In this country the torch put to the factories that have discharged hands for good or bad reason; obstructions on the rail-track in front of midnight express trains because the offenders do not like the president of the company; strikes on shipboard the hour they were going to sail, or in printing-offices the hour the paper was to go to press, or in mines the day the coal was to be delivered, or on house scaffoldings so the builder fails in keeping his contract—all these are only a hard blow on the head of American labor, and cripple its arms, and lame its feet, and pierce its heart. Take the last great strike in America—the telegraph operators' strike—and you have to find that the operators lost four hundred thousand dollars' worth of wages, and have had poorer wages ever since. Traps sprung suddenly upon employers, and violence, never took one knot out of the knuckle of toil, or put one farthing of wages into a callous palm. Barbarism will never cure the wrongs of civilization. Mark that!

Frederick the Great admired some land near his palace at Potsdam, and he resolved to get it. It was owned by a miller. He offered the miller three times the value of the property. The miller would not take it, because it was the old homestead, and he felt about as Naboth felt about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it. Frederick the Great was a rough and terrible man, and he ordered the miller into his presence; and the king, with a stick, in his hand—a stick with which he sometimes struck his officers of state—said to this miller: "Now, I have offered you three times the value of that property, and if you won'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 the miller, "if your majesty does take it, I will sue you in the Chancery Court." At that threat Frederick the Great yielded his infamous demand. And the most imperious outrage against the working-classes will yet cower before the law. Violence and contrary to the law will never accomplish anything, but righteousness and according to law will accomplish it.

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

The owner of an iron mill, having taken a dose of my text before leaving home in the morning, will go into his foundry, and, passing into what is called the puddling-room, he will see a man there stripped to the waist, and besweated and exhausted with the labor and the toil, and he will say to him: "Why, it seems to be very hot in here. You look very much exhausted. I hear your child is sick with scarlet fever. If you want your wages a little earlier this week, so as to pay the nurse and get the medicines, just come into my office any time."

After awhile, crash goes the money market, and there is no more demand for the articles manufactured in that iron mill, and the owner does not know what to do. He says, "Shall I stop the mill, or shall I run it on half time, or shall I cut down the men's wages?" He walks the floor of his counting-room all day, hardly knowing what to do. Toward evening he calls all the laborers together. They stand all around, some with arms akimbo, some with folded arms, wondering what the boss is 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 little demand. You see I am at vast expense, and I have called you together this afternoon to see what you would advise. I don't want to shut up the mill, because that would force you out of work, and you have always 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 awhile want 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 workmen steps out from the ranks of his fellows, and says: "Boss, you have been very good to us, and when you prospered we prospered, and now you are in a tight place and I am sorry, and we have got to sympathize with you. I don't know how the others feel, but I propose that we take off twenty per cent. from our wages, and that when the times get good you will remember us and raise them again." The workman looks around to his comrades, and says: "Boys, what do you say to this? all in favor of my proposition will say ay." "Ay! ay! ay!" shout two hundred voices.

But the mill-owner, getting in some new machinery, exposes himself very much, and takes cold, and it settles into pneumonia, and he dies. In the procession to the tomb are all the workmen, tears rolling down their cheeks, and off upon the ground; but an hour before the procession gets to the cemetery the wives and the children of those workmen are at the grave waiting for the arrival of the funeral pageant. The minister of religion may have delivered an eloquent eulogium before they started from the house, but the most impressive things are said that day by the working-classes standing around the tomb.

That night in all the cabins of the working-people where they have family prayers the widowhood and the orphanage in the mansion are remembered. No glaring populations look over the iron fence of the cemetery; but, hovering over the scene, the benediction of God and man is coming for the fulfillment of the Christlike injunction, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."

"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 of the pleasantest incidents recorded in a long time is reported from Sheffield, England. The wages of the men in the iron works at Sheffield are regulated by a board of arbitration, by whose decision both masters and men are bound. For some time past the iron and steel trade has been extremely unprofitable, and the employers can not, without much loss, pay the wages fixed by the board, which neither employers nor employed have the power to change. To avoid this difficulty, the workmen in one of the largest steel works in Sheffield hit upon a device as rare as it was generous. They offered to work for their employers one week without any pay whatever. How much better that 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 costly enterprises where this Christ-like injunction of my text is fully kept, and you could no more get the employer to practice an injustice upon his men, or the men to conspire against the employer, than you could get your right hand and your left hand, your right eye and your left eye, your right ear and your left ear, into physiological antagonism. 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 there a divergence now between the parlor and the kitchen? Then there is something wrong, either in the parlor or the kitchen, perhaps in both. Are the clerks in your store irate against the firm? Then there is something 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 this Christ-like injunction, that which He promulgated in His sermon Olivetic. All the political economists under the arch or vault of the heavens in convention for a thousand years can not settle this controversy between monopoly and hard work, between capital and labor. During the Revolutionary War there was a heavy piece of timber to be lifted, perhaps for some fortress, and a corporal was overseeing the work, and he was giving commands to some soldiers as they lifted: "Heave away, there! yo heave!" Well, the timber was too heavy; they could not get it up. There was a gentleman riding by on a horse, and he 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 the place. "Now," he said to the soldiers, "all together—yo heave!" and the timber went to its place. "Now," said the gentleman to the corporal, "when you have a piece of timber too heavy for the men to lift, and you want help, you send to your commander-in-chief." It was Washington. Now, that is about all the Gospel I know—the Gospel of giving somebody a lift, a lift out of darkness, a lift out of earth into heaven. That is all the Gospel I know—the Gospel of helping somebody else to lift.

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

Supply and Demand own the largest mill on earth, and all the rivers roll over their wheel, and into their hopper they put all the men, women, and children they can shovel out of the centuries, and the blood and the bones redden the valley while the mill grinds. That diabolic law of supply and demand will yet have to stand aside, and instead thereof will come the law of love, the law of cooperation, the law 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 believe the Bible. All the Bible is full of promises on this subject, and as the ages roll on the time will come when men or fortune will be giving larger sums to humanitarian and evangelistic purposes, and there will be more James Lenoxes and Peter Coopers and William E. Dodges and George Peabodys. As that time comes there will be more parks, more picture-galleries, more gardens thrown open for the holiday people and the working-classes.

