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

That process of inebriation, warning, and dissolution is going on within stone's throw of this church, going on in all the neighborhoods of Christendom. Pain does not correct. Suffering does not reform. What is 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, and you will find that the vast majority of the incarcerated have been there before, some of them four, five, six times. With a million illustrations all working the other way in this world, people are expecting that distress in the next state will be salvatory. You can not imagine any worse torture in any other world than that which some men have suffered here, and without any salutary consequence.

Furthermore, the prospect of a reformation in the next world is more improbable than a reformation here. In this world the life started with innocence of infancy. In the case supposed the other life will open 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 out of an old hulk that has been ground up in the breakers. If with innocence to start with in this life a man does not become godly, what prospect is there that in the next world, starting with sin, there would be a seraph evoluted? Surely the sculptor has more prospect of making a fine statue out of a block of pure white Parian marble than out of an old black rock seamed and cracked with the storms of a half century. Surely upon a clean, white sheet of paper it is easier to write a deed or a will than upon a sheet of paper all scribbled and blotted and torn from top to bottom. Yet men seem to think that, though the life that began here comparatively perfect turned out badly, the next life will succeed, though it starts with a dead failure.

"But," says some one, "I think we ought to have a chance in the next life, because this life is so short it allows only small opportunity. We hardly have time to turn around between cradle and tomb, the wood of the one almost touching the marble of the other." But do you know what made the ancient deluge a necessity? It was the longevity of the antediluvians. They were worse in the second century of their life-time than in the first hundred years, and still worse in the third century, and still worse all the way on to seven, eight, and nine hundred years, and the earth had to be washed, and scrubbed, and soaked, and anchored, clear out of sight for more than a month before it could be made fit for decent people to live in. Longevity never cures impenitency. All the pictures of Time represent him with a scythe to cut, but I never saw any picture of Time with a case of medicines to heal. Seneca says that Nero for the first five years of his 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 a suicide. If eight hundred years did not make antediluvians any better, but only made them worse, the ages of eternity could have no effect except prolongation of depravity.

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

Poneropolis was a city where King Philip of Thracia put all the bad people of his kingdom. If any man had opened a primary school at Poneropolis I do not think the parents from other cities would have sent their children there. Instead of amendment in the other world, all the associations, now that the good are evolved, will be degenerating and down. You would not want to send a man to a cholera or yellow fever hospital for his health; and the great lazaretto of the next world, containing the diseased and plague-struck, will be a poor place for moral recovery. If the surroundings in this world were crowded of temptation, the surroundings of the next world, after the righteous have passed up and on, will be a thousand per cent. more crowded of temptation.

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

Furthermore, it would not be safe for this world if men had another chance in the next. If it had been announced that, however wickedly a man might act in this world, he could fix it up all right in the next, society would be terribly demoralized, and the human race demolished in a few years. The fear that, if we are bad and unforgiven here, it will not be well for us in the next existence, is the chief influence that keeps civilization from rushing back to semi-barbarism, and semi-barbarism from rushing into midnight savagery, and midnight savagery from extinction; for it is the astringent impression of all nations, Christian and heathen, that there is no future chance for those 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, and inebriation, and uncleanness, and revenge, and all sensualities, and wait upon me! My life may be somewhat shortened in this world by dissoluteness, but that will only make heavenly indulgence on a larger scale the sooner possible. I will overtake the saints at last, and will enter the Heavenly Temple only a little later than those who behaved themselves here. I will on my way to heaven take a little wider excursion than those who were on earth pious, and I shall go to heaven via Gehenna and via Sheol." Another chance in the next world means free license and wild abandonment in this.

Suppose you were a party in an important case at law, and you knew from consultation with judges and attorneys that it would be tried twice, and the first trial would be of little importance, but that the second would decide everything; for which trial would you make the most preparation, for which retain the ablest attorneys, for which be most anxious about the attendance of witnesses? You would put all the stress upon the second trial, all the anxiety, all the expenditure, saying, "The first is nothing, the last is everything." Give the race assurance 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 pitched off into impiety and godlessness.

Furthermore, let me ask why a chance should be given in the next world if we have refused innumerable chances in this? Suppose you give a banquet, and you invite a vast number of friends, but one man declines to come, or treats your invitation with indifference. You in the course of twenty years give twenty banquets, and the same man is invited to them all, and treats them all in the same obnoxious way. After awhile you remove to another house, larger and better, and you again invite your friends, but send no invitation to the man who declined or neglected the other invitations. Are you to blame? Has he a right to expect to be invited after all the indignities he has done you? 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 and sixty-five days of every year since we knew our right hand from our left. If we declined it every time, or treated the invitation with indifference, and gave twenty or forty or fifty years of indignity on our part toward the Banqueter, and at last He spreads the banquet in a more luxurious and kingly place, amid the heavenly gardens, have we a right to expect Him to invite us again, and have we a right to blame Him if He does not invite us?

If twelve gates of salvation stood open twenty years or fifty years for our admission, and at the end of that time they are closed, can we complain of it and say, "These gates ought to be open again. Give us another chance"? If the steamer is to sail for Hamburg, and we want to get to Germany by that line, and we read in every evening and every morning newspaper that it will sail on a certain day, for two weeks we have that advertisement before our eyes, and then we go down to the docks 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 this way. Swing up to the dock again, and throw out planks, and let me come on board." Such behavior would invite arrest as a madman.

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

You see that this idea lifts this world up from an unimportant way-station to a platform of stupendous issues, and makes all eternity whirl around this hour. But one trial for which all the preparation must be made in this world, or never made at all. That piles up all the emphases and all the climaxes and all the destinies into life here. No other chance! Oh, how that augments the value and the importance of this chance!

Alexander with his army used to surround a city, and then would lift a great light in token to the people that, if they surrendered before that light went out, all would be well; but if once the light went out, then the battering-rams would swing against the wall, and demolition and disaster would follow. Well, all we need do for our present and everlasting safety is to make surrender to Christ, the King and Conqueror—surrender of our hearts, surrender of our lives, surrender of everything. And He keeps a great light burning, light of Gospel invitation, light kindled with the wood of the cross and flaming up against the dark night of our sin and sorrow. Surrender while that great light continues to burn, for after it goes out there will be no other opportunity of making peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Talk of another chance! Why, this is a supernal chance!

In the time of Edward the Sixth, at the battle of Musselburgh, a private 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 the head of the private soldier uncovered, he was soon slain, while his commander rode safely out of the battle. But in our case, instead of a private soldier offering helmet to an earl, it is a King putting His crown 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. Tell it to all earth and heaven. Tell it to all centuries, all ages, all millenniums, that we have such a magnificent chance in this world that we need no other chance in the next.

