sympathizing, all-pitying, all-pardoning Jesus. The laceration on His brow, the gash in His side, the torn muscles and nerves of His feet beg you to come. 

But remember that one inch outside the door of pardon, and you are inas much peril as though you were a thousand miles away. Many ashipwrecked sailor has got almost to the beach, but did not get on it. There are thousands in the world of the lost who came very near beingsaved--perhaps as near as you are to-night--but were not saved. 

On the eastern coast of England, a few weeks ago, in afishing-village, there was a good deal of excitement. While peoplewere in church, the sailors and fishermen hearing the Gospel on theSabbath, there was a cry: "To the beach!" and the minister closed theBible, and with his congregation went out to help, and they saw in theoffing a ship in trouble; but there was some disorder amid thefishing-smacks, and amid all the boats, and it was almost impossibleto get anything launched. But after awhile they did, and they pulledaway for the wreck, and came almost up, when suddenly the distressedbark in the offing capsized, and they all went down. Oh, if thelifeboats had only been ten minutes quicker! And how many a life-boathas been launched from the Gospel shore! It has come almost up to thedrowning, and yet, after all, they were not rescued. Somehow they didnot get into it!

I suppose there are people who have asked for our prayers, and Isuppose there were some in the side room, last Sabbath night, talkingabout their souls, who will miss heaven. They do not take the laststep, and all the other steps go for nothing until you have taken thelast step, for I have here, in the presence of God and this people, toannounce the solemn truth, that to be almost saved is to be lostforever. That is all I have to say to the second division. 

III. I come now to speak to the careless. You look indifferent, and Isuppose you are indifferent. You say: "I came in here because a friendinvited me to see what is going on, but with no serious intentionsabout my soul. I have so much work, and so much pleasure on hand, don't bother me about religion. " And yet you are gentlemanly, and youare lady-like, in your behavior, and, therefore, I know that you willlisten respectfully if I talk courteously. Christian people aresometimes afraid to talk to men and women of the world lest they beinsulted. If they talk courteously to people of the world, they willlisten courteously. So now I try to come in that way, and in thatspirit, and talk to those of you who tell me that you are carelessabout your soul. 

Then you have a soul, have you? Yes, precious, with infinite capacityfor joy or suffering, winged for flight somewhere. Beckoned upward, beckoned downward. Fought after by angels and by fiends. Immortal!

 "The sun is but a spark of fire, A transient meteor in the sky: The soul, immortal as its Sire, Can never die. "

Your body will soon be taken down, the castle will be destroyed, thetower will be in the dust, the windows will be broken out, and theplace where your body sleeps will be forgotten; but your soul, afterthat, will be living, acting, feeling, thinking--where? where? Oh, there must be something of incomputable worth in that for which heavengave up its best inhabitant, and Christ went into martyrdom, and atthe coming of which angels chant an eternal litany and devils rush tothe gate. When everything above you, and beneath you, and around you, is intent upon that soul, you can not afford to be careless, especially when I think, this moment while I speak, there arethousands of souls in heaven rejoicing that they attended to thismatter in time, while at this very instant there are souls in the lostworld mourning that they did not attend to it in time. Hark to thehowling of the damned!

Oh, if this room could be vacated of this audience, and you were allgone, and the wan spirits of the lost could come up and occupy thisplace, and I could stand before them with offers of pardon throughJesus Christ, and then ask them if they would accept it, there wouldcome up an instantaneous, multitudinous, overwhelming cry: "Yes! yes!yes! yes!" No such fortune for them. They had their day of grace, andsacrificed it. You have yours; will you sacrifice it? I wish that Icould have you see these things as you will one day see them. 

Suppose, on your way home, a runaway horse should dash across thestreet, or between the dock and the boat you should accidentally slip, where would you be at twelve o'clock to-night or seven o'clockto-morrow morning? Or for all eternity where would you be? I do notanswer the question. I just leave it to you to answer. 

But suppose you escape fatal accident. Suppose you go out by theordinary process of sickness. I will just suppose now that your lasthour has come. The doctor says, as he goes out of the room: "Can't getwell. " There is something in the faces of those who stand around youthat prophesies that you can not get well. You say within yourself: "Ican't get well. " Where are your comrades now? Oh, they are off to thegay party that very night! They dance as well as they ever did. Theydrink as much wine. They laugh as loud as though you were not dying. They destroyed your soul, but do not come to help you die. 

Well, there are father and mother in the room. They are very quiet, but occasionally they go out into the next room and weep bitterly. Thebed is very much disheveled. They have not been able to make it upfor two or three days. There are four or five pillows lying around, because they have been trying to make you as easy as they could. Onthe one side of your bed are all the past years of your life--theBibles, the sermons, the communion-tables, the offers of mercy. Yousay: "Take them away. " Your mother thinks you are delirious. She says:"There is nothing there, my dear, nothing there. " There is somethingthere! It is your wasted opportunities. It is your procrastinations. It is those years you gave to the world that you ought to have givento Christ. They are there; and some of them put their fingers on youraching temples, and some of them feel for the strings of your heart, and some put more thorns in your tumbled pillow, and you say: "Turn meover. " And they turn you over, but, alas! there is a more appallingvision. You say: "Take that away!" They say: "There is nothing there, nothing there. " There is--an open grave there! the judgment is there!a lost eternity is there! Take it away! They can not take it away. 

You say: "How dark it is getting in the room!" Why, the burners areall lighted. Your family come up one by one, and tenderly kiss yougood-bye. Your feet are cold, and the hands are cold, and the lips arecold, and they take a small mirror and they put it over your mouth tosee if there is any breathing, and that mirror is taken away without asingle blur upon it; and they whisper through the room: "She is gone. "And then the door of the body opens and the soul flashes out. Makeroom for the destroyed spirit. 

Push back that door! Lost! Let it come into its eternal residence. Woe! woe! No cup of merriment now, but cup of the wrath of AlmightyGod. The last chance for heaven gone. The door of mercy shut. The doomsealed. The blackness of darkness forever!

Voltaire is there. Herod is there. Robespierre is there. Thedebauchees are there. The murderers are there. All the rejectors ofJesus Christ are there. And you will be there unless you repent. Youcan not say, my dear brother, that you were not warned. This sermonwould be a witness against you. You can not say that God's Holy Spiritnever strove with your heart. He is striving now. You can not say thatyou had no chance for heaven, for the Omnipotent Son of God offers youHis rescue. You can not say: "I had no warning about that world; Ididn't know there was any such place, " for the Bible distinctly ringsin your ears to-day, saying: "At the end of the world the angels shallseparate the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into afurnace of fire. " And again that book says: "The wicked shall beturned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. " And again itsays: "The smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever. "

You can not say that you did not hear about heaven, the otheralternative, for you hear of it now: "The Lamb which is in the midstof the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and Godshall wipe away all tears from their eyes. " No sorrow, no suffering, no death. Oh, will you be careless any longer, when I tell you thatChrist, the Conqueror of earth and hell, offers you now escape fromall peril, and offers to introduce you this very hour into the peaceand pardon of the Gospel, preparing you for that good land? The sidesof Calvary run blood for you. Jesus, who had not where to lay Hishead, offers you His heart as a pillow of rest. Christ offers with Hisown body to bridge over the chasm of death, saying: "Walk over Me; Iam the way. "

O suffering Jesus! the thief scoffed at Thee, and the malefactor spaton Thee, and the soldiers stabbed Thee; but these who sit before Theeto-day have no heart to do that. O Jesus! tell them of Thy love, tellthem of Thy sympathy, tell them of the rewards Thou wilt give them inthe better land. Groan again, O blessed Jesus! groan again, andperhaps when the rocks fall, their hard hearts may break. 

 "Nothing brought Him from above, Nothing but redeeming love. "

The promise is all free, the path all clear. Come, Mary, and sitto-night at the feet of Jesus. Come, Bartimeus, and have your eyesopened. Come, O prodigal! and sit at thy father's table. Come, O yousuffering, sinning, dying the soul! and find rest on the heart ofJesus. The Spirit and Bride say "Come, " and Churches militant andtriumphant say "Come, " and all the voices of the past, mingling withall the voices of the future, in one great thunder of emphasis, bidyou "Come now!" Are not those of you who are in the third class readyto pass over into the second division, and become seekers afterChrist? Ay, are you not ready to pass over into the first division, and become the pardoned sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty? Ican do no more than offer you, through Jesus Christ, peace on earthand everlasting residence in His presence. 

 "When God makes up His last account Of natives in His holy mount, 'Twill be an honor to appear As one new-born and nourished there. "

Good-night! The Lord bless you! Go to your homes seeking after Christ. Sleep not until you have made your peace with God. Good-night--a deep, hearty, loving, Christian good-night!

THE INSIGNIFICANT. 

 "And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech. "--RUTH ii: 3. 

The time that Ruth and Naomi arrive at Bethlehem is harvest-time. Itwas the custom when a sheaf fell from a load in the harvest-field forthe reapers to refuse to gather it up: that was to be left for thepoor who might happen to come along that way. If there were handfulsof grain scattered across the field after the main harvest had beenreaped, instead of raking it, as farmers do now, it was, by the customof the land, left in its place, so that the poor, coming along thatway, might glean it and get their bread. But, you say, "What is theuse of all these harvest-fields to Ruth and Naomi? Naomi is too oldand feeble to go out and toil in the sun; and can you expect thatRuth, the young and the beautiful, should tan her cheeks and blisterher hands in the harvest-field?"

Boaz owns a large farm, and he goes out to see the reapers gather inthe grain. Coming there, right behind the swarthy, sun-brownedreapers, he beholds a beautiful woman gleaning--a woman more fit tobend to a harp or sit upon a throne than to stoop among the sheaves. Ah, that was an eventful day!

It was love at first sight. Boaz forms an attachment for the womanlygleaner--an attachment full of undying interest to the Church of Godin all ages; while Ruth, with an ephah, or nearly a bushel of barley, goes home to Naomi to tell her the successes and adventures of theday. That Ruth, who left her native land of Moab in darkness, andtraveled through an undying affection for her mother-in-law, is in theharvest-field of Boaz, is affianced to one of the best families inJudah, and becomes in after-time the ancestress of Jesus Christ, theLord of glory! Out of so dark a night did there ever dawn so bright amorning?

I. I learn, in the first place, from this subject how trouble developscharacter. It was bereavement, poverty, and exile that developed, illustrated, and announced to all ages the sublimity of Ruth'scharacter. That is a very unfortunate man who has no trouble. It wassorrow that made John Bunyan the better dreamer, and Doctor Young thebetter poet, and O'Connell the better orator, and Bishop Hall thebetter preacher, and Havelock the better soldier, and Kitto the betterencyclopædist, and Ruth the better daughter-in-law. 

I once asked an aged man in regard to his pastor, who was a verybrilliant man, "Why is it that your pastor, so very brilliant, seemsto have so little heart and tenderness in his sermons?" "Well, " hereplied, "the reason is, our pastor has never had any trouble. Whenmisfortune comes upon him, his style will be different. " After awhilethe Lord took a child out of that pastor's house; and though thepreacher was just as brilliant as he was before, oh, the warmth, thetenderness of his discourses! The fact is, that trouble is a greateducator. You see sometimes a musician sit down at an instrument, andhis execution is cold and formal and unfeeling. The reason is that allhis life he has been prospered. But let misfortune or bereavement cometo that man, and he sits down at the instrument, and you discover thepathos in the first sweep of the keys. 

Misfortune and trials are great educators. A young doctor comes into asick-room where there is a dying child. Perhaps he is very rough inhis prescription, and very rough in his manner, and rough in thefeeling of the pulse, and rough in his answer to the mother's anxiousquestion; but years roll on, and there has been one dead in his ownhouse; and now he comes into the sick-room, and with tearful eye helooks at the dying child, and he says, "Oh, how this reminds me of myCharlie!" Trouble, the great educator. Sorrow--I see its touch in thegrandest painting; I hear its tremor in the sweetest song; I feel itspower in the mightiest argument. 

Grecian mythology said that the fountain of Hippocrene was struck outby the foot of the winged horse Pegasus. I have often noticed in lifethat the brightest and most beautiful fountains of Christian comfortand spiritual life have been struck out by the iron-shod hoof ofdisaster and calamity. I see Daniel's courage best by the flash ofNebuchadnezzar's furnace. I see Paul's prowess best when I find him onthe foundering ship under the glare of the lightning in the breakersof Melita. God crowns His children amid the howling of wild beasts andthe chopping of blood-splashed guillotine and the crackling fires ofmartyrdom. It took the persecutions of Marcus Aurelius to developPolycarp and Justin Martyr. It took the pope's bull and the cardinal'scurse and the world's anathema to develop Martin Luther. It took allthe hostilities against the Scotch Covenanters and the fury of LordClaverhouse to develop James Renwick, and Andrew Melville, and HughMcKail, the glorious martyrs of Scotch history. It took the stormysea, and the December blast, and the desolate New England coast, andthe war-whoop of savages, to show forth the prowess of the PilgrimFathers--

 "When amid the storms they sung, And the stars heard, and the sea, And the sounding aisles of the dim wood Rang to the anthems of the free. "

It took all our past national distresses, and it takes all our presentnational sorrows, to lift up our nation on that high career where itwill march along after the foreign aristocracies that have mocked andthe tyrannies that have jeered, shall be swept down under theomnipotent wrath of God, who hates despotism, and who, by the strengthof His own red right arm, will make all men free. And so it isindividually, and in the family, and in the Church, and in the world, that through darkness and storm and trouble men, women, churches, nations, are developed. 

II. Again, I see in my text the beauty of unfaltering friendship. Isuppose there were plenty of friends for Naomi while she was inprosperity; but of all her acquaintances, how many were willing totrudge off with her toward Judah, when she had to make that lonelyjourney? One--the heroine of my text. One--absolutely one. I supposewhen Naomi's husband was living, and they had plenty of money, and allthings went well, they had a great many callers; but I suppose thatafter her husband died, and her property went, and she got old andpoor, she was not troubled very much with callers. All the birds thatsung in the bower while the sun shone have gone to their nests, nowthe night has fallen. 

Oh, these beautiful sun-flowers that spread out their color in themorning hour! but they are always asleep when the sun is going down!Job had plenty of friends when he was the richest man in Uz; but whenhis property went and the trials came, then there were none so muchthat pestered as Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, andZophar the Naamathite. 

Life often seems to be a mere game, where the successful player pullsdown all the other men into his own lap. Let suspicions arise about aman's character, and he becomes like a bank in a panic, and all theimputations rush on him and break down in a day that character whichin due time would have had strength to defend itself. There arereputations that have been half a century in building, which go downunder some moral exposure, as a vast temple is consumed by the touchof a sulphurous match. A hog can uproot a century plant. 

In this world, so full of heartlessness and hypocrisy, how thrillingit is to find some friend as faithful in days of adversity as in daysof prosperity! David had such a friend in Hushai; the Jews had such afriend in Mordecai, who never forgot their cause; Paul had such afriend in Onesiphorus, who visited him in jail; Christ had such inthe Marys, who adhered to Him on the cross; Naomi had such a one inRuth, who cried out: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return fromfollowing after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and wherethou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy Godmy God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried: theLord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me. "

III. Again, I learn from this subject that paths which open inhardship and darkness often come out in places of joy. When Ruthstarted from Moab toward Jerusalem, to go along with hermother-in-law, I suppose the people said: "Oh, what a foolish creatureto go away from her father's house, to go off with a poor old womantoward the land of Judah! They won't live to get across the desert. They will be drowned in the sea, or the jackals of the wilderness willdestroy them. " It was a very dark morning when Ruth started off withNaomi; but behold her in my text in the harvest-field of Boaz, to beaffianced to one of the lords of the land, and become one of thegrandmothers of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. And so it often isthat a path which often starts very darkly ends very brightly. 

When you started out for heaven, oh, how dark was the hour ofconviction--how Sinai thundered, and devils tormented, and thedarkness thickened! All the sins of your life pounced upon you, and itwas the darkest hour you ever saw when you first found out your sins. After awhile you went into the harvest-field of God's mercy; youbegan to glean in the fields of divine promise, and you had moresheaves than you could carry, as the voice of God addressed you, saying: "Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, andwhose sins are covered. " A very dark starting in conviction, a verybright ending in the pardon and the hope and the triumph of theGospel!

So, very often in our worldly business or in our spiritual career, westart off on a very dark path. We must go. The flesh may shrink back, but there is a voice within, or a voice from above, saying, "You mustgo;" and we have to drink the gall, and we have to carry the cross, and we have to traverse the desert and we are pounded and flailed ofmisrepresentation and abuse, and we have to urge our way through tenthousand obstacles that have been slain by our own right arm. We haveto ford the river, we have to climb the mountain, we have to storm thecastle; but, blessed be God, the day of rest and reward will come. Onthe tip-top of the captured battlements we will shout the victory; ifnot in this world, then in that world where there is no gall to drink, no burdens to carry, no battles to fight. How do I know it? Know it! Iknow it because God says so: "They shall hunger no more, neitherthirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them toliving fountains of water, and God shall wipe all tears from theireyes. "

It was very hard for Noah to endure the scoffing of the people in hisday, while he was trying to build the ark, and was every morningquizzed about his old boat that would never be of any practical use;but when the deluge came, and the tops of the mountains disappearedlike the backs of sea-monsters, and the elements, lashed up in fury, clapped their hands over a drowned world, then Noah in the arkrejoiced in his own safety and in the safety of his family, and lookedout on the wreck of a ruined earth. 

Christ, hounded of persecutors, denied a pillow, worse maltreated thanthe thieves on either side of the cross, human hate smacking its lipsin satisfaction after it had been draining His last drop of blood, thesheeted dead bursting from the sepulchers at His crucifixion. Tell me, O Gethsemane and Golgotha! were there ever darker times than those?Like the booming of the midnight sea against the rock, the surges ofChrist's anguish beat against the gates of eternity, to be echoed backby all the thrones of heaven and all the dungeons of hell. But the dayof reward comes for Christ; all the pomp and dominion of this worldare to be hung on His throne, uncrowned heads are to bow before Him onwhose head are many crowns, and all the celestial worship is to comeup at His feet, like the humming of the forest, like the rushing ofthe waters, like the thundering of the seas, while all heaven, risingon their thrones, beat time with their scepters: "Hallelujah, for theLord God omnipotent reigneth! Hallelujah, the kingdoms of this worldhave become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ!"

 "That song of love, now low and far, Ere long shall swell from star to star; That light, the breaking day which tips The golden-spired Apocalypse. "

IV. Again, I learn from my subject that events which seem to be mostinsignificant may be momentous. Can you imagine anything moreunimportant than the coming of a poor woman from Moab to Judah? Canyou imagine anything more trivial than the fact that this Ruth justhappened to alight--as they say--just happened to alight on that fieldof Boaz? Yet all ages, all generations, have an interest in the factthat she was to become an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ, and allnations and kingdoms must look at that one little incident with athrill of unspeakable and eternal satisfaction. So it is in yourhistory and in mine: events that you thought of no importance at allhave been of very great moment. That casual conversation, thataccidental meeting--you did not think of it again for a long while;but how it changed all the phase of your life!

It seemed to be of no importance that Jubal invented rude instrumentsof music, calling them harp and organ; but they were the introductionof all the world's minstrelsy; and as you hear the vibration of astringed instrument, even after the fingers have been taken away fromit, so all music now of lute and drum and cornet is only thelong-continued strains of Jubal's harp and Jubal's organ. It seemed tobe a matter of very little importance that Tubal Cain learned the usesof copper and iron; but that rude foundry of ancient days has its echoin the rattle of Birmingham machinery, and the roar and bang offactories on the Merrimac. 

It seemed to be a matter of no importance that Luther found a Bible ina monastery; but as he opened that Bible, and the brass-bound lidsfell back, they jarred everything, from the Vatican to the furthestconvent in Germany, and the rustling of the wormed leaves was thesound of the wings of the angel of the Reformation. It seemed to be amatter of no importance that a woman, whose name has been forgotten, dropped a tract in the way of a very bad man by the name of RichardBaxter. He picked up the tract and read it, and it was the means ofhis salvation. 

In after-days that man wrote a book called "The Call to theUnconverted, " that was the means of bringing a multitude to God, amongothers Philip Doddridge. Philip Doddridge wrote a book called "TheRise and Progress of Religion, " which has brought thousands and tensof thousands into the kingdom of God, and among others the greatWilberforce. Wilberforce wrote a book called "A Practical View ofChristianity, " which was the means of bringing a great multitude toChrist, among others Legh Richmond. Legh Richmond wrote a tract called"The Dairyman's Daughter, " which has been the means of the salvationof unconverted multitudes. And that tide of influence started from thefact that one Christian woman dropped a Christian tract in the way ofRichard Baxter--the tide of influence rolling on through RichardBaxter, through Philip Doddridge, through the great Wilberforce, through Legh Richmond, on, on, on, forever, forever. So theinsignificant events of this world seem, after all, to be mostmomentous. The fact that you came up that street or this street seemedto be of no importance to you, and the fact that you went inside ofsome church may seem to be a matter of very great insignificance toyou, but you will find it the turning-point in your history. 

V. Again, I see in my subject an illustration of the beauty of femaleindustry. 

Behold Ruth toiling in the harvest-field under the hot sun, or at noontaking plain bread with the reapers, or eating the parched corn whichBoaz handed to her. The customs of society, of course, have changed, and without the hardships and exposure to which Ruth was subjected, every intelligent woman will find something to do. 

I know there is a sickly sentimentality on this subject. In somefamilies there are persons of no practical service to the household orcommunity; and though there are so many woes all around about them inthe world, they spend their time languishing over a new pattern, orbursting into tears at midnight over the story of some lover who shothimself! They would not deign to look at Ruth carrying back the barleyon her way home to her mother-in-law, Naomi. All this fastidiousnessmay seem to do very well while they are under the shelter of theirfather's house; but when the sharp winter of misfortune comes, what ofthese butterflies? Persons under indulgent parentage may get uponthemselves habits of indolence; but when they come out into practicallife their soul will recoil with disgust and chagrin. They will feelin their hearts what the poet so severely satirized when he said:

 "Folks are so awkward, things so impolite, They're elegantly pained from morning until night. "

Through that gate of indolence how many men and women have marched, useless on earth, to a destroyed eternity! Spinola said to Sir HoraceVere: "Of what did your brother die?" "Of having nothing to do, " wasthe answer. "Ah!" said Spinola, "that's enough to kill any general ofus. " Oh! can it be possible in this world, where there is so muchsuffering to be alleviated, so much darkness to be enlightened, and somany burdens to be carried, that there is any person who cannot findanything to do?

Madame de Staël did a world of work in her time; and one day, whileshe was seated amid instruments of music, all of which she hadmastered, and amid manuscript books which she had written, some onesaid to her: "How do you find time to attend to all these things?""Oh, " she replied, "these are not the things I am proud of. My chiefboast is in the fact that I have seventeen trades, by any one of whichI could make a livelihood if necessary. " And if in secular spheresthere is so much to be done, in spiritual work how vast the field! Howmany dying all around about us without one word of comfort! We wantmore Abigails, more Hannahs, more Rebeccas, more Marys, more Deborahsconsecrated--body, mind, soul--to the Lord who bought them. 

VI. Once more I learn from my subject the value of gleaning. 

Ruth going into that harvest-field might have said: "There is a straw, and there is a straw, but what is a straw? I can't get any barley formyself or my mother-in-law out of these separate straws. " Not so saidbeautiful Ruth. She gathered two straws, and she put them together, and more straws, until she got enough to make a sheaf. Putting thatdown, she went and gathered more straws, until she had another sheaf, and another, and another, and another, and then she brought them alltogether, and she threshed them out, and she had an ephah of barley, nigh a bushel. Oh, that we might all be gleaners!

Elihu Burritt learned many things while toiling in a blacksmith'sshop. Abercrombie, the world-renowned philosopher, was a philosopherin Scotland, and he got his philosophy, or the chief part of it, while, as a physician, he was waiting for the door of the sick-room toopen. Yet how many there are in this day who say they are so busy theyhave no time for mental or spiritual improvement; the great duties oflife cross the field like strong reapers, and carry off all the hours, and there is only here and there a fragment left, that is not worthgleaning. Ah, my friends, you could go into the busiest day andbusiest week of your life and find golden opportunities, which, gathered, might at last make a whole sheaf for the Lord's garner. Itis the stray opportunities and the stray privileges which, taken upand bound together and beaten out, will at last fill you with muchjoy. 

There are a few moments left worth the gleaning. Now, Ruth, to thefield! May each one have a measure full and running over! Oh, yougleaners, to the field! And if there be in your household an aged oneor a sick relative that is not strong enough to come forth and toil inthis field, then let Ruth take home to feeble Naomi this sheaf ofgleaning: "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves withhim. " May the Lord God of Ruth and Naomi be our portion forever!

THE THREE RINGS. 

 "Put a ring on his hand. "--LUKE xv: 22. 

I will not rehearse the familiar story of the fast young man of theparable. You know what a splendid home he left. You know what a hardtime he had. And you remember how after that season of vagabondage andprodigality he resolved to go and weep out his sorrows on the bosom ofparental forgiveness. Well, there is great excitement one day in frontof the door of the old farmhouse. The servants come rushing up andsay: "What's the matter? What _is_ the matter?" But before they quitearrive, the old man cries out: "Put a ring on his hand. " What aseeming absurdity! What can such a wretched mendicant as this fellowthat is tramping on toward the house want with a ring? Oh, he is theprodigal son. No more tending of the swine-trough. No more longing forthe pods of the carob-tree. No more blistered feet. Off with the rags!On with the robe! Out with the ring! Even so does God receive everyone of us when we come back. There are gold rings, and pearl rings, and carnelian rings, and diamond rings; but the richest ring that everflashed on the vision is that which our Father puts upon a forgivensoul. 

I know that the impression is abroad among some people that religionbemeans and belittles a man; that it takes all the sparkle out of hissoul; that he has to exchange a roistering independence for anecclesiastical strait-jacket. Not so. When a man becomes a Christian, he does not go down, he starts upward. Religion multiplies one by tenthousand. Nay, the multiplier is in infinity. It is not a blottingout--it is a polishing, it is an arborescence, it is an efflorescence, it is an irradiation. When a man comes into the kingdom of God he isnot sent into a menial service, but the Lord God Almighty from thepalaces of heaven calls upon the messenger angels that wait upon thethrone to fly and "put a ring on his hand. " In Christ are the largestliberty, and brightest joy, and highest honor, and richest adornment. "Put a ring on his hand. "

I remark, in the first place, that when Christ receives a soul intoHis love, He puts upon him the ring of adoption. Eight or ten yearsago, in my church in Philadelphia, there came the representative ofthe Howard Mission of New York. He brought with him eight or tenchildren of the street that he had picked up, and he was trying tofind for them Christian homes; and as the little ones stood on thepulpit and sung, our hearts melted within us. At the close of theservices a great-hearted wealthy man came up and said: "I'll take thislittle bright-eyed girl, and I'll adopt her as one of my ownchildren;" and he took her by the hand, lifted her into his carriage, and went away. 

The next day, while we were in the church gathering up garments forthe poor of New York, this little child came back with a bundle underher arm, and she said: "There's my old dress; perhaps some of thepoor children would like to have it, " while she herself was in brightand beautiful array, and those who more immediately examined her saidthat she had a ring on her hand. It was a ring of adoption. 