I was reading only this morning in regard to a charge that had been made in England against Lambeth Palace, that it was exclusive; and that charge demonstrated the sublime fact that to the grounds of that wealthy estate eight hundred poor families have free passes, and forty croquet companies, and on the hall-day holidays four thousand poor people recline on the grass, walk through the paths, and sit under the trees. That is Gospel—Gospel on the wing, Gospel out-of-doors worth just 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 come when, 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 will say, "See what I have been blessed with. God has given me this, and so far 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 at the very verge of the cliff, and he stood there with his cloak wrapped about him, and he seemed to be listening for something. Some one said to him, "What are you listening for?" Standing there, on the top of the mountain, he said: "I am listening to the tramp of the footsteps of the coming millions of this continent." A sublime posture for an American statesman! You and I to-day stand on the mountain-top of privilege, and on the Rock of Ages, and we look off, and we hear coming from the future the happy industries, and smiling populations, and the consecrated fortunes, and the innumerable prosperities of the closing nineteenth and the opening twentieth century.

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

The greatest friend of capitalist and toiler, and the one who will yet bring them together in complete accord, was born one Christmas night while the curtains of heaven swung, stirred by the wings angelic. Owner of all things—all the continents, all worlds, and all the islands of light. Capitalist of immensity, crossing over to our condition. Coming into our world, not by gate of palace, but by door of barn. Spending His first night amid the shepherds. Gathering after around Him the fishermen to be His chief attendants. With adze, and saw, and chisel, and ax, and in a carpenter-shop showing himself brother with the tradesmen. Owner of all things, and yet on a hillock back of Jerusalem one day resigning everything for others, keeping not so much as a shekel to pay for His obsequies, by charity buried in the suburbs of a city that had cast Him out. Before the cross of such a capitalist, and such a carpenter, all men can afford to shake hands and worship. Here is the every man's Christ. None so high, but He was higher. None so poor, but He was poorer. At His feet the hostile extremes will yet renounce their animosities, and countenances which have glowered with the prejudices and revenge of centuries shall brighten with the smile of heaven as He commands: "Whatsoever ye would that 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 for women to toil in olden time. Alexander the Great stood in his palace showing garments made by his own mother. The finest tapestries at Bayeux were made by the queen of William the Conqueror. Augustus, the Emperor, would not wear any garments except those that were fashioned by some member of his royal family. So let the toiler everywhere be respected!

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

The greatest blessing that could have happened to our first parents was being turned out of Eden after they had done wrong. Adam and Eve, in their perfect state, might have got along without work, or only such slight employment as a perfect garden with no weeds in it demanded. But as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them was to be turned out where they would have to work. We know what a withering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old Ashbel Green, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said: "I do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a man who has a large amount of money to start with has no chance. Of the thousand prosperous and honorable men that you know, nine hundred and ninety-nine had to work vigorously at the beginning. But I am now to tell you that industry is just as important for a woman's safety and happiness. The most unhappy women in our communities to-day are those who have no engagements to call them up in the morning; who, once having risen and breakfasted, lounge through the dull forenoon in slippers down at the heel and with disheveled hair, reading Ouida's last novel, and who, having dragged through a wretched forenoon and taken their afternoon sleep, and having passed an hour and a half at their toilet, pick up their card-case and go out to make calls, and who pass their evenings waiting for somebody to come in and break up the monotony. Arabella Stuart never was imprisoned in so dark a dungeon as that.

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

The curse of American society is that our young women are taught that the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, tenth, fiftieth, thousandth thing in their life is to get somebody to take care of them. Instead of that, the first lesson should be how under God they may take care of themselves. The simple fact is that a majority of them do have to take care of themselves, and that, too, after having, through the false notions of their parents, wasted the years in which they ought to have learned how successfully to maintain themselves. We now and here declare the inhumanity, cruelty, and outrage of that father and mother who pass their daughters into womanhood, having given them no facility for earning their livelihood. Madame de Stael said: "It is not these writings that I am proud of, but the fact that I have facility in ten occupations, in any one of which I could make a livelihood." You say you have a fortune to leave them. Oh, man and woman, have you not learned that like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches have wings and fly away? Though you should be successful in leaving a competency behind you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in a night? or some officials in our churches may get up a mining company and induce your orphans to put their money into a hole in Colorado, and if by the most skillful machinery the sunken money can not be brought up again, prove to them, that it was eternally decreed that that was the way they were to lose it, and that it went in the most orthodox and heavenly style. Oh, the damnable schemes that professed Christians will engage in until God puts His fingers into the collar of the hypocrite's robe and strips it clear down to the bottom! You have no right, because you are well off, to conclude that your children are going to be as well off. A man died leaving a large fortune. His son fell dead in a Philadelphia grog-shop. His old comrades came in and said as they bent over his corpse: "What is the matter with you, Boggsey?" The surgeon standing over 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 have not, but send your daughters into the world with empty brain and unskilled hand, you are guilty of assassination, homicide, regicide, infanticide.

There are women toiling in our cities for two and three dollars per week who were the daughters of merchant princes. These suffering ones now would be glad to have the crumbs that once fell from their fathers' table. That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears is the lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gaiters in which her mother walked; and that torn and faded calico had ancestry of magnificent brocade that swept Broadway clean without any expense to the street commissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence and fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace to them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea prevalent in society that, though our young women may embroider slippers and crochet and make mats for lamps to stand on without disgrace, the idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame for a young woman belonging to a large family to be inefficient when the father toils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a daughter to be idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is as honorable to sweep the house, make beds or trim hats as it is to twist a watch-chain.