I am in the burnished Judgment Hall of the Last Day. A great white throne is lifted, but the Judge has not yet taken it. While we are waiting for His arrival I hear immortal spirits in conversation. "What are you waiting here for?" says a soul that went up from Madagascar to a soul that ascended from America. The latter says: "I came from America, where forty years I heard the Gospel preached, and Bible read, and from the prayer that I learned in infancy at my mother's knee 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 the Judge to give me a new trial and another chance." "Strange!" says the other; "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 to one who had great brain, and silvery tongue, and scepters of influence. The latter responds: "Oh, I knew more than my fellows. I mastered libraries, and had learned titles from colleges, and my name was 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 the feeble earthly capacity; "I knew but little of worldly knowledge, but I knew Christ, and made Him my partner, and I have no need of another chance."

Now the ground trembles with the approaching chariot. The great folding-doors of the Hall swing open. "Stand back!" cry the celestial ushers. "Stand back, and let the Judge of quick and dead pass through!" He takes the throne, and, looking over the throng of nations, He says: "Come to judgment, the last judgment, the only judgment!" By one flash from the throne all the history of each one flames forth to the vision of himself and all others. "Divide!" says the Judge to the assembly. "Divide!" echo the walls. "Divide!" cry the guards angelic.

And now the immortals separate, rushing this way and that, and after awhile there is a great aisle between them, and a great vacuum widening and widening, and the Judge, turning to the throng on one side, says: "He that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still;" and then, turning toward the throng on the opposite side, He says: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still, and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still;" and then, lifting one hand toward each group, He declares: "If the tree fall toward the south or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be." And then I hear something jar with a great sound. It is the closing of the Book of Judgment. The Judge ascends the stairs behind the throne. The hall of the last assize is cleared 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 similitudes in Ossian or the Iliad or the Odyssey so daring. Its imagery sometimes seems on the verge of the reckless, but only seems so. The fact is that God would startle and arouse and propel men and nations. A tame and limping similitude would fail to accomplish the object. While there are times when He employs in the Bible the gentle dew and the morning cloud and the dove and the daybreak in the presentation of truth, 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 seasons of mourning and humiliation, but the razor was always a suggestive symbol. David says of Doeg, his antagonist: "Thy tongue is a sharp razor working deceitfully;" that is, it pretends to clear the face, but is really used for deadly incision. In this morning's text the weapon of the toilet appears under the following circumstances: Judea needed to have some of its prosperities cut off, and God sends against it three Assyrian kings—first Sennacherib, then Esrahaddon, and afterward Nebuchadnezzar. Those three sharp invasions, that cut down the glory of Judea, are compared to so many sweeps of the razor across the face of the land. And these circumstances were called a hired razor because God took the kings of Assyria, with whom He had no sympathy, to do the work, and paid them in palaces and spoils and annexations. These kings were hired to execute the divine behests. And now the text, which on its first reading may have seemed trivial or inapt, is charged with momentous import: "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."

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

Some of the most wicked business men succeed, and they live and die in prosperity, and some of the most honest and conscientious are driven into bankruptcy. Perhaps his manner was unfortunate, and he was not really as proud as he looked to be. Some of those who carry their head erect and look imperial are humble as a child, while many a man in seedy 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 in business, for there are two sides to every story, and everybody that accomplishes anything for himself or others gets industriously lied about. Perhaps his business misfortune was not a punishment, but the fatherly discipline to prepare him for heaven, and God may love him far more than He loves you, who can pay dollar for dollar, and are put down in the commercial catalogues as A1. Whom the Lord loveth He gives four hundred thousand dollars and lets die on embroidered pillows? No: whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. Better keep your hand off the Lord'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 heart do 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 are unfortunate, say: "I told you so—getting punished—served him right." If those I-told-you-so's got their desert they would long ago have been pitched over the battlements. The mote in their neighbor's eyes—so small that it takes a microscope to find it—gives them more trouble than the beam which obscures their own optics. With air sometimes supercilious and sometimes Pharisaical, and always blasphemous, they take the razor of the divine judgment and sharpen it on the hone of their own hard hearts, and then go to work on men sprawled out at full length under disaster, cutting mercilessly. They begin 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 wrong one, remembering the servant of King William Rufus who shot at a deer, but the arrow glanced against a tree and killed the king. Instead of going out with shafts to pierce, and razors to cut, we had better imitate the friend of Richard Coeur de Lion, who, in the war of the Crusades, was captured and imprisoned, but none of his friends knew where. So his loyal friend went around the land from stronghold to stronghold, and sung at each window a snatch of song that Richard Coeur de Lion had taught him in other days. And one day, coming before a jail where he suspected his king might be incarcerated, he sung two lines of song, and immediately King Richard responded from his cell with the other two lines, and so his whereabouts were discovered, and immediately a successful movement was made for his liberation. So let us go up and down the world with the music of kind words and sympathetic hearts, serenading the unfortunate, and trying to get out of trouble men who had noble natures, but, by unforeseen circumstances, have been incarcerated, thus liberating kings. More hymn-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 are barren of virtues. No weeds verily, but no flowers. I must not be too much enraged at a nettle along the fence if it be in a field containing forty acres of ripe Michigan wheat. At the present time, naturalists tell us, there is on the sun a spot twenty thousand miles long, but from the brightness and warmth I conclude it is a good deal of a sun yet.

Again, when I read in my text that the Lord shaves with the hired razor of Assyria the land of Judea, I bethink myself of the precision of God's providence. A razor swung the tenth part of an inch out of the right line means either failure or laceration, but God's dealings never slip, and they do not miss by the thousandth part of an inch the right direction. People talk as though things in this world were at loose 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 a successful experiment; that will depend entirely on quarantine regulations; that will depend on the early or late appearance of frost; that epidemic is pitched into the world, and it goes blundering across the continents, and it is all guess-work and an appalling perhaps."

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 have done as much for us as the quarantine and the health officers. It was right and a necessity that all caution should be used, but there has come enough macaroni from Italy, and enough grapes from the south of France, and enough rags from tatterdemalions, and hidden in these articles of transportation enough choleraic germs to have left by this time all Brooklyn mourning at Greenwood, and all Philadelphia at Laurel Hill, and all Boston at Mount Auburn. I thank all the doctors and quarantines; but, more than all, and first of all, and last of all, and all the time, I thank God. In all the six thousand years of the 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 land sympathized with the sorrow in the White House. He used to rush into the room where the cabinet was in session, and while the most eminent men 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 in regard to this world and kindred worlds. Shall you, His child, rush in to criticise or arraign or condemn the divine government? No; the Cabinet of the Eternal Three can govern and will govern in the wisest and best way, and there never will be a mistake, and like razor skillfully swung, shall cut that which ought to be cut, and avoid that which ought to be avoided. Precision to the very hair-breadth. Earthly time-pieces may get out of order and strike wrong, saying that it is one o'clock when it is two, or two when it is three. God's clock is always right, and when it is one it strikes one, and when it is twelve it strikes twelve, and the second hand is as accurate as the minute hand.