There are a great many persons who pride themselves on their ancestry, and they glory over the royal blood that pours through their arteries. In their line there was a lord, or a duke, or a prime minister, or aking. But when the Lord, our Father, puts upon us the ring of Hisadoption, we become the children of the Ruler of all nations. "Beholdwhat manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we shouldbe called the sons of God. " It matters not how poor our garments maybe in this world, or how scant our bread, or how mean the hut we livein, if we have that ring of Christ's adoption upon our hand we areassured of eternal defenses. 

Adopted! Why, then, we are brothers and sisters to all the good ofearth and heaven. We have the family name, the family dress, thefamily keys, the family wardrobe. The Father looks after us, robes us, defends us, blesses us. We have royal blood in our veins, and thereare crowns in our line. If we are His children, then princes andprincesses. It is only a question of time when we get our coronet. Adopted! Then we have the family secrets. "The secret of the Lord iswith them that fear Him. " Adopted! Then we have the familyinheritance, and in the day when our Father shall divide the riches ofheaven we shall take our share of the mansions and palaces andtemples. Henceforth let us boast no more of an earthly ancestry. Theinsignia of eternal glory is our coat of arms. This ring of adoptionputs upon us all honor and all privilege. Now we can take the words ofCharles Wesley, that prince of hymn-makers, and sing:

 "Come, let us join our friends above, Who have obtained the prize, And on the eagle wings of love To joy celestial rise. 

 "Let all the saints terrestrial sing With those to glory gone; For all the servants of our King, In heaven and earth, are one. "

I have been told that when any of the members of any of the greatsecret societies of this country are in a distant city and are in anykind of trouble, and are set upon by enemies, they have only to give acertain signal and the members of that organization will flock aroundfor defense. And when any man belongs to this great Christianbrotherhood, if he gets in trouble, in trial, in persecution, intemptation, he has only to show this ring of Christ's adoption, andall the armed cohorts of heaven will come to his rescue. 

Still further, when Christ takes a soul into His love He puts upon ita marriage-ring. Now, that is not a whim of mine: "And I will betroththee unto Me forever; yea, I will betroth thee unto Me inrighteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and inmercies. " (Hosea ii: 19. ) At the wedding altar the bridegroom puts aring upon the hand of the bride, signifying love and faithfulness. Trouble may come upon the household, and the carpets may go, thepictures may go, the piano may go, everything else may go--the lastthing that goes is that marriage-ring, for it is considered sacred. Inthe burial hour it is withdrawn from the hand and kept in a casket, and sometimes the box is opened on an anniversary day, and as you lookat that ring you see under its arch a long procession of preciousmemories. Within the golden circle of that ring there is room for athousand sweet recollections to revolve, and you think of the greatcontrast between the hour when, at the close of the "Wedding March, "under the flashing lights and amid the aroma of orange-blossoms, youset that ring on the round finger of the plump hand, and that otherhour when, at the close of the exhaustive watching, when you knew thatthe soul had fled, you took from the hand, which gave back noresponsive clasp, from that emaciated finger, the ring that she hadworn so long and worn so well. 

On some anniversary day you take up that ring, and you repolish ituntil all the old luster comes back, and you can see in it the flashof eyes that long ago ceased to weep. Oh, it is not an unmeaning thingwhen I tell you that when Christ receives a soul into His keeping Heputs on it a marriage-ring. He endows you from that moment with allHis wealth. You are one--Christ and the soul--one in sympathy, one inaffection, one in hope. 

There is no power in earth or hell to effect a divorcement afterChrist and the soul are united. Other kings have turned out theircompanions when they got weary of them, and sent them adrift from thepalace gate. Ahasuerus banished Vashti; Napoleon forsook Josephine;but Christ is the husband that is true forever. Having loved you once, He loves you to the end. Did they not try to divorce Margaret, theScotch girl, from Jesus? They said: "You must give up your religion. "She said: "I can't give up my religion. " And so they took her down tothe beach of the sea, and they drove in a stake at low-water mark, andthey fastened her to it, expecting that as the tide came up her faithwould fail. The tide began to rise, and came up higher and higher, andto the girdle, and to the lip, and in the last moment, just as thewave was washing her soul into glory, she shouted the praises ofJesus. 

Oh, no, you can not separate a soul from Christ! It is an everlastingmarriage. Battle and storm and darkness can not do it. Is it too muchexultation for a man, who is but dust and ashes like myself, to cryout this morning: "I am persuaded that neither height, nor depth, norprincipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature shall separate me from the love of God which isin Christ Jesus my Lord"? Glory be to God that when Christ and thesoul are married they are bound by a chain, a golden chain--if I mightsay so--a chain with one link, and that one link the golden ring ofGod's everlasting love. 

I go a step further, and tell you that when Christ receives a soulinto His love He puts on him the ring of festivity. You know that ithas been the custom in all ages to bestow rings on very happyoccasions. There is nothing more appropriate for a birthday gift thana ring. You delight to bestow such a gift upon your children at sucha time. It means joy, hilarity, festivity. Well, when this old man ofthe text wanted to tell how glad he was that his boy had got back, heexpressed it in this way. Actually, before he ordered sandals to beput on his bare feet; before he ordered the fatted calf to be killedto appease the boy's hunger, he commanded: "Put a ring on his hand. "

Oh, it is a merry time when Christ and the soul are united! Joy offorgiveness! What a splendid thing it is to feel that all is rightbetween me and God. What a glorious thing it is to have God just takeup all the sins of my life and put them in one bundle, and then flingthem into the depths of the sea, never to rise again, never to betalked of again. Pollution all gone. Darkness all illumined. Godreconciled. The prodigal home. "Put a ring on his hand. "

Every day I find happy Christian people. I find some of them with nosecond coat, some of them in huts and tenement houses, not one earthlycomfort afforded them; and yet they are as happy as happy can be. Theysing "Rock of Ages" as no other people in the world sing it. Theynever wore any jewelry in their life but one gold ring, and that wasthe ring of God's undying affection. Oh, how happy religion makes us!Did it make you gloomy and sad? Did you go with your head cast down? Ido not think you got religion, my brother. That is not the effect ofreligion. True religion is a joy. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. "

Why, religion lightens all our burdens. It smooths all our way. Itinterprets all our sorrows. It changes the jar of earthly discord forthe peal of festal bells. In front of the flaming furnace of trial itsets the forge on which scepters are hammered out. Would you not liketo-day to come up from the swine-feeding and try this religion? Allthe joys of heaven would come out and meet you, and God would cry fromthe throne: "Put a ring on his hand. "

You are not happy. I see it. There is no peace, and sometimes youlaugh when you feel a great deal more like crying. The world is acheat. It first wears you down with its follies, then it kicks you outinto darkness. It comes back from the massacre of a million souls toattempt the destruction of your soul to-day. No peace out of God, buthere is the fountain that can slake the thirst. Here is the harborwhere you can drop safe anchorage. 

Would you not like, I ask you--not perfunctorily, but as one brothermight talk to another--would you not like to have a pillow of rest toput your head on? And would you not like, when you retire at night, tofeel that all is well, whether you wake up to-morrow morning at sixo'clock, or sleep the sleep that knows no waking? Would you not liketo exchange this awful uncertainty about the future for a gloriousassurance of heaven? Accept of the Lord Jesus to-day, and all is well. If on your way home some peril should cross the street and dash yourlife out, it would not hurt you. You would rise up immediately. Youwould stand in the celestial streets. You would be amid the greatthrong that forever worship and are forever happy. If this day somesudden disease should come upon you, it would not frighten you. If youknew you were going you could give a calm farewell to your beautifulhome on earth, and know that you are going right into thecompanionship of those who have already got beyond the toiling and theweeping. 

You feel on Saturday night different from the way you feel any othernight of the week. You come home from the bank, or the store, or theshop, and you say: "Well, now my week's work is done, and to-morrow isSunday. " It is a pleasant thought. There is refreshment andreconstruction in the very idea. Oh, how pleasant it will be, if, whenwe get through the day of our life, and we go and lie down in our bedof dust, we can realize: "Well, now the work is all done, andto-morrow is Sunday--an everlasting Sunday. "

 "Oh, when, thou city of my God, Shall I thy courts ascend? Where congregations ne'er break up, And Sabbaths have no end. "

There are people in this house to-day who are very near the eternalworld. If you are Christians, I bid you be of good cheer. Bear withyou our congratulations to the bright city. Aged men, who will soon begone, take with you our love for our kindred in the better land, andwhen you see them, tell them that we are soon coming. Only a few moresermons to preach and hear. Only a few more heart-aches. Only a fewmore toils. Only a few more tears. And then--what an entrancingspectacle will open before us!

 "Beautiful heaven, where all is light, Beautiful angels clothed in white, Beautiful strains that never tire, Beautiful harps through all the choir; There shall I join the chorus sweet, Worshiping at the Saviour's feet. "

I stand before you on this Sabbath, the last Sabbath preceding thegreat feast-day in this Church. On the next Lord's-day the door ofcommunion will be open, and you will all be invited to come in. And soI approach you now with a general invitation, not picking out here andthere a man, or here and there a woman, or here and there a child; butgiving you an unlimited invitation, saying: "Come, for all things arenow ready. " We invite you to the warm heart of Christ, and theinclosure of the Christian Church. I know a great many think that theChurch does not amount to much--that it is obsolete; that it did itswork and is gone now, so far as all usefulness is concerned. It is thehappiest place I have ever been in except my own home. 

I know there are some people who say they are Christians who seem toget along without any help from others, and who culture solitarypiety. They do not want any ordinances. I do not belong to that class. I can not get along without them. There are so many things in thisworld that take my attention from God, and Christ, and heaven, that Iwant all the helps of all the symbols and of all the Christianassociations; and I want around about me a solid phalanx of men wholove God and keep His commandments. Are there any here who would liketo enter into that association? Then by a simple, child-like faith, apply for admission into the visible Church, and you will be received. No questions asked about your past history or present surroundings. Only one test--do you love Jesus?

Baptism does not amount to anything, say a great many people; but theLord Jesus declared, "He that believeth and is baptized shall besaved, " putting baptism and faith side by side. And an apostledeclares, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you. " I do not sticklefor any particular mode of baptism, but I put great emphasis on thefact that you ought to be baptized. Yet no more emphasis than the LordJesus Christ, the Great Head of the Church, puts upon it. 

The world is going to lose a great many of its votaries next Sabbath. We give you warning. There is a great host coming in to stand underthe banner of the Lord Jesus Christ. Will you be among them? It isgoing to be a great harvest-day. Will you be among the gatheredsheaves?

Some of you have been thinking on this subject year after year. Youhave found out that this world is a poor portion. You want to beChristians. You have come almost into the kingdom of God; but thereyou stop, forgetful of the fact that to be almost saved is not to besaved at all. Oh, my brother, after having come so near to the door ofmercy, if you turn back, you will never come at all. After all youhave heard of the goodness of God, if you turn away and die, it willnot be because you did not have a good offer. 

 "God's spirit will not always strive With hardened, self-destroying man; Ye who persist His love to grieve May never hear his voice again. "

May God Almighty this hour move upon your soul and bring you back fromthe husks of the wilderness to the Father's house, and set you at thebanquet, and "put a ring on your hand. "

HOW HE CAME TO SAY IT. 

 "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. "--I COR. Xvi: 22. 

The smallest lad in the house knows the meaning of all those wordsexcept the last two, Anathema Maranatha. Anathema, to cut off. Maranatha, at His coming. So the whole passage might be read: "If anyman love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cut off at His coming. "Well, how could the tender-hearted Paul say that? We have seen himwith tears discoursing about human want, and flushed with excitementabout human sorrow; and now he throws those red-hot iron words intothis letter to the Corinthians. Had he lost his patience? Ok, no. Hadhe resigned his confidence in the Christian religion? Oh, no. Had theworld treated him so badly that he had become its sworn enemy? Oh, no. It needs some explanation, I confess, and I shall proceed to show bywhat process Paul came to the vehement utterance of my text. Before Iclose, if God shall give His Spirit, you shall cease to be surprisedat the exclamation of the Apostle, and you yourselves will employ thesame emphasis, declaring, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. "

If the photographic art had been discovered early enough, we shouldhave had the facial proportions of Christ--the front face, the sideface, Jesus sitting, Jesus standing--provided He had submitted to thatart; but since the sun did not become a portrait painter untileighteen centuries after Christ, our idea about the Saviour's personalappearance is all guess work. Still, tradition tells us that He wasthe most infinitely beautiful being that ever walked our small earth. If His features had been rugged, and His gait had been ungainly, thatwould not have hindered Him from being attractive. Many men you haveknown and loved have had few charms of physiognomy. Wilberforce wasnot attractive in face. Socrates was repulsive. Suwarrow, the greatRussian hero, looked almost an imbecile. And some whom you have known, and honored, and loved, have not had very great attractiveness ofpersonal appearance. The shape of the mouth, and the nose, and theeyebrow, did not hinder the soul from shining through the cuticle ofthe face in all-powerful irradiation. 

But to a lovely exterior Christ joined all loveliness of disposition. Run through the galleries of heaven, and find out that He is _anon-such_. The sunshine of His love mingling with the shadows of Hissorrows, crossed by the crystalline stream of His tears and thecrimson flowing forth of His blood, make a picture worthy of beingcalled the masterpiece of the eternities. Hung on the wall of heaven, the celestial population would be enchanted but for the fact that theyhave the grand and magnificent original, and they want no picture. ButChrist having gone away from earth, we are dependent upon fourindistinct pictures. Matthew took one, Mark another, Luke another, and John another. I care not which picture you take, it is lovely. Lovely? He was altogether lovely. 

He had a way of taking up a dropsical limb without hurting it, and ofremoving the cataract from the eye without the knife, and of startingthe circulation through the shrunken arteries without the shock of theelectric battery, and of putting intelligence into the dull stare oflunacy, and of restringing the auditory nerve of the deaf ear, and ofstriking articulation into the stiff tongue, and of making thestark-naked madman dress himself and exchange tombstone for ottoman, and of unlocking from the skeleton grip of death the daughter ofJairus to embosom her in her glad father's arms. Oh, He waslovely--sitting, standing, kneeling, lying down--always lovely. 

Lovely in His sacrifice. Why, He gave up everything for us. Home, celestial companionship, music of seraphic harps, balmy breath ofeternal summer, all joy, all light, all music, and heard the gatesslam shut behind Him as He came out to fight for our freedom, and withbare feet plunged on the sharp javelins of human and satanic hate, until His blood spurted into the faces of those who slew Him. You wantthe soft, low, minor key of sweetest music to describe the pathos; butit needs an orchestra, under swinging of an archangel's baton, reaching from throne to manger, to drum and trumpet the doxologies ofHis praise. He took everybody's trouble--the leper's sickness, thewidow's dead boy, the harlot's shame, the Galilean fisherman's poorluck, the invalidism of Simon's mother-in-law, the sting of Malchus'amputated ear. 

Some people cry very easily, and for some it is very difficult to cry. A great many tears on some cheeks do not mean so much as one tear onanother cheek. What is it that I see glittering in the mild eye ofJesus? It was all the sorrows of earth, and the woes of hell, fromwhich He had plucked our souls, accreted into one transparent drop, lingering on the lower eyelash until it fell on a cheek red with theslap of human hands--just one salt, bitter, burning tear of Jesus. Nowonder the rock, the sky, and the cemetery were in consternation whenHe died! No wonder the universe was convulsed! It was the Lord GodAlmighty bursting into tears. Now, suppose that, notwithstanding allthis, a man can not have any affection for Him. What ought to be donewith such hard behavior?

It seems to me that there ought to be some chastisement for a man whowill not love such a Christ. Does it not make your blood tingle tothink of Jesus coming over the tens of thousands of miles that seem toseparate God from us, and then to see a man jostle Him out, and pushHim back, and shut the door in His face, and trample upon Hisentreaties? While you may not be able to rise up to the toweringexcitement of the Apostle in my text, you can at any rate somewhatunderstand his feelings when he cried out: "After all this, 'if a manlove not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. '"

Just look at the injustice of not loving Him. Now, there is nothingthat excites a man like injustice. You go along the street, and yousee your little child buffeted, or a ruffian comes and takes a boy'shat and throws it into the ditch. You say: "What great meanness, whatinjustice that is!" You can not stand injustice. I remember, in myboyhood days, attending a large meeting in Tripler Hall, New York. Thousands of people were huzzaing, and the same kind of audiences wereassembled at the same time in Boston, Edinburgh, and London. Why?Because the Madaii family, in Italy, had been robbed of their Bible. "A little thing, " you say. Ah, that injustice was enough to arouse theindignation of a world. But while we are so sensitive about injusticeas between man and man, how little sensitive we are about injusticebetween man and God. If there ever was a fair and square purchase ofanything, then Christ purchased us. He paid for us, not in shekels, not in ancient coins inscribed with effigies of Hercules, or Ægina'stortoise, or lyre of Mitylene, but in two kinds of coin--one red, theother glittering--blood and tears! If anything is purchased and paidfor, ought not the goods to be delivered? If you have bought propertyand given the money, do you not want to come into possession of it?"Yes, " you say, "I will have it. I bought and paid for it. " And youwill go to law for it, and you will denounce the man as a defrauder. Ay, if need be, you will hurl him into jail. You will say: "I am boundto get that property. I bought it. I paid for it!"

Now, transpose the case. Suppose Jesus Christ to be the wrongedpurchaser on the one side, and the impenitent soul on the other, trying to defraud Him of that which He bought at such an exorbitantprice, how do you feel about that injustice? How do you feel towardthat spiritual fraud, turpitude and perfidy? A man with an ardenttemperament rises and he says that such injustice as between man andman is bad enough, but between man and God it is reprehensible andintolerable, and he brings his fist down on the pew, and he says: "Ican stand this injustice no longer. After all this purchase, 'if anyman love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha'!"

I go still further, and show you how suicidal it is for a man not tolove Christ. If a man gets in trouble, and he can not get out, we haveonly one feeling toward him--sympathy and a desire to help him. If hehas failed for a vast amount of money, and can not pay more than tencents on a dollar--ay, if he can not pay anything--though hiscreditors may come after him like a pack of hounds, we sympathize withhim. We go to his store, or house, and we express our condolence. Butsuppose the day before that man failed, William E. Dodge had come intohis store and said: "My friend, I hear you are in trouble. I have cometo help you. If ten thousand dollars will see you through yourperplexity, I have a loan of that amount for you. Here is a check forthe amount of that loan. " Suppose the man said: "With that tenthousand dollars I could get through until next spring, and theneverything will be all right; but, Mr. Dodge, I don't want it; I won'ttake it; I would rather fail than take it; I don't even thank you foroffering it. " Your sympathy for that man would cease immediately. Youwould say: "He had a fair offer; he might have got out; he wants tofail; he refuses all help; now let him fail. " There is no one in allthis house who would have any sympathy for that man. 

But do not let us be too hasty. Christ hears of our spiritualembarrassments, he finds that we are on the very verge of eternaldefalcation. He finds the law knocking at our door with this dun: "Payme what thou owest. "

We do not know which way to turn. Pay? We can not pay a farthing ofall the millions of obligation. Well, Christ comes in and says: "Hereis My name; you can use My name. Your name would be worthless, but Myred handwriting on the back of this obligation will get you throughanywhere. " Now suppose the soul says: "I know I am in debt; I can'tmeet these obligations either in time or eternity; but, oh, Christ, Iwant not Thy help; I ask not Thy rescue. Go away from me. " You wouldsay: "That man, why, he deserves to die. He had the offer of help; hewould not take it. He is a free agent; he ought to have what he wants;he chooses death rather than life. Ought you not give him freedom ofchoice?" Though awhile ago there was only one ardent man whounderstood the Apostle, now there are hundreds in the house who cansay, and do say within themselves: "After all this ingratitude, andrejection, and obstinacy, 'if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. '"

I go a step further, and say it is most cruel for a man not to loveJesus. The meanest thing I could do for you would be needlessly tohurt your feelings. Sharp words sometimes cut like a dagger. An unkindlook will sometimes rive like the lightning. An unkind deed mayovermaster a sensitive spirit, and if you have made up your mind thatyou have done wrong to any one, it does not take you two minutes tomake up your mind to go and apologize. Now, Christ is a bundle ofdelicacy and sensitiveness. How you have shocked His nerves! How youhave broken His heart!

Did you, my brother, ever measure the meaning of that one passage:"Behold, I stand at the door and knock"? It never came to me as it didthis morning while I was thinking on this subject. "Behold, I stand atthe door and knock. " Some January day, the thermometer five degreesbelow zero, the wind and sleet beating mercilessly against you, you goup the steps of a house where you have a very important errand. Youknock with one knuckle. No answer. You are very earnest, and you arefreezing. The next time you knock harder. After awhile with your fistyou beat against the door. You must get in, but the inmate is carelessor stubborn, and he does not want you in. Your errand is a failure. You go away. 

The Lord Jesus Christ comes up on the steps of your heart, and withvery sore hand he knocks hard at the door of your soul. He is standingin the cold blasts of human suffering. He knocks. He says: "Let me in. I have come a great way. I have come all the way from Nazareth, fromBethlehem, from Golgotha. Let Me in. I am shivering and blue with thecold. Let Me in. My feet are bare but for their covering of blood. Myhead is uncovered but for a turban of brambles. By all these wounds offoot, and head, and heart, I beg you to let Me in. Oh, I have beenhere a great while, and the night is getting darker. I am faint withhunger. I am dying to get in. Oh, lift the latch--shove back thebolt! Won't you let Me in? Won't you? 'Behold, I stand at the door andknock!'"

But after awhile, my brother, the scene will change. It will beanother door, but Christ will be on the other side of it. He will beon the inside, and the rejected sinner will be on the outside, and thesinner will come up and knock at the door, and say: "Let me in, let mein. I have come a great way. I came all the way from earth. I am sickand dying. Let me in. The merciless storm beats my unsheltered head. The wolves of a great night are on my track. Let me in. With bothfists I beat against this door. Oh, let me in. Oh, Christ, let me in. Oh, Holy Ghost, let me in. Oh, God, let me in. Oh, my glorifiedkindred, let me in. " No answer save the voice of Christ, who shallsay: "Sinner, when I stood at your door you would not let Me in, andnow you are standing at My door, and I can not let you in. The day ofyour grace is past. Officer of the law, seize him. " And while thearrest is going on, all the myriads of heaven rise on gallery andthrone, and cry with loud voice, that makes the eternal city quakefrom capstone to foundation, saying: "If any man love not the LordJesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. "

Sabbath audience in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and all to whom thesewords shall come on both sides the sea, notice here the tremendousalternative: it is not whether you live in Pierrepont Street orCarlton Avenue, walk Trafalgar Square or the "Canongate;" nor whetheryour dress shall be black or brown; nor whether you shall be robustor an invalid; nor whether you shall live on the banks of the Hudson, the Shannon, the Seine, the Thames, the Tiber; but it is a questionwhether you will love Christ or suffer banishment; whether you willgive yourselves to Him who owns you or fall under the millstone;whether you will rise to glories that have no terminus or plunge to adepth which has no bottom. I do not see how you can take theten-thousandth part of a second to decide it, when there are twoworlds fastened at opposite ends of a swivel, and the swivel turns onone point, and that point is now, now. Is it not fair that you loveHim? Is it not right that you love Him? Is it not imperative that youlove Him? What is it that keeps you from rushing up and throwing thearms of your affection about His neck?

My text pronounces Anathema Maranatha upon all those who refuse tolove Christ. Anathema--cut off. Cut off from light, from hope, frompeace, from heaven. Oh, sharp, keen, sword-like words! Cut off!Everlastingly cut off! Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity ofGod: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thoucontinue in His goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. Maranatha--that is the other word. "When he comes" is the meaning ofit. 

Will He come? I see no signs of it. I looked into the sky as I rodedown to church. I saw no signs of the coming. No signal of God'sappearance. The earth stands solid on its foundation. No cry ofwelcome or of woe. Will He come! He will. Maranatha! Hear it yemountains, and prepare to fall. Ye cities, and prepare to burn. Yerighteous, and prepare to reign. Ye wicked, and prepare to die. Maranatha! Maranatha!

But, oh, my brother, I am not so aroused by that coming as I am by aprevious coming, and that is the coming of our death hour, which willfix everything for us. I can not help now, while preaching, askingmyself the question--Am I ready for that? If I am ready for the firstI will be ready for the next. Are you ready for the emergency? Shall Itell you when your death hour will come? "Oh, no, " says some one, "Idon't want to know. I would rather not know. " Some one says: "I wouldrather know, if you can tell me. " I will tell you. It will be at themost unexpected moment, when you are most busy, and when you think youcan be least spared. I can not exactly say whether it will be in thenoon, or at the sundown when people are coming home, or in the morningwhen the world is waking up, or while the clock is striking twelve atnight. But I tell you what I think, that with some of you it will bebefore next Saturday night. 

A minister of the Gospel said to an audience: "Before next Sabbathsome of you will be gone. " And a man said during the week: "I shallwatch now, and if no one dies in our congregation during this week Ishall go and tell the minister his falsehood. " A man standing next tohim said: "Why, it may be yourself. " "Oh, no, " he replied; "I shalllive on to be an old man. " That night he breathed his last. 

Standing before some who shall be launched into the great eternity, what are your equipments? About to jump, where will you land? Oh, thesubject is overwhelming to me; and when I say these things to you, Isay them to myself. "Lord, is it I? Is it I?" Some of us part to-nightnever to meet again. If never before, I now here commit my soul intothe keeping of the Lord Jesus Christ. I throw my sinful heart upon Hisinfinite mercy. But some of you will not do that. You will go over tothe store to-morrow, and your comrades will say: "Where were youyesterday?" You will say: "I heard Talmage preach, and I don't believewhat he preaches. " And you will go on and die in your sins. 

Feeling that you are bound unto death eternal I solemnly take leave ofyou. Be careful of your health, for when your respiration gives outall your good times will have ended. Be careful in walking near ascaffold, for one falling brick or stone might usher you into thegreat eternity for which you have no preparation. A few months, orweeks, or days, or hours will pass on, and then you will see the lastlight, and hear the last music, and have the last pleasant emotion, and a destroyed eternity will rush upon you. Farewell, oh, doomedspirit! As you shove off from hope, I wave you this last salutation. Oh, it is hard to part forever and forever! I bid you one long, last, bitter, eternal adieu!

CASTLE JESUS. 

 "Who have fled for refuge. "--HEB. Vi: 18. 

Paul is here speaking of the consolations of Christians. He stylesthem these "who have fled for refuge. "

Moses established six cities of refuge--three on the east side of theriver Jordan, and three on the west. When a man had killed any oneaccidentally he fled to one of these cities. The roads leading to themwere kept perfectly good, so that when a man started for the refugenothing might impede him. Along the cross-roads, and wherever theremight be any mistake about the way, there were signs put up pointingin the right way, with the word "Refuge. " Having gained the limits ofone of these cities the man was safe, and the mothers of the priestsprovided for him. 

Some of us have seen our peril, and have fled to Christ, and feel thatwe shall never be captured. We are among those "who have fled forrefuge. " Christ is represented in the Bible as a Tower, a High Rock, aFortress, and a Shelter. If you have seen any of the ancient castlesof Europe, you know that they are surrounded by trenches, across whichthere is a draw-bridge. If an enemy approach, the people, for defense, would get into the castle, have the trenches filled with water, andlift up the draw-bridge. Whether to a city of safety, or a tower, Paul refers, I know not, and care not, for in any case he meansChrist, the safety of the soul. 