As far as I can understand, the line of respectability lies between that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the back of an arm-chair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy the chair. You may with a delicate brush beautify a mantel ornament, but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may learn artistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing "Ortonville" or "Old Hundred." Do nothing practical if you would in the eyes of refined society preserve your respectability. I scout these fine notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man, has a right 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 of cattle, and every day you live, breathe forty hogsheads of good, pure air. You must by some kind of usefulness pay for all this. Our race was 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. If geologists are right, the earth was a million of years in the possession of the insects, beasts, and birds before our race came upon it. In one sense we were innovators. The cattle, the lizards, and the hawks had pre-emption right. The question is not what we are to do with the lizards and summer insects, but what the lizards and summer insects are to do with us. If we want a place in this world, we must earn it. The partridge makes its own nest before it occupies it. The lark by its morning song earns its breakfast before it eats it, and the Bible gives an intimation that the first duty of an idler is to starve when it says: "If he will not work, neither shall he eat." Idleness ruins the health; and very soon nature says: "This man has refused to pay his rent, out with him!" Society is to be reconstructed on the subject of woman's toil. A vast majority of those who would have woman industrious shut her up to a few kinds of work. My judgment in this matter is that a woman has a right to do anything that she can do well. There should be no department of merchandise, mechanism, art, or science barred against her. If Miss Hosmer has genius for sculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa Bonheur has a fondness for delineating animals, let her make "The Horse Fair." If Miss Mitchell will study astronomy, let her mount the starry ladder. If Lydia will be a merchant, let her sell purple. If Lucretia Mott will preach the Gospel, let her thrill with her womanly eloquence the Quaker meeting-house.

It is said, If woman is given such opportunities she will occupy places that might be taken by men. I say, If she have more skill and adaptedness for any position than a man has, let her have it! She has as much right to her bread, to her apparel, and to her home, as men have. But it is said that her nature is so delicate that she is unfitted for exhausting toil. I ask in the name of all past history what toil on earth is more severe, exhausting, and tremendous than that toil of the needle to which for ages she has been subjected? The battering-ram, the sword, the carbine, the battle-ax, have made no such havoc as the needle. I would that these living sepulchers in which women have for ages been buried might be opened, and that some resurrection trumpet might bring up these living corpses to the fresh air and sunlight.

Go with me and I will show you a woman who by hardest toil supports her children, her drunken husband, her old father and mother, pays her house rent, always has wholesome food on her table, and when she can get some neighbor on the Sabbath to come in and take care of her family, appears in church with hat and cloak that are far from indicating the toil to which she is subjected. Such a woman as that has body and soul enough to fit her for any position. She could stand beside the majority of your salesmen and dispose of more goods. She could go into your wheelwright shops and beat one half of your workmen at making carriages. We talk about woman as though we had resigned to her all the light work, and ourselves had shouldered the heavier. But the day of judgment, which will reveal the sufferings of the stake and Inquisition, will marshal before the throne of God and the hierarchs of heaven the martyrs of wash-tub and needle. Now, I say if there be any preference in occupation, let women have it. God knows her trials are the severest. By her acuter sensitiveness to misfortune, by her hour of anguish, I demand that no one hedge up her pathway to a livelihood. Oh! the meanness, the despicability of men who begrudge a woman the right to work anywhere in any honorable calling!

I go still further and say that woman should have equal compensation with men. By what principle of justice is it that women in many of our cities get only two thirds as much pay as men, and in many cases only half? Here is the gigantic injustice—that for work equally well, if not better, done, woman receives far less compensation than man. Start with the National Government. Women clerks in Washington get nine hundred dollars for doing that for which men receive eighteen hundred dollars. The wheel of oppression is rolling over the necks of thousands of women who are at this moment in despair about what they are to do. Many of the largest mercantile establishments of our cities are accessory to these abominations, and from their large establishments 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 our large establishments will be swallowed up quicker than a South American earthquake ever took down a city. God will catch these oppressors between the two millstones of his wrath and grind them to powder.

Why is it that a female principal in a school gets only eight hundred and twenty-five dollars for doing work for which a male principal gets sixteen hundred and fifty dollars? I hear from all this land the wail of 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 a human being who gets hungry when she has no food, and cold when she has no fire. Give her no more flatteries; give her justice! There are sixty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York and Brooklyn. Across the sunlight comes their death groan. It is not such a cry as comes from those who are suddenly hurled out of life, but a slow, grinding, horrible wasting-away. Gather them before you and look into their faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at their fingers, needle-pricked and blood-tipped! See that premature stoop in the shoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough! At a large meeting of these women held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches were delivered, but a needle-woman took the stand, threw aside her faded shawl, and with her shriveled arm hurled a very thunder-bolt of eloquence, speaking out the horrors of her own experience.

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

Years ago, one Sabbath night in the vestibule of this church, after service, a woman fell in convulsions. The doctor said she needed medicine not so much as something to eat. As she began to revive, in her delirium she said, gaspingly: "Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight cents! I wish I could get it done, I am so tired. I wish I could get some sleep, but I must get it done. Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight cents!" We found afterward that she was making garments for eight cents apiece, and that she could make but three of them in a day. Hear it! Three times eight are twenty-four. Hear it, men and women who have comfortable homes! Some of the worst villains of our cities are the employers of these women. They beat them down to the last penny and try to cheat them out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or two before she gets the garments to work on. When the work is done it is sharply inspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and the wages refused and sometimes the dollar deposited not given back. The Women's Protective Union reports a case where one of the poor souls, finding a place where she could get more wages, resolved to change employers, 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 come to get what you owe me." He made no answer. She said: "Are you not going to pay me?" "Yes," he said, "I will pay you," and he kicked her down-stairs.