Further, my text tells us that God sometimes shaves nations: "In the same day shall the Lord shave with the razor that is hired." With one sharp sweep He went across Judea and down went its pride and its power. In 1861 God shaved our nation. We had allowed to grow Sabbath desecration, and oppression, and blasphemy, and fraud, and impurity, and all sorts of turpitude. The South had its sins, and the North its sins, and the East its sins, and the West its sins. We had been warned again and again, and we did not heed. At length the sword of war cut from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, and from Atlantic seaboard to Pacific seaboard. The pride of the land, not the cowards, but the heroes, on both sides went down. And that which we took for the sword of 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 the history of the ages was any land more thoroughly shaved than during those four years of civil combat; and, my brethren, if we do not quit some of our individual sins, national sins, the Lord will again take us in hand. He has other razors within reach besides war: epidemics, droughts, deluges, plagues—grasshopper and locust; or our overtowering success may so far excite the jealousy of other lands that, under some pretext, the great nations of Europe and Asia may combine to put us down. This nation, so easily approached on north and south and from both oceans, might have on hand at once more hostilities than were ever arrayed against any power.

We have recently been told by skillful engineers that all our fortresses around New York harbor could not keep the shells from being hurled from the sea into the heart of these great cities. Insulated China, the wealthiest of all nations, as will be realized when her resources are developed, will have adopted all the modes of modern warfare, and at the Golden Gate may be discussing whether Americans must go. If the combined jealousies of Europe and Asia should come upon us, we should have more work on hand than would be pleasant. I hope no such combination against us will ever be formed, but I want to show that, as Assyria was the hired razor against Judea, and Cyrus the hired razor against Babylon, and the Huns the hired razor against the Goths, there are now many razors that the Lord could hire if, because of our national sins, He should undertake to shave us. In 1870, Germany was the razor with which the Lord shaved France. England is the razor with which very shortly the Lord will shave Russia. But nations are to repent in a day. May a speedy and world-wide coming to God hinder, on both sides the sea, all national calamity. But do not let us, as a nation, either by unrighteous law at Washington, or bad lives among ourselves, defy the Almighty.

One would think that our national symbol of the eagle might sometimes suggest another eagle, that which ancient Rome carried. In the talons of 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, and all Northern Africa, and all the islands of the Mediterranean, indeed, all the world that was worth having, an hundred and twenty millions of people under the wings of that one eagle. Where is she now? Ask Gibbon, the historian, in his prose poem, the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Ask her gigantic ruins straggling their sadness through the ages, the screech owl at windows out of which world-wide conquerors looked. Ask the day of judgment when her crowned debauchees, Commodus and Pertinax, and Caligula and Diocletian, shall answer for their infamy? As men and as nations let us repent, and have our trust in a pardoning God, rather than depend on former successes for immunity! Out of thirteen greatest battles of the world, Napoleon had lost but one before Waterloo. Pride and destruction often ride in the same saddle.

But notice once more, and more than all in my text, that God is so kind and loving, that when it is necessary for Him to cut, He has to go to others for the sharp-edged weapon. "In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired." God is love. God is pity. God is help. God is shelter. God is rescue. There are no sharp edges about Him, no thrusting points, no instruments of laceration. If you want balm 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 which requires 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 to some one else to get the instrument.

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

King Henry II., of England, crowned his son as king, and on the day of coronation put on a servant's garb and waited, he, the king, at the son's table, to the astonishment of all the princes. But we know of a more wondrous scene, the King of heaven and earth offering to put on you, His child, the crown of life, and in the form of a servant waiting on you with blessing. Extol that love, all painting, all sculpture, all music, all architecture, all worship! In Dresdenian gallery let Raphael hold Him up as a child, and in Antwerp Cathedral let Rubens hand Him down from the cross as a martyr, and Handel make all his oratorio vibrate around that one chord—"He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquity." But not until all the redeemed get home, and from the countenances of all the piled-up galleries 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 than any one to achieve our American Independence, was for scores of years in building, and most of us were discouraged and said it never would be completed. And how glad we all were when in the presence of the highest officials of the nation, the work was done! But will the monument to Him who died for the eternal liberation of the human race ever be completed? For ages the work has been going up; evangelists and apostles and martyrs have been adding to the heavenly pile, and every one of the millions of the redeemed going up from earth, has made to it contribution of gladness, and weight of glory is swung to the top of other weight of glory, higher and higher as the centuries go by, higher and higher as the whole millenniums roll, sapphire on the top of jasper, sardonyx on the top of chalcedony, and chrysoprasus above topaz, until, far beneath shall be the walls and towers and domes of the great capitol, a monument forever and forever rising, and yet never done. "Unto Him who hath loved us and washed us from our sins 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 jealousy against Daniel, have succeeded in getting a law passed that whosoever prays to God shall be put under the paws and teeth of the lions, who are lashing themselves in rage and hunger up and down the stone cage, or putting their lower jaws on the ground, bellowing till the earth trembles. But the leonine threat did not hinder the devotion of Daniel, the Coeur-de-Lion of the ages. His enemies might as well have a law that the sun should not draw water or that the south wind should not sweep across a garden of magnolias or that God should be abolished. They could not scare him with the red-hot furnaces, and they can not now scare him with the lions. As soon as Daniel hears of this enactment he leaves his office of Secretary of State, with its upholstery of crimson and gold, and comes down the white marble steps and goes to his own house. He opens his window and puts the shutters back and pulls the curtain aside so that he can look toward the sacred city of Jerusalem, and then prays.

I suppose the people in the street gathered under and before his window, and said: "Just see that man defying the law; he ought to be arrested." And the constabulary of the city rush to the police head-quarters and report that Daniel is on his knees at the wide-open window. "You are my prisoner," says the officer of the law, dropping a heavy hand on the shoulder of the kneeling Daniel. As the constables open the door of the cavern to thrust in their prisoner, they see the glaring 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 sleeps with the shaggy mane of a wild beast for his pillow, while the king that night, sleepless in the palace, has on him the paw and teeth of a lion he can not tame—the lion of a remorseful conscience.

What a picture it would be for some artist; Darius, in the early dusk of morning, not waiting for footmen or chariot, hastening to the den, all flushed and nervous and in dishabille, and looking through the crevices of the cage to see what had become of his prime-minister! "What, no sound!" he says: "Daniel is surely devoured, and the lions are sleeping after their horrid meal, the bones of the poor man scattered across the floor of the cavern." With trembling voice Darius calls out, "Daniel!" No answer, for the prophet is yet in profound slumber. But a lion, more easily awakened, advances, and, with hot breath blown through the crevice, seems angrily to demand the cause of this interruption, and then another wild beast lifts his mane from under Daniel's head, and the prophet, waking up, comes forth to report himself all unhurt and well.