But why talk of refuge? Who needs it, if the refuge spoken of be acity or a castle, into which men fly for safety? It is all sunlighthere. No sound of war in our streets. We do not hear the rush of armedmen against the doors of our dwellings. We do not come with weapons tochurch. Our lives are not at the mercy of an assassin. Why, then, talkof refuge?

Alas! I stand before a company of imperiled men. No flock of sheep wasever so threatened or endangered of a pack of wolves; no ship was everso beaten of a storm; no company of men were ever so environed of aband of savages. A refuge you must have, or fall before anall-devouring destruction. There are not so many serpents in Africa;there are not so many hyenas in Asia; there are not so many panthersin the forest, as there are transgressions attacking my soul. I willtake the best unregenerated man anywhere, and say to him, You areutterly corrupt. If all the sins of your past life were marshaled insingle file, they would reach from here to hell. If you have escapedall other sins, the fact that you have rejected the mission of the Sonof God is enough to condemn you forever, pushing you off intobottomless darkness, struck by ten thousand hissing thunder-bolts ofOmnipotent wrath. 

You are a sinner. The Bible says it, and your conscience affirms it. Not a small sinner, or a moderate sinner, or a tolerable sinner, but agreat sinner, a protracted sinner, a vile sinner, an outrageoussinner, a condemned sinner. As God, with His all-scrutinizing gaze, looks upon you to-day, He can not find one sound spot in your soul. Sin has put scales on your eyes, and deadened your ear with an awfuldeafness, and palsied your right arm, and stunned your sensibilities, and blasted you with an infinite blasting. The Bible, which you admitto be true, affirms that you are diseased from the crown of your headto the sole of your foot. You are unclean; you are a leper. Believenot me, but believe God's Word, that over and over again announces, inlanguage that a fool might understand, the total and completedepravity of the unchanged heart: "The heart is deceitful above allthings, and desperately wicked. "

In addition to the sins of your life there are uncounted troubles inpursuit of you. Bereavements, losses, disappointments are a flock ofvultures ever on the wing. Did you get your house built, andfurnished, and made comfortable any sooner than misfortune came inwithout knocking, and sat beside you--a skeleton apparition? Have notpains shot their poisoned arrows, and fevers kindled their fire inyour brain? Many of you, for years, have walked on burning marl. Youstepped out of one disaster into another. You may, like Job, havecursed the day in which you were born. This world boils over withtrouble for you, and you are wondering where the next grave will gape, and where the next storm will burst. Oh, ye pursued, sinning, dying, troubled, exhausted souls, are you not ready now to hear me while Itell you of Christ, the Refuge?

A soldier, during the war, heard of the sickness of his wife andasked for a furlough. It was denied him, and he ran away. He wascaught, brought back, and sentenced to be shot as a deserter. Theofficer took from his pocket a document that announced his death onthe following morning. As the document was read, the man flinched notand showed no sorrow or anxiety. But the officer then took from hispocket another document that contained the prisoner's pardon. Then hebroke down with deep emotion at the thought of the leniency that hadbeen extended. Though you may not appear moved while I tell you of thelaw that thundered its condemnation, while I tell you of the pardonand the peace of the Gospel I wonder if they will not overcome you. 

Jesus is a safe refuge. Fort Hudson, Fort Pulaski, Fort Moultrie, FortSumter, Gibraltar, Sebastopol were taken. But Jesus is a castle intowhich the righteous runneth and is safe. No battering-ram can demolishits wall. No sappers or miners can explode its ramparts, no storm-boltof perdition leap upon its towers. The weapons that guard this fortare omnipotent. Hell shall unlimber its great guns as death only tohave them dismantled. In Christ our sins are pardoned, discomforted, blotted out, forgiven. An ocean can not so easily drown a fly as theocean of God's forgiveness swallow up, utterly and forever, ourtransgressions. He is able to save unto the uttermost. 

You who have been so often overcome in a hand-to-hand fight with theworld, the flesh, and devil, try this fortress. Once here, you aresafe forever. Satan may charge up the steep, and shout amid the uproarof the fight, Forward, to his battalions of darkness; but you willstand in the might of the great God, your Redeemer, safe in therefuge. The troubles of life, that once overwhelmed you, may come onwith their long wagon-trains laden with care and worryment; and youmay hear in their tramp the bereavements that once broke your heart;but Christ is your friend, Christ your sympathizer, Christ yourreward. Safe in the refuge!

Death at last may lay the siege to your spirit, and the shadows of thesepulcher may shake their horrors in the breeze, and the hoarse howlof the night wind may be mingled with the cry of despair, yet you willshout in triumph from the ramparts, and the pale horse shall be hurledback on his haunches. Safe in the refuge! To this castle I fly. Thislast fire shall but illumine its towers; and the rolling thunders ofthe judgment will be the salvo of its victory. 

Just after Queen Victoria had been crowned--she being only nineteen ortwenty years of age--Wellington handed her a death-warrant for hersignature. It was to take the life of a soldier in the army. She saidto Wellington: "Can there nothing good be said of this man?" He said:"No; he is a bad soldier, and deserves to die. " She took up thedeath-warrant, and it trembled in her hand as she again asked: "Doesno one know anything good of this man?" Wellington said: "I have heardthat at his trial a man said that he had been a good son to his oldmother. " "Then let his life be spared, " said the queen, and sheordered his sentence commuted. 

Christ is on a throne of grace. Our case is brought before him. Thequestion is asked: "Is there any good about this man?" The law says:"None. " Justice says: "None. " Our own conscience says: "None. "Nevertheless, Christ hands over our pardon, and asks us to take it. Oh, the height and depth, the length and breadth of his mercy!

Again, Christ is a near refuge. When we are attacked, what advantageis there in having a fortress on the other side of the mountain? Manyan army has had an intrenchment, but could not get to it before thebattle opened. Blessed be God, it is no long march to our castle. Wemay get off, with all our troops, from the worst earthly defeat inthis stronghold. In a moment we may step from the battle into thetower. I sing of a Saviour near. 

During the late war the forts of the North were named after theNorthern generals, and the forts of the South were named after theSouthern generals. This fortress of our soul I shall call CastleJesus. I have seen men pursued of sins that chased them with feet oflightning, and yet with one glad leap they bounded into the tower. Ihave seen troubles, with more than the speed and terror of a cavalrytroop, dash after a retreating soul, yet were hurled back in defeatfrom the bulwarks. Jesus near! A child's cry, a prisoner's prayer, asailor's death-shriek, a pauper's moan reaches him. No pilgrimages onspikes. No journeying with a huge pack on your back. No kneeling inpenance in cold vestibule of mercy. But an open door! A compassionateSaviour! A present salvation! A near refuge! Castle Jesus!

Oh, why do you not put out your arm and reach it? Why do you not flyto it? Why be riddled, and shelled, and consumed under the rattlingbombardment of perdition, when one moment's faith would plant you inthe glorious refuge? I preach a Jesus here; a Jesus now; a fountainclose to your feet; a fiery pillar right over your head; bread alreadybroken for your hunger; a crown already gleaming for your brow. Harkto the castle gates rattling back for your entrance! Hear you not thewelcome of those who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hopeset before us?

Again, it is a universal refuge. A fortress is seldom large enough tohold a whole army. I look out upon fourteen hundred millions of therace; and then I look at this fortress, and I say that there is roomenough for all. If it had been possible, this salvation would havebeen monopolized. Men would have said: "Let us have all this toourselves--no publicans, no plebeians, no lazzaroni, no convertedpickpockets. We will ride toward heaven on fierce chargers, our feetin golden stirrups. Grace for lords, and dukes, and duchesses, andcounts. Let Napoleon and his marshals come in, but not the commonsoldier that fought under him. Let the Girards and the Barings comein, but not the stevedores that unloaded their cargoes, or the men whokept their books. " Heaven would have been a glorified Windsor Castle, or Tuileries, or Vatican; and exclusive aristocrats would havestrutted through the golden streets to all eternity. 

Thank God, there is mercy for the poor! The great Doctor John Masonpreached over a hundred times the same sermon; and the text was: "Tothe poor the Gospel is preached. " Lazarus went up, while Dives wentdown; and there are candidates for Imperial splendors in the backalley, and by the peat-fire of the Irish shanty. King Jesus set up Histhrone in a manger, and made a resurrection day for the poor widow ofNain, and sprung the gate of heaven wide open, so that all thebeggars, and thieves, and scoundrels of the universe may come in ifthey will only repent. I can snatch the knife from the murderer's handwhile it is yet dripping with the blood of his victim, and tell him ofthe grace that is sufficient to pardon his soul. Do you say that Iswing open the gate of heaven too far? I swing it open no wider thanChrist, when He says: "Whosoever will, let him come. " Don't you wantto go in with such a rabble? Then you can stay out. 

The whole world will yet come into this refuge. The windows of heavenwill be opened; God's trumpet of salvation will sound, and China willcome from its tea-fields and rice-harvests, and lift itself up intothe light. India will come forth, the chariots of salvation jostlingto pieces her Juggernauts. Freezing Greenland, and swelteringAbyssinia, will, side by side, press into the kingdom; and transformedBornesian cannibal preach of the resurrection of the missionary he hasslain. The glory of Calvary will tinge the tip of the Pyrenees; andLebanon cedars shall clap their hands; and by one swing of the sickleChrist shall harvest nations for the skies. 

I sing a world redeemed. In the rush of the winds that set the forestin motion, like giants wrestling on the hills, I see the tossing up ofthe triumphal branches that shall wave all along the line of our Kingas He comes to take empire. In the stormy diapason of the ocean'sorgan, and the more gentle strains that in the calm come sounding upfrom the crystal and jasper keys at the beach, I hear the prophecy:"The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the watersfill the sea. "

The gospel morning will come like the natural morning. At first itseems only like another hue of the night. Then a pallor strikesthrough the sky, as though a company of ministering spirits, pale withtedious watching through the night, had turned in their flight upwardto look back upon the earth. Then a faint glow of fire, as though on abarren beach a wrecked mariner was kindling a flickering flame. Thenchariots and horses of fire racing up and down the heavens; thenperfect day: "Who is she that cometh forth as the morning?"

Come in, black Hottentot and snow-white Caucasian, come in, miteredofficial and diseased beggar; let all the world come in. Room inCastle Jesus! Sound it through all lands; sound it by all tongues. Letsermons preach it, and bells chime it, and pencils sketch it, andprocessions celebrate it, and bells ring it: Room in Castle Jesus!

Again, Christ is the only refuge. If you were very sick, and there wasonly one medicine that would cure you, how anxious you would be to getthat medicine. If you were in a storm at sea, and you found that theship could not weather it, and there was only one harbor, how anxiousyou would be to get into that harbor. Oh, sin-sick soul, Christ is theonly medicine; oh, storm-tossed soul, Christ is the only harbor. NeedI tell a cultured audience like this that there is no other name givenamong men by which ye can be saved? That if you want the handcuffsknocked from your wrists, and the hopples from your feet, and the icybands from your heart, there is just one Almighty arm in all theuniverse to do everything? There are other fortresses to which youmight fly, and other ramparts behind which you might hide, but Godwill cut to pieces, with the hail of His vengeance, all these refugesof lies. 

Some of you are foundering in terrible Euroclydon. Hark to the howlingof the gale, and the splintering of the spars, and the starting of thetimbers, and the breaking of the billow, clear across the hurricanedeck. Down she goes! Into the life-boat! Quick! One boat! One shore!One oarsman! One salvation! You are polluted; there is but one well atwhich you can wash clean. You are enslaved; there is but oneproclamation that can emancipate. You are blind; there is but onesalve that can kindle your vision. You are dead; there is but onetrumpet that can burst the grave. 

I have seen men come near the refuge but not make entrance. They cameup, and fronted the gate, and looked in, but passed on, and passeddown; and they will curse their folly through all eternity, that theydespised the only refuge. Oh! forget everything else I have said, ifyou will but remember that there is but one atonement, one sacrifice, one justification, one faith, one hope, one Jesus, one refuge. Thereis that old Christian. Many a scar on his face tells where troublelacerated him. He has fought with wild beasts at Ephesus. He has hadenough misfortune to shadow his countenance with perpetual despair. Yet he is full of hope. Has he found any new elixir? "No, " he says; "Ihave found Jesus the refuge. "

Christ is our only defense at the last. John Holland, in hisconcluding moment, swept his hand over the Bible, and said: "Come, letus gather a few flowers from this garden. " As it was even-time he saidto his wife: "Have you lighted the candles?" "No, " she said; "we havenot lighted the candles. " "Then, " said he, "it must be the brightnessof the face of Jesus that I see. "

Ask that dying Christian woman the source of her comfort. Why thatsupernatural glow on the curtains of the death-chamber; and thetossing out of one hand, as if to wave the triumph, and the reachingup of the other, as if to take a crown? Hosanna on the tongue. Glorybeaming from the forehead. Heaven in the eyes. Spirit departing. Wingsto bear it. Anthems to charm it. Open the gates to receive it. Hallelujah! Speak, dying Christian--what light do you see? What soundsdo you hear? The thin lips part. The pale hand is lifted. She says:"Jesus the refuge!" Let all in the death-chamber stop weeping now. Celebrate the triumph. Take up a song. Clap your hands. Shout it. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

But this refuge will be of no worth to you unless you lay hold of it. The time will come when you will wish that you had done so. It willcome soon. At an unexpected moment it will come. The castle bridgewill be drawn up and the fortress closed. When you see thisdiscomfiture, and look back, and look up at the storm gathering, andthe billowy darkness of death has rolled upon the sheeted flash ofthe storm, you will discover the utter desolation of those who areoutside of the refuge. 

What you propose to do in this matter you had better do right away. Amistake this morning may never be corrected. Jesus, the Great Captainof salvation, puts forth his wounded hand to-day to cheer you on therace to heaven. If you despise it, the ghastliest vision that willhaunt the eternal darkness of your soul will be the gaping, bleedingwounds of the dying Redeemer. 

Jesus is to be crucified to-day. Think not of it as a day that ispast. He comes before you to-day weary and worn. Here is the cross, and here is the victim. But there are no nails, and there are nothorns, and there are no hammers. Who will furnish these? A man outyonder says: "I will furnish with my sins the nails!" Now we have thecross, and the victim, and the nails. But we have no thorns. Who willfurnish the thorns? A man in the audience says: "With my sins I willfurnish the thorns!" Now we have the cross, the victim, the nails, andthe thorns. But we have no hammers. Who will furnish the hammers? Avoice in the audience says: "My hard heart shall be the hammer!"Everything is ready now. The crucifixion goes out! See Jesus dying!"Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. "

STRIPPING THE SLAIN. 

 "And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in Mount Gilboa. "--I. SAM. Xxxi: 8. 

Some of you were at South Mountain, or Shiloh, or Ball's Bluff, orGettysburg, and I ask you if there is any sadder sight than abattle-field after the guns have stopped firing? I walked across thefield of Antietam just after the conflict. The scene was so sickeningI shall not describe it. Every valuable thing had been taken from thebodies of the dead, for there are always vultures hovering over andaround about an army, and they pick up the watches, and the memorandumbooks, and the letters, and the daguerreotypes, and the hats, and thecoats, applying them to their own uses. The dead make no resistance. So there are always camp followers going on and after an army, as whenScott went down into Mexico, as when Napoleon marched up towardMoscow, as when Von Moltke went to Sedan. There is a similar scene inmy text. 

Saul and his army had been horribly cut to pieces. Mount Gilboa wasghastly with the dead. On the morrow the stragglers came on to thefield, and they lifted the latchet of the helmet from under the chinof the dead, and they picked up the swords and bent them on theirknee to test the temper of the metal, and they opened the wallets andcounted the coin. Saul lay dead along the ground, eight or nine feetin length, and I suppose the cowardly Philistines, to show theirbravery, leaped upon the trunk of his carcass, and jeered at thefallen slain, and whistled through the mouth of the helmet. Beforenight those cormorants had taken everything valuable from the field:"And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to stripthe slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in MountGilboa. "

Before I get through to-day I will show you that the same process isgoing on all the world over, and every day, and that when men havefallen, Satan and the world, so far from pitying them or helping them, go to work remorselessly to take what little is left, thus strippingthe slain. 

There are tens of thousands of young men every year coming from thecountry to our great cities. They come with brave hearts and grandexpectations. They think they will be Rufus Choates in the law, orDrapers in chemistry, or A. T. Stewarts in merchandise. The countrylads sit down in the village grocery, with their feet on the iron rodaround the red-hot stove, in the evening, talking over the prospectsof the young man who has gone off to the city. Two or three of themthink that perhaps he may get along very well and succeed, but themost of them prophesy failure; for it is very hard to think that thosewhom we knew in boyhood will ever make any stir in the world. 

But our young man has a fine position in a dry-goods store. The monthis over. He gets his wages. He is not accustomed to have so much moneybelonging to himself. He is a little excited, and does not knowexactly what to do with it, and he spends it in some places where heought not. Soon there come up new companions and acquaintances fromthe bar-rooms and the saloons of the city. Soon that young man beginsto waver in the battle of temptation, and soon his soul goes down. Ina few months, or few years, he has fallen. He is morally dead. He is amere corpse of what he once was. The harpies of sin snuff up the taintand come on the field. His garments gradually give out. He has pawnedhis watch. His health is failing him. His credit perishes. He is toopoor to stay in the city, and he is too poor to pay his way home tothe country. Down! down! Why do the low fellows of the city now stickto him so closely? Is it to help him back to a moral and spirituallife? Oh, no! I will tell you why they stay; they are the Philistinesstripping the slain. 

Do not look where I point, but yonder stands a man who once had abeautiful home in this city. His house had elegant furniture, hischildren were beautifully clad, his name was synonymous with honor andusefulness; but evil habit knocked at his front door, knocked at hisback door, knocked at his parlor door, knocked at his bedroom door. Where is the piano? Sold to pay the rent. Where is the hat-rack? Soldto meet the butcher's bill. Where are the carpets? Sold to get bread. Where is the wardrobe? Sold to get rum. Where are the daughters?Working their fingers off in trying to keep the family together. Worse and worse, until everything is gone. Who is that going up thefront steps of that house? That is a creditor, hoping to find somechair or bed that has not been levied upon. Who are those twogentlemen now going up the front steps? The one is a constable, theother is the sheriff. Why do they go there? The unfortunate is morallydead, socially dead, financially dead. Why do they go there? I willtell you why the creditors, and the constables, and the sheriffs gothere. They are, some on their own account, and some on account of thelaw, stripping the slain. 

An ex-member of Congress, one of the most eloquent men that ever stoodin the House of Representatives, said in his last moments: "This isthe end. I am dying--dying on a borrowed bed, covered by a borrowedsheet, in a house built by public charity. Bury me under that tree inthe middle of the field, where I shall not be crowded, for I have beencrowded all my life. " Where were the jolly politicians and thedissipating comrades who had been with him, laughing at his jokes, applauding his eloquence, and plunging him into sin? They have left. Why? His money is gone, his reputation is gone, his wit is gone, hisclothes are gone, everything is gone. Why should they stay any longer?They have completed their work. They have stripped the slain. 

There is another way, however, of doing that same work. Here is a manwho, through his sin, is prostrate. He acknowledges that he has donewrong. Now is the time for you to go to that man and say: "Thousandsof people have been as far astray as you are, and got back. " Now isthe time for you to go to that man and tell him of the omnipotentgrace of God, that is sufficient for any poor soul. Now is the time togo to tell him how swearing John Bunyan, through the grace of God, afterward came to the celestial city. Now is the time to go to thatman and tell him how profligate Newton came, through conversion, to bea world-renowned preacher of righteousness. Now is the time to tellthat man that multitudes who have been pounded with all the flails ofsin and dragged through all the sewers of pollution at last have risento positive dominion of moral power. 

You do not tell him that, do you? No. You say to him: "Loan you money?No. You are down. You will have to go to the dogs. Lend you ashilling? I would not lend you five cents to keep you from thegallows. You are debauched! Get out of my sight, now! Down; you willhave to stay down!" And thus those bruised and battered men aresometimes accosted by those who ought to lift them up. Thus the lastvestige of hope is taken from them. Thus those who ought to go andlift and save them are guilty of stripping the slain. 

The point I want to make is this: sin is hard, cruel, and merciless. Instead of helping a man up it helps him down; and when, like Saul andhis comrades, you lie on the field, it will come and steal your swordand helmet and shield, leaving you to the jackal and the crow. 

But the world and Satan do not do all their work with the outcast andabandoned. A respectable, impenitent man comes to die. He is flat onhis back. He could not get up if the house were on fire. Adroitestmedical skill and gentlest nursing have been a failure. He has come tohis last hour. What does Satan do for such a man? Why, he fetches upall the inapt, disagreeable, and harrowing things in his life. Hesays: "Do you remember those chances you had for heaven, and missedthem? Do you remember all those lapses in conduct? Do you remember allthose opprobrious words and thoughts and actions? Don't remember them, eh? I'll make you remember them. " And then he takes all the past andempties it on that death-bed, as the mail-bags are emptied on thepost-office floor. The man is sick. He can not get away from them. 

Then the man says to Satan: "You have deceived me. You told me thatall would be well. You said there would be no trouble at the last. Youtold me if I did so and so, you would do so and so. Now you corner me, and hedge me up, and submerge me in everything evil. " "Ha! ha!" saysSatan, "I was only fooling you. It is mirth for me to see you suffer. I have been for thirty years plotting to get you just where you are. It is hard for you now--it will be worse for you after awhile. Itpleases me. Lie still, sir. Don't flinch or shudder. Come now, I willtear off from you the last rag of expectation. I will rend away fromyour soul the last hope. I will leave you bare for the beating of thestorm. It is my business to strip the slain. "

While men are in robust health, and their digestion is good, and theirnerves are strong, they think their physical strength will get themsafely through the last exigency. They say it is only cowardly womenwho are afraid at the last, and cry out for God. "Wait till I come todie. I will show you. You won't hear me pray, nor call for a minister, nor want a chapter read me from the Bible. " But after the man has beenthree weeks in a sick-room his nerves are not so steady, and hisworldly companions are not anywhere near to cheer him up, and he ispersuaded that he must quit life: his physical courage is all gone. 

He jumps at the fall of a teaspoon in a saucer. He shivers at the ideaof going away. He says: "Wife, I don't think my infidelity is going totake me through. For God's sake don't bring up the children to do as Ihave done. If you feel like it, I wish you would read a verse or twoout of Fannie's Sabbath-school hymn-book or New Testament. " But Satanbreaks in, and says: "You have always thought religion trash and alie; don't give up at the last. Besides that, you can not, in the houryou have to live, get off on that track. Die as you lived. With mygreat black wings I shut out that light. Die in darkness. I rend awayfrom you that last vestige of hope. It is my business to strip theslain. "

A man who had rejected Christianity and thought it all trash, came todie. He was in the sweat of a great agony, and his wife said: "We hadbetter have some prayer. " "Mary, not a breath of that, " he said. "Thelightest word of prayer would roll back on me like rocks on a drowningman. I have come to the hour of test. I had a chance, and I forfeitedit. I believed in a liar, and he has left me in the lurch. Mary, bringme Tom Paine, that book that I swore by and lived by, and pitch it inthe fire, and let it burn and burn as I myself shall soon burn. " Andthen, with the foam on his lip and his hands tossing wildly in theair, he cried out: "Blackness of darkness! Oh, my God, too late!" Andthe spirits of darkness whistled up from the depth, and wheeled aroundand around him, stripping the slain. 

Sin is a luxury now; it is exhilaration now; it is victory now. Butafter awhile it is collision; it is defeat; it is extermination; it isjackalism; it is robbing the dead; it is stripping the slain. Give itup to-day--give it up! Oh, how you have been cheated on, my brother, from one thing to another! All these years you have been under an evilmastery that you understood not. What have your companions done foryou? What have they done for your health? Nearly ruined it bycarousal. What have they done for your fortune? Almost scattered it byspendthrift behavior. What have they done for your reputation? Almostruined it with good men. What have they done for your immortal soul?Almost insured its overthrow. 

You are hastening on toward the consummation of all that is sad. To-day you stop and think, but it is only for a moment, and then youwill tramp on, and at the close of this service you will go out, andthe question will be: "How did you like the sermon?" And one man willsay: "I liked it very well, " and another man will say: "I didn't likeit at all;" but neither of the answers will touch the tremendous factthat, if impenitent, you are going at eighteen knots an hour towardshipwreck! Yea, you are in a battle where you will fall; and whileyour surviving relatives will take your remaining estate, and thecemetery will take your body, the messengers of darkness will takeyour soul, and come and go about you for the next ten million years, stripping the slain. 

Many are crying out: "I admit I am slain, I admit it!" On whatbattle-field, my brothers? By what weapon? "Polluted imagination, "says one man; "Intoxicating liquor, " says another man; "My own hardheart, " says another man. Do you realize this? Then I come to tell youthat the omnipotent Christ is ready to walk across this battle-field, and revive, and resuscitate, and resurrect your dead soul. Let Himtake your hand and rub away the numbness; your head, and bathe off theaching; your heart, and stop its wild throb. He brought Lazarus tolife; He brought Jairus' daughter to life; He brought the young man ofNain to life, and these are three proofs anyhow that he can bring youto life. 

When the Philistines came down on the field, they stepped between thecorpses, and they rolled over the dead, and they took away everythingthat was valuable; and so it was with the people that followed afterour army at Chancellorsville, and at Pittsburg Landing, and at StoneRiver, and at Atlanta, stripping the slain; but the Northern andSouthern women--God bless them!--came on the field with basins, andpads, and towels, and lint, and cordials, and Christian encouragement;and the poor fellows that lay there lifted up their arms and said:"Oh, how good that does feel since you dressed it!" and others lookedup and said: "Oh, how you make me think of my mother!" and otherssaid: "Tell the folks at home I died thinking about them;" and anotherlooked up and said: "Miss, won't you sing me a verse of 'Home, SweetHome, ' before I die?" And then the tattoo was sounded, and the hatswere off, and the service was read: "I am the resurrection and thelife;" and in honor of the departed the muskets were loaded, and thecommand given: "Take aim--fire!" And there was a shingle set up at thehead of the grave, with the epitaph of "Lieutenant ---- in theFourteenth Massachusetts Regulars, " or "Captain ---- in the FifteenthRegiment of South Carolina Volunteers. " And so to-night, across thisgreat field of moral and spiritual battle, the angels of God comewalking among the slain, and there are voices of comfort, and voicesof hope, and voices of resurrection, and voices of heaven. 

Christ is ready to give life to the dead. He will make the deaf ear tohear, the blind eye to see, the pulseless heart to beat, and the dampwalls of your spiritual charnel-house will crash into ruin at His cry:"Come forth!" I verily believe there are souls in this house who arenow dead in sin, who in half an hour will be alive forever. There wasa thrilling dream, a glorious dream--you may have heard of it. Ezekielclosed his eyes, and he saw two mountains, and a valley between themountains. That valley looked as though there had been a great battlethere, and a whole army had been slain, and they had been unburied;and the heat of the land, and the vultures coming there, soon thebones were exposed to the sun, and they looked like thousands ofsnow-drifts all through the valley. Frightful spectacle! The bleachingskeletons of a host!