Oh, that Women's Protective Union, 19 Clinton Place, New York! The blessings of Heaven be on it for the merciful and divine work it is doing in the defense of toiling womanhood! What tragedies of suffering are presented to them day by day! A paragraph from their report: "'Can you 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, a young woman lately widowed, burst into a flood of tears as she spoke. She was bidden to come again the next afternoon and repeat her story to 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 she modestly hinted a desire to know how much her services were worth. 'Oh, my dear,' he replied, 'you are getting to be one of the most valuable 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 the girl's fingers flew on with her work at a marvelous rate. The picture of $10 a week had almost turned her head. A few nights later, while crossing the ferry, she overheard the name of her employer in the conversation of girls who stood near: 'What, John Snipes? Why, he don't pay! Look out for him every time. He'll keep you on trial, as he calls it, for weeks, and then he'll let you go, and get some other fool!' 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 worth of each of those days of 'trial.'"

Another paragraph: "Her mortification may be imagined when told that one of the two five-dollar bills which she had just received for her work was counterfeit. But her mortification was swallowed up in indignation when her employer denied having paid her the money, and insultingly asked her to prove it. When the Protective Union had placed this matter in the courts, the judge said: 'You will pay Eleanor the amount of her claim, $5.83, and also the costs of the court.'"

How are these evils to be eradicated? Some say: "Give woman the ballot." What effect such ballot might have on other questions I am not here to discuss; but what would be the effect of female suffrage on women's wages? I do not believe that woman will ever get justice by woman's ballot. Indeed, women oppress women as much as men do. Do not women, as much as men, beat down to the lowest figure the woman who sews for them? Are not women as sharp as men on washer-women and milliners and mantua-makers? If a woman asks a dollar for her work, does not her female employer ask her if she will not take ninety cents? You say, "Only ten cents difference." But that is sometimes the difference between heaven and hell. Women often have less commiseration for women than men. If a woman steps aside from the path of rectitude, man may forgive—woman never! Woman will never get justice done her from woman's ballot. Neither will she get it from man's ballot. How then? God will rise up for her. God has more resources than we know of. The flaming sword that hung at Eden's gate when woman was driven out will cleave with its terrible edge her oppressors.

But there is something for women to do. Let young people prepare to excel in spheres of work, and they will be able after awhile to get larger 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, I contend that the demand for skilled labor is very great and the supply very small. Start with the idea that work is honorable, and that you can do some one thing better than anybody else. Resolve that, God helping, you will take care of yourself. If you are after awhile called into another relation you will all the better be qualified for it by your spirit of self-reliance, or if you are called to stay as you are, you can be happy and self-supporting.

Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak and woman the vine that climbs it; but I have seen many a tree fall that not only went down itself, but took all the vines with it. I can tell you of something stronger than an oak for an ivy to climb on, and that is the throne of the great Jehovah. Single or affianced, that woman is strong who leans on God and does her best. Many of you will go single-handed through life, 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 be a woman, and ask God to make you an humble, active, earnest Christian. What will become of that womanly disciple of the world? She is more thoughtful of the attitude she strikes upon the carpet than how she will look in the judgment; more worried about her freckles than her sins; more interested in her apparel than in her redemption. The dying actress whose life had been vicious said: "The scene closes—draw the curtain." Generally the tragedy comes first and the farce afterward; but in her life it was first the farce of a useless life and then the tragedy of a wretched eternity.

Compare the life and death of such a one with that of some Christian aunt that was once a blessing to your household. I do not know that she was ever asked to give her hand in marriage. She lived single, that, untrammeled, she might be everybody's blessing. Whenever the sick were to be visited or the poor to be provided with bread she went with a blessing. She could pray or sing "Rock of Ages" for any sick pauper who asked her. As she got older there were many days when she was a little sharp, but for the most part auntie was a sunbeam—just the one for Christmas Eve. She knew better than any one else how to fix things. Her every prayer, as God heard it, was full of everybody who had trouble. The brightest things in all the house dropped from her fingers. She had peculiar notions, but the grandest notion she ever had was to make you happy. She dressed well—auntie always dressed well; but her highest adornment was that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price. When she died you all gathered lovingly about her; and as you carried her out to rest, the Sunday-school class almost covered the coffin with japonicas; and the poor people stood at the end of the alley, with their aprons to their eyes, sobbing bitterly, and the man of the world said, with Solomon: "Her price was above rubies;" and Jesus, as unto the 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 for the animal creation, the herb for human service. The cattle came and took possession of their inheritance, the grass-blade; man came and took possession of his inheritance, the herb. We have the herb for food as in case of hunger, for narcotic as in case of insomnia, for anodyne as in case of paroxysm, for stimulant as when the pulses flag under the weight of disease. The caterer comes and takes the herb and presents it in all styles of delicacy. The physician comes and takes the herb and compounds it for physical recuperation. Millions of people come and take the herb for ruinous physical and intellectual delectation. The herb, which was divinely created, and for good purposes, has often been degraded for bad results. There is a useful and a baneful employment of the herbaceous kingdom.

There sprung up in Yucatan of this continent an herb that has bewitched the world. In the fifteenth century it crossed the Atlantic Ocean and captured Spain. Afterward it captured Portugal. Then the French embassadors took it to Paris, and it captured the French Empire. Then Walter Raleigh took it to London, and it captured Great Britain. Nicotiana, ascribed to that genus by the botanists, but we all know it is the exhilarating, elevating, emparadising, nerve-shattering, dyspepsia-breeding, health-destroying tobacco. I shall not in my remarks be offensively personal, because you all use it, or nearly all! I know by experience how it soothes and roseates the world, and kindles sociality, and I also know some of its baleful results. I was its slave, and by the grace of God I have become its conqueror. Tens of thousands of people have been asking the question during the past two months, asking it with great pathos and great earnestness: "Does the use of tobacco produce cancerous and other troubles?" I shall not answer the question in regard to any particular case, 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, "Is not God good?" Yes. Well, then, you say, "If God is good and he created tobacco, He must have created it for some good purpose." Yes, your logic is complete. But God created the common sense at the same time, by which we are to know how to use a poison and how not to use it. God created that just as He created henbane and nux vomica and copperas and belladonna and all other poisons, whether directly created by Himself or extracted by man.