But our text stands us at Daniel's window, open toward Jerusalem. Why in that direction open? Jerusalem was his native land, and all the pomp of his Babylonish successes could not make him forget it. He came there from Jerusalem at eighteen years of age, and he never visited it, though he lived to be eighty-five years. Yet, when he wanted to arouse the deepest emotions and grandest aspirations of his heart, he had his window open toward his native Jerusalem. There are many of you to-day who understand that without any exposition. This is getting to be a nation of foreigners. They have come into all occupations and professions. They sit in all churches. It may be twenty years ago since you got your naturalization papers, and you may be thoroughly Americanized, but you can't forget the land of your birth, and your warmest sympathies go out toward it. Your windows are open toward Jerusalem. Your father and mother are buried there. It may have been a very humble home in which you were born, but your memory often plays around it, and you hope some day to go and see it—the hill, the tree, the brook, the house, the place so sacred, the door from which you started off with parental blessing to make your own way in the world; and God only knows how sometimes you have longed to see the familiar places of your childhood, and how in awful crises of life you would like to have caught a glimpse of the old, wrinkled face that bent over you as you lay on the gentle lap twenty or forty or fifty years ago. You may have on this side of the sea risen in fortune, and, like Daniel, have become great, and may have come into prosperities which you never could have reached if you had stayed there, and you may have many windows to your house—bay-windows, and sky-light-windows, and windows of conservatory, and windows on all sides—but you have at least one window open toward Jerusalem.

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

Yes, yes; in all these cities, and amid the flowering western prairies, and on the slopes of the Pacific, and amid the Sierras, and on the banks of the lagoon, and on the ranches of Texas there is an uncounted multitude who, this hour, stand and sit and kneel with their windows open toward Jerusalem. Some of them played on the heather of the Scottish hills. Some of them were driven out by Irish famine. Some of them, in early life, drilled in the German army. Some of them were accustomed at Lyons or Marseilles or Paris to see on the street Victor Hugo and Gambetta. Some chased the chamois among the Alpine precipices. Some plucked the ripe clusters from Italian vineyard. Some lifted their faces under the midnight sun of Norway. It is no dishonor to our land that they remember the place of their nativity. Miscreants would they be if, while they have some of their windows open to take in the free air of America and the sunlight of an atmosphere which no kingly despot has ever breathed, they forgot sometime to open the window toward Jerusalem.

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

But Daniel, in the text, kept this port-hole of his domestic fortress unclosed because Jerusalem was the capital of sacred influences. There had smoked the sacrifice. There was the Holy of Holies. There was the Ark of the Covenant. There stood the temple. We are all tempted to keep our windows open on the opposite side, toward the world, that we may see and hear and appropriate its advantages. What does the world say? What does the world think? What does the world do? Worshipers of the world instead of worshipers of God. Windows open toward Babylon. Windows open toward Corinth. Windows open toward Athens. Windows open toward Sodom. Windows open toward the flats, instead of windows open toward the hills. Sad mistake, for this world as a god is like something I saw the other day in the museum of Strasburg, Germany—the figure of a virgin in wood and iron. The victim in olden time was brought there, and this figure would open its arms to receive him, and, once infolded, the figure closed with a hundred knives and lances upon him, and then let him drop one hundred and eighty feet sheer down. So the world first embraces its idolaters, then closes upon them with many tortures, and then lets them drop forever down. The highest honor the world could confer was to make a man Roman emperor; but, out of sixty-three emperors, it allowed only six to die peacefully in their beds.

The dominion of this world over multitudes is illustrated by the names of coins of many countries. They have their pieces of money which they call sovereigns and half sovereigns, crowns and half crowns, Napoleons and half Napoleons, Fredericks and double Fredericks, and ducats, and Isabellinos, all of which names mean not so much usefulness as dominion. The most of our windows open toward the exchange, toward the salon of fashion, toward the god of this world. In olden times the length of the English yard was fixed by the length of the arm of King Henry I., and we are apt to measure things by a variable standard and by 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, but kneeling, while he looks out. Most photographs are taken of those in standing or sitting posture. I now remember but one picture of a man kneeling, and that was David Livingstone, who in the cause of God and civilization sacrificed himself; and in the heart of Africa his servant, 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, and dead on his knees. But here is a great lion-tamer, living under the dash of the light, and his hair disheveled of the breeze, praying. The fact is, that a man can see further on his knees than standing on tiptoe. Jerusalem was about five hundred and fifty statute miles from Babylon, 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. Would you like to see the way through your sins to pardon, through your troubles to comfort, through temptation to rescue, through dire sickness to immortal health, through night to day, through things terrestrial to things celestial, you will not see them till you take Daniel's posture. No cap of bone to the joints of the fingers, no cap of bone to the joints of the elbow, but cap of bone to the knees, made so because the God of the body was the God of the soul, and especial provision for those who want to pray, and physiological structure joins 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 one side by Shadrach's red-hot furnace, and the other side by devouring lions, learn the secret of courage and deliverance by looking at that Babylonish window open toward the south-west! "Oh," you say, "that is the direction of the Arabian Desert!" Yes; but on the other side of the desert is God, is Christ, is Jerusalem, is heaven.

The Brussels lace is superior to all other lace, so beautiful, so multiform, so expensive—four hundred francs a pound. All the world seeks it. Do you know how it is made? The spinning is done in a dark room, the only light admitted through a small aperture, and that light falling directly on the pattern. And the finest specimens of Christian character I have ever seen or ever expect to see are those to be found in lives all of whose windows have been darkened by bereavement and misfortune save one, but under that one window of prayer the interlacing of divine workmanship went on until it was fit to deck a throne, a celestial embroidery which angels admired and God approved.

But it is another Jerusalem toward which we now need to open our windows. The exiled evangelist of Ephesus saw it one day as the surf of 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 sister and maid was having garlands twisted for her hair and jewels strung for her neck just before she puts her betrothed hand into the hand of her affianced: "I, John, saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." Toward that bridal Jerusalem are our windows opened?

We would do well to think more of heaven. It is not a mere annex of earth. It is not a desolate outpost. As Jerusalem was the capital of Judae, and Babylon the capital of the Babylonian monarchy, and London is the capital of Great Britain, and Washington is the capital of our own republic, the New Jerusalem is the capital of the universe. The king lives there, and the royal family of the redeemed have their palaces there, and there is a congress of many nations and the parliament of all the worlds. Yea, as Daniel had kindred in Jerusalem of whom he often thought, though he had left home when a very young man, perhaps father and mother and brothers and sisters still living, and was homesick to see them, and they belonged to the high circles of royalty, Daniel himself having royal blood in his veins, so we have in the New Jerusalem a great many kindred, and we are sometimes homesick to see them, and they are all princes and princesses, in them the blood imperial, and we do well to keep our windows open toward their eternal residence.