But Ezekiel still kept his eyes shut; and lo! there were fourcurrents of wind that struck the battle-field, and when those fourcurrents of wind met, the bones began to rattle; and the foot came tothe ankle, and the hand came to the wrist, and the jaws clashedtogether, and the spinal column gathered up the ganglions and thenervous fiber, and all the valley wriggled and writhed, and throbbed, and rocked, and rose up. There, a man coming to life. There, a hundredmen. There, a thousand; and all falling into line, waiting for theshout of their commander. Ten thousand bleached skeletons springing upinto ten thousand warriors, panting for the fray. I hope that insteadof being a dream it may be a prophecy of what we shall see hereto-day. Let this north wall be one of the mountains, and the southwall be taken for another of the mountains, and let all the aisles andthe pews be the valley between, for there are thousands here to-daywithout one pulsation of spiritual life. 

I look off in one direction, and they are dead. I look off in anotherdirection, and they are dead. Who will bring them to life? Who shallrouse them up? If I should halloo at the top of my voice I could notwake them. Wait a moment! Listen! There is a rustling. There is a galefrom heaven. It comes from the north, and from the south, and from theeast, and from the west. It shuts us in. It blows upon the slain. There a soul begins to move in spiritual life; there, ten souls;there, a score of souls; there, a hundred souls. The nostrilsthrobbing in divine respiration, the hands lifted as though to takehold of heaven, the tongue moving as in prayer and adoration. Life!immortal life coming into the slain. Ten men for God--fifty--ahundred--a regiment--an army for God! Oh, that we might have such ascene here to-day! In Ezekiel's words, and in almost a frenzy ofprayer, I cry: "Come from the four winds, O Breath! and breathe uponthe slain. "

You will have to surrender your heart to-day to God. You can not takethe responsibility of fighting against the Spirit in this crisis whichwill decide whether you are to go to heaven or to hell--to join thehallelujahs of the saved, or the lamentations of the lost. You mustpray. You must repent. You must this day fling your sinful soul on thepardoning mercy of God. You must! I see your resolution against Godgiving way, your determination wavering. I break through the breach inthe wall and follow up the advantage gained, hoping to rout your lastopposition to Christ, and to make you "ground arms" at the feet of theDivine Conqueror. Oh, you must! You must!

The moon does not ask the tides of the Atlantic Ocean to rise. It onlystoops down with two great hands of light, the one at the Europeanbeach, and the other at the American beach, and then lifts the greatlayer of molten silver. And God, it seems to me, is now going to liftthis audience to newness of life. Do you not feel the swellings of thegreat oceanic tides of Divine mercy? My heart is in anguish to haveyou saved. For this I pray, and preach, and long, glad to be called afool for Christ's sake, and your salvation. 

Some one replies: "Dear me, I do wish I could have these mattersarranged with my God. I want to be saved. God knows I want to besaved; but you stand there talking about this matter, and you don'tshow me how. " My dear brother, the work has all been done. Christ didit with His own torn hand, and lacerated foot, and bleeding side. Hetook your place, and died your death, if you will only believeit--only accept Him as your substitute. 

What an amazing pity that any man should go from this house unblessed, when such a large blessing is offered him at less cost than you wouldpay for a pin--"without money and without price. " I have driven downto-day with the Lord's ambulance to the battle-field where your soullies exposed to the darkness and the storm, and I want to lift you in, and drive off with you toward heaven. Oh, Christians, by your prayershelp to lift these wounded souls into the ambulance! God forbid thatany should be left on the field, and that at last eternal sorrow, andremorse, and despair should come up around their soul like the banditPhilistines to the field of Gilboa, stripping the slain. 

SOLD OUT. 

 "Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money. "--ISA. Lii: 3. 

The Jews had gone headlong into sin, and as a punishment they had beencarried captive to Babylon. They found that iniquity did not pay. Cyrus seized Babylon, and felt so sorry for these poor captive Jewsthat, without a dollar of compensation, he let them go home. So that, literally, my text was fulfilled: "Ye have sold yourselves for nought;and ye shall be redeemed without money. "

There is enough Gospel in this text for fifty sermons; though I neverheard of its being preached on. There are persons in this house whohave, like the Jews of the text, sold out. You do not seem to belongeither to yourselves or to God. The title-deeds have been passed overto "the world, the flesh, and the devil, " but the purchaser has neverpaid up. "Ye have sold yourselves for nought. "

When a man passes himself over to the world he expects to get someadequate compensation. He has heard the great things that the worlddoes for a man, and he believes it. He wants two hundred and fiftythousand dollars. That will be horses, and houses, and asummer-resort, and jolly companionship. To get it he parts with hisphysical health by overwork. He parts with his conscience. He partswith much domestic enjoyment. He parts with opportunities for literaryculture. He parts with his soul. And so he makes over his entirenature to the world. He does it in four installments. He pays down thefirst installment, and one fourth of his nature is gone. He pays downthe second installment, and one half of his nature is gone. He paysdown the third installment, and three quarters of his nature are gone;and after many years have gone by he pays down the fourth installment, and, lo! his entire nature is gone. Then he comes up to the world andsays: "Good-morning. I have delivered to you the goods. I have passedover to you my body, my mind, and my soul, and I have come now tocollect the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. " "Two hundred andfifty thousand dollars?" says the world. "What do you mean?" "Well, "you say, "I come to collect the money you owe me, and I expect you nowto fulfill your part of the contract. " "But, " says the world, "_I havefailed. I am bankrupt. _ I can not possibly pay that debt. I have notfor a long while expected to pay it. " "Well, " you then say, "give meback the goods. " "Oh, no, " says the world, "they are all gone. I cannot give them back to you. " And there you stand on the confines ofeternity, your spiritual character gone, staggering under theconsideration that "you have sold yourself for nought. "

I tell you the world is a liar; it does not keep its promises. It is acheat, and it fleeces everything it can put its hands on. It is abogus world. It is a six-thousand-year-old swindle. Even if it paysthe two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for which you contracted, it pays them in bonds that will not be worth anything in a littlewhile. Just as a man may pay down ten thousand dollars in hard cashand get for it worthless scrip--so the world passes over to you thetwo hundred and fifty thousand dollars in that shape which will not beworth a farthing to you a thousandth part of a second after you aredead. "Oh, " you say, "it will help to bury me, anyhow. " Oh, mybrother! you need not worry about that. The world will bury you soonenough, from sanitary considerations. After you have been deceased forthree or four days you will compel the world to bury you. 

Post-mortem emoluments are of no use to you. The treasures of thisworld will not pass current in the future world; and if all the wealthof the Bank of England were put in the pocket of your shroud, and youin the midst of the Jordan of death were asked to pay three cents foryour ferriage, you could not do it. There comes a moment in yourexistence beyond which all earthly values fail; and many a man haswakened up in such a time to find that he has sold out for eternity, and has nothing to show for it. I should as soon think of going toChatham Street to buy silk pocket-handkerchiefs with no cotton inthem, as to go to this world expecting to find any permanenthappiness. It has deceived and deluded every man that has ever put histrust in it. 

History tells us of one who resolved that he would have all his sensesgratified at one and the same time, and he expended thousands ofdollars on each sense. He entered a room, and there were the firstmusicians of the land pleasing his ear, and there were fine picturesfascinating his eye, and there were costly aromatics regaling hisnostril, and there were the richest meats, and wines, and fruits, andconfections pleasing the appetite, and there was a soft couch ofsinful indulgence on which he reclined; and the man declared afterwardthat he would give ten times what he had given if he could have oneweek of such enjoyment, even though he lost his soul by it. Ah! thatwas the rub. He did lose his soul by it! Cyrus the Conqueror thoughtfor a little while that he was making a fine thing out of this world, and yet before he came to his grave he wrote out this pitiful epitaphfor his monument: "I am Cyrus. I occupied the Persian Empire. I wasking over Asia. Begrudge me not this monument. " But the world in afteryears plowed up his sepulcher. 

The world clapped its hands and stamped its feet in honor of CharlesLamb; but what does he say? "I walk up and down, thinking I am happy, but feeling I am not. " Call the roll, and be quick about it. SamuelJohnson, the learned! Happy? "No. I am afraid I shall some day getcrazy. " William Hazlitt, the great essayist! Happy? "No. I have beenfor two hours and a half going up and down Paternoster Row with avolcano in my breast. " Smollett, the witty author! Happy? "No. I amsick of praise and blame, and I wish to God that I had suchcircumstances around me that I could throw my pen into oblivion. "Buchanan, the world-renowned writer, exiled from his own country, appealing to Henry VIII. For protection! Happy? "No. Over mountainscovered with snow, and through valleys flooded with rain, I come afugitive. " Molière, the popular dramatic author! Happy? "No. Thatwretch of an actor just now recited four of my lines without theproper accent and gesture. To have the children of my brain so hung, drawn, and quartered, tortures me like a condemned spirit. "

I went to see a worldling die. As I went into the hall I saw its floorwas tessellated, and its wall was a picture-gallery. I found hisdeath-chamber adorned with tapestry until it seemed as if the cloudsof the setting sun had settled in the room. The man had given fortyyears to the world--his wit, his time, his genius, his talent, hissoul. Did the world come in to stand by his death-bed, and clearingoff the vials of bitter medicine, put down any compensation? Oh, no!The world does not like sick and dying people, and leaves them in thelurch. It ruined this man, and then left him. He had a magnificentfuneral. All the ministers wore scarfs, and there were forty-threecarriages in a row; but the departed man appreciated not theobsequies. 

I want to persuade my audience that this world is a poor investment;that it does not pay ninety per cent. Of satisfaction, nor eighty percent. , nor twenty per cent. , nor two per cent. , nor one; that it givesno solace when a dead babe lies on your lap; that it gives no peacewhen conscience rings its alarm; that it gives no explanation in theday of dire trouble; and at the time of your decease it takes hold ofthe pillow-case, and shakes out the feathers, and then jolts down inthe place thereof sighs, and groans, and execrations, and then makesyou put your head on it. Oh, ye who have tried this world, is it asatisfactory portion? Would you advise your friends to make theinvestment? No. "Ye have sold yourselves for nought. " Your consciencewent. Your hope went. Your Bible went. Your heaven went. Your Godwent. When a sheriff under a writ from the courts sells a man out, theofficer generally leaves a few chairs and a bed, and a few cups andknives; but in this awful vendue in which you have been engaged theauctioneer's mallet has come down upon body, mind, and soul: Going!Gone! "Ye have sold yourselves for nought. "

How could you do so? Did you think that your soul was a mere trinketwhich for a few pennies you could buy in a toy shop? Did you thinkthat your soul, if once lost, might be found again if you went outwith torches and lanterns? Did you think that your soul wasshort-lived, and that, panting, it would soon lie down for extinction?Or had you no idea what your soul was worth? Did you ever put yourforefingers on its eternal pulses? Have you never felt the quiver ofits peerless wing? Have you not known that, after leaving the body, the first step of your soul reaches to the stars, and the next step tothe furthest outposts of God's universe, and that it will not dieuntil the day when the everlasting Jehovah expires? Oh, my brother, what possessed you that you should part with your soul so cheap? "Yehave sold yourselves for nought. "

But I have some good news to tell you. I want to engage in alitigation for the recovery of that soul of yours. I want to show thatyou have been cheated out of it. I want to prove, as I will, that youwere crazy on that subject, and that the world, under suchcircumstances, has no right to take the title-deed from you; and ifyou will join me I shall get a decree from the High Chancery Court ofHeaven reinstating you into the possession of your soul. "Oh, " yousay, "I am afraid of lawsuits; they are so expensive, and I can notpay the cost. " Then have you forgotten the last half of my text? "Yehave sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed withoutmoney. "

Money is good for a great many things, but it can not do anything inthis matter of the soul. You can not buy your way through. Dollars andpounds sterling mean nothing at the gate of mercy. If you could buyyour salvation, heaven would be a great speculation, an extension ofWall Street. Bad men would go up and buy out the place, and leave usto shift for ourselves. But as money is not a lawful tender, what is?I will answer: Blood! Whose? Are we to go through the slaughter? Oh, no; it wants richer blood than ours. It wants a king's blood. It mustbe poured from royal arteries. It must be a sinless torrent. But whereis the king? I see a great many thrones and a great many occupants, yet none seem to be coming down to the rescue. But after awhile theclock of night in Bethlehem strikes twelve, and the silver pendulum ofa star swings across the sky, and I see the King of Heaven rising up, and He descends, and steps down from star to star, and from cloud tocloud, lower and lower, until He touches the sheep-covered hills, andthen on to another hill, this last skull-covered, and there, at thesharp stroke of persecution, a rill incarnadine trickles down, and wewho could not be redeemed by money are redeemed by precious andimperial blood. 

We have in this day professed Christians who are so rarefied andetherealized that they do not want a religion of blood. What do youwant? You seem to want a religion of brains. The Bible says: "In theblood is the life. " No atonement without blood. Ought not the apostleto know? What did he say? "Ye are redeemed not with corruptiblethings, such as silver and gold, but by the precious blood of Christ. "You put your lancet into the arm of our holy religion and withdraw theblood, and you leave it a mere corpse, fit only for the grave. Why didGod command the priests of old to strike the knife into the kid, andthe goat, and the pigeon, and the bullock, and the lamb? It was sothat when the blood rushed out from these animals on the floor of theancient tabernacle the people should be compelled to think of thecoming carnage of the Son of God. No blood, no atonement. 

I think that God intended to impress us with the vividness of thatcolor. The green of the grass, the blue of the sky, would not havestartled and aroused us like this deep crimson. It is as if God hadsaid: "Now, sinner, wake up and see what the Saviour endured for you. This is not water. This is not wine. It is blood. It is the blood ofmy own Son. It is the blood of the Immaculate. It is the blood ofGod. " Without the shedding of blood is no remission. There has beenmany a man who in courts of law has pleaded "not guilty, " whonevertheless has been condemned because there was blood found on hishands, or blood found in his room; and what shall we do in the lastday if it be found that we have recrucified the Lord of Glory and havenever repented of it? You must believe in the blood or die. Noescape. Unless you let the sacrifice of Jesus go in your stead youyourself must suffer. It is either Christ's blood or your blood. 

"Oh, " says some one, "the thought of blood sickens me. " Good. Godintended it to sicken you with your sin. Do not act as though you hadnothing to do with that Calvarian massacre. You had. Your sins werethe implements of torture. Those implements were not made of steel, and iron, and wood, so much as out of your sins. Guilty of thishomicide, and this regicide, and this deicide, confess your guiltto-day. Ten thousand voices of heaven bring in the verdict against youof guilty, guilty. Prepare to die, or believe in that blood. Stretchyourself out for the sacrifice, or accept the Saviour's sacrifice. Donot fling away your one chance. 

It seems to me as if all heaven were trying to bid in your soul. Thefirst bid it makes is the tears of Christ at the tomb of Lazarus; butthat is not a high enough price. The next bid heaven makes is thesweat of Gethsemane; but it is too cheap a price. The next bid heavenmakes seems to be the whipped back of Pilate's hall; but it is not ahigh enough price. Can it be possible that heaven can not buy you in?Heaven tries once more. It says: "I bid this time for that man's soulthe tortures of Christ's martyrdom, the blood on His temple, the bloodon His cheek, the blood on His chin, the blood on His hand, the bloodon His side, the blood on His knee, the blood on His foot--the bloodin drops, the blood in rills, the blood in pools coagulated beneaththe cross; the blood that wet the tips of the soldiers' spears, theblood that plashed warm in the faces of His enemies. " Glory to God, that bid wins it! The highest price that was ever paid for anythingwas paid for your soul. Nothing could buy it but blood! The estrangedproperty is bought back. Take it. "You have sold yourselves fornought; and ye shall be redeemed without money. " O atoning blood, cleansing blood, life-giving blood, sanctifying blood, glorifyingblood of Jesus! Why not burst into tears at the thought that for theeHe shed it--for thee the hard-hearted, for thee the lost?

"No, " says some one; "I will have nothing to do with it except that, like the Jews, I put both my hands into that carnage and scoop up bothpalms full, and throw it on my head and cry: 'His blood be on us andon our children!'" Can you do such a shocking thing as that? Just rubyour handkerchief across your brow and look at it. It is the blood ofthe Son of God whom you have despised and driven back all these years. Oh, do not do that any longer! Come out frankly and boldly andhonestly, and tell Christ you are sorry. You can not afford to soroughly treat Him upon whom everything depends. 

I do not know how you will get away from this subject. You see thatyou are sold out, and that Christ wants to buy you back. There arethree persons who come after you to-night: God the Father, God theSon, and God the Holy Ghost. They unite their three omnipotences inone movement for your salvation. You will not take up arms against theTriune God, will you? Is there enough muscle in your arm for such acombat? By the highest throne in heaven, and by the deepest chasm inhell, I beg you look out. Unless you allow Christ to carry away yoursins, they will carry you away. Unless you allow Christ to lift youup, they will drag you down. There is only one hope for you, and thatis the blood. Christ, the sin-offering, bearing your transgressions. Christ, the surety, paying your debts. Christ, the divine Cyrus, loosening your Babylonish captivity. 

Would you not like to be free? Here is the price of yourliberation--not money, but blood. I tremble from head to foot, notbecause I fear your presence, for I am used to that, but because Ifear that you will miss your chance for immortal rescue, and die. Thisis the alternative divinely put: "He that believeth on the Son shallhave everlasting life; and he that believeth not on the Son shall notsee life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. " In the last day, ifyou now reject Christ, every drop of that sacrificial blood, insteadof pleading for your release as it would have pleaded if you hadrepented, will plead against you. It will seem to say: "They refusedthe ransom; they chose to die; let them die; they must die. Down withthem to the weeping and the wailing. Depart! go away from me. Youwould not have me, now I will not have you. Sold out for eternity. "

O Lord God of the judgment day! avert that calamity! Let us see thequick flash of the cimeter that slays the sin but saves the sinner. Strike, omnipotent God, for the soul's deliverance! Beat, O eternalsea! with all thy waves against the barren beach of that rocky soul, and make it tremble. Oh! the oppressiveness of the hour, the minute, the second, on which the soul's destiny quivers, and this is thathour, that minute, that second!

I wonder what proportion of this audience will be saved? Whatproportion will be lost? When the "Schiller" went down, out of threehundred and eighty people only forty were saved. When the "Ville duHavre" went down, out of three hundred and forty about fifty weresaved. Out of this audience to-day, how many will get to the shore ofheaven? It is no idle question for me to ask, for many of you I shallnever see again until the day when the books are open. 

Some years ago there came down a fierce storm on the sea-coast, and avessel got in the breakers and was going to pieces. They threw up somesignal of distress, and the people on the shore saw them. They put outin a life-boat. They came on, and they saw the poor sailors, almostexhausted, clinging to a raft; and so afraid were the boatmen that themen would give up before they got to them, they gave them three roundsof cheers, and cried: "Hold on, there! Hold on! We'll save you!" Afterawhile the boat came up. One man was saved by having the boat-hook putin the collar of his coat; and some in one way, and some in another;but they all got into the boat. "Now, " says the captain, "for theshore. Pull away now, pull!" The people on the land were afraid thelife-boat had gone down. They said: "How long the boat stays. Why, itmust have been swamped, and they have all perished together. "

And there were men and women on the pier-heads and on the beachwringing their hands; and while they waited and watched, they sawsomething looming up through the mist, and it turned out to be thelife-boat. As soon as it came within speaking distance the people onthe shore cried out: "Did you save any of them? Did you save any ofthem?" And as the boat swept through the boiling surf and came to thepier-head, the captain waved his hand over the exhausted sailors thatlay flat on the bottom of the boat, and cried: "All saved! Thank God!All saved!" So may it be to-day. The waves of your sin run high, thestorm is on you, the danger is appalling. Oh! shipwrecked soul, I havecome for you. I cheer you with this Gospel hope. God grant that withinthe next ten minutes we may row with you into the harbor of God'smercy. And when these Christian men gather around to see the result ofthis service, and the glorified gathering on the pier-heads of heavento watch and to listen, may we be able to report all saved! Young andold, good and bad! All saved! Saved from sin, and death, and hell. Saved for time. Saved for eternity. "And so it came to pass that theyall escaped safe to land. "

SUMMER TEMPTATIONS. 

 "Come ye yourselves apart unto a desert place and rest awhile. "--MARK vi: 31. 

Here Christ advises His apostles to take a vacation. They have beenliving an excited as well as a useful life, and He advises that theyget out into the country. When, six weeks ago, standing in this place, I advocated, with all the energy I could command, the Saturdayafternoon holiday, I did not think the people would so soon get thatrelease. By divine fiat it has come, and I rejoice that more peoplewill have opportunity of recreation this summer than in any previoussummer. Others will have whole weeks and months of rest. The railwaytrains are being laden with passengers and baggage on their way to themountains and the lakes and the sea-shore. Multitudes of our citizensare packing their trunks for a restorative absence. 

The city heats are pursuing the people with torch and fear ofsunstroke. The long silent halls of sumptuous hotels are all abuzzwith excited arrivals. The crystalline surface of Winnipiseogee isshattered with the stroke of steamer, laden with excursionists. Theantlers of Adirondack deer rattle under the shot of city sportsmen. The trout make fatal snaps at the hook of adroit sportsmen and tosstheir spotted brilliance into the game-basket. Already the baton ofthe orchestral leader taps the music-stand on the hotel green, andAmerican life puts on festal array, and the rumbling of the tenpinalley, and the crack of the ivory balls on the green-baized billiardtables, and the jolting of the bar-room goblets, and the explosiveuncorking of champagne bottles, and the whirl and the rustle of theball-room dance, and the clattering hoofs of the race-courses, attestthat the season for the great American watering-places is fairlyinaugurated. Music--flute and drum and cornet-à-piston and clappingcymbals--will wake the echoes of the mountains. 

Glad I am that fagged-out American life for the most part will have anopportunity to rest, and that nerves racked and destroyed will find aBethesda. I believe in watering-places. Let not the commercial firmbegrudge the clerk, or the employer the journeyman, or the patient thephysician, or the church its pastor, a season of inoccupation. Lutherused to sport with his children; Edmund Burke used to caress hisfavorite horse; Thomas Chalmers, in the dark hours of the church'sdisruption, played kite for recreation--as I was told by his owndaughter--and the busy Christ said to the busy apostles: "Come yeapart awhile into the desert and rest yourselves. " And I have observedthat they who do not know how to rest do not know how to work. 

But I have to declare this truth to-day, that some of our fashionablewatering-places are the temporal and eternal destruction of "amultitude that no man can number, " and amid the congratulations ofthis season and the prospect of the departure of many of you for thecountry I must utter a note of warning--plain, earnest, andunmistakable. 

I. The first temptation that is apt to hover in this direction is toleave your piety all at home. You will send the dog and cat and canarybird to be well cared for somewhere else; but the temptation will beto leave your religion in the room with the blinds down and the doorbolted, and then you will come back in the autumn to find that it isstarved and suffocated, lying stretched on the rug stark dead. Thereis no surplus of piety at the watering-places. I never knew any one togrow very rapidly in grace at the Catskill Mountain House, or SharonSprings, or the Falls of Montmorency. It is generally the case thatthe Sabbath is more of a carousal than any other day, and there areSunday walks and Sunday rides and Sunday excursions. 

Elders and deacons and ministers of religion who are entirelyconsistent at home, sometimes when the Sabbath dawns on them atNiagara Falls or the White Mountains take the day to themselves. Ifthey go to the church, it is apt to be a sacred parade, and thediscourse, instead of being a plain talk about the soul, is apt to bewhat is called _a crack sermon_--that is, some discourse picked out ofthe effusions of the year as the one most adapted to exciteadmiration; and in those churches, from the way the ladies hold theirfans, you know that they are not so much impressed with the heat aswith the picturesqueness of half-disclosed features. Four puny soulsstand in the organ-loft and squall a tune that nobody knows, andworshipers, with two thousand dollars' worth of diamonds on the righthand, drop a cent into the poor-box, and then the benediction ispronounced and the farce is ended. 

The toughest thing I ever tried to do was to be good at awatering-place. The air is bewitched with "the world, the flesh, andthe devil. " There are Christians who in three or four weeks in such aplace have had such terrible rents made in their Christian robe thatthey had to keep darning it until Christmas to get it mended! Thehealth of a great many people makes an annual visit to some mineralspring an absolute necessity; but, my dear people, take your Biblealong with you, and take an hour for secret prayer every day, thoughyou be surrounded by guffaw and saturnalia. Keep holy the Sabbath, though they denounce you as a bigoted Puritan. Stand off from thoseinstitutions which propose to imitate on this side the water theiniquities of Baden-Baden. Let your moral and your immortal healthkeep pace with your physical recuperation, and remember that all thewaters of Hathorne and sulphur and chalybeate springs can not do youso much good as the mineral, healing, perennial flood that breaksforth from the "Rock of Ages. " This may be your last summer. If so, make it a fit vestibule of heaven. 

II. Another temptation around nearly all our watering-places is thehorse-racing business. We all admire the horse. There needs to be aredistribution of coronets among the brute creation. For ages the lionhas been called the king of beasts. I knock off its coronet and putthe crown upon the horse, in every way nobler, whether in shape orspirit or sagacity or intelligence or affection or usefulness. He issemi-human, and knows how to reason on a small scale. The centaur ofolden times, part horse and part man, seems to be a suggestion of thefact that the horse is something more than a beast. 

Job sets forth his strength, his beauty, his majesty, the panting ofhis nostril, the pawing of his hoof, and his enthusiasm for thebattle. What Rosa Bonheur did for the cattle, and what Landseer didfor the dog, Job, with mightier pencil, does for the horse. Eighty-eight times does the Bible speak of him. He comes into everykingly procession and into every great occasion and into everytriumph. It is very evident that Job and David and Isaiah and Ezekieland Jeremiah and John were fond of the horse. He came into much oftheir imagery. A red horse--that meant war; a black horse--that meantfamine; a pale horse--that meant death; a white horse--that meantvictory. 

As the Bible makes a favorite of the horse, the patriarch and theprophet and the evangelist and the apostle, stroking his sleek hide, and patting his rounded neck, and tenderly lifting his exquisitelyformed hoof, and listening with a thrill to the champ of his bit, soall great natures in all ages have spoken of him in encomiastic terms. Virgil in his Georgics almost seems to plagiarize from the descriptionof Job. The Duke of Wellington would not allow any one irreverently totouch his old war-horse, Copenhagen, on whom he had ridden fifteenhours without dismounting at Waterloo; and when old Copenhagen died, his master ordered a military salute fired over his grave. JohnHoward showed that he did not exhaust all his sympathies in pityingthe human race, for when sick he writes home: "Has my old chaise-horsebecome sick or spoiled?"

But we do not think that the speed of the horse should be cultured atthe expense of human degradation. Horse-races, in olden times, wereunder the ban of Christian people, and in our day the same institutionhas come up under fictitious names, and it is called a "SummerMeeting, " almost suggestive of positive religious exercises. And it iscalled an "Agricultural Fair, " suggestive of everything that isimproving in the art of farming. But under these deceptive titles arethe same cheating and the same betting, the same drunkenness and thesame vagabondage and the same abominations that were to be found underthe old horse-racing system. 

I never knew a man yet who could give himself to the pleasures of theturf for a long reach of time, and not be battered in morals. Theyhook up their spanking team, and put on their sporting-cap, and lighttheir cigar, and take the reins, and dash down the road to perdition. The great day at Saratoga, and Long Branch, and Cape May, and nearlyall the other watering-places, is the day of the races. The hotels arethronged, nearly every kind of equipage is taken up at an almostfabulous price, and there are many respectable people mingling withjockeys, and gamblers, and libertines, and foul-mouthed men and flashywomen. The bar-tender stirs up the brandy-smash. The bets run high. The greenhorns, supposing all is fair, put in their money soon enoughto lose it. Three weeks before the race takes place the struggle isdecided, and the men in the secret know on which steed to bet theirmoney. The two men on the horses riding around long before arrangedwho shall beat. 