That it is a poison no man of common sense will deny. A case was reported where a little child lay upon its mother's lap and one drop fell from a pipe to the child's lip, and it went into convulsions and into death. But you say, "Haven't people lived on in complete use of it to old age?" Oh, yes; just as I have seen inebriates seventy years old. In Boston, years ago, there was a meeting in which there were several centenarians, and they were giving their experience, and one centenarian said that he had lived over a hundred years, and that he ascribed it to the fact that he had refrained from the use of intoxicating liquors. Right after him another centenarian said he had lived over a hundred years, and he ascribed it to the fact that for the last fifty years he had hardly seen a sober moment. It is an amazing thing how many outrages men may commit upon their physical system and yet live on. In the case of the man of the jug he lived on because his body was pickled. In the case of the man of the pipe, he lived 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 who hear me this day? What is the advice you are going to give to your children?

First of all, we must advise them to abstain from the use of tobacco because all the medical fraternity of the United States and Great Britain agree in ascribing to this habit terrific unhealth. The men whose life-time work is the study of the science of health say so, and shall 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 as a matter of unhealth. A distinguished physician declared he considered the use of tobacco caused seventy different styles of disease, and he says: "Of all the cases of cancer in the mouth that have come under my observation, almost in every case it has been ascribed to tobacco."

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

Besides that, all reformers will tell you that the use of tobacco creates an unnatural thirst, and it is the cause of drunkenness in America to-day more than anything else. In all cases where you find men taking strong drink you find they use tobacco. There are men who use tobacco who do not take strong drink, but all who use strong drink use tobacco, and that shows beyond controversy there is an affinity between the two products. There are reformers here to-day who will testify to you it is impossible for a man to reform from taking strong drink until he quits tobacco. In many of the cases where men have been reformed from strong drink and have gone back to their cups, they have testified that they first touched tobacco and then they surrendered to intoxicants.

I say in the presence of this assemblage to-day, in which there are many physicians—and they know that what I say is true on the subject—that the pathway to the drunkard's grave and the drunkard's hell is strewn thick with tobacco-leaves. What has been the testimony on this subject? Is this a mere statement of a preacher whose business it is to talk morals, or is the testimony of the world just as emphatic? What did Benjamin Franklin say? "I never saw a well man in the exercise of common sense who would say that tobacco did him any good." What did Thomas Jefferson say? Certainly he is good authority. He says in regard to the culture of tobacco, "It is a culture productive of infinite wretchdness." What did Horace Greeley say of it? "It is a profane stench." What did Daniel Webster say of it? "If those men must smoke, let them take the horse-shed!" One reason why the habit goes on from destruction to destruction is that so many ministers of the gospel take it. They smoke themselves into bronchitis, and then the dear people have to send them to Europe to get them restored from exhausting religious services! They smoke until the nervous system is shattered. They smoke themselves to death. I could mention the names of five distinguished clergymen who died of cancer of the mouth, and the doctor said, in every case, it was the result of tobacco. The tombstone of many a minister of religion has been covered all over with handsome eulogy, when, if the true epitaph had been written, it would have said: "Here lies a man killed by too much cavendish!" They smoke until the world is blue, and their theology is blue, and everything is blue. How can a man stand in the pulpit and preach on the subject of temperance when he is indulging such a habit as that? I have seen a cuspadore in a pulpit into which the holy man dropped his cud before he got up to read about "blessed are the pure in heart," and to read about the rolling of sin as a sweet morsel under the tongue, and to read about the unclean animals in Leviticus that chewed the cud.

About sixty-five years ago a student at Andover Theological Seminary graduated into the ministry. He had an eloquence and a magnetism which sent him to the front. Nothing could stand before him. But in a few months he was put in an insane asylum, and the physician said tobacco was the cause of the disaster. It was the custom in those days to give a portion of tobacco to every patient in the asylum. Nearly twenty years passed along, and that man was walking the floor of his cell in the asylum, when his reason returned, and he saw the situation, and he took the tobacco from his mouth and threw it against the iron gate of the place in which he was confined, and he said: "What brought me here? What keeps me here? Tobacco! tobacco! God forgive me, God help me, 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 then went into everlasting blessedness.

There are ministers of religion now in this country who are dying by inches, and they do not know what is the matter with them. They are being killed by tobacco. They are despoiling their influence through tobacco. They are malodorous with tobacco. I could give one paragraph of history, and that would be my own experience. It took ten cigars to make one sermon, and I got very nervous, and I awakened one day to see what an outrage I was committing upon my health by the use of tobacco. I was about to change settlement, and a generous tobacconist of Philadelphia told me if I would come to Philadelphia and be his pastor he would give me all the cigars I wanted for nothing all the rest of my life. I halted. I said to myself, "If I smoke more than I ought to now in these war times, and when my salary is small, what would I do if I had gratuitous and unlimited supply?" Then and there, twenty-four years ago, I quit once and forever. It made a new man of me. Much of the time the world looked blue before that, because I was looking through 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 has blessed 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 hand all the money expended by Christian men in Brooklyn for tobacco, and I will support three orphan asylums as well and as grandly as the three great orphan asylums already established. Put into my hand the money spent by the Christians of America for tobacco, and I will clothe, shelter, and feed all the suffering poor of the continent. The American Church gives a million dollars a year for the salvation of the heathen, and American Christians smoke five million dollars' worth of tobacco.

I stand here to-day in the presence of a vast multitude of young people who are forming their habits. Between seventeen and twenty-five years of age a great many young men get on them habits in the use of tobacco 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 either take very good tobacco, or you take very cheap tobacco. If it is cheap, I will tell you why it is cheap. It is made of burdock, and lampblack, and sawdust, and colt's-foot, and plantain leaves, and fuller'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. But if you use expensive tobacco, do you not think it would be better for you to take that amount of money which you are now expending for this herb, and which you will expend during the course of your life if you keep the habit up, and with it buy a splendid farm and make the afternoon and the evening of your life comfortable?