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

Homer's heaven was an elysium which he describes as a plain at the end of the earth or beneath, with no snow nor rainfall, and the sun never goes down, and Rhadamanthus, the justest of men, rules. Hesiod's heaven is what he calls the islands of the blessed, in the midst of the ocean, three times a year blooming with most exquisite flowers, and the air is tinted with purple, while games and music and horse-races occupy the time. The Scandinavian's heaven was the hall of Walhalla, where the god Odin gave unending wine-suppers to earthly heroes and heroines. The Mohammedan's heaven passes its disciples in over the bridge Al-Sirat, which is finer than a hair and sharper than a sword, and then they are let loose into a riot of everlasting sensuality.

The American aborigines look forward to a heaven of illimitable hunting-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's elysium. Voyagers have traversed the deep in all directions, and found no Hesiod's islands of the blessed. The Mohammedan's celestial debauchery and the Indian's eternal hunting-ground for vast multitudes have no charm. But here rolls in the Bible heaven. No more sea—that is, no wide separation. No more night—that is, no insomnia. No more tears—that is, no heart-break. No more pain—that is, dismissal of lancet and bitter draught and miasma, and banishment of neuralgias and catalepsies and consumptions. All colors in the wall except gloomy black; all the music in the major-key, because celebrative and jubilant. River crystalline, gate crystalline, and skies crystalline, because everything is clear and without doubt. White robes, and that means sinlessness. Vials full of odors, and that means pure regalement of the senses. Rainbow, and that means the storm is over. Marriage supper, and that means gladdest festivity. Twelve manner of fruits, and that means luscious and unending variety. Harp, trumpet, grand march, anthem, amen, and hallelujah in the same orchestra. Choral meeting solo, and overture meeting antiphon, and strophe joining dithyramb, as they roll into the ocean of doxologies. And you and I may have all that, and have it forever through Christ, if we will let Him with the blood of one wounded hand rub out our sin, and with the other wounded hand swing open the shining portals.

Day and night keep your window open toward that Jerusalem. Sing about it. Pray about it. Think about it. Talk about it. Dream about it. Do not be inconsolable about your friends who have gone into it. Do not worry if something in your heart indicates that you are not far off from 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 in Revelation, and has calculated that there will be in heaven one hundred rooms sixteen feet square for each ascending soul, though this world should lose a hundred millions yearly. But all the rooms of heaven will be ours, for they are family rooms; and as no room in your house is too good for your children, so all the rooms of all the palaces of the heavenly Jerusalem will be free to God's children and even the throne-room will not be denied, and you may run up the steps of the throne, and put your hand on the side of the throne, and sit down beside the king according to the promise: "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne."

But you can not go in except as conquerors. Many years ago the Turks and Christians were in battle, and the Christians were defeated, and with their commander Stephen fled toward a fortress where the mother of this commander was staying. When she saw her son and his army in disgraceful retreat, she had the gates of the fortress rolled shut, and then from the top of the battlement cried out to her son, "You can not enter here except as conqueror!" Then Stephen rallied his forces and resumed the battle and gained the day, twenty thousand driving back two hundred thousand. For those who are defeated in the battle with sin and death and hell nothing but shame and contempt; but for those who gain the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ the gates of the New Jerusalem will hoist, and there shall be an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord, toward which you do well to keep 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 of profitable suggestion. Buoys are black and uncomely, but they tell where the rocks are. The snake's rattle is hideous, but it gives timely warning. From the piazza of my summer home, night by night I saw a lighthouse fifteen miles away, not placed there for adornment, but to tell mariners to stand off from that dangerous point. So all the iron-bound coast of moral danger is marked with Saul, and Herod, and Rehoboam, and Jezebel, and Abimelech. These bad people are mentioned in the Bible, not only as warnings, but because there were sometimes 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 to do it. I see the dust rolling up from their excited march. I hear the shouting of the captains and the yell of the besiegers. The swords clack sharply on the parrying shields, and the vociferation of two armies in death-grapple is horrible to hear. The battle goes on all day, and as the sun is setting Abimelech and his army cry "Surrender!" to the beaten foe. And, unable longer to resist, the city of Shechem falls; and there are pools of blood, and dissevered limbs, and glazed eyes looking up beggingly for mercy that war never shows, and dying soldiers with their head on the lap of mother, or wife, or sister, who have come out for the last offices of kindness and affection: and a groan rolls across the city, stopping not, because there is no spot for 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 the horrors of a sacked town!

As I look over the city I can find only one building standing, and that is the temple of the god Berith. Some soldiers outside of the city, in a tower, finding that they can no longer defend Shechem, now begin to look out for their own personal safety, and they fly to this temple 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 not take this temple of Berith. Here we shall be under the protection of the 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 have thunderbolts, strike for them.

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

Oh, what a strange army, with what strange equipment! They come to the foot of the temple of Berith, and Abimelech takes his limb of a tree and throws it down; and the first platoon of soldiers come up and they throw down their branches; and the second platoon, and the third, until all around about the temple of Berith there is a pile of tree-branches. The Shechemites look out from the windows of the temple upon what seems to them childish play on the part of their enemies. But soon the flints are struck, and the spark begins to kindle the brush, and the flame comes up all through the pile, and the red elements leap to the casement, and the woodwork begins to blaze, and one arm of flame is thrown up on the right side of the temple, and another 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 the cry of "Fire!" within, and "Fire!" without announces the terror, and the strangulation, and the doom of the Shechemites, and the complete overthrow of the temple of the god Berith. Then there went up a shout, long and loud, from the stout lungs and swarthy chests of Abimelech and 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 any one form of tactics in anything we have to do for this world or for God. Look over the weaponry of olden times—javelins, battle-axes, habergeons—and show me a single weapon with which Abimelech and his men could have gained such complete victory. It is no easy thing to take a temple thus armed. I saw a house where, during revolutionary times, a man and his wife kept back a whole regiment hour after hour, because they were inside the house, and the assaulting soldiers were outside the house. Yet here Abimelech and his army come up, they surround this temple, and they capture it without the loss of a single man on the part of Abimelech, although I suppose some of the old Israelitish heroes told Abimelech: "You are only going up there to be cut to pieces." Yet you are willing to testify to-day that by no other mode—certainly not by ordinary modes—could that temple so easily, so thoroughly have been taken. Fathers and mothers, brethren and sisters in Jesus Christ, what the Church most wants to learn this day is that any plan is right, is lawful, is best, which helps to overthrow the temple of sin, and capture this world for God. We are very apt to stick 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 the castle, but they have a thousand spears where we have ten. And so the castle of sin stands. Oh, my friends, we will never capture this world for God by any keen saber of sarcasm, by any glittering lances of rhetoric, by any sapping and mining of profound disquisition, by any gunpowdery explosions of indignation, by sharp shootings of wit, by howitzers of mental strength made to swing shell five miles, by cavalry horses gorgeously caparisoned pawing the air. In vain all the attempts on the part of these ecclesiastical foot soldiers, light horsemen, and grenadiers.