Leaning from the stand or from the carriage are men and women soabsorbed in the struggle of bone and muscle and mettle that they makea grand harvest for the pickpockets, who carry off the pocket-booksand portemonnaies. Men looking on see only two horses with two ridersflying around the ring; but there is many a man on that stand whosehonor and domestic happiness and fortune--white mane, white foot, white flank--are in the ring, racing with inebriety, and with fraud, and with profanity, and with ruin--black neck, black foot, blackflank. Neck and neck they go in that moral Epsom. 

Ah, my friends, have nothing to do with horse-racing dissipations thissummer. Long ago the English government got through looking to theturf for the dragoon and light-cavalry horse. They found the turfdepreciates the stock, and it is yet worse for men. Thomas Hughes, themember of parliament and the author, known all the world over, hearingthat a new turf enterprise was being started in this country, wrote aletter, in which he said: "Heaven help you, then; for of all thecankers of our old civilization there is nothing in this countryapproaching in unblushing meanness, in rascality holding its headhigh, to this belauded institution of the British turf. " Anotherfamous sportsman writes: "How many fine domains have been shared amongthese hosts of rapacious sharks during the last two hundred years; andunless the system be altered, how many more are doomed to fall intothe same gulf!" The Duke of Hamilton, through his horse-racingproclivities, in three years got through his entire fortune of£70, 000, and I will say that some of you are being undermined by it. With the bull-fights of Spain and the bear-baitings of the pit may theLord God annihilate the infamous and accursed horse-racing of Englandand America. 

III. I go further, and speak of another temptation that hovers overthe watering-places; and this is the temptation to sacrifice physicalstrength. The modern Bethesda was intended to recuperate the physicalhealth; and yet how many come from the watering-places, their healthabsolutely destroyed! New York and Brooklyn idiots boasting of havingimbibed twenty glasses of Congress water before breakfast. Familiesaccustomed to going to bed at ten o'clock at night gossiping until oneor two o'clock in the morning. Dyspeptics, usually very cautious abouttheir health, mingling ice-creams, and lemons, and lobster-salads, andcocoa-nuts, until the gastric juices lift up all their voices oflamentation and protest. Delicate women and brainless young menchassezing themselves into vertigo and catalepsy. Thousands of men andwomen coming back from our watering-places in the autumn with thefoundations laid for ailments that will last them all their life long. You know as well as I do that this is the simple truth. 

In the summer you say to your good health: "Good-bye, I am going tohave a good time for a little while. I will be very glad to see youagain in the autumn. " Then in the autumn, when you are hard at work inyour office, or store, or shop, or counting-room, Good Health willcome and say: "Good-bye, I am going. " You say: "Where are you going?""Oh, " says Good Health, "I am going to take a vacation!" It is a poorrule that will not work both ways, and your good health will leave youcholeric and splenetic and exhausted. You coquetted with your goodhealth in the summer-time, and your good health is coquetting with youin the winter-time. A fragment of Paul's charge to the jailer would bean appropriate inscription for the hotel-register in everywatering-place: "Do thyself no harm. "

IV. Another temptation hovering around the watering-place is to theformation of hasty and life-long alliances. The watering-places areresponsible for more of the domestic infelicities of this country thanall the other things combined. Society is so artificial there that nosure judgment of character can be formed. Those who formcompanionships amid such circumstances go into a lottery where thereare twenty blanks to one prize. In the severe tug of life you wantmore than glitter and splash. Life is not a ball-room where the musicdecides the step, and bow and prance and graceful swing of long trailcan make up for strong common sense. You might as well go among thegayly painted yachts of a summer regatta to find war vessels as to goamong the light spray of the summer watering-place to find characterthat can stand the test of the great struggle of human life. Ah, inthe battle of life you want a stronger weapon than a lace fan or acroquet mallet! The load of life is so heavy that in order to draw it, you want a team stronger than one made up of a masculine grasshopperand a feminine butterfly. 

If there is any man in the community that excites my contempt, andthat ought to excite the contempt of every man and woman, it is thesoft-handed, soft-headed fop, who, perfumed until the air is actuallysick, spends his summer in taking killing attitudes, and wavingsentimental adieus, and talking infinitesimal nothings, and findinghis heaven in the set of a lavender kid-glove. Boots as tight as anInquisition, two hours of consummate skill exhibited in the tie of aflaming cravat, his conversation made up of "Ah's" and "Oh's" and"He-hee's. " It would take five hundred of them stewed down to make ateaspoonful of calves-foot jelly. There is only one counterpart tosuch a man as that, and that is the frothy young woman at thewatering-place, her conversation made up of French moonshine; what shehas on her head only equaled by what she has on her back; useless eversince she was born, and to be useless until she is dead: and what theywill do with her in the next world I do not know, except to set herupon the banks of the River Life for eternity to look sweet! Godintends us to admire music and fair faces and graceful step, but amidthe heartlessness and the inflation and the fantastic influences ofour modern watering-places, beware how you make life-long covenants!

V. Another temptation that will hover over the watering-place is thatof baneful literature. Almost every one starting off for the summertakes some reading matter. It is a book out of the library or off thebookstand, or bought of the boy hawking books through the cars. Ireally believe there is more pestiferous trash read among theintelligent classes in July and August than in all the other tenmonths of the year. Men and women who at home would not be satisfiedwith a book that was not really sensible, I found sitting onhotel-piazzas or under the trees reading books the index of whichwould make them blush if they knew that you knew what the book was. 

"Oh, " they say, "you must have intellectual recreation!" Yes. There isno need that you take along into a watering-place "Hamilton'sMetaphysics" or some thunderous discourse on the eternal decrees, or"Faraday's Philosophy. " There are many easy books that are good. Youmight as well say: "I propose now to give a little rest to mydigestive organs; and, instead of eating heavy meat and vegetables, Iwill for a little while take lighter food--a little strychnine and afew grains of ratsbane. " Literary poison in August is as bad asliterary poison in December. Mark that. Do not let the frogs and thelice of a corrupt printing-press jump and crawl into your Saratogatrunk or White Mountain valise. 

Would it not be an awful thing for you to be struck with lightningsome day when you had in your hand one of these paper-coveredromances--the hero a Parisian _roué_, the heroine an unprincipledflirt--chapters in the book that you would not read to your childrenat the rate of $100 a line? Throw out all that stuff from your summerbaggage. Are there not good books that are easy to read--books ofentertaining travel, books of congenial history, books of pure fun, books of poetry ringing with merry canto, books of fine engravings, books that will rest the mind as well as purify the heart and elevatethe whole life? My hearers, there will not be an hour between thisand the day of your death when you can afford to read a book lackingin moral principle. 

VI. Another temptation hovering all around our watering-places is theintoxicating beverage. I am told that it is becoming more and morefashionable for woman to drink. I care not how well a woman may dress, if she has taken enough of wine to flush her cheek and put glassinesson her eyes, she is intoxicated. She may be handed into a $2500carriage, and have diamonds enough to confound the Tiffanys--she isintoxicated. She may be a graduate of Packer Institute, and thedaughter of some man in danger of being nominated for thePresidency--she is drunk. You may have a larger vocabulary than Ihave, and you may say in regard to her that she is "convivial, " or sheis "merry, " or she is "festive, " or she is "exhilarated, " but you cannot with all your garlands of verbiage cover up the plain fact that itis an old-fashioned case of drunk. 

Now, the watering-places are full of temptations to men and women totipple. At the close of the tenpin or billiard-game they tipple. Atthe close of the cotillon they tipple. Seated on the piazza coolingthemselves off they tipple. The tinged glasses come around with brightstraws, and they tipple. First they take "light wines, " as they callthem; but "light wines" are heavy enough to debase the appetite. Thereis not a very long road between champagne at $5 a bottle and whiskeyat five cents a glass. 

Satan has three or four grades down which he takes men to destruction. One man he takes up, and through one spree pitches him into eternaldarkness. That is a rare case. Very seldom, indeed, can you find a manwho will be such a fool as that. 

When a man goes down to destruction Satan brings him to a plane. It isalmost a level. The depression is so slight that you can hardly seeit. The man does not actually know that he is on the down grade, andit tips only a little toward darkness--just a little. And the firstmile it is claret, and the second mile it is sherry, and the thirdmile it is punch, and the fourth mile it is ale, and the fifth mile itis porter, and the sixth mile it is brandy, and then it gets steeperand steeper and steeper, and the man gets frightened and says, "Oh, let me get off!" "No, " says the conductor, "this is an express train, and it does not stop until it gets to the Grand Central Depot atSmashupton. " Ah, "look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when itgiveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the lastit biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. " And if any youngman in my congregation should get astray this summer in this directionit will not be because I have not given him fair warning. 

My friends, whether you tarry at home--which will be quite as safe andperhaps quite as comfortable--or go into the country, arm yourselfagainst temptation. The grace of God is the only safe shelter, whetherin town or country. There are watering-places accessible to all of us. You can not open a book of the Bible without finding out some suchwatering-place. Fountains open for sin and uncleanliness; wells ofsalvation; streams from Lebanon; a flood struck out of the rock byMoses; fountains in the wilderness discovered by Hagar; water todrink and water to bathe in; the river of God, which is full of water;water of which if a man drink he shall never thirst; wells of water inthe Valley of Baca; living fountains of water; a pure river of wateras clear as crystal from under the throne of God. 

These are watering-places accessible to all of us. We do not have alaborious packing up before we start--only the throwing away of ourtransgressions. No expensive hotel bills to pay; it is "without moneyand without price. " No long and dirty travel before we get there; itis only one step away. California in five minutes. I walked around andsaw ten fountains, all bubbling up, and they were all different. Andin five minutes I can get through this Bible _parterre_ and find youfifty bright, sparkling fountains bubbling up into eternal life. 

A chemist will go to one of these summer watering-places and take thewater and analyze it and tell you that it contains so much of iron, and so much of soda, and so much of lime, and so much of magnesia. Icome to this Gospel well, this living fountain and analyze the water, and I find that its ingredients are peace, pardon, forgiveness, hope, comfort, life, heaven. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye" to thiswatering-place!

Crowd around this Bethesda this morning! Oh, you sick, you lame, youtroubled, you dying--crowd around this Bethesda! Step in it! Oh, stepin it! The angel of the covenant this morning stirs the water. Why doyou not step in it? Some of you are too weak to take a step in thatdirection. Then we take you up in the arms of our closing prayer andplunge you clean under the wave, hoping that the cure may be as suddenand as radical as with Captain Naaman, who, blotched and carbuncled, stepped into the Jordan, and after the seventh dive came up, his skinroseate-complexioned as the flesh of a little child. 

THE BANISHED QUEEN. 

 "Also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women in the royal house which belonged to King Ahasuerus. On the seventh day when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas, the seven chamberlains that served in the presence of Ahasuerus the king, to bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to show the people and the princes her beauty: for she was fair to look on. But the Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's commandment by his chamberlains; therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him. "--ESTHER i: 9-12. 

We stand amid the palaces of Shushan. The pinnacles are aflame withthe morning light. The columns rise festooned and wreathed, the wealthof empires flashing from the grooves; the ceilings adorned with imagesof bird and beast, and scenes of prowess and conquest. The walls arehung with shields, and emblazoned until it seems that the whole roundof splendors is exhausted. Each arch is a mighty leaf of architecturalachievement. Golden stars shining down on glowing arabesque. Hangingsof embroidered work in which mingle the blueness of the sky, thegreenness of the grass, and the whiteness of the sea-foam. Tapestrieshung on silver rings, wedding together the pillars of marble. Pavilions reaching out in every direction. These for repose, filledwith luxuriant couches, in which weary limbs sink until all fatigue issubmerged. Those for carousal, where kings drink down a kingdom at oneswallow. 

Amazing spectacle!

Light of silver dripping down over stairs of ivory on shields of gold. Floors of stained marble, sunset red and night black, and inlaid withgleaming pearl. 

In connection with this palace there is a garden, where the mighty menof foreign lands are seated at a banquet. Under the spread of oak andlinden and acacia the tables are arranged. The breath of honeysuckleand frankincense fills the air. Fountains leap up into the light, thespray struck through with rainbows falling in crystalline baptism uponflowering shrubs--then rolling down through channels of marble, andwidening out here and there into pools swirling with the finny tribesof foreign aquariums, bordered with scarlet anemones, hypericums, andmany-colored ranunculi. 

Meats of rarest bird and beast smoking up amid wreaths of aromatics. The vases filled with apricots and almonds. The baskets piled up withapricots and figs and oranges and pomegranates. Melons tastefullytwined with leaves of acacia. The bright waters of Eulæus filling theurns and dropping outside the rim in flashing beads amid thetraceries. Wine from the royal vats of Ispahan and Shiraz, in bottlesof tinged shell, and lily-shaped cups of silver, and flagons andtankards of solid gold. The music rises higher, and the revelry breaksout into wilder transport, and the wine has flushed the cheek andtouched the brain, and louder than all other voices are the hiccoughof the inebriates, the gabble of fools, and the song of the drunkards. 

In another part of the palace, Queen Vashti is entertaining theprincesses of Persia at a banquet. Drunken Ahasuerus says to hisservants, "You go out and fetch Vashti from, that banquet with thewomen, and bring her to this banquet with the men, and let me displayher beauty. " The servants immediately start to obey the king'scommand; but there was a rule in Oriental society that no woman mightappear in public without having her face veiled. Yet here was amandate that no one dare dispute, demanding that Vashti come inunveiled before the multitude. However, there was in Vashti's soul aprinciple more regal than Ahasuerus, more brilliant than the gold ofShushan, of more wealth than the realm of Persia, which commanded herto disobey this order of the king; and so all the righteousness andholiness and modesty of her nature rise up into one sublime refusal. She says, "I will not go into the banquet unveiled. " Ahasuerus wasinfuriate; and Vashti, robbed of her position and her estate, isdriven forth in poverty and ruin to suffer the scorn of a nation, andyet to receive the applause of after generations, who shall rise up toadmire this martyr to kingly insolence. Well, the last vestige of thatfeast is gone; the last garland has faded; the last arch has fallen;the last tankard has been destroyed; and Shushan is a ruin; but aslong as the world stands there will be multitudes of men and women, familiar with the Bible, who will come into this picture-gallery ofGod and admire the divine portrait of Vashti the queen, Vashti theveiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vashti the silent. 

I. In the first place, I want you to look upon Vashti the queen. Ablue ribbon, rayed with white, drawn around her forehead, indicatedher queenly position. It was no small honor to be queen in such arealm as that. Hark to the rustle of her robes! See the blaze of herjewels! And yet, my friends, it is not necessary to have place andregal robe in order to be queenly. When I see a woman with stout faithin God, putting her foot upon all meanness and selfishness and godlessdisplay, going right forward to serve Christ and the race by a grandand a glorious service, I say: "That woman is a queen, " and the ranksof heaven look over the battlements upon the coronation; and whethershe comes up from the shanty on the commons or the mansion of thefashionable square, I greet her with the shout, "All hail, QueenVashti!"

What glory was there on the brow of Mary of Scotland, or Elizabeth ofEngland, or Margaret of France, or Catherine of Russia, compared withthe worth of some of our Christian mothers, many of them gone intoglory?--or of that woman mentioned in the Scriptures, who put her allinto the Lord's treasury?--or of Jephtha's daughter, who made ademonstration of unselfish patriotism?--or of Abigail, who rescued theherds and flocks of her husband?--or of Ruth, who toiled under atropical sun for poor, old, helpless Naomi?--or of FlorenceNightingale, who went at midnight to stanch the battle wounds of theCrimea?--or of Mrs. Adoniram Judson, who kindled the lights ofsalvation amid the darkness of Burmah?--or of Mrs. Hemans, who pouredout her holy soul in words which will forever be associated withhunter's horn, and captive's chain, and bridal hour, and lute's throb, and curfew's knell at the dying day?--and scores and hundreds ofwomen, unknown on earth, who have given water to the thirsty, andbread to the hungry, and medicine to the sick, and smiles to thediscouraged--their footsteps heard along dark lane and in governmenthospital, and in almshouse corridor, and by prison gate? There may beno royal robe--there may be no palatial surroundings. She does notneed them; for all charitable men will unite with the crackling lipsof fever-struck hospital and plague-blotched lazaretto in greeting heras she passes: "Hail! Hail! Queen Vashti!"

II. Again, I want you to consider Vashti the veiled. Had she appearedbefore Ahasuerus and his court on that day with her face uncovered shewould have shocked all the delicacies of Oriental society, and thevery men who in their intoxication demanded that she come, in theirsober moments would have despised her. As some flowers seem to thrivebest in the dark lane and in the shadow, and where the sun does notseem to reach them, so God appoints to most womanly natures a retiringand unobtrusive spirit. 

God once in awhile does call an Isabella to a throne, or a Miriam tostrike the timbrel at the front of a host, or a Marie Antoinette toquell a French mob, or a Deborah to stand at the front of an armedbattalion, crying out, "Up! Up! This is the day in which the Lord willdeliver Sisera into thy hands. " And when the women are called to suchout-door work and to such heroic positions, God prepares them for it;and they have iron in their soul, and lightnings in their eye, andwhirlwinds in their breath, and the borrowed strength of the LordOmnipotent in their right arm. They walk through furnaces as thoughthey were hedges of wild-flowers, and cross seas as though they wereshimmering sapphire; and all the harpies of hell down to their dungeonat the stamp of womanly indignation. 

But these are the exceptions. Generally, Dorcas would rather make agarment for the poor boy; Rebecca would rather fill the trough for thecamels; Hannah would rather make a coat for Samuel; the Hebrew maidwould rather give a prescription for Naaman's leprosy; the woman ofSarepta would rather gather a few sticks to cook a meal for famishedElijah; Phebe would rather carry a letter for the inspired apostle;Mother Lois would rather educate Timothy in the Scriptures. When I seea woman going about her daily duty, with cheerful dignity presiding atthe table, with kind and gentle, but firm discipline presiding in thenursery, going out into the world without any blast of trumpets, following in the footsteps of Him who went about doing good--I say:"This is Vashti with a veil on. "

But when I see a woman of unblushing boldness, loud-voiced, with atongue of infinite clitter-clatter, with arrogant look, passingthrough the streets with the step of a walking-beam, gayly arrayed ina very hurricane of millinery, I cry out: "Vashti has lost her veil!"When I see a woman struggling for political preferment--trying toforce her way on up to the ballot-box, amid the masculine demagogueswho stand, with swollen fists and bloodshot eyes and pestiferousbreath, to guard the polls--wanting to go through the loaferism andthe defilement of popular sovereigns, who crawl up from the saloonsgreasy and foul and vermin-covered, to decide questions of justice andorder and civilization--when I see a woman, I say, who wants to pressthrough all that horrible scum to get to the ballot-box, I say: "Ah, what a pity! Vashti has lost her veil!"

When I see a woman of comely features, and of adroitness of intellect, and endowed with all that the schools can do for one, and of highsocial position, yet moving in society with superciliousness and_hauteur_, as though she would have people know their place, and withan undefined combination of giggle and strut and rhodomontade, endowedwith allopathic quantities of talk, but only homeopathicinfinitesimals of sense, the terror of dry-goods clerks and railroadconductors, discoverers of significant meanings in plain conversation, prodigies of badinage and innuendo--I say: "Vashti has lost her veil. "

III. Again, I want you this morning to consider Vashti the sacrifice. Who is this that I see coming out of that palace gate of Shushan? Itseems to me that I have seen her before. She comes homeless, houseless, friendless, trudging along with a broken heart. Who is she?It is Vashti the sacrifice. Oh! what a change it was from regalposition to a wayfarer's crust! A little while ago, approved andsought for; now, none so poor as to acknowledge her acquaintanceship. Vashti the sacrifice!

Ah! you and I have seen it many a time. Here is a home empalaced withbeauty. All that refinement and books and wealth can do for that homehas been done; but Ahasuerus, the husband and the father, is takinghold on paths of sin. He is gradually going down. After awhile he willflounder and struggle like a wild beast in the hunter's net--furtheraway from God, further away from the right. Soon the bright apparel ofthe children will turn to rags; soon the household song will becomethe sobbing of a broken heart. The old story over again. BrutalCentaurs breaking up the marriage feast of Lapithæ. The house full ofoutrage and cruelty and abomination, while trudging forth from thepalace gate are Vashti and her children. There are homes representedin this house this morning that are in danger of such breaking-up. Oh, Ahasuerus! that you should stand in a home, by a dissipated lifedestroying the peace and comfort of that home. God forbid that yourchildren should ever have to wring their hands, and have people pointtheir finger at them as they pass down the street, and say, "Theregoes a drunkard's child. " God forbid that the little feet should everhave to trudge the path of poverty and wretchedness! God forbid thatany evil spirit born of the wine-cup or the brandy-glass should comeforth and uproot that garden, and with a lasting, blistering, all-consuming curse, shut forever the palace gate against Vashti andthe children. 

One night during the war I went to Hagerstown to look at the army, andI stood on a hill-top and looked down upon them. I saw the camp-firesall through the valleys and all over the hills. It was a weirdspectacle, those camp-fires, and I stood and watched them; and thesoldiers who were gathered around them were, no doubt, talking oftheir homes, and of the long march they had taken, and of the battlesthey were to fight; but after awhile I saw these camp-fires begin tolower; and they continued to lower, until they were all gone out, andthe army slept. It was imposing when I saw the camp-fires; it wasimposing in the darkness when I thought of that great host asleep. Well, God looks down from heaven, and He sees the fireside ofChristendom and the loved ones gathered around these firesides. Theseare the camp-fires where we warm ourselves at the close of day, andtalk over the battles of life we have fought and the battles that areyet to come. God grant that when at last these fires begin to go out, and continue to lower until finally they are extinguished, and theashes of consumed hopes strew the hearth of the old homestead, it maybe because we have

 "Gone to sleep that last long sleep, From which none ever wake to weep. "

Now we are an army on the march of life. Then we shall be an armybivouacked in the tent of the grave. 

IV. Once more: I want you to look at Vashti the silent. You do nothear any outcry from this woman as she goes forth from the palacegate. From the very dignity of her nature, you know there will be novociferation. Sometimes in life it is necessary to make a retort;sometimes in life it is necessary to resist; but there are crises whenthe most triumphant thing to do is to keep silence. The philosopher, confident in his newly discovered principle, waited for the coming ofmore intelligent generations, willing that men should laugh at thelightning-rod and cotton-gin and steam-boat--waiting for long yearsthrough the scoffing of philosophical schools, in grand andmagnificent silence. 

Galileo, condemned by mathematicians and monks and cardinals, caricatured everywhere, yet waiting and watching with his telescope tosee the coming up of stellar reenforcements, when the stars in theircourses would fight for the Copernican system; then sitting down incomplete blindness and deafness to wait for the coming on of thegenerations who would build his monument and bow at his grave. Thereformer, execrated by his contemporaries, fastened in a pillory, theslow fires of public contempt burning under him, ground under thecylinders of the printing-press, yet calmly waiting for the day whenpurity of soul and heroism of character will get the sanction of earthand the plaudits of heaven. 

Affliction enduring without any complaint the sharpness of the pang, and the violence of the storm, and the heft of the chain, and thedarkness of the night--waiting until a Divine hand shall be put forthto soothe the pang, and hush the storm, and release the captive. Awife abused, persecuted, and a perpetual exile from every earthlycomfort--waiting, waiting, until the Lord shall gather up His dearchildren in a heavenly home, and no poor Vashti will ever be thrustout from the palace gate. 

Jesus, in silence and answering not a word, drinking the gall, bearingthe cross, in prospect of the rapturous consummation when

 "Angels thronged their chariot wheel, And bore Him to His throne, Then swept their golden harps and sung, 'The glorious work is done!'"

Oh, woman! does not this story of Vashti the queen, Vashti the veiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vashti the silent, move your soul? My sermonconverges into the one absorbing hope that none of you may be shut outof the palace gate of heaven. You can endure the hardships, and theprivations, and the cruelties, and the misfortunes of this life if youcan only gain admission there. Through the blood of the everlastingcovenant you go through those gates, or never go at all. God forbidthat you should at last be banished from the society of angels, andbanished from the companionship of your glorified kindred, andbanished forever. Through the rich grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, mayyou be enabled to imitate the example of Rachel, and Hannah, andAbigail, and Deborah, and Mary, and Esther, and Vashti. 

THE DAY WE LIVE IN. 

 "Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"--ESTHER iv. 14. 

Esther the beautiful was the wife of Ahasuerus the abominable. Thetime had come for her to present a petition to her infamous husband inbehalf of the Jewish nation, to which she had once belonged. She wasafraid to undertake the work, lest she should lose her own life; buther uncle, Mordecai, who had brought her up, encouraged her with thesuggestion that probably she had been raised up of God for thatpeculiar mission. "Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdomfor such a time as this?" Esther had her God-appointed work; you and Ihave ours. It is my business to tell you what style of men and womenyou ought to be in order that you meet the demand of the age in whichGod has cast your lot. If you have come expecting to hear abstractionsdiscussed, or dry technicalities of religion glorified, you have cometo the wrong church; but if you really would like to know what thisage has a right to expect of you as Christian men and women, then I amready in the Lord's name to look you in the face. When two armies haverushed into battle the officers of either army do not want aphilosophical discussion about the chemical properties of human bloodor the nature of gunpowder; they want some one to man the batteriesand swab out the guns. And now, when all the forces of light anddarkness, of heaven and hell, have plunged into the fight, it is notime to give ourselves to the definitions and formulas andtechnicalities and conventionalities of religion. 

What we want is practical, earnest, concentrated, enthusiastic, andtriumphant help. 

I. In the first place, in order to meet the special demand of thisage, you need to be an unmistakably aggressive Christian. Ofhalf-and-half Christians we do not want any more. The Church of JesusChrist will be better without ten thousand of them. They are the chiefobstacle to the Church's advancement. I am speaking of another kind ofChristian. All the appliances for your becoming an earnest Christianare at your hand, and there is a straight path for you into the broaddaylight of God's forgiveness. You may have come into this Tabernaclethe bondsmen of the world, and yet before you go out of these doorsyou may become princes of the Lord God Almighty. You remember whatexcitement there was in this country, years ago, when the Prince ofWales came here--how the people rushed out by hundreds of thousands tosee him. Why? Because they expected that some day he would sit uponthe throne of England. But what was all that honor compared with thehonor to which God calls you--to be sons and daughters of the LordAlmighty; yea, to be queens and kings unto God? "They shall reign withHim forever and forever. "

But, my friends, you need to be aggressive Christians, and not likethose persons who spend their lives in hugging their Christian gracesand wondering why they do not make any progress. How much robustnessof health would a man have if he hid himself in a dark closet? A greatdeal of the piety of the day is too exclusive. It hides itself. Itneeds more fresh air, more out-door exercise. There are manyChristians who are giving their entire life to self-examination. Theyare feeling their pulses to see what is the condition of theirspiritual health. How long would a man have robust physical health ifhe kept all the days and weeks and months and years of his lifefeeling his pulse instead of going out into active, earnest, every-daywork?