There are young men whose life is going out inch by inch from cigarettes. Now, do you not think it would be well for you to listen to the testimony of a merchant of New York, who said this: "In early life I smoked six cigars a day at six and a half cents each. They averaged that. I thought to myself one day, I'll just put aside all I consume 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 gives this tremendous statistic: "Last July completed thirty-nine years since, 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 compound interest. We lived in the city, but the children, who had learned something of the enjoyment of country life from their annual visits to their grandparents, longed for a home among the green fields. I found a very pleasant place in the country for sale. The cigar money came into requisition, and I found it amounted to a sufficient sum to purchase the place, and it is mine. Now, boys, you take your choice. Smoking without a home, or a home without smoking." This is common sense as well as religion.

I must say a word to my friends who smoke the best tobacco, and who could stop at any time. What is your Christian influence in this respect? What is your influence upon young men? Do you not think it would be better for you to exercise a little self-denial! People wondered why George Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts, wore a cravat but no collar. "Oh," they said, "it is an absurd eccentricity." This was the history of the cravat without any collar: For many years before he had been talking with an inebriate, trying to persuade him to give up the habit of drinking and he said to the inebriate, "Your habit is entirely unnecessary." "Ah!" replied the inebriate, "we do a great many things that are not necessary. It isn't necessary that you should have that collar." "Well," said Mr. Briggs, "I'll never wear a collar again if you will stop drinking." "Agreed," said the other. They joined hands in a pledge that they kept for twenty years—kept until 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 to somebody else's advantage.

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

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

But I must put my emphasis upon the use of opium. It is made from the white poppy. It is not a new discovery. Three hundred years before Christ we read of it; but it was not until the seventh century that it took up its march of death, and, passing out of the curative and the medicinal, through smoking and mastication it has become the curse of nations. In 1861 there were imported into this country one hundred and seven thousand pounds of opium. In 1880, nineteen years after, there were imported five hundred and thirty thousand pounds of opium. In 1876 there were in this country two hundred and twenty-five thousand opium-consumers. Now, it is estimated there are in the United States to-day six hundred thousand victims of opium. It is appalling.

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

I have knelt down in this very church by those who were elegant in apparel, and elegant in appearance, and from the depths of their souls and from the depths of my soul, we cried out for God's rescue. Somehow it did not come. In many a household only the physician and pastor know it—the physician called in for physical relief, the pastor called in for spiritual relief, and they both fail. The physician confesses his defeat, the minister of religion confesses his defeat, for somehow God does not seem to hear a prayer offered for an opium-eater. His grace is infinite, and I have been told there are cases of reformation. I never saw one. I say this not to wound the feelings of any who may feel this awful grip, but to utter a potent warning that you stand back from that gate of hell. Oh, man, oh, woman, tampering with this great evil, have you fallen back on this as a permanent resource because of some physical distress or mental anguish? Better stop. The ecstasies do not pay for the horrors. The Paradise is followed too soon by the Pandemonium. Morphia, a blessing of 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. Did you ever read De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium-Eater?" He says that during the first ten years the habit handed to him all the keys of Paradise, but it would take something as mighty as De Quincey's pen to describe the consequent horrors. There is nothing that I have ever read about the tortures of the damned that seemed more horrible than those which De Quincey says he suffered. Samuel Taylor Coleridge first conquered the world with his exquisite pen, and then was conquered by opium. The most brilliant, the most eloquent lawyer of the nineteenth century went down under its power, and there is a vast multitude of men and women—but more women than men—who are going into the dungeon of that awful incarceration.

The worst thing about it is, it takes advantage of one's weakness. De Quincey says: "I got to be an opium-eater on account of my rheumatism." Coleridge says: "I got to be an opium-eater on account of my sleeplessness." For what are you taking it? For God's sake do not take it long. The wealthiest, the grandest families going down under its power. Twenty-five thousand victims of opium in Chicago. Twenty-five thousand victims of opium in St. Louis, and, according to that average, seventy-five thousand victims of opium in New York and Brooklyn.

The clerk of a drug store says: "I can tell them when they come in; there is something about their complexion, something about their manner, something about the look of their eyes that shows they are victims." Some in the struggle to get away from it try chloral. Whole tons of chloral manufactured in Germany every year. Baron Liebig says he knows one chemist in Germany who manufactures a half ton of chloral every week. Beware of hydrate of chloral. It is coming on with mighty tread to curse these cities. But I am chiefly under this head speaking of 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 the Christian pulpit, by the power of the Christianized printing-press, by the power of the Lord God Almighty, all these evils are going to be extirpated—all, all, and you have a work in regard to that, and I have a work. But what we do we had better do right away. The clock ticks now, and we hear it; after awhile the clock will tick and we will not hear it.

I sat at a country fireside, and I saw the fire kindle and blaze, and go out. I sat long enough at that fireside to get a good many practical reflections, and I said: "That is like human life, that fire on the hearth." We put on the fagots and they blaze up, and out, and on, and the whole room is filled with the light, gay of sparkle, gay of flash, gay of crackle. Emblem of boyhood. Now the fire intensifies. Now the flame reddens into coals. Now the heat is becoming more and more intense, and the more it is stirred the redder is the coal. Now with one sweep of flame it cleaves the way, and all the hearth glows with the intensity. Emblem of full manhood. Now the coals begin to whiten. Now the heat lessens. Now the flickering shadows die along the wall. Now the fagots fall apart. Now the household hover over the expiring 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 the misfortunes of life seemed to come upon him at once. Bankruptcy, bereavement, scandalization, and eruptive disease so irritating that he had to re-enforce his ten finger-nails with pieces of earthenware to scratch himself withal. His wife took the diagnosis of his complaints and prescribed profanity. She thought he would feel better if 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 than when, at last, Job's three exasperating friends came in, Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad, practically saying to him, "You old sinner, serves you right; you are a hypocrite; what a sight you are! God has sent these chastisements for your wickedness."