My friends, I propose this morning a different style of tactics. Let each one go to the forest of God's promise and invitation, and hew down a branch and put it on his shoulder, and let us all come around these obstinate iniquities, and then, with this pile, kindled by the fires of a holy zeal and the flames of a consecrated life, we will burn them out. What steel can not do, fire may. And I, this morning, announce myself in favor of any plan of religious attack that succeeds—any plan of religious attack, however radical, however odd, however unpopular, however hostile to all the conventionalities of Church and State. We want more heart in our song, more heart in our alms-giving, more heart in our prayers, more heart in our preaching. Oh, for less of Abimelech's sword, and more of Abimelech's conflagration! I have often heard

"There is a fountain filled with blood"

sung artistically by four birds perched on their Sunday roost in the gallery, until I thought of Jenny Lind, and Nilsson, and Sontag, and all the other warblers; but there came not one tear to my eye, nor one master emotion to my heart. But one night I went down to the African Methodist meeting-house in Philadelphia, and at the close of the service a black woman, in the midst of the audience, began to sing that hymn, and all the audience joined in, and we were floated some three or four miles nearer heaven than I have ever been since. I saw with my own eyes that "fountain filled with blood"—red, agonizing, sacrificial, redemptive—and I heard the crimson plash of the wave as we 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, it is not polemics, or the science of squabble. It is blood-red fact; it is warm-hearted invitation; it is leaping, bounding, flying good news; it is efflorescent with all light; it is rubescent with all glow; it is arborescent with all sweet shade. I have seen the sun rise on Mount Washington, and from the Tip-top House; but there was no beauty in that compared with the day-spring from on high when Christ gives light to a soul. I have heard Parepa sing; but there was no music in that compared with the voice of Christ when He said: "Thy sins are forgiven thee; go in peace." Good news! Let every one cut down a branch of this tree of life and wave it. Let him throw it down and kindle it. Let all the way from Mount Zalmon to Shechem be filled with the tossing joy. Good news! This bonfire of the Gospel shall consume the last temple of sin, and will illumine the sky with apocalyptic joy that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Any new plan that makes a man quit his sin, and that prostrates a wrong, I am as much in favor of as though all the doctors, and the bishops, and the archbishops, and the synods, and the academical gownsmen of Christianity sanctioned it. The temple of Berith must come down, and I do not care how it comes.

Still further, I learn from this subject the power of example. If Abimelech had sat down on the grass and told his men to go and get the boughs, 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 effective result; but when Abimelech goes with his own ax and hews down a branch, and with Abimelech's arm puts it on Abimelech's shoulder, and marches on—then, my text says, all the people did the same. How natural that was! What made Garibaldi and Stonewall Jackson the most magnetic commanders of this century? They always rode ahead. Oh, the overcoming power of example! Here is a father on the wrong road; all his boys go on the wrong road. Here is a father who enlists for Christ; his children enlist.

I saw, in some of the picture-galleries of Europe, that before many of the great works of the masters—the old masters—there would be sometimes four or five artists taking copies of the pictures. These copies they were going to carry with them, perhaps to distant lands; and I have thought that your life and character are a masterpiece, and it is being copied, and long after you are gone it will bloom or blast in the homes of those who knew you, and be a Gorgon or a Madonna. Look out 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 ever chanted is a consistent walk.

I saw, near the beach, a wrecker's machine. It was a cylinder with some holes at the side, made for the thrusting in of some long poles with strong leverage; and when there is a vessel in trouble or going to pieces out in the offing, the wreckers shoot a rope out to the suffering men. They grasp it, and the wreckers turn the cylinder, and the rope winds around the cylinder, and those who are shipwrecked are saved. So at your feet to-day there is an influence with a tremendous leverage. The rope attached to it swings far out into the billowy future. Your children, your children's children, and all the generations that are to follow, will grip that influence and feel the long-reaching pull long after the figures on your tombstone are so near worn out that the visitor can not tell whether it was in 1885, or 1775, or 1675 that you died.

Still further, I learn from this subject the advantages of concerted action. If Abimelech had merely gone out with a tree-branch the work would not have been accomplished, or if ten, twenty, or thirty men had gone; 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 about the temple, the victory is gained—the temple falls. My friends, where there is one man in the Church of God at this day shouldering his whole duty there are a great many who never lift an ax or swing a blow.

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

Suppose, in military circles, on the morning of battle the roll is called, and out of a thousand men only a hundred men in the regiment answered. What excitement there would be in the camp! What would the colonel say? What high talking there would be among the captains, and majors, and the adjutants! Suppose word came to head-quarters that these delinquents excused themselves on the ground that they had overslept themselves, or that the morning was damp and they were afraid of getting their feet wet, or that they were busy cooking rations. My friends, this is the morning of the day of God Almighty's battle! Do you not see the troops? Hear you not all the trumpets of heaven and all the drums of hell? Which side are you on? If you are on the right side, to what cavalry troop, to what artillery service, to what garrison duty do you belong? In other words, in what Sabbath-school do you teach? in what prayer-meeting do you exhort? to what penitentiary do you declare eternal liberty? to what almshouse do you announce the riches of heaven? What broken bone of sorrow have you ever set? Are you doing nothing? Is it possible that a man or woman sworn to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ is doing nothing? Then hide the horrible secret from the angels. Keep it away from the book of judgment. If you are doing nothing do not let the world find it out, lest they charge your religion with being a false-face. Do not let your cowardice and treason be heard among the martyrs about the throne, lest they forget the sanctity of the place and curse your betrayal of that cause for which they agonized and died.

May the eternal God rouse us all to action! As for myself, I feel I would be ashamed to die now and enter heaven until I have accomplished something more decisive for the Lord that bought me. I would like to join with you in an oath, with hand high uplifted to heaven, swearing new allegiance to Jesus Christ, and to work more for His kingdom. Are you ready to join with me in some new work for Christ? I feel that there is such a thing as claustral piety, that there is such a thing as insular work; but it seems to me that what we want now is concerted action. The temple of Berith is very broad, and it is very high. It has been going up by the hands of men and devils, and no human enginery can demolish it; but if the fifty thousand ministers of Christ 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 on and throw these branches around the great temples of sin, and worldliness and folly, it would need no match, or coal, or torch of ours to touch off the pile; for, as in the days of Elijah, fire would fall from heaven and kindle the bonfire of Christian victory over demolished 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 they were safe. They said: "Berith will take care of us. Abimelech may batter down everything else; he can not batter down this temple where we are now hid." But very soon they heard the timbers crackling, and they were smothered with smoke, and they miserably died. And you and I are just as much tempted to false refuges. The mirror this morning may have persuaded you that you have a comely cheek; your best friends may have persuaded you that you have elegant manners. Satan may have told 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 to measure how steep is the inclined plane you are descending, but I know it is very steep. "Well," you say, "if the Bible is true I am a sinner. Show me some refuge; I will step right into it."