I was once amid the wonderful, bewitching cactus growths of NorthCarolina. I never was more bewildered with the beauty of flowers, andyet when I would take up one of these cactuses and pull the leavesapart, the beauty was all gone. You could hardly tell that it had everbeen a flower. And there are a great many Christian people in this dayjust pulling apart their Christian experiences to see what there is inthem, and there is nothing left in them. This style ofself-examination is a damage instead of an advantage to theirChristian character. I remember when I was a boy I used to have asmall piece in the garden that I called my own, and I planted cornthere, and every few days I would pull it up to see how fast it wasgrowing. Now, there are a great many Christian people in this daywhose self-examination merely amounts to the pulling up of that whichthey only yesterday or the day before planted. 

O my friends! if you want to have a stalwart Christian character, plant it right out of doors in the great field of Christianusefulness, and though storms may come upon it, and though the hot sunof trial may try to consume it, it will thrive until it becomes agreat tree, in which the fowls of heaven may have their habitation. Ihave no patience with these flower-pot Christians. They keepthemselves under shelter, and all their Christian experience in asmall, exclusive circle, when they ought to plant it in the greatgarden of the Lord, so that the whole atmosphere could be aromaticwith their Christian usefulness. What we want in the Church of God ismore brawn of piety. 

The century plant is wonderfully suggestive and wonderfully beautiful, but I never look at it without thinking of its parsimony. It letswhole generations go by before it puts forth one blossom; so I havereally more heartfelt admiration when I see the dewy tears in the blueeyes of the violets, for they come every spring. My Christian friends, time is going by so rapidly that we can not afford to be idle. 

A recent statistician says that human life now has an average of onlythirty-two years. From these thirty-two years you must subtract allthe time you take for sleep and the taking of food and recreation;that will leave you about sixteen years. From those sixteen years youmust subtract all the time that you are necessarily engaged in theearning of a livelihood; that will leave you about eight years. Fromthose eight years you must take all the days and weeks and months--allthe length of time that is passed in childhood and sickness, leavingyou about one year in which to work for God. Oh, my soul, wake up!How darest thou sleep in harvest-time and with so few hours in whichto reap? So that I state it as a simple fact that all the time thatthe vast majority of you will have for the exclusive service of Godwill be less than one year!

"But, " says some man, "I liberally support the Gospel, and the churchis open and the Gospel is preached: all the spiritual advantages arespread before men, and if they want to be saved, let them come to besaved; I have discharged all my responsibility. " Ah! is that theMaster's spirit? Is there not an old Book somewhere that commands usto go out into the highways and the hedges and compel the people tocome in? What would have become of you and me if Christ had not comedown off the hills of heaven, and if He had not come through the doorof the Bethlehem caravansary, and if He had not with the crushed handof the crucifixion knocked at the iron gate of the sepulcher of ourspiritual death, crying, "Lazarus, come forth"? Oh, my Christianfriends, this is no time for inertia, when all the forces of darknessseem to be in full blast; when steam printing-presses are publishinginfidel tracts; when express railroad trains are carrying messengersof sin; when fast clippers are laden with opium and rum; when thenight-air of our cities is polluted with the laughter that breaks upfrom the ten thousand saloons of dissipation and abandonment; when thefires of the second death already are kindled in the cheeks of somewho, only a little while ago, were incorrupt. Oh, never since thecurse fell upon the earth has there been a time when it was such anunwise, such a cruel, such an awful thing for the Church to sleep!The great audiences are not gathered in the Christian churches; thegreat audiences are gathered in temples of sin--tears of unutterablewoe their baptism, the blood of crushed hearts the awful wine of theirsacrament, blasphemies their litany, and the groans of the lost worldthe organ dirge of their worship. 

II. Again, if you want to be qualified to meet the duties which thisage demands of you, you must on the one hand avoid recklessiconoclasm, and on the other hand not stick too much to things becausethey are old. The air is full of new plans, new projects, new theoriesof government, new theologies, and I am amazed to see how so manyChristians want only novelty in order to recommend a thing to theirconfidence; and so they vacillate and swing to and fro, and they areuseless, and they are unhappy. New plans--secular, ethical, philosophical, religious, cisatlantic, transatlantic--long enough tomake a line reaching from the German universities to Great Salt LakeCity. Ah, my brother, do not take hold of a thing merely because it isnew. Try it by the realities of a Judgment Day. 

But, on the other hand, do not adhere to any thing merely because itis old. There is not a single enterprise of the Church or the worldbut has sometimes been scoffed at. There was a time when men deridedeven Bible societies; and when a few young men met near a hay-stack inMassachusetts and organized the first missionary society everorganized in this country, there went laughter and ridicule all aroundthe Christian Church. They said the undertaking was preposterous. Andso also the work of Jesus Christ was assailed. People cried out, "Whoever heard of such theories of ethics and government? Who evernoticed such a style of preaching as Jesus has?" Ezekiel had talked ofmysterious wings and wheels. Here came a man from Capernaum andGennesaret, and he drew his illustration from the lakes, from thesand, from the ravine, from the lilies, from the corn-stalks. How thePharisees scoffed! How Herod derided! How Caiaphas hissed! And thisJesus they plucked by the beard, and they spat in his face, and theycalled him "this fellow!" All the great enterprises in and out of theChurch have at times been scoffed at, and there have been a greatmultitude who have thought that the chariot of God's truth would fallto pieces if it once got out of the old rut. 

And so there are those who have no patience with anything likeimprovement in church architecture, or with anything like good, hearty, earnest church singing, and they deride any form of religiousdiscussion which goes down walking among every-day men rather thanthat which makes an excursion on rhetorical stilts. Oh, that theChurch of God would wake up to an adaptability of work! We must admitthe simple fact that the churches of Jesus Christ in this day do notreach the great masses. There are fifty thousand people in Edinburghwho never hear the Gospel. There are one million people in London whonever hear the Gospel. There are at least three hundred thousand soulsin the city of Brooklyn who come not under the immediate ministrationsof Christ's truth; and the Church of God in this day, instead of beinga place full of living epistles, read and known of all men, is morelike a "dead-letter" post-office. 

"But, " say the people, "the world is going to be converted; you mustbe patient; the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms ofChrist, " Never, unless the Church of Jesus Christ puts on more speedand energy. Instead of the Church converting the world, the world isconverting the Church. Here is a great fortress. How shall it betaken? An army comes and sits around about it, cuts off the supplies, and says: "Now we will just wait until from exhaustion and starvationthey will have to give up. " Weeks and months, and perhaps a year, passalong, and finally the fortress surrenders through that starvation andexhaustion. But, my friends, the fortresses of sin are never to betaken in that way. If they are taken for God it will be by storm; youwill have to bring up the great siege guns of the Gospel to the verywall and wheel the flying artillery into line, and when the armedinfantry of heaven shall confront the battlements you will have togive the quick command, "Forward! Charge!"

Ah, my friends, there is work for you to do and for me to do in orderto this grand accomplishment! Here is my pulpit, and I preach in it. Your pulpit is the bank. Your pulpit is the store. Your pulpit is theeditorial chair. Your pulpit is the anvil. Your pulpit is the housescaffolding. Your pulpit is the mechanic's shop. I may stand in thisplace and, through cowardice or through self-seeking, may keep backthe word I ought to utter; while you, with sleeve rolled up and browbesweated with toil, may utter the word that will jar the foundationsof heaven with the shout of a great victory. Oh, that this morningthis whole audience might feel that the Lord Almighty was putting uponthem the hands of ordination. I tell you, every one, go forth andpreach this gospel. You have as much right to preach as I have, or asany man has. Only find out the pulpit where God will have you preach, and there preach. 

Hedley Vicars was a wicked man in the English army. The grace of Godcame to him. He became an earnest and eminent Christian. They scoffedat him, and said: "You are a hypocrite; you are as bad as ever youwere. " Still he kept his faith in Christ, and after awhile, findingthat they could not turn him aside by calling him a hypocrite, theysaid to him: "Oh, you are nothing but a Methodist. " That did notdisturb him. He went on performing his Christian duty until he hadformed all his troop into a Bible-class, and the whole encampment wasshaken with the presence of God. So Havelock went into the heathentemple in India while the English army was there, and put a candleinto the hand of each of the heathen gods that stood around in theheathen temple, and by the light of those candles, held up by theidols, General Havelock preached righteousness, temperance, andjudgment to come. And who will say, on earth or in Heaven, thatHavelock had not the right to preach?

In the minister's house where I prepared for college, there was a manwho worked, by the name of Peter Croy. He could neither read norwrite, but he was a man of God. Often theologians would stop in thehouse--grave theologians--and at family prayers Peter Croy would becalled upon to lead; and all those wise men sat around, wonder-struckat his religious efficiency. When he prayed he reached up and seemedto take hold of the very throne of the Almighty, and he talked withGod until the very heavens were bowed down into the sitting-room. Oh, if I were dying I would rather have plain Peter Croy kneel by mybedside and commend my immortal spirit to God than the greatestarchbishop, arrayed in costly canonicals. Go preach this Gospel. Yousay you are not licensed. In the name of the Lord Almighty, thismorning, I license you. Go preach this Gospel--preach it in theSabbath-schools, in the prayer-meetings, in the highways, in thehedges. Woe be unto you if you preach it not. 

III. I remark, again, that in order to be qualified to meet your dutyin this particular age you want unbounded faith in the triumph of thetruth and the overthrow of wickedness. How dare the Christian Churchever get discouraged? Have we not the Lord Almighty on our side? Howlong did it take God to slay the hosts of Sennacherib or burn Sodom orshake down Jericho? How long will it take God, when He once arises inHis strength, to overthrow all the forces of iniquity? Between thistime and that there may be long seasons of darkness--thechariot-wheels of God's Gospel may seem to drag heavily; but here isthe promise, and yonder is the throne; and when Omniscience has lostits eyesight, and Omnipotence falls back impotent, and Jehovah isdriven from His throne, then the Church of Jesus Christ can afford tobe despondent, but never until then. Despots may plan and armies maymarch, and the congresses of the nations may seem to think they areadjusting all the affairs of the world, but the mighty men of theearth are only the dust of the chariot-wheels of God's providence. 

I think that before the sun of this century shall set the last tyrannywill fall, and with a splendor of demonstration that shall be theastonishment of the universe God will set forth the brightness andpomp and glory and perpetuity of His eternal government. Out of thestarry flags and the emblazoned insignia of this world God will make apath for His own triumph, and, returning from universal conquest, Hewill sit down, the grandest, strongest, highest throne of earth Hisfootstool. 

 "Then shall all nations' song ascend To Thee, our Ruler, Father, Friend, Till heaven's high arch resounds again With 'Peace on earth, good will to men. '"

I preach this sermon because I want to encourage all Christian workersin every possible department. Hosts of the living God, march on! marchon! His Spirit will bless you. His shield will defend you. His swordwill strike for you. March on! march on! The despotism will fall, andpaganism will burn its idols, and Mohammedanism will give up its falseprophet, and Judaism will confess the true Messiah, and the greatwalls of superstition will come down in thunder and wreck at the long, loud blast of the Gospel trumpet. March on! march on! The besiegementwill soon be ended. Only a few more steps on the long way; only a fewmore sturdy blows; only a few more battle cries, then God will put thelaurel upon your brow, and from the living fountains of heaven willbathe off the sweat and the heat and the dust of the conflict. Marchon! march on! For you the time for work will soon be passed, and amidthe outflashings of the judgment throne, and the trumpeting ofresurrection angels, and the upheaving of a world of graves, and thehosanna and the groaning of the saved and the lost, we shall berewarded for our faithfulness or punished for our stupidity. Blessedbe the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting, and let thewhole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen. 

CAPITAL AND LABOR. 

 "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. "--MATT. Vii: 12. 

The greatest war the world has ever seen is between capital and labor. The strife is not like that which in history is called the ThirtyYears' War, for it is a war of centuries, it is a war of the fivecontinents, it is a war hemispheric. The middle classes in thiscountry, upon whom the nation has depended for holding the balance ofpower and for acting as mediators between the two extremes, arediminishing; and if things go on at the same ratio as they are nowgoing, it will not be very long before there will be no middle classin this country, but all will be very rich or very poor, princes orpaupers, and the country will be given up to palaces and hovels. 

The antagonistic forces are closing in upon each other. Thetelegraphic operators' strikes, the railroad employés' strikes, thePennsylvania miners' strikes, the movements of the Boycotters and thedynamiters are only skirmishes before a general engagement, or, if youprefer it, escapes through the safety-valves of an imprisoned forcewhich promises the explosion of society. You may pooh-pooh it; you maysay that this trouble, like an angry child, will cry itself to sleep;you may belittle it by calling it Fourierism, or Socialism, or St. Simonism, or Nihilism, or Communism; but that will not hinder the factthat it is the mightiest, the darkest, the most terrific threat ofthis century. All attempts at pacification have been dead failures, and monopoly is more arrogant, and the trades unions more bitter. "Give us more wages, " cry the employés. "You shall have less, " say thecapitalists. "Compel us to do fewer hours of toil in a day. " "Youshall toil more hours, " say the others. "Then, under certainconditions, we will not work at all, " say these. "Then you shallstarve, " say those, and the workmen gradually using up that which theyaccumulated in better times, unless there be some radical change, weshall have soon in this country three million hungry men and women. Now, three million hungry people can not be kept quiet. All theenactments of legislatures and all the constabularies of the cities, and all the army and navy of the United States can not keep threemillion hungry people quiet. What then? Will this war between capitaland labor be settled by human wisdom? Never. The brow of the onebecomes more rigid, the fist of the other more clinched. 

But that which human wisdom can not achieve will be accomplished byChristianity if it be given full sway. You have heard of medicines sopowerful that one drop would stop a disease and restore a patient; andI have to tell you that one drop of my text properly administered willstop all those woes of society and give convalescence and completehealth to all classes. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. "

I shall first show you this morning how this quarrel between monopolyand hard work can not be stopped, and then I will show you how thiscontroversy will be settled. 

Futile remedies. In the first place, there will come no pacificationto this trouble through an outcry against rich men merely because theyare rich. There is no member of a trades-union on earth that would notbe rich if he could be. Sometimes through a fortunate invention, orthrough some accident of prosperity, a man who had nothing comes tolarge estate, and we see him arrogant and supercilious, and takingpeople by the throat just as other people took him by the throat. There is something very mean about human nature when it comes to thetop. But it is no more a sin to be rich than it is a sin to be poor. There are those who have gathered a great estate through fraud, andthen there are millionaires who have gathered their fortune throughforesight in regard to changes in the markets, and through brilliantbusiness faculty, and every dollar of their estate is as honest as thedollar which the plumber gets for mending a pipe, or the mason getsfor building a wall. There are those who keep in poverty because oftheir own fault. They might have been well-off, but they smoked orchewed up their earnings, or they lived beyond their means, whileothers on the same wages and on the same salaries went on tocompetency. I know a man who is all the time complaining of hispoverty and crying out against rich men, while he himself keeps twodogs, and chews and smokes, and is filled to the chin with whisky andbeer!

Micawber said to David Copperfield: "Copperfield, my boy, one poundincome, twenty shillings and sixpence expenses: result misery. But, Copperfield, my boy, one pound income, expenses nineteen shillings andsixpence; result, happiness. " And there are vast multitudes of peoplewho are kept poor because they are the victims of their ownimprovidence. It is no sin to be rich, and it is no sin to be poor. Iprotest against this outcry which I hear against those who, througheconomy and self-denial and assiduity, have come to large fortune. This bombardment of commercial success will never stop this quarrelbetween capital and labor. 

Neither will the contest be settled by cynical and unsympathetictreatment of the laboring classes. There are those who speak of themas though they were only cattle or draught horses. Their nerves arenothing, their domestic comfort is nothing, their happiness isnothing. They have no more sympathy for them than a hound has for ahare, or a hawk for a hen, or a tiger for a calf. When Jean Valjean, the greatest hero of Victor Hugo's writings, after a life of sufferingand brave endurance, goes into incarceration and death, they clap thebook shut and say, "Good for him!" They stamp their feet withindignation and say just the opposite of "Save the working-classes. "They have all their sympathies with Shylock, and not with Antonio andPortia. They are plutocrats, and their feelings are infernal. They arefilled with irritation and irascibility on this subject. To stop thisawful imbroglio between capital and labor they will lift not so muchas the tip end of the little finger. 

Neither will there be any pacification of this angry controversythrough violence. God never blessed murder. 

The poorest use you can put a man to is to kill him. Blow up to-morrowall the country-seats on the banks of the Hudson, and all the finehouses on Madison Square, and Brooklyn Heights, and Bunker Hill, andRittenhouse Square, and Beacon Street, and all the bricks and timberand stone will just fall back on the bare head of American labor. Theworst enemies of the working-classes in the United States and Irelandare their demented coadjutors. Assassination--the assassination ofLord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, in the attempt to avenge the wrongs of Ireland, only turnedaway from that afflicted people millions of sympathizers. The recentattempt to blow up the House of Commons, in London, had only thiseffect: to throw out of employment tens of thousands of innocent Irishpeople in England. 

In this country the torch put to the factories that have dischargedhands for good or bad reason; obstructions on the rail-track in frontof midnight express trains because the offenders do not like thepresident of the company; strikes on shipboard the hour they weregoing to sail, or in printing-offices the hour the paper was to go topress, or in mines the day the coal was to be delivered, or on housescaffoldings so the builder fails in keeping his contract--all theseare only a hard blow on the head of American labor, and cripple itsarms, and lame its feet, and pierce its heart. Take the last greatstrike in America--the telegraph operators' strike--and you have tofind that the operators lost four hundred thousand dollars' worth ofwages, and have had poorer wages ever since. Traps sprung suddenlyupon employers, and violence, never took one knot out of the knuckleof toil, or put one farthing of wages into a callous palm. Barbarismwill never cure the wrongs of civilization. Mark that!

Frederick the Great admired some land near his palace at Potsdam, andhe resolved to get it. It was owned by a miller. He offered the millerthree times the value of the property. The miller would not take it, because it was the old homestead, and he felt about as Naboth feltabout his vineyard when Ahab wanted it. Frederick the Great was arough and terrible man, and he ordered the miller into his presence;and the king, with a stick, in his hand--a stick with which hesometimes struck his officers of state--said to this miller: "Now, Ihave offered you three times the value of that property, and if youwon't sell it I'll take it anyhow. " The miller said, "Your majesty, you won't. " "Yes, " said the king, "I will take it. " "Then, " said themiller, "if your majesty does take it, I will sue you in the ChanceryCourt. " At that threat Frederick the Great yielded his infamousdemand. And the most imperious outrage against the working-classeswill yet cower before the law. Violence and contrary to the law willnever accomplish anything, but righteousness and according to law willaccomplish it. 

Well, if this controversy between Capital and Labor can not be settledby human wisdom, if to-day Capital and Labor stand with their thumbson each other's throat--as they do--it is time for us to looksomewhere else for relief, and it points from my text roseate andjubilant, and puts one hand on the broadcloth shoulder of Capital, andputs the other hand on the homespun-covered shoulder of Toil, andsays, with a voice that will grandly and gloriously settle this, andsettle everything, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, doye even so to them. " That is, the lady of the household will say: "Imust treat the maid in the kitchen just as I would like to be treatedif I were down-stairs, and it were my work to wash, and cook, andsweep, and it were the duty of the maid in the kitchen to preside inthis parlor. " The maid in the kitchen must say: "If my employer seemsto be more prosperous than I, that is no fault of hers; I shall nottreat her as an enemy. I will have the same industry and fidelitydown-stairs as I would expect from my subordinates, if I happened tobe the wife of a silk importer. "

The owner of an iron mill, having taken a dose of my text beforeleaving home in the morning, will go into his foundry, and, passinginto what is called the puddling-room, he will see a man therestripped to the waist, and besweated and exhausted with the labor andthe toil, and he will say to him: "Why, it seems to be very hot inhere. You look very much exhausted. I hear your child is sick withscarlet fever. If you want your wages a little earlier this week, soas to pay the nurse and get the medicines, just come into my officeany time. "

After awhile, crash goes the money market, and there is no more demandfor the articles manufactured in that iron mill, and the owner doesnot know what to do. He says, "Shall I stop the mill, or shall I runit on half time, or shall I cut down the men's wages?" He walks thefloor of his counting-room all day, hardly knowing what to do. Towardevening he calls all the laborers together. They stand all around, some with arms akimbo, some with folded arms, wondering what the bossis going to do now. The manufacturer says: "Men, times are very hard;I don't make twenty dollars where I used to make one hundred. Somehow, there is no demand now for what we manufacture, or but very littledemand. You see I am at vast expense, and I have called you togetherthis afternoon to see what you would advise. I don't want to shut upthe mill, because that would force you out of work, and you havealways been very faithful, and I like you, and you seem to like me, and the bairns must be looked after, and your wife will after awhilewant a new dress. I don't know what to do. "

There is a dead halt for a minute or two, and then one of the workmensteps out from the ranks of his fellows, and says: "Boss, you havebeen very good to us, and when you prospered we prospered, and now youare in a tight place and I am sorry, and we have got to sympathizewith you. I don't know how the others feel, but I propose that we takeoff twenty per cent. From our wages, and that when the times get goodyou will remember us and raise them again. " The workman looks aroundto his comrades, and says: "Boys, what do you say to this? all infavor of my proposition will say ay. " "Ay! ay! ay!" shout two hundredvoices. 

But the mill-owner, getting in some new machinery, exposes himselfvery much, and takes cold, and it settles into pneumonia, and he dies. In the procession to the tomb are all the workmen, tears rolling downtheir cheeks, and off upon the ground; but an hour before theprocession gets to the cemetery the wives and the children of thoseworkmen are at the grave waiting for the arrival of the funeralpageant. The minister of religion may have delivered an eloquenteulogium before they started from the house, but the most impressivethings are said that day by the working-classes standing around thetomb. 

That night in all the cabins of the working-people where they havefamily prayers the widowhood and the orphanage in the mansion areremembered. No glaring populations look over the iron fence of thecemetery; but, hovering over the scene, the benediction of God and manis coming for the fulfillment of the Christlike injunction, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so tothem. "

"Oh, " says some man here, "that is all Utopian, that is apocryphal, that is impossible. " No. Yesterday, I cut out of a paper this: "One ofthe pleasantest incidents recorded in a long time is reported fromSheffield, England. The wages of the men in the iron works atSheffield are regulated by a board of arbitration, by whose decisionboth masters and men are bound. For some time past the iron and steeltrade has been extremely unprofitable, and the employers can not, without much loss, pay the wages fixed by the board, which neitheremployers nor employed have the power to change. To avoid thisdifficulty, the workmen in one of the largest steel works in Sheffieldhit upon a device as rare as it was generous. They offered to work fortheir employers one week without any pay whatever. How much betterthat plan is than a strike would be. "

But you go with me and I will show you--not so far off as Sheffield, England--factories, banking-houses, storehouses, and costlyenterprises where this Christ-like injunction of my text is fullykept, and you could no more get the employer to practice an injusticeupon his men, or the men to conspire against the employer, than youcould get your right hand and your left hand, your right eye and yourleft eye, your right ear and your left ear, into physiologicalantagonism. Now, where is this to begin? In our homes, in our stores, on our farms--not waiting for other people to do their duty. Is therea divergence now between the parlor and the kitchen? Then there issomething wrong, either in the parlor or the kitchen, perhaps in both. Are the clerks in your store irate against the firm? Then there issomething wrong, either behind the counter, or in the private office, or perhaps in both. 

The great want of the world to-day is the fulfillment of thisChrist-like injunction, that which He promulgated in His sermonOlivetic. All the political economists under the arch or vault of theheavens in convention for a thousand years can not settle thiscontroversy between monopoly and hard work, between capital and labor. During the Revolutionary War there was a heavy piece of timber to belifted, perhaps for some fortress, and a corporal was overseeing thework, and he was giving commands to some soldiers as they lifted:"Heave away, there! yo heave!" Well, the timber was too heavy; theycould not get it up. There was a gentleman riding by on a horse, andhe stopped and said to this corporal, "Why don't you help them lift?That timber is too heavy for them to lift. " "No, " he said, "I won't;I am a corporal. " The gentleman got off his horse and came up to theplace. "Now, " he said to the soldiers, "all together--yo heave!" andthe timber went to its place. "Now, " said the gentleman to thecorporal, "when you have a piece of timber too heavy for the men tolift, and you want help, you send to your commander-in-chief. " It wasWashington. Now, that is about all the Gospel I know--the Gospel ofgiving somebody a lift, a lift out of darkness, a lift out of earthinto heaven. That is all the Gospel I know--the Gospel of helpingsomebody else to lift. 

"Oh, " says some wiseacre, "talk as you will, the law of demand andsupply will regulate these things until the end of time. " No, theywill not, unless God dies and the batteries of the Judgment Day arespiked, and Pluto and Proserpine, king and queen of the infernalregions, take full possession of this world. Do you know who Supplyand Demand are? They have gone into partnership, and they propose toswindle this earth and are swindling it. You are drowning. Supply andDemand stand on the shore, one on one side, the other on the otherside, of the life-boat, and they cry out to you, "Now, you pay us whatwe ask you for getting you to shore, or go to the bottom!" If you canborrow $5000 you can keep from failing in business. Supply and Demandsay, "Now, you pay us exorbitant usury, or you go into bankruptcy. "This robber firm of Supply and Demand say to you: "The crops areshort. We bought up all the wheat and it is in our bin. Now, you payour price or starve. " That is your magnificent law of supply anddemand. 

Supply and Demand own the largest mill on earth, and all the riversroll over their wheel, and into their hopper they put all the men, women, and children they can shovel out of the centuries, and theblood and the bones redden the valley while the mill grinds. Thatdiabolic law of supply and demand will yet have to stand aside, andinstead thereof will come the law of love, the law of cooperation, thelaw of kindness, the law of sympathy, the law of Christ. 

Have you no idea of the coming of such a time? Then you do not believethe Bible. All the Bible is full of promises on this subject, and asthe ages roll on the time will come when men or fortune will be givinglarger sums to humanitarian and evangelistic purposes, and there willbe more James Lenoxes and Peter Coopers and William E. Dodges andGeorge Peabodys. As that time comes there will be more parks, morepicture-galleries, more gardens thrown open for the holiday people andthe working-classes. 

I was reading only this morning in regard to a charge that had beenmade in England against Lambeth Palace, that it was exclusive; andthat charge demonstrated the sublime fact that to the grounds of thatwealthy estate eight hundred poor families have free passes, and fortycroquet companies, and on the hall-day holidays four thousand poorpeople recline on the grass, walk through the paths, and sit under thetrees. That is Gospel--Gospel on the wing, Gospel out-of-doors worthjust as much as in-doors. That time is going to come. 

That is only a hint of what is going to be. The time is going to comewhen, if you have anything in your house worth looking at--pictures, pieces of sculpture--you are going to invite me to come and see it, you are going to invite my friends to come and see it, and you willsay, "See what I have been blessed with. God has given me this, and sofar as enjoying it, it is yours also. " That is Gospel. 

In crossing the Alleghany Mountains, many years ago, the stage halted, and Henry Clay dismounted from the stage, and went out on a rock atthe very verge of the cliff, and he stood there with his cloak wrappedabout him, and he seemed to be listening for something. Some one saidto him, "What are you listening for?" Standing there, on the top ofthe mountain, he said: "I am listening to the tramp of the footstepsof the coming millions of this continent. " A sublime posture for anAmerican statesman! You and I to-day stand on the mountain-top ofprivilege, and on the Rock of Ages, and we look off, and we hearcoming from the future the happy industries, and smiling populations, and the consecrated fortunes, and the innumerable prosperities of theclosing nineteenth and the opening twentieth century. 