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

They build up fortunes that overshadow the earth. They confound all the life-insurance tables on the subject of longevity, dying octogenarians, perhaps nonagenarians, possibly centenarians. Ahab in the palace, Naboth in the cabinet. Unclean Herod on the throne, consecrated Paul twisting ropes for tent-making. Manasseh, the worst of all the kings of Juda, living longer than any of them. While the general rule is the wicked do not live out half their days, there are exceptions where they live on to great age and in a Paradise of beauty and luxuriance, and die with a whole college of physicians expending its skill in trying further prolongation of life, and have a funeral with casket under mountain of calla-lilies, the finest equipages of the city jingling and flashing into line, the poor, angle-worm of the dust carried out to its hole in the ground with the pomp that might make a spirit from some other world suppose that the Archangel Michael was dead.

Go up among the finest residences of the city, and on some of the door-plates you will find the names of those mightiest for commercial and social iniquity. They are the vampires of society—they are the gorgons of the century. Some of these men have each wheel of their carriage a juggernaut wet with the blood of those sacrificed to their avarice. Some of them are like Caligula, who wished that all the people 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 and infamous quacks and legal charlatans and world-grabbing monsters. What apostleship of despoliation! Demons incarnate. Hundreds of men concentering all their energies of body, mind, and soul in one prolonged, ever-intensifying, and unrelenting effort to scald and scarify and blast and consume the world. I do not blame you for asking me the quivering, throbbing, burning, resounding, appalling question of my text, "Wherefore do the wicked live?"

In the first place, they live to demonstrate beyond all controversy the long-suffering patience of God. You sometimes say, under some great affront, "I will not stand it;" but perhaps you are compelled to stand it. God, with all the batteries of omnipotence loaded with thunderbolts, stands it century after century. I have no doubt sometimes an angel comes to Him and suggests, "Now is the time to strike." "No," says God; "wait a year, wait twenty years, wait a century, wait five centuries." What God does is not so wonderful as what He does not do. He has the reserve corps with which He could strike Mormonism and Mohammedanism and Paganism from the earth in a day. He could take all the fraud in New York on the west side of Broadway and hurl it into the Hudson, and all the fraud on the east side of Broadway and hurl it into the East River in an hour. He understands the combination lock of every dishonest money-safe, and could blow it up quicker than by any earthly explosive. Written all over the earth, written all over history are the words, "Divine forbearance, 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 into other worlds to be kept in their museums as specimens of a defunct planet. People sometimes talk of God as though He were hasty in His judgments and as though He snapped men up quick. Oh, no! He waited one hundred and twenty years for the people to get into the ark, and warned them all the time—one hundred and twenty years, then the flood came. The Anchor Line gives only a month's announcement of the sailing of the "Circassia," the White Star Line gives only a month's announcement of the sailing of the "Britannic," the Cunard Line gives only a month's announcement of the sailing of the "Oregon;" but of the sailing of that ship that Noah commanded God gave one hundred and twenty years' announcement and warning. Patience antediluvian, patience postdiluvian, patience in times Adamic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, Pauline, Lutheran, Whitefieldian. Patience with men and nations. Patience with barbarisms and civilizations. Six thousand years of patience! Overtopping attribute of God, all of whose attributes are immeasurable. Why do the wicked live? That their overthrow may be the more impressive and climacteric. They must pile up their mischief until all the community shall see it, until the nation shall see it, until all the world shall see it. The higher it goes up the harder it will come down and the grander will be the divine vindication.

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

About fifteen years ago we had in this country a most illustrious instance of how God lets a man go on in iniquity, so that at the close of the career his overthrow may be the more impressive, full of warning and climacteric. First, an honest chairmaker, then an alderman, then a member of congress, then a supervisor of a city, then school commissioner, then state senator, then commissioner of public works—on and up, stealing thousands of dollars here and thousands of dollars there, until the malfeasance in office overtopped anything the world had ever seen—making the new Court House in New York a monument of municipal crime, and rushing the debt of the city from thirty-six million dollars to ninety-seven millions. Now, he is at the top of millionairedom.

Country-seat terraced and arbored and parterred clear to the water's brink. Horses enough to stock a king's equerry. Grooms and postilions in 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, and ignoramuses took important office. He whispered, and in Albany and Washington they said it thundered. Wider and mightier and more baleful his influence, until it seemed as if Pandemonium was to be adjourned to this world, and in the Satanic realm there was to be a change of administration, and Apollyon, who had held dominion so long, should have 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 diamonds representing sheaves of wheat. Musicians in a semicircle, half-hidden by a great harp of flowers. Ships of flowers. Forty silver sets, one of them with two hundred and forty pieces. One wedding-dress that cost five thousand dollars. A famous libertine, who owned several Long Island Sound steamboats, and not long before he was shot for his crimes, sent as a wedding present to that house a frosted silver iceberg, with representations of arctic bears walking on icicle-handles and ascending the spoons. Was there ever such a convocation of pictures, bronzes, of bric-a-brac, of grandeurs, social grandeurs? The highest wave of New York splendor rolled into that house and recoiled perhaps never again to rise so high. But just at that time, when all earthly and infernal observation was concentered on that man, eternal justice, impersonated by that wonder of the American bar, Charles O'Connor, got on the track of the offender. First arraignment, then sentence to twelve years' imprisonment under twelve indictments, then penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, then a lawsuit against him for six million dollars, then incarceration in Ludlow Street jail, then escape to foreign land, to be brought back under the stout grip of the constabulary, then dying of broken heart in a prison cell. God allowed him to go on in iniquity until all the world saw as never before that "the way of the transgressor is hard," and that dishonesty will not declare permanent dividends, and that you had better be an honest chairmaker with a day's wages at a time than a brilliant commissioner of public works, all your pockets crammed with plunder.