I suppose every person in this audience this moment is stepping into some kind of refuge. Here you step in the tower of good works. You say: "I shall be safe here in this refuge." The battlements are adorned; the steps are varnished; on the wall are pictures of all the suffering you have alleviated, and all the schools you have established, and all the fine things you have ever done. Up in that tower you feel you are safe. But hear you not the tramp of your unpardoned sins all around the tower? They each have a match. They are kindling the combustible material. You feel the heat and the suffocation. Oh, may you leap in time, the Gospel declaring: "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified."

"Well," you say, "I have been driven out of that tower; where shall I go?" Step into this tower of indifference. You say: "If this tower is attacked, it will be a great while before it is taken." You feel at ease. But there is an Abimelech, with ruthless assaults, coming on. Death and his forces are gathering around, and they demand that you surrender everything, and they clamor for your immortal overthrow, and they throw their skeleton arms in the windows, and with their iron fists they beat against the door; and while you are trying to keep them out you see the torches of judgment kindling, and every forest is a torch, and every mountain a torch, and every sea a torch; and while the Alps, the Pyrenees, and Himalayas turn into a live coal, blown redder and redder by the whirlwind breath of a God omnipotent, what will 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 a Gibraltar that never has been and never will be taken; of a wall that no satanic assault can scale; of a bulwark that the judgment earthquakes can not budge. The Bible refers to it when it says: "In God is thy refuge, and underneath thee are the everlasting arms." Oh, fling yourself into it! Tread down unceremoniously everything that intercepts you. Wedge your way there. There are enough hounds of death and peril after you to make you hurry. Many a man has perished just outside the tower, with his foot on the step, with his hand on the latch. 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 too hard with my right foot on the earth, does it break through into the grave? Is this world, which swings at the speed of thousands of miles an hour around the sun, going with tenfold more speed toward the judgment-day? Oh, I am overborne with the thought; and in the conclusion 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 to hold on to: for "in God is thy refuge, and underneath thee are the everlasting arms." And, exhausted with my failure to save myself, I throw 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 a wounded soldier throws himself on the hospital pillow; as a pursued man throws himself into the refuge; for "in God is thy refuge, and underneath thee are the everlasting arms." Oh, for a flood of tears with 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 a European Adam and an African Adam and an American Adam, but that theory is entirely overthrown by my text, which says that all nations are blood relatives, having sprung from one and the same stock. A difference in climate makes much of the difference in national temper.

An American goes to Europe and stays there a long while, and finds his pulse moderating and his temper becoming more calm. The air on this side the ocean is more tonic than on the other side. An American breathes more oxygen than a European. A European coming to America finds a great change taking place in himself. He walks with more rapid strides, and finds his voice becoming keener and shriller. The Englishman who walks in London Strand at the rate of three miles the hour, coming to America and residing for a long while here, walks Broadway at the rate of four miles the hour. Much of the difference between 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 physical organism—in the one case ignorance flattening the skull, as with the Egyptian; in the other case intelligence building up the great dome of the forehead, as with the German. Then the style of god that the nation worships decides how much it shall be elevated or debased, so that those nations that worship reptiles are themselves only a superior form of reptile, while those nations that worship the natural sun in the heavens are the noblest style of barbaric people. But whatever be the difference of physiognomy, and whatever the difference of temperament, the physiologist tells us that after careful analysis he finds out that the plasma and the disk in the human blood have the same characteristics: so that if you should put twenty men from twenty nationalities abreast in line of battle, and a bullet should fly through 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 text that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men."

I have thought, my friends, it might be profitable this morning if I gave you some of the moral and religious impressions which I received when, through your indulgence, I had transatlantic absence. First, I observe that the majority of people in all lands are in a mighty struggle for bread. While in nearly all lands there are only a few cases of actual starvation reported, there is a vast population in every country I visited who have a limited supply of food, or such food as is incompetent to sustain physical vigor. This struggle in some lands is becoming more agonizing, while here and there it is lightened. I have joy in reporting that Ireland, about the sufferings of which we have heard so much, has far better prospects than I have seen there in previous visits. In 1879, coming home from that land, I prophesied the famine that must come upon, and did come upon, the deluged fields of that country. This year the crops are large, and both parties—those who like the English Government and those who don't like it—are expecting relief. I said to one of the intelligent men of Ireland: "Tell me in a few words what are the sufferings of Ireland, and what is the Land Relief enactment?" He replied: "I will tell you. Suppose I am a landlord and you a tenant. You rent from me a place for ten pounds a year. You improve it. You turn it from a bog into 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 man paying;' He answers, 'Ten pounds.' 'Is that all? Put his rent up to twenty pounds.' The tenant goes on improving his property, and after awhile I come around and I say to my agent, 'How much rent is this man paying?' He says, 'Twenty pounds.' 'Put his rent up to twenty-five pounds.' The tenant protests and says, 'I can't pay it.' Then I, the landlord, say, 'Pay it or get out;' and the tenant is helpless, and, leaving the place, the property in its improved condition turns over to the landlord. Now, to stop that outrage the Relief Enactment comes in and appoints commissioners who shall see that if the tenant is turned out, he shall receive the difference of value between the farm as he got it and the farm as he surrenders it. Moreover, the government loans money to the tenant, so that he may buy the property out and out if the landlord will sell." Mighty advancement toward the righting of a great wrong! But there and in all lands, not excepting our own, there is a far-reaching distress. And let those who broke their fast this morning, and those who shall dine to-day, remember those who are in want, and by prayer and practical beneficence do all they can to alleviate the hunger swoon of nations.

Another impression was—indeed the impression carried with me all the summer—the thought already suggested, the brotherhood of man. The fact is that the differences are so small between nations that they may be said to be all alike. Though I spent the most of the summer in silence, I spoke a few times and to people of different nations, and how soon I noticed that they were very much alike! If a man knows how to play the piano, it does not make any difference whether he finds it in New Orleans or San Francisco or Boston or St. Petersburg or Moscow or 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 in all cases, and you strike some of them and there is joy, and you strike some of them and there is sorrow. Plied by the same motives, lifted up by the same success, depressed by the same griefs. The cab-men of London have the same characteristics as the cab-men of New York, and are just as modest and retiring. The gold and silver drive Piccadilly and the Boulevards just as they drive Wall Street. If there be a great political excitement in Europe, the Bourse in Paris howls just as loudly as ever did the American gold-room.