While I speak this morning, there lies in state the dead author andpatriot of France, Victor Hugo. The ten thousand dollars in his willhe has given to the poor of the city are only a hint of the work hehas done for all nations and for all times. I wonder not that theyallow eleven days to pass between his death and his burial, his bodymeantime kept under triumphal arch, for the world can hardly afford tolet go this man who for more than eight decades has by hisunparalleled genius blessed it. His name shall be a terror to alldespots, and an encouragement to all the struggling. He has made theworld's burden lighter, and its darkness less dense, and its chainless galling, and its thrones of iniquity less secure. Farewell, patriot, genius of the century, Victor Hugo! But he was not theovertowering friend of mankind. 

The greatest friend of capitalist and toiler, and the one who will yetbring them together in complete accord, was born one Christmas nightwhile the curtains of heaven swung, stirred by the wings angelic. Owner of all things--all the continents, all worlds, and all theislands of light. Capitalist of immensity, crossing over to ourcondition. Coming into our world, not by gate of palace, but by doorof barn. Spending His first night amid the shepherds. Gathering afteraround Him the fishermen to be His chief attendants. With adze, andsaw, and chisel, and ax, and in a carpenter-shop showing himselfbrother with the tradesmen. Owner of all things, and yet on a hillockback of Jerusalem one day resigning everything for others, keeping notso much as a shekel to pay for His obsequies, by charity buried in thesuburbs of a city that had cast Him out. Before the cross of such acapitalist, and such a carpenter, all men can afford to shake handsand worship. Here is the every man's Christ. None so high, but He washigher. None so poor, but He was poorer. At His feet the hostileextremes will yet renounce their animosities, and countenances whichhave glowered with the prejudices and revenge of centuries shallbrighten with the smile of heaven as He commands: "Whatsoever ye wouldthat men should do to you, do ye even so to them. "

DESPOTISM OF THE NEEDLE. 

 "So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. "--ECCLES. Iv: 1. 

Very long ago the needle was busy. It was considered honorable forwomen to toil in olden time. Alexander the Great stood in his palaceshowing garments made by his own mother. The finest tapestries atBayeux were made by the queen of William the Conqueror. Augustus, theEmperor, would not wear any garments except those that were fashionedby some member of his royal family. So let the toiler everywhere berespected!

The needle has slain more than the sword. When the sewing-machine wasinvented some thought that invention would alleviate woman's toil andput an end to the despotism of the needle. But no; while thesewing-machine has been a great blessing to well-to-do families inmany cases, it has added to the stab of the needle the crush of thewheel; and multitudes of women, notwithstanding the re-enforcement ofthe sewing-machines, can only make, work hard as they will, betweentwo dollars and three dollars per week. 

The greatest blessing that could have happened to our first parentswas being turned out of Eden after they had done wrong. Adam and Eve, in their perfect state, might have got along without work, or onlysuch slight employment as a perfect garden with no weeds in itdemanded. But as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them wasto be turned out where they would have to work. We know what awithering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old AshbelGreen, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said: "Ido so to keep out of mischief. " We see that a man who has a largeamount of money to start with has no chance. Of the thousandprosperous and honorable men that you know, nine hundred andninety-nine had to work vigorously at the beginning. But I am now totell you that industry is just as important for a woman's safety andhappiness. The most unhappy women in our communities to-day are thosewho have no engagements to call them up in the morning; who, oncehaving risen and breakfasted, lounge through the dull forenoon inslippers down at the heel and with disheveled hair, reading Ouida'slast novel, and who, having dragged through a wretched forenoon andtaken their afternoon sleep, and having passed an hour and a half attheir toilet, pick up their card-case and go out to make calls, andwho pass their evenings waiting for somebody to come in and break upthe monotony. Arabella Stuart never was imprisoned in so dark adungeon as that. 

There is no happiness in an idle woman. It may be with hand, it may bewith brain, it may be with foot; but work she must, or be wretchedforever. The little girls of our families must be started with thatidea. 

The curse of American society is that our young women are taught thatthe first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, tenth, fiftieth, thousandth thing in their life is to get somebody to takecare of them. Instead of that, the first lesson should be how underGod they may take care of themselves. The simple fact is that amajority of them do have to take care of themselves, and that, too, after having, through the false notions of their parents, wasted theyears in which they ought to have learned how successfully to maintainthemselves. We now and here declare the inhumanity, cruelty, andoutrage of that father and mother who pass their daughters intowomanhood, having given them no facility for earning their livelihood. Madame de Staël said: "It is not these writings that I am proud of, but the fact that I have facility in ten occupations, in any one ofwhich I could make a livelihood. " You say you have a fortune to leavethem. Oh, man and woman, have you not learned that like vultures, likehawks, like eagles, riches have wings and fly away? Though you shouldbe successful in leaving a competency behind you, the trickery ofexecutors may swamp it in a night? or some officials in our churchesmay get up a mining company and induce your orphans to put their moneyinto a hole in Colorado, and if by the most skillful machinery thesunken money can not be brought up again, prove to them, that it waseternally decreed that that was the way they were to lose it, and thatit went in the most orthodox and heavenly style. Oh, the damnableschemes that professed Christians will engage in until God puts Hisfingers into the collar of the hypocrite's robe and strips it cleardown to the bottom! You have no right, because you are well off, toconclude that your children are going to be as well off. A man diedleaving a large fortune. His son fell dead in a Philadelphiagrog-shop. His old comrades came in and said as they bent over hiscorpse: "What is the matter with you, Boggsey?" The surgeon standingover him said: "Hush ye! He is dead!" "Oh, he is dead, " they said. "Come, boys; let us go and take a drink in memory of poor Boggsey!"Have you nothing better than money to leave your children? If you havenot, but send your daughters into the world with empty brain andunskilled hand, you are guilty of assassination, homicide, regicide, infanticide. 

There are women toiling in our cities for two and three dollars perweek who were the daughters of merchant princes. These suffering onesnow would be glad to have the crumbs that once fell from theirfathers' table. That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears is thelineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gaiters in which her motherwalked; and that torn and faded calico had ancestry of magnificentbrocade that swept Broadway clean without any expense to the streetcommissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence and faresumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace tothem not to know how to work. I denounce the idea prevalent in societythat, though our young women may embroider slippers and crochet andmake mats for lamps to stand on without disgrace, the idea of doinganything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame for a youngwoman belonging to a large family to be inefficient when the fathertoils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a daughter tobe idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is as honorable tosweep the house, make beds or trim hats as it is to twist awatch-chain. 

As far as I can understand, the line of respectability lies betweenthat which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that whichis of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, itis dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doingdishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for theback of an arm-chair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buythe chair. You may with a delicate brush beautify a mantel ornament, but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may learnartistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing"Ortonville" or "Old Hundred. " Do nothing practical if you would inthe eyes of refined society preserve your respectability. I scoutthese fine notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man, has aright to occupy a place in this world unless she pays a rent for it. 

In the course of a life-time you consume whole harvests and droves ofcattle, and every day you live, breathe forty hogsheads of good, pureair. You must by some kind of usefulness pay for all this. Our racewas the last thing created--the birds and fishes on the fourth day, the cattle and lizards on the fifth day, and man on the sixth day. Ifgeologists are right, the earth was a million of years in thepossession of the insects, beasts, and birds before our race came uponit. In one sense we were innovators. The cattle, the lizards, and thehawks had pre-emption right. The question is not what we are to dowith the lizards and summer insects, but what the lizards and summerinsects are to do with us. If we want a place in this world, we mustearn it. The partridge makes its own nest before it occupies it. Thelark by its morning song earns its breakfast before it eats it, andthe Bible gives an intimation that the first duty of an idler is tostarve when it says: "If he will not work, neither shall he eat. "Idleness ruins the health; and very soon nature says: "This man hasrefused to pay his rent, out with him!" Society is to be reconstructedon the subject of woman's toil. A vast majority of those who wouldhave woman industrious shut her up to a few kinds of work. My judgmentin this matter is that a woman has a right to do anything that she cando well. There should be no department of merchandise, mechanism, art, or science barred against her. If Miss Hosmer has genius forsculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa Bonheur has a fondness fordelineating animals, let her make "The Horse Fair. " If Miss Mitchellwill study astronomy, let her mount the starry ladder. If Lydia willbe a merchant, let her sell purple. If Lucretia Mott will preach theGospel, let her thrill with her womanly eloquence the Quakermeeting-house. 

It is said, If woman is given such opportunities she will occupyplaces that might be taken by men. I say, If she have more skill andadaptedness for any position than a man has, let her have it! She hasas much right to her bread, to her apparel, and to her home, as menhave. But it is said that her nature is so delicate that she isunfitted for exhausting toil. I ask in the name of all past historywhat toil on earth is more severe, exhausting, and tremendous thanthat toil of the needle to which for ages she has been subjected? Thebattering-ram, the sword, the carbine, the battle-ax, have made nosuch havoc as the needle. I would that these living sepulchers inwhich women have for ages been buried might be opened, and that someresurrection trumpet might bring up these living corpses to the freshair and sunlight. 

Go with me and I will show you a woman who by hardest toil supportsher children, her drunken husband, her old father and mother, pays herhouse rent, always has wholesome food on her table, and when she canget some neighbor on the Sabbath to come in and take care of herfamily, appears in church with hat and cloak that are far fromindicating the toil to which she is subjected. Such a woman as thathas body and soul enough to fit her for any position. She could standbeside the majority of your salesmen and dispose of more goods. Shecould go into your wheelwright shops and beat one half of your workmenat making carriages. We talk about woman as though we had resigned toher all the light work, and ourselves had shouldered the heavier. Butthe day of judgment, which will reveal the sufferings of the stake andInquisition, will marshal before the throne of God and the hierarchsof heaven the martyrs of wash-tub and needle. Now, I say if there beany preference in occupation, let women have it. God knows her trialsare the severest. By her acuter sensitiveness to misfortune, by herhour of anguish, I demand that no one hedge up her pathway to alivelihood. Oh! the meanness, the despicability of men who begrudge awoman the right to work anywhere in any honorable calling!

I go still further and say that woman should have equal compensationwith men. By what principle of justice is it that women in many of ourcities get only two thirds as much pay as men, and in many cases onlyhalf? Here is the gigantic injustice--that for work equally well, ifnot better, done, woman receives far less compensation than man. Startwith the National Government. Women clerks in Washington get ninehundred dollars for doing that for which men receive eighteen hundreddollars. The wheel of oppression is rolling over the necks ofthousands of women who are at this moment in despair about what theyare to do. Many of the largest mercantile establishments of our citiesare accessory to these abominations, and from their largeestablishments there are scores of souls being pitched off into death, and their employers know it. Is there a God? Will there be a judgment?I tell you, if God rises up to redress woman's wrongs, many of ourlarge establishments will be swallowed up quicker than a SouthAmerican earthquake ever took down a city. God will catch theseoppressors between the two millstones of his wrath and grind them topowder. 

Why is it that a female principal in a school gets only eight hundredand twenty-five dollars for doing work for which a male principal getssixteen hundred and fifty dollars? I hear from all this land the wailof womanhood. Man has nothing to answer to that wail but flatteries. He says she is an angel. She is not. She knows she is not. She is ahuman being who gets hungry when she has no food, and cold when shehas no fire. Give her no more flatteries; give her justice! There aresixty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York and Brooklyn. Across thesunlight comes their death groan. It is not such a cry as comes fromthose who are suddenly hurled out of life, but a slow, grinding, horrible wasting-away. Gather them before you and look into theirfaces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at their fingers, needle-pricked and blood-tipped! See that premature stoop in theshoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough! At a large meetingof these women held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches weredelivered, but a needle-woman took the stand, threw aside her fadedshawl, and with her shriveled arm hurled a very thunder-bolt ofeloquence, speaking out the horrors of her own experience. 

Stand at the corner of a street in New York at six or seven o'clock inthe morning as the women go to work. Many of them had no breakfastexcept the crumbs that were left over from the night before, or thecrumbs they chew on their way through the street. Here they come! Theworking-girls of New York and Brooklyn. These engaged in head work, these in flower-making, in millinery, in paper-box making; but, mostoverworked of all and least compensated, the sewing-women. Why do theynot take the city cars on their way up? They can not afford the fivecents. If, concluding to deny herself something else, she gets intothe car, give her a seat. You want to see how Latimer and Ridleyappeared in the fire. Look at that woman and behold a more horriblemartyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing death. Ask that woman howmuch she gets for her work, and she will tell you six cents for makingcoarse shirts and find her own thread. 

Years ago, one Sabbath night in the vestibule of this church, afterservice, a woman fell in convulsions. The doctor said she neededmedicine not so much as something to eat. As she began to revive, inher delirium she said, gaspingly: "Eight cents! Eight cents! Eightcents! I wish I could get it done, I am so tired. I wish I could getsome sleep, but I must get it done. Eight cents! Eight cents! Eightcents!" We found afterward that she was making garments for eightcents apiece, and that she could make but three of them in a day. Hearit! Three times eight are twenty-four. Hear it, men and women who havecomfortable homes! Some of the worst villains of our cities are theemployers of these women. They beat them down to the last penny andtry to cheat them out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or twobefore she gets the garments to work on. When the work is done it issharply inspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and thewages refused and sometimes the dollar deposited not given back. TheWomen's Protective Union reports a case where one of the poor souls, finding a place where she could get more wages, resolved to changeemployers, and went to get her pay for work done. The employer says:"I hear you are going to leave me?" "Yes, " she said, "and I have cometo get what you owe me. " He made no answer. She said: "Are you notgoing to pay me?" "Yes, " he said, "I will pay you, " and he kicked herdown-stairs. 

Oh, that Women's Protective Union, 19 Clinton Place, New York! Theblessings of Heaven be on it for the merciful and divine work it isdoing in the defense of toiling womanhood! What tragedies of sufferingare presented to them day by day! A paragraph from their report: "'Canyou make Mr. Jones pay me? He owes me for three weeks at $2. 50 a week, and I can't get anything, and my child is very sick!' The speaker, ayoung woman lately widowed, burst into a flood of tears as she spoke. She was bidden to come again the next afternoon and repeat her storyto the attorney at his usual weekly hearing of frauds and impositions. Means were found by which Mr. Jones was induced to pay the $7. 50. "

Another paragraph from their report: "A fortnight had passed, when shemodestly hinted a desire to know how much her services were worth. 'Oh, my dear, ' he replied, 'you are getting to be one of the mostvaluable hands in the trade; you will always get the very best price. Ten dollars a week you will be able to earn very easily. ' And thegirl's fingers flew on with her work at a marvelous rate. The pictureof $10 a week had almost turned her head. A few nights later, whilecrossing the ferry, she overheard the name of her employer in theconversation of girls who stood near: 'What, John Snipes? Why, hedon't pay! Look out for him every time. He'll keep you on trial, as hecalls it, for weeks, and then he'll let you go, and get some otherfool!' And thus Jane Smith gained her warning against the swindler. But the Union held him in the toils of the law until he paid the worthof each of those days of 'trial. '"

Another paragraph: "Her mortification may be imagined when told thatone of the two five-dollar bills which she had just received for herwork was counterfeit. But her mortification was swallowed up inindignation when her employer denied having paid her the money, andinsultingly asked her to prove it. When the Protective Union hadplaced this matter in the courts, the judge said: 'You will payEleanor the amount of her claim, $5. 83, and also the costs of thecourt. '"

How are these evils to be eradicated? Some say: "Give woman theballot. " What effect such ballot might have on other questions I amnot here to discuss; but what would be the effect of female suffrageon women's wages? I do not believe that woman will ever get justice bywoman's ballot. Indeed, women oppress women as much as men do. Do notwomen, as much as men, beat down to the lowest figure the woman whosews for them? Are not women as sharp as men on washer-women andmilliners and mantua-makers? If a woman asks a dollar for her work, does not her female employer ask her if she will not take ninetycents? You say, "Only ten cents difference. " But that is sometimes thedifference between heaven and hell. Women often have lesscommiseration for women than men. If a woman steps aside from the pathof rectitude, man may forgive--woman never! Woman will never getjustice done her from woman's ballot. Neither will she get it fromman's ballot. How then? God will rise up for her. God has moreresources than we know of. The flaming sword that hung at Eden's gatewhen woman was driven out will cleave with its terrible edge heroppressors. 

But there is something for women to do. Let young people prepare toexcel in spheres of work, and they will be able after awhile to getlarger wages. Unskilled and incompetent labor must take what is given:skilled and competent labor will eventually make its own standard. Admitting that the law of supply and demand regulates these things, Icontend that the demand for skilled labor is very great and the supplyvery small. Start with the idea that work is honorable, and that youcan do some one thing better than anybody else. Resolve that, Godhelping, you will take care of yourself. If you are after awhilecalled into another relation you will all the better be qualified forit by your spirit of self-reliance, or if you are called to stay asyou are, you can be happy and self-supporting. 

Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak and woman the vine thatclimbs it; but I have seen many a tree fall that not only went downitself, but took all the vines with it. I can tell you of somethingstronger than an oak for an ivy to climb on, and that is the throne ofthe great Jehovah. Single or affianced, that woman is strong who leanson God and does her best. Many of you will go single-handed throughlife, and you will have to choose between two characters. Young woman, I am sure you will turn your back upon the useless, giggling, irresponsible nonentity which society ignominiously acknowledges to bea woman, and ask God to make you an humble, active, earnest Christian. What will become of that womanly disciple of the world? She is morethoughtful of the attitude she strikes upon the carpet than how shewill look in the judgment; more worried about her freckles than hersins; more interested in her apparel than in her redemption. Thedying actress whose life had been vicious said: "The scenecloses--draw the curtain. " Generally the tragedy comes first and thefarce afterward; but in her life it was first the farce of a uselesslife and then the tragedy of a wretched eternity. 

Compare the life and death of such a one with that of some Christianaunt that was once a blessing to your household. I do not know thatshe was ever asked to give her hand in marriage. She lived single, that, untrammeled, she might be everybody's blessing. Whenever thesick were to be visited or the poor to be provided with bread she wentwith a blessing. She could pray or sing "Rock of Ages" for any sickpauper who asked her. As she got older there were many days when shewas a little sharp, but for the most part auntie was a sunbeam--justthe one for Christmas Eve. She knew better than any one else how tofix things. Her every prayer, as God heard it, was full of everybodywho had trouble. The brightest things in all the house dropped fromher fingers. She had peculiar notions, but the grandest notion sheever had was to make you happy. She dressed well--auntie alwaysdressed well; but her highest adornment was that of a meek and quietspirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price. When she diedyou all gathered lovingly about her; and as you carried her out torest, the Sunday-school class almost covered the coffin withjaponicas; and the poor people stood at the end of the alley, withtheir aprons to their eyes, sobbing bitterly, and the man of the worldsaid, with Solomon: "Her price was above rubies;" and Jesus, as untothe maiden in Judea, commanded, "I say unto thee, Arise!"

TOBACCO AND OPIUM. 

 "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed. "--GEN. I: 11. 

The two first born of our earth were the grass-blade and the herb. They preceded the brute creation and the human family--the grass forthe animal creation, the herb for human service. The cattle came andtook possession of their inheritance, the grass-blade; man came andtook possession of his inheritance, the herb. We have the herb forfood as in case of hunger, for narcotic as in case of insomnia, foranodyne as in case of paroxysm, for stimulant as when the pulses flagunder the weight of disease. The caterer comes and takes the herb andpresents it in all styles of delicacy. The physician comes and takesthe herb and compounds it for physical recuperation. Millions ofpeople come and take the herb for ruinous physical and intellectualdelectation. The herb, which was divinely created, and for goodpurposes, has often been degraded for bad results. There is a usefuland a baneful employment of the herbaceous kingdom. 

There sprung up in Yucatan of this continent an herb that hasbewitched the world. In the fifteenth century it crossed the AtlanticOcean and captured Spain. Afterward it captured Portugal. Then theFrench embassadors took it to Paris, and it captured the FrenchEmpire. Then Walter Raleigh took it to London, and it captured GreatBritain. Nicotiana, ascribed to that genus by the botanists, but weall know it is the exhilarating, elevating, emparadising, nerve-shattering, dyspepsia-breeding, health-destroying tobacco. Ishall not in my remarks be offensively personal, because you all useit, or nearly all! I know by experience how it soothes and roseatesthe world, and kindles sociality, and I also know some of its balefulresults. I was its slave, and by the grace of God I have become itsconqueror. Tens of thousands of people have been asking the questionduring the past two months, asking it with great pathos and greatearnestness: "Does the use of tobacco produce cancerous and othertroubles?" I shall not answer the question in regard to any particularcase, but shall deal with the subject in a more general way. 

You say to me, "Did God not create tobacco?" Yes. You say to me, "Isnot God good?" Yes. Well, then, you say, "If God is good and hecreated tobacco, He must have created it for some good purpose. " Yes, your logic is complete. But God created the common sense at the sametime, by which we are to know how to use a poison and how not to useit. God created that just as He created henbane and nux vomica andcopperas and belladonna and all other poisons, whether directlycreated by Himself or extracted by man. 

That it is a poison no man of common sense will deny. A case wasreported where a little child lay upon its mother's lap and one dropfell from a pipe to the child's lip, and it went into convulsions andinto death. But you say, "Haven't people lived on in complete use ofit to old age?" Oh, yes; just as I have seen inebriates seventy yearsold. In Boston, years ago, there was a meeting in which there wereseveral centenarians, and they were giving their experience, and onecentenarian said that he had lived over a hundred years, and that heascribed it to the fact that he had refrained from the use ofintoxicating liquors. Right after him another centenarian said he hadlived over a hundred years, and he ascribed it to the fact that forthe last fifty years he had hardly seen a sober moment. It is anamazing thing how many outrages men may commit upon their physicalsystem and yet live on. In the case of the man of the jug he lived onbecause his body was pickled. In the case of the man of the pipe, helived on because his body turned into smoked liver!

But are there no truths to be uttered in regard to this great evil?What is the advice to be given to the multitude of young people whohear me this day? What is the advice you are going to give to yourchildren?

First of all, we must advise them to abstain from the use of tobaccobecause all the medical fraternity of the United States and GreatBritain agree in ascribing to this habit terrific unhealth. The menwhose life-time work is the study of the science of health say so, andshall I set up my opinion against theirs? Dr. Agnew, Dr. Olcott, Dr. Barnes, Dr. Rush, Dr. Mott, Dr. Harvey, Dr. Hosack--all the doctors, allopathic, homeopathic, hydropathic, eclectic, denounce the habit asa matter of unhealth. A distinguished physician declared he consideredthe use of tobacco caused seventy different styles of disease, and hesays: "Of all the cases of cancer in the mouth that have come under myobservation, almost in every case it has been ascribed to tobacco. "

The united testimony of all physicians is that it depresses thenervous system, that it takes away twenty-five per cent. Of thephysical vigor of this generation, and that it goes on as the yearsmultiply and, damaging this generation with accumulated curse, itstrikes other centuries. And if it is so deleterious to the body, howmuch more destructive to the mind. An eminent physician, who was thesuperintendent of the insane asylum at Northampton, Massachusetts, says: "Fully one half the patients we get in our asylum have losttheir intellect through the use of tobacco. " If it is such a bad thingto injure the body, what a bad thing, what a worse thing it is toinjure the mind, and any man of common sense knows that tobaccoattacks the nervous system, and everybody knows that the nervoussystem attacks the mind. 

Besides that, all reformers will tell you that the use of tobaccocreates an unnatural thirst, and it is the cause of drunkenness inAmerica to-day more than anything else. In all cases where you findmen taking strong drink you find they use tobacco. There are men whouse tobacco who do not take strong drink, but all who use strong drinkuse tobacco, and that shows beyond controversy there is an affinitybetween the two products. There are reformers here to-day who willtestify to you it is impossible for a man to reform from taking strongdrink until he quits tobacco. In many of the cases where men have beenreformed from strong drink and have gone back to their cups, theyhave testified that they first touched tobacco and then theysurrendered to intoxicants. 

I say in the presence of this assemblage to-day, in which there aremany physicians--and they know that what I say is true on thesubject--that the pathway to the drunkard's grave and the drunkard'shell is strewn thick with tobacco-leaves. What has been the testimonyon this subject? Is this a mere statement of a preacher whose businessit is to talk morals, or is the testimony of the world just asemphatic? What did Benjamin Franklin say? "I never saw a well man inthe exercise of common sense who would say that tobacco did him anygood. " What did Thomas Jefferson say? Certainly he is good authority. He says in regard to the culture of tobacco, "It is a cultureproductive of infinite wretchdness. " What did Horace Greeley say ofit? "It is a profane stench. " What did Daniel Webster say of it? "Ifthose men must smoke, let them take the horse-shed!" One reason whythe habit goes on from destruction to destruction is that so manyministers of the gospel take it. They smoke themselves intobronchitis, and then the dear people have to send them to Europe toget them restored from exhausting religious services! They smoke untilthe nervous system is shattered. They smoke themselves to death. Icould mention the names of five distinguished clergymen who died ofcancer of the mouth, and the doctor said, in every case, it was theresult of tobacco. The tombstone of many a minister of religion hasbeen covered all over with handsome eulogy, when, if the true epitaphhad been written, it would have said: "Here lies a man killed by toomuch cavendish!" They smoke until the world is blue, and theirtheology is blue, and everything is blue. How can a man stand in thepulpit and preach on the subject of temperance when he is indulgingsuch a habit as that? I have seen a cuspadore in a pulpit into whichthe holy man dropped his cud before he got up to read about "blessedare the pure in heart, " and to read about the rolling of sin as asweet morsel under the tongue, and to read about the unclean animalsin Leviticus that chewed the cud. 

About sixty-five years ago a student at Andover Theological Seminarygraduated into the ministry. He had an eloquence and a magnetism whichsent him to the front. Nothing could stand before him. But in a fewmonths he was put in an insane asylum, and the physician said tobaccowas the cause of the disaster. It was the custom in those days to givea portion of tobacco to every patient in the asylum. Nearly twentyyears passed along, and that man was walking the floor of his cell inthe asylum, when his reason returned, and he saw the situation, and hetook the tobacco from his mouth and threw it against the iron gate ofthe place in which he was confined, and he said: "What brought mehere? What keeps me here? Tobacco! tobacco! God forgive me, God helpme, and I will never use it again. " He was fully restored to reason, came forth, preached the Gospel of Christ for some ten years, and thenwent into everlasting blessedness. 

There are ministers of religion now in this country who are dying byinches, and they do not know what is the matter with them. They arebeing killed by tobacco. They are despoiling their influence throughtobacco. They are malodorous with tobacco. I could give one paragraphof history, and that would be my own experience. It took ten cigars tomake one sermon, and I got very nervous, and I awakened one day to seewhat an outrage I was committing upon my health by the use of tobacco. I was about to change settlement, and a generous tobacconist ofPhiladelphia told me if I would come to Philadelphia and be his pastorhe would give me all the cigars I wanted for nothing all the rest ofmy life. I halted. I said to myself, "If I smoke more than I ought tonow in these war times, and when my salary is small, what would I doif I had gratuitous and unlimited supply?" Then and there, twenty-fouryears ago, I quit once and forever. It made a new man of me. Much ofthe time the world looked blue before that, because I was lookingthrough tobacco smoke. Ever since the world has been full of sunshine, and though I have done as much work as any one of my age, God hasblessed me, it seems to me, with the best health that a man ever had. 

I say that no minister of religion can afford to smoke. Put in my handall the money expended by Christian men in Brooklyn for tobacco, and Iwill support three orphan asylums as well and as grandly as the threegreat orphan asylums already established. Put into my hand the moneyspent by the Christians of America for tobacco, and I will clothe, shelter, and feed all the suffering poor of the continent. TheAmerican Church gives a million dollars a year for the salvation ofthe heathen, and American Christians smoke five million dollars' worthof tobacco. 

I stand here to-day in the presence of a vast multitude of youngpeople who are forming their habits. Between seventeen and twenty-fiveyears of age a great many young men get on them habits in the use oftobacco that they never get over. Let me say to all my young friends, you can not afford to smoke, you can not afford to chew. You eithertake very good tobacco, or you take very cheap tobacco. If it ischeap, I will tell you why it is cheap. It is made of burdock, andlampblack, and sawdust, and colt's-foot, and plantain leaves, andfuller's earth, and salt, and alum, and lime, and a little tobacco, and you can not afford to put such a mess as that in your mouth. Butif you use expensive tobacco, do you not think it would be better foryou to take that amount of money which you are now expending for thisherb, and which you will expend during the course of your life if youkeep the habit up, and with it buy a splendid farm and make theafternoon and the evening of your life comfortable?

There are young men whose life is going out inch by inch fromcigarettes. Now, do you not think it would be well for you to listento the testimony of a merchant of New York, who said this: "In earlylife I smoked six cigars a day at six and a half cents each. Theyaveraged that. I thought to myself one day, I'll just put aside all Iconsume in cigars and all I would consume if I keep on in the habit, and I'll see what it will come to by compound interest. " And he givesthis tremendous statistic: "Last July completed thirty-nine yearssince, by the grace of God, I was emancipated from the filthy habit, and the saving amounted to the enormous sum of $29, 102. 03 by compoundinterest. We lived in the city, but the children, who had learnedsomething of the enjoyment of country life from their annual visits totheir grandparents, longed for a home among the green fields. I founda very pleasant place in the country for sale. The cigar money cameinto requisition, and I found it amounted to a sufficient sum topurchase the place, and it is mine. Now, boys, you take your choice. Smoking without a home, or a home without smoking. " This is commonsense as well as religion. 

I must say a word to my friends who smoke the best tobacco, and whocould stop at any time. What is your Christian influence in thisrespect? What is your influence upon young men? Do you not think itwould be better for you to exercise a little self-denial! Peoplewondered why George Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts, wore a cravatbut no collar. "Oh, " they said, "it is an absurd eccentricity. " Thiswas the history of the cravat without any collar: For many yearsbefore he had been talking with an inebriate, trying to persuade himto give up the habit of drinking and he said to the inebriate, "Yourhabit is entirely unnecessary. " "Ah!" replied the inebriate, "we do agreat many things that are not necessary. It isn't necessary that youshould have that collar. " "Well, " said Mr. Briggs, "I'll never wear acollar again if you will stop drinking. " "Agreed, " said the other. They joined hands in a pledge that they kept for twenty years--keptuntil death. That is magnificent. That is Gospel, practical Gospel, worthy of George Briggs, worthy of you. Self-denial for others. Subtraction from our advantage that there may be an addition tosomebody else's advantage. 

But what I have said has been chiefly appropriate for men. Now mysubject widens and shall be appropriate for both sexes. In all ages ofthe world there has been a search for some herb or flower that wouldstimulate lethargy and compose grief. Among the ancient Greeks andEgyptians they found something they called nepenthe, and the Thebanwomen knew how to compound it. If a person should chew a few of thoseleaves his grief would be immediately whelmed with hilarity. Nepenthepassed out from the consideration of the world and then came hasheesh, which is from the Indian hemp. It is manufactured from the flowers atthe top. The workman with leathern apparel walks through the field andthe exudation of the plants adheres to the leathern garments, and thenthe man comes out and scrapes off this exudation, and it is mixed witharomatics and becomes an intoxicant that has brutalized whole nations. Its first effect is sight, spectacle glorious and grand beyond alldescription, but afterward it pulls down body, mind, and soul intoanguish. 

I knew one of the most brilliant men of our time. His appearance in anewspaper column, or a book, or a magazine was an enchantment. In thecourse of a half hour he could produce more wit and more valuableinformation than any man I ever heard talk. But he chewed hasheesh. Hefirst took it out of curiosity to see whether the power said to beattached really existed. He took it. He got under the power of it. Hetried to break loose. He put his hand in the cockatrice's den to seewhether it would bite, and he found out to his own undoing. Hisfriends gathered around and tried to save him, but he could not besaved. The father, a minister of the Gospel, prayed with him andcounseled him, and out of a comparatively small salary employed thefirst medical advice of New York, Philadelphia, Edinburgh, Paris, London, and Berlin, for he was his only son. No help came. First hisbody gave way in pangs and convulsions of suffering. Then his mindgave way and he became a raving maniac. Then his soul went outblaspheming God into a starless eternity. He died at thirty years ofage. Behold the work of accursed hasheesh. 

But I must put my emphasis upon the use of opium. It is made from thewhite poppy. It is not a new discovery. Three hundred years beforeChrist we read of it; but it was not until the seventh century that ittook up its march of death, and, passing out of the curative and themedicinal, through smoking and mastication it has become the curse ofnations. In 1861 there were imported into this country one hundred andseven thousand pounds of opium. In 1880, nineteen years after, therewere imported five hundred and thirty thousand pounds of opium. In1876 there were in this country two hundred and twenty-five thousandopium-consumers. Now, it is estimated there are in the United Statesto-day six hundred thousand victims of opium. It is appalling. 

We do not know why some families do not get on. There is somethingmysterious about them. The opium habit is so stealthy, it is sodeceitful, and it is so deathful, you can cure a hundred men ofstrong drink where you can cure one opium-eater. 

I have knelt down in this very church by those who were elegant inapparel, and elegant in appearance, and from the depths of their soulsand from the depths of my soul, we cried out for God's rescue. Somehowit did not come. In many a household only the physician and pastorknow it--the physician called in for physical relief, the pastorcalled in for spiritual relief, and they both fail. The physicianconfesses his defeat, the minister of religion confesses his defeat, for somehow God does not seem to hear a prayer offered for anopium-eater. His grace is infinite, and I have been told there arecases of reformation. I never saw one. I say this not to wound thefeelings of any who may feel this awful grip, but to utter a potentwarning that you stand back from that gate of hell. Oh, man, oh, woman, tampering with this great evil, have you fallen back on this asa permanent resource because of some physical distress or mentalanguish? Better stop. The ecstasies do not pay for the horrors. TheParadise is followed too soon by the Pandemonium. Morphia, a blessingof God for the relief of sudden pang and of acute dementia, misappropriated and never intended for permanent use. 

It is not merely the barbaric fanatics that are taken down by it. Didyou ever read De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium-Eater?" He saysthat during the first ten years the habit handed to him all the keysof Paradise, but it would take something as mighty as De Quincey's pento describe the consequent horrors. There is nothing that I have everread about the tortures of the damned that seemed more horrible thanthose which De Quincey says he suffered. Samuel Taylor Coleridge firstconquered the world with his exquisite pen, and then was conquered byopium. The most brilliant, the most eloquent lawyer of the nineteenthcentury went down under its power, and there is a vast multitude ofmen and women--but more women than men--who are going into the dungeonof that awful incarceration. 

The worst thing about it is, it takes advantage of one's weakness. DeQuincey says: "I got to be an opium-eater on account of myrheumatism. " Coleridge says: "I got to be an opium-eater on account ofmy sleeplessness. " For what are you taking it? For God's sake do nottake it long. The wealthiest, the grandest families going down underits power. Twenty-five thousand victims of opium in Chicago. Twenty-five thousand victims of opium in St. Louis, and, according tothat average, seventy-five thousand victims of opium in New York andBrooklyn. 

The clerk of a drug store says: "I can tell them when they come in;there is something about their complexion, something about theirmanner, something about the look of their eyes that shows they arevictims. " Some in the struggle to get away from it try chloral. Wholetons of chloral manufactured in Germany every year. Baron Liebig sayshe knows one chemist in Germany who manufactures a half ton of chloralevery week. Beware of hydrate of chloral. It is coming on with mightytread to curse these cities. But I am chiefly under this head speakingof the morphine. The devil of morphia is going to be in this country, in my opinion, mightier than the devil of alcohol. By the power of theChristian pulpit, by the power of the Christianized printing-press, bythe power of the Lord God Almighty, all these evils are going to beextirpated--all, all, and you have a work in regard to that, and Ihave a work. But what we do we had better do right away. The clockticks now, and we hear it; after awhile the clock will tick and wewill not hear it. 

I sat at a country fireside, and I saw the fire kindle and blaze, andgo out. I sat long enough at that fireside to get a good manypractical reflections, and I said: "That is like human life, that fireon the hearth. " We put on the fagots and they blaze up, and out, andon, and the whole room is filled with the light, gay of sparkle, gayof flash, gay of crackle. Emblem of boyhood. Now the fire intensifies. Now the flame reddens into coals. Now the heat is becoming more andmore intense, and the more it is stirred the redder is the coal. Nowwith one sweep of flame it cleaves the way, and all the hearth glowswith the intensity. Emblem of full manhood. Now the coals begin towhiten. Now the heat lessens. Now the flickering shadows die along thewall. Now the fagots fall apart. Now the household hover over theexpiring embers. Now the last breath of smoke is lost in the chimney. The fire is out. Shovel up the white remains. Ashes! Ashes!

WHY ARE SATAN AND SIN PERMITTED?

 "Wherefore do the wicked live?"--JOB xxi: 7, Poor Job! With tusks and horns and hoofs and stings, all themisfortunes of life seemed to come upon him at once. Bankruptcy, bereavement, scandalization, and eruptive disease so irritating thathe had to re-enforce his ten finger-nails with pieces of earthenwareto scratch himself withal. His wife took the diagnosis of hiscomplaints and prescribed profanity. She thought he would feel betterif between the paroxysms of grief and pain he would swear a little. For each boil a plaster of objurgation. 

Probably no man was ever more tempted to take the bad advice thanwhen, at last, Job's three exasperating friends came in, Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad, practically saying to him, "You old sinner, servesyou right; you are a hypocrite; what a sight you are! God has sentthese chastisements for your wickedness. "

The disfigured invalid, putting down the pieces of broken saucer withwhich he had been rubbing his arms, with swollen eyelids looks up andsays to his garrulous friends in substance, "The most wicked peoplesometimes have the best health and are the most prospered, " and thenin that connection hurls the question which every man and woman hasasked in some juncture of affairs, "Wherefore do the wicked live?"

They build up fortunes that overshadow the earth. They confound allthe life-insurance tables on the subject of longevity, dyingoctogenarians, perhaps nonagenarians, possibly centenarians. Ahab inthe palace, Naboth in the cabinet. Unclean Herod on the throne, consecrated Paul twisting ropes for tent-making. Manasseh, the worstof all the kings of Juda, living longer than any of them. While thegeneral rule is the wicked do not live out half their days, there areexceptions where they live on to great age and in a Paradise of beautyand luxuriance, and die with a whole college of physicians expendingits skill in trying further prolongation of life, and have a funeralwith casket under mountain of calla-lilies, the finest equipages ofthe city jingling and flashing into line, the poor, angle-worm of thedust carried out to its hole in the ground with the pomp that mightmake a spirit from some other world suppose that the Archangel Michaelwas dead. 

Go up among the finest residences of the city, and on some of thedoor-plates you will find the names of those mightiest for commercialand social iniquity. They are the vampires of society--they are thegorgons of the century. Some of these men have each wheel of theircarriage a juggernaut wet with the blood of those sacrificed to theiravarice. Some of them are like Caligula, who wished that all thepeople had only one neck that he might strike it off at one blow. Oh, the slain, the slain! A long procession of usurers and libertines andinfamous quacks and legal charlatans and world-grabbing monsters. Whatapostleship of despoliation! Demons incarnate. Hundreds of menconcentering all their energies of body, mind, and soul in oneprolonged, ever-intensifying, and unrelenting effort to scald andscarify and blast and consume the world. I do not blame you for askingme the quivering, throbbing, burning, resounding, appalling questionof my text, "Wherefore do the wicked live?"

In the first place, they live to demonstrate beyond all controversythe long-suffering patience of God. You sometimes say, under somegreat affront, "I will not stand it;" but perhaps you are compelled tostand it. God, with all the batteries of omnipotence loaded withthunderbolts, stands it century after century. I have no doubtsometimes an angel comes to Him and suggests, "Now is the time tostrike. " "No, " says God; "wait a year, wait twenty years, wait acentury, wait five centuries. " What God does is not so wonderful aswhat He does not do. He has the reserve corps with which He couldstrike Mormonism and Mohammedanism and Paganism from the earth in aday. He could take all the fraud in New York on the west side ofBroadway and hurl it into the Hudson, and all the fraud on the eastside of Broadway and hurl it into the East River in an hour. Heunderstands the combination lock of every dishonest money-safe, andcould blow it up quicker than by any earthly explosive. Written allover the earth, written all over history are the words, "Divineforbearance, divine leniency, divine long-suffering. "

I wonder that God did not burn this world up two thousand years ago, scattering its ashes into immensity, its aerolites dropping intoother worlds to be kept in their museums as specimens of a defunctplanet. People sometimes talk of God as though He were hasty in Hisjudgments and as though He snapped men up quick. Oh, no! He waited onehundred and twenty years for the people to get into the ark, andwarned them all the time--one hundred and twenty years, then the floodcame. The Anchor Line gives only a month's announcement of the sailingof the "Circassia, " the White Star Line gives only a month'sannouncement of the sailing of the "Britannic, " the Cunard Line givesonly a month's announcement of the sailing of the "Oregon;" but of thesailing of that ship that Noah commanded God gave one hundred andtwenty years' announcement and warning. Patience antediluvian, patience postdiluvian, patience in times Adamic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, Pauline, Lutheran, Whitefieldian. Patience with men andnations. Patience with barbarisms and civilizations. Six thousandyears of patience! Overtopping attribute of God, all of whoseattributes are immeasurable. Why do the wicked live? That theiroverthrow may be the more impressive and climacteric. They must pileup their mischief until all the community shall see it, until thenation shall see it, until all the world shall see it. The higher itgoes up the harder it will come down and the grander will be thedivine vindication. 

God will not allow sin to sneak out of the world. God will not allowit merely to resign and quit. This shall not be a case that goes bydefault because no one appears against it. God will arraign it, handcuff it, try it, bring against it the verdict of all the good, andthen gibbet it so high up that if one half of the gibbet stood onMount Washington and the other on the Himalaya, it would not be anymore conspicuous. 

About fifteen years ago we had in this country a most illustriousinstance of how God lets a man go on in iniquity, so that at the closeof the career his overthrow may be the more impressive, full ofwarning and climacteric. First, an honest chairmaker, then analderman, then a member of congress, then a supervisor of a city, thenschool commissioner, then state senator, then commissioner of publicworks--on and up, stealing thousands of dollars here and thousands ofdollars there, until the malfeasance in office overtopped anything theworld had ever seen--making the new Court House in New York a monumentof municipal crime, and rushing the debt of the city from thirty-sixmillion dollars to ninety-seven millions. Now, he is at the top ofmillionairedom. 

Country-seat terraced and arbored and parterred clear to the water'sbrink. Horses enough to stock a king's equerry. Grooms and postilionsin full rig. Wine cellars enough to make a whole legislature drunk. New York finances and New York politics in his vest pocket. He winked, and men in high place fell. He lifted his little finger, andignoramuses took important office. He whispered, and in Albany andWashington they said it thundered. Wider and mightier and more balefulhis influence, until it seemed as if Pandemonium was to be adjournedto this world, and in the Satanic realm there was to be a change ofadministration, and Apollyon, who had held dominion so long, shouldhave a successful competitor. 

To bring all to a climax, a wedding came in the house of that man. Diamonds as large as hickory nuts. A pin of sixty diamondsrepresenting sheaves of wheat. Musicians in a semicircle, half-hiddenby a great harp of flowers. Ships of flowers. Forty silver sets, oneof them with two hundred and forty pieces. One wedding-dress that costfive thousand dollars. A famous libertine, who owned several LongIsland Sound steamboats, and not long before he was shot for hiscrimes, sent as a wedding present to that house a frosted silvericeberg, with representations of arctic bears walking onicicle-handles and ascending the spoons. Was there ever such aconvocation of pictures, bronzes, of bric-à-brac, of grandeurs, socialgrandeurs? The highest wave of New York splendor rolled into thathouse and recoiled perhaps never again to rise so high. But just atthat time, when all earthly and infernal observation was concenteredon that man, eternal justice, impersonated by that wonder of theAmerican bar, Charles O'Connor, got on the track of the offender. First arraignment, then sentence to twelve years' imprisonment undertwelve indictments, then penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, then alawsuit against him for six million dollars, then incarceration inLudlow Street jail, then escape to foreign land, to be brought backunder the stout grip of the constabulary, then dying of broken heartin a prison cell. God allowed him to go on in iniquity until all theworld saw as never before that "the way of the transgressor is hard, "and that dishonesty will not declare permanent dividends, and that youhad better be an honest chairmaker with a day's wages at a time thana brilliant commissioner of public works, all your pockets crammedwith plunder. 

What a brilliant figure in history is William the Conqueror, theintimidator of France, of Anjou, of Brittany, victor at Hastings, snatching the crown of England and setting it on his own brow, destroying homesteads that he might have a larger game forest, makinga Doomsday Book by which he could keep the whole land under despoticespionage, proclaiming war in revenge for a joke uttered in regard tohis obesity. Harvest fields and vineyards going down under the cavalryhoof. Nations horror-struck. But one day while at the apex of allobservation he is riding out and the horse put his hoof on a hotcinder, throwing the king so violently against the pommel of thesaddle that he dies, his son hastening to England to get the crownbefore the breath has left his father's body. 

The imperial corpse drawn by a cart, most of the attendants leaving itin the street because of a fire alarm that they might go off and seethe conflagration. And just as they are going to put his body down inthe church which he had built, a man stepping up and saying, "Bishop, the man you praise is a robber. This church stands on my father'shomestead. The property on which this church is built is mine. Ireclaim my right. In the name of Almighty God I forbid you to bury theking here, or to cover him with my glebe. " "Go up, " said the ambitionof William the Conqueror. "Go up by conquest, go up by throne, go upin the sight of all nations, go up by cruelties. " But one day Godsaid, "Come down, come down by the way of a miserable death, come downby the way of an ignominious obsequies, come down in the sight of allnations, come clear down, come down forever. " And you and I see thesame thing on a smaller scale many and many a time--illustrations ofthe fact that God lets the wicked live that He may make theiroverthrow the more climacteric. 

What is true in regard to sin is true in regard to its author, Satan, called Abaddon, called the Prince of the Power of the Air, called theserpent, called the dragon. It seems to me any intelligent man mustadmit that there is a commander-in-chief of all evil. 

The Persians called him Ahriman, the Hindus called him Siva. He wasrepresented on canvas as a mythological combination of Thor andCerberus and Pan and Vulcan and other horrible addenda. I do not carewhat you call him, that monster of evil is abroad, and his one work isdestruction. John Milton almost glorified him by witchery ofdescription, but he is the concentration of all meanness and of alldespicability. My little child, seven years of age, said to her motherone day, "Why don't God kill the devil at once, and have done withit?" In less terse phrase we have all asked the same question. TheBible says he is to be imprisoned and he is to be chained down. Whynot heave the old miscreant into his dungeon now? Does it not seem asif his volume of infamy were complete? Does it not seem as if the lastfifty years would make an appropriate peroration? No; God will let himgo on to the top of all bad endeavor, and then when all the earth andall constellations and galaxies and all the universe are watching, Godwill hurl him down with a violence and ghastliness enough to persuadefive hundred eternities that a rebellion against God must perish. Godwill not do it by piecemeal, God will not do it by small skirmish. Hewill wait until all the troops are massed, and then some day when indefiant and confident mood, at the head of his army, this Goliath ofhell stalks forth, our champion, the son of David, will strike himdown, not with smooth stones from the brook, but with fragments fromthe Rock of Ages. But it will not be done until this giant of evil andhis holy antagonist come out within full sight of the two greatarmies. The tragedy is only postponed to make the overthrow moreimpressive and climacteric. Do not fret. If God can afford to wait youcan afford to wait. God's clock of destiny strikes only once in athousand years. Do not try to measure events by the second-hand onyour little time-piece. Sin and Satan go on only that their overthrowmay at last be the more terrific, the more impressive, the moreresounding, the more climacteric. 

Why do the wicked live? In order that they may build up fortresses forrighteousness to capture. Have you not noticed that God harnesses men, bad men, and accomplishes good through them? Witness Cyrus, witnessNebuchadnezzar, witness the fact that the Bastile of oppression waspried open by the bayonets of a bad man. Recently there came to me thefact that a college had been built at the Far West for infidelpurposes. There was to be no nonsense of chapel prayers, no Biblereading there. All the professors there were pronounced infidels. Thecollege was opened, and the work went on, but, of course, failed. Notlong ago a Presbyterian minister was in a bank in that village onpurposes of business, and he heard in an adjoining room the board oftrustees of that college discussing what they had better do with theinstitution, as it did not get on successfully, and one of thetrustees proposed that it be handed over to the Presbyterians, prefacing the word Presbyterians with a very unhappy expletive. Theresolutions were passed, and that fortress of infidelity has become afortress of old-fashioned, orthodox religion, the only religion thatwill be worth a snap of your finger when you come to die or appear inthe Day of Judgment. The devil built the college. Righteousnesscaptured it. 

In some city there goes up a great club-house--the architecture, thefurniture, all the equipment a bedazzlement of wealth. That particularclub-house is designed to make gambling and dissipation respectable. 

Do not fret. That splendid building will after a while be a freelibrary, or it will be a hospital, or it will be a gallery of pureart. Again and again observatories have been built by infidelity, andthe first thing you know they go into the hand of Christian science. God said in the Bible that He would put a hook in Sennacherib's noseand pull him down by a way he knew not. And God has a hook to-day inthe nose of every Sennacherib of infidelity and sin, and will drag himabout as He will. Marble halls deserted to sinful amusements will yetbe dedicated for religious assemblage. All these castles of sin are tobe captured for God as we go forth with the battle-shout that OliverCromwell rang out at the head of his troops as he rode in on the fieldof Naseby: "Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered!" After agreat fire in London, amid the ruins there was nothing left but anarch with the name of the architect upon it; and, my friends, whateverelse goes down, God stays up. 

Why do the wicked live? That some of them may be monuments of mercy. 

So it was with John Newton, so it was with Augustine, perhaps so itwas with you. Chieftains of sin to become chieftains of grace. Paul, the apostle, made out of Saul, the persecutor. Baxter, the flamingevangel, made out of Baxter, the blasphemer. Whole squadrons, withstreamers of Emmanuel floating from the masthead, though once theywere launched from the dry-docks of diabolism. God lets these wickedmen live that He may make jewels out of them for coronets, that He maymake tongues of fire out of them for Pentecosts, that He may makewarriors out of them for Armageddons, that he may make conquerors outof them for the day when they shall ride at the head of thewhite-horse host in the grand review of the resurrection. 

Why do the wicked live? To make it plain beyond all controversy thatthere is another place of adjustment. So many of the bad up, so manyof the good down. It seems to me that no man can look abroad withoutsaying--no man of common sense, religious or irreligious, can lookabroad without saying, "There must be some place where brilliantscoundrelism shall be arrested, where innocence shall get out fromunder the heel of despotism. " Common fairness as well as eternaljustice demands it. 

We adjourn to the great assizes, the stupendous injustices of thislife. They are not righted here. There must be some place where theywill be righted. God can not afford to omit the judgment day or thereconstruction of conditions. For you can not make me believe thatthat man stuffed with all abomination, having devoured widows' housesand digested them, looking with basilisk or tigerish eyes upon hisfellows, no music so sweet to him as the sound of breaking hearts, is, at death, to get out of the landau at the front door of the sepulcherand pass right on through to the back door of the sepulcher, and finda celestial turnout waiting for him, so that he can drive tandem rightup primrosed hills, one glory riding as lackey ahead, and anotherglory riding as postilion behind, while that poor woman who supportedher invalid husband and her helpless children by taking in washing andironing, often putting her hand to her side where the canceroustrouble had already begun, and dropping dead late on Saturday nightwhile she was preparing the garments for the Sabbath day, coming afootto the front door of the sepulcher, shall pass through to the backdoor of the sepulcher and find nothing waiting, no one to welcome, noone to tell her the way to the King's gate. I will not believe it. Solomon was confounded in his day by what he represents as princesafoot and beggars a-horseback, but I tell you there must be a placeand a time when the right foot will get into the stirrup. Todemonstrate beyond all controversy that there is another place foradjustment, God lets the wicked live. 

Why do the wicked live? For the same reason that He lets us live--tohave time for repentance. 

Where would you and I have been if sin had been followed by immediatecatastrophe? While the foot of Christ is fleet as that of a roebuckwhen He comes to save, it does seem as if he were hoppled with greatlanguors and infinite lethargies when He comes to punish. Oh, Icelebrate God's slowness, God's retardation, God's putting off theretribution! Do you not think, my brother, it would be a great dealbetter for us to exchange our impatient hypercriticism of Providencebecause this man, by watering of stock, makes a million dollars in oneday, and another man rides on in one bloated iniquity year afteryear--would it not be better for us to exchange that impatienthypercriticism for gratitude everlasting that God let us who werewicked live, though we deserved nothing but capsize and demolition?Oh, I celebrate God's slowness! The slower the rail-train comes thebetter, if the drawbridge is off. 

How long have you, my brother, lived unforgiven? Fifteen, twenty, forty, sixty years? Lived through great awakenings, lived throughdomestic sorrow, lived through commercial calamity, lived throughprovidential crises that startled nations, and you are living yet, strangers to God, and with no hope for a great future into which youmay be precipitated. Oh, would it not be better for us to get ournature through the Grace of Christ revolutionized and transfigured?For I want you to know that God sometimes changes His gait, andinstead of the deliberate tread He is the swift witness, and sometimesthe enemies of God are suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy. 

Make God your ally. What an offer that is! Do not fight against Him. Do not contend against your best interests. Yield this morning to thebest impulse of your heart, and that is toward Christ and heaven. Donot fight the Lord that made you and offers to redeem you. 

Philip of France went out with his army, with bows and arrows, tofight King Edward III. Of England; but just as they got into thecritical moment of the battle, a shower of rain came and relaxed thebow-strings so that they were of no effect, and Philip and his armywere worsted. And all your weaponry against God will be as nothingwhen he rains upon you discomfiture from the heavens. Do not fight theLord any longer. Change allegiance. Take down the old flag of sin, runup the new flag of grace. It does not take the Lord Jesus Christ thethousandth part of a second to convert you if you will only surrender, be willing to be saved. The American Congress was in anxiety duringthe Revolutionary War while awaiting to hear news from the conflictbetween Washington and Cornwallis, and the anxiety became intense andalmost unbearable as the days went by. When the news came at last thatCornwallis had surrendered and the war was practically over, so greatwas the excitement that the doorkeeper of the House of Congressdropped dead from joyful excitement. And if this long war between yoursoul and God should come to an end this morning by your entiresurrender, the war forever over, the news would very soon reach theheavens, and nothing but the supernatural health of your loved onesbefore the throne would keep them from being prostrated with overjoyat the cessation of all spiritual hostilities. 

THE END.