The same grief that we saw in our country in 1864 you may find now in the military hospitals of England containing the wounded and sick from the Egyptian wars. The same widowhood and orphanage that sat down in despair after the battles of Shiloh and South Mountain poured their grief in the Shannon and the Clyde and the Dee and the Thames. Oh, ye men and women who know how to pray, never get up from your knees until you have implored God in behalf of the fourteen hundred millions of the race just like yourselves, finding life a tremendous struggle! For who knows but that as the sun to-day draws up drops of water from the Caspian and the Black seas and from the Amazon and the Mississippi, after a while to distill the rain, these very drops on the fields—who knows but that the sun of righteousness may draw up the tears of your sympathy, and then rain them down in distillation of comfort o'er all the 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 hand against the wall among the tombs of the dead, you will hear a very strange echo coming from all parts of the Pantheon just as soon as you smite the wall. And I suppose it is so arranged that every stroke of sorrow among the tombs of bereavement ought to have loud, long, and oft-repeated echoes of sympathy all around the world. Oh, what a beautiful theory it is—and it is a Christian theory—that Englishman, Scotchman, Irishman, Norwegian, Frenchman, Italian, Russian, are all akin. Of one blood all nations. That is a very beautiful inscription that I saw a few days ago over the door in Edinburgh, the door of the house where John Knox used to live. It is getting somewhat dim now, but there is the inscription, fit for the door of any household—"Love God above all, and your neighbor as yourself."

I was also impressed in journeying on the other side the sea with the difference the Bible makes in countries. The two nations of Europe that are the most moral to-day and that have the least crime are Scotland and Wales. They have by statistics, as you might find, fewer thefts, fewer arsons, fewer murders. What is the reason? A bad book can hardly live in Wales. The Bible crowds it out. I was told by one of the first literary men in Wales: "There is not a bad book in the Welsh language." He said: "Bad books come down from London, but they can not live here." It is the Bible that is dominant in Wales. And then in Scotland just open your Bible to give out your text, and there is a rustling all over the house almost startling to an American. What is it? The people opening their Bibles to find the text, looking at the context, picking out the referenced passages, seeing whether you make right quotation. Scotland and Wales Bible-reading people. That accounts for it. A man, a city, a nation that reads God's Word must be virtuous. That Book is the foe of all wrong-doing. What makes Edinburgh better than Constantinople? The Bible.

Oh, I am afraid in America we are allowing the good book to be covered up with other good books! We have our ever-welcome morning and evening newspapers, and we have our good books on all subjects—geological subjects, botanical subjects, physiological subjects, theological subjects—good books, beautiful books, and so many good books that we have not time to read the Bible. Oh, my friends, it is not a matter of very great importance that you have a family Bible on the center-table in your parlor! Better have one pocket New Testament, the passages marked, the leaves turned down, the binding worn smooth with much usage, than fifty pictorial family Bibles too handsome to read! Oh, let us take a whisk-broom and brush the dust off our Bibles! Do you want poetry? Go and hear Job describe the war-horse, or David tell how the mountains skipped like lambs. Do you want logic? Go and hear Paul reason until your brain aches under the spell of his mighty intellect. Do you want history? Go and see Moses put into a few pages stupendous information which Herodotus, Thucydides, and Prescott never preached after. And, above all, if you want to find how a nation struck down by sin can rise to happiness and to heaven, read of that blood which can wash away the pollution of a world. There is one passage in the Bible of vast tonnage: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Oh, may God fill this country with Bibles and help the people to read them!

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

The greatest pictures in all the galleries of Italy, Germany, France, England, and Scotland are Bible pictures. What were the subjects of Raphael's great paintings? "The Transfiguration," "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes," "The Charge to Peter," "The Holy Family," "The Massacre of the Innocents," "Moses at the Burning Bush," "The Nativity," "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," "Agony in the Garden," "The Temptation," "The Adoration of the Magi," "The Communication," "Baptism," "Massacre of the Innocents," "The Flight into Egypt," "The Crucifixion," "The Madonna." What are Titian's great pictures? "The Flagellation of Christ," "The Supper at Emmaus," "The Death of Abel," "The Assumption," "The Entombment," "Faith," "The Madonna." What are Michael Angelo's great pictures? "The Annunciation," "The Spirits in Prison," "At the feet of Christ," "The Infant Christ," "The Crucifixion," "The Last Judgment." What are Paul Veronese's great pictures? "Queen of Sheba," "The Marriage in Cana," "Magdalen Washing the Feet of Christ," "The Holy Family." Who has not heard 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 Isaac and Rebecca"? Who has not heard of Duerer's "Dragon of the Apocalypse"? The mightiest picture on this planet is Rubens' "Scourging of Christ." Painter's pencil loves to sketch the face of Christ. Sculptor's chisel loves to present the form of Christ. Organs love to roll forth the sorrows of Christ.

The first time you go to London go into the Dore picture gallery. As I went and sat down before "Christ Descending the Steps of the Praetorium," at the first I was disappointed. I said: "There isn't enough majesty in that countenance, not enough tenderness in that eye;" but as I sat and looked at the picture it grew upon me until I was overwhelmed with its power, and I staggered with emotion as I went out 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 your personal friend, my sister, my brother. You may never go to Milan to see Da Vinci's "Last Supper;" but, better than that, you can have Christ come and sup with you. You may never get to Antwerp to see Rubens' "Descent of Christ from the Cross," but you can have Christ come down from the mountain of His suffering into your heart and abide there forever. Oh, you must have Him! We are all so diseased with sin that we want that which hurts us, and we won't have that which cures us. The best thing for you and for me to do to-day is to get down on our bended knees before God and say: "Oh, Almighty Son of God, I am blind! I want to see. My arms are palsied. I want to take hold of thy cross. Have mercy on me, O Lord Jesus!" Why will you live on husks when you may sit down to this white bread of heaven? Oh, with such a God, and with such a Christ, and with such a Holy Spirit, and with such an immortal nature, wake up!

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

These ships that you see going up and down New York harbor are to be brought into the service of God. All those ships I saw at Liverpool, at Southampton, at Glasgow, are to be brought into the service of Christ. What is that passage, "Ships of Tarshish shall bring presents"? That is what it means. Oh, what a goodly fleet when the vessels of the sea come into the service of God! No guns frowning through the port-holes, no pikes hung in the gangway, nothing from cut-water to taffrail to suggest atrocity. Those ships will come from all parts of the seas. Great flocks of ships that never met on the high sea but in wrath, will cry, "Ship ahoy!" and drop down beside each other in calmness, the flags of Emmanuel streaming from the top-gallants. The old slaver, with decks scrubbed and washed and glistened and burnished—the old slaver will wheel into line; and the Chinese junk and the Venetian gondola, and the miners' and the pirates' corvette, will fall into line, equipped, readorned, beautified, only the small craft of this grand flotilla which shall float out for the truth—a flotilla mightier than the armada of Xerxes moving in the pomp and pride of Persian insolence; mightier than the Carthaginian navy rushing with forty thousand oarsmen upon the Roman galleys, the life of nations dashed out against the gunwales.