What a brilliant figure in history is William the Conqueror, the intimidator 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, making a Doomsday Book by which he could keep the whole land under despotic espionage, proclaiming war in revenge for a joke uttered in regard to his obesity. Harvest fields and vineyards going down under the cavalry hoof. Nations horror-struck. But one day while at the apex of all observation he is riding out and the horse put his hoof on a hot cinder, throwing the king so violently against the pommel of the saddle that he dies, his son hastening to England to get the crown before the breath has left his father's body.

The imperial corpse drawn by a cart, most of the attendants leaving it in the street because of a fire alarm that they might go off and see the conflagration. And just as they are going to put his body down in the 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's homestead. The property on which this church is built is mine. I reclaim my right. In the name of Almighty God I forbid you to bury the king here, or to cover him with my glebe." "Go up," said the ambition of William the Conqueror. "Go up by conquest, go up by throne, go up in the sight of all nations, go up by cruelties." But one day God said, "Come down, come down by the way of a miserable death, come down by the way of an ignominious obsequies, come down in the sight of all nations, come clear down, come down forever." And you and I see the same thing on a smaller scale many and many a time—illustrations of the fact that God lets the wicked live that He may make their overthrow 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 the serpent, called the dragon. It seems to me any intelligent man must admit that there is a commander-in-chief of all evil.

The Persians called him Ahriman, the Hindus called him Siva. He was represented on canvas as a mythological combination of Thor and Cerberus and Pan and Vulcan and other horrible addenda. I do not care what you call him, that monster of evil is abroad, and his one work is destruction. John Milton almost glorified him by witchery of description, but he is the concentration of all meanness and of all despicability. My little child, seven years of age, said to her mother one day, "Why don't God kill the devil at once, and have done with it?" In less terse phrase we have all asked the same question. The Bible says he is to be imprisoned and he is to be chained down. Why not heave the old miscreant into his dungeon now? Does it not seem as if his volume of infamy were complete? Does it not seem as if the last fifty years would make an appropriate peroration? No; God will let him go on to the top of all bad endeavor, and then when all the earth and all constellations and galaxies and all the universe are watching, God will hurl him down with a violence and ghastliness enough to persuade five hundred eternities that a rebellion against God must perish. God will not do it by piecemeal, God will not do it by small skirmish. He will wait until all the troops are massed, and then some day when in defiant and confident mood, at the head of his army, this Goliath of hell stalks forth, our champion, the son of David, will strike him down, not with smooth stones from the brook, but with fragments from the Rock of Ages. But it will not be done until this giant of evil and his holy antagonist come out within full sight of the two great armies. The tragedy is only postponed to make the overthrow more impressive and climacteric. Do not fret. If God can afford to wait you can afford to wait. God's clock of destiny strikes only once in a thousand years. Do not try to measure events by the second-hand on your little time-piece. Sin and Satan go on only that their overthrow may at last be the more terrific, the more impressive, the more resounding, the more climacteric.

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

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

Do not fret. That splendid building will after a while be a free library, or it will be a hospital, or it will be a gallery of pure art. Again and again observatories have been built by infidelity, and the 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 nose and pull him down by a way he knew not. And God has a hook to-day in the nose of every Sennacherib of infidelity and sin, and will drag him about as He will. Marble halls deserted to sinful amusements will yet be dedicated for religious assemblage. All these castles of sin are to be captured for God as we go forth with the battle-shout that Oliver Cromwell rang out at the head of his troops as he rode in on the field of Naseby: "Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered!" After a great fire in London, amid the ruins there was nothing left but an arch with the name of the architect upon it; and, my friends, whatever else 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 it was with you. Chieftains of sin to become chieftains of grace. Paul, the apostle, made out of Saul, the persecutor. Baxter, the flaming evangel, made out of Baxter, the blasphemer. Whole squadrons, with streamers of Emmanuel floating from the masthead, though once they were launched from the dry-docks of diabolism. God lets these wicked men live that He may make jewels out of them for coronets, that He may make tongues of fire out of them for Pentecosts, that He may make warriors out of them for Armageddons, that he may make conquerors out of them for the day when they shall ride at the head of the white-horse host in the grand review of the resurrection.

Why do the wicked live? To make it plain beyond all controversy that there is another place of adjustment. So many of the bad up, so many of the good down. It seems to me that no man can look abroad without saying—no man of common sense, religious or irreligious, can look abroad without saying, "There must be some place where brilliant scoundrelism shall be arrested, where innocence shall get out from under the heel of despotism." Common fairness as well as eternal justice demands it.

We adjourn to the great assizes, the stupendous injustices of this life. They are not righted here. There must be some place where they will be righted. God can not afford to omit the judgment day or the reconstruction of conditions. For you can not make me believe that that man stuffed with all abomination, having devoured widows' houses and digested them, looking with basilisk or tigerish eyes upon his fellows, 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 sepulcher and pass right on through to the back door of the sepulcher, and find a celestial turnout waiting for him, so that he can drive tandem right up primrosed hills, one glory riding as lackey ahead, and another glory riding as postilion behind, while that poor woman who supported her invalid husband and her helpless children by taking in washing and ironing, often putting her hand to her side where the cancerous trouble had already begun, and dropping dead late on Saturday night while she was preparing the garments for the Sabbath day, coming afoot to the front door of the sepulcher, shall pass through to the back door of the sepulcher and find nothing waiting, no one to welcome, no one 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 princes afoot and beggars a-horseback, but I tell you there must be a place and a time when the right foot will get into the stirrup. To demonstrate beyond all controversy that there is another place for adjustment, God lets the wicked live.

Why do the wicked live? For the same reason that He lets us live—to have time for repentance.

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

How long have you, my brother, lived unforgiven? Fifteen, twenty, forty, sixty years? Lived through great awakenings, lived through domestic sorrow, lived through commercial calamity, lived through providential crises that startled nations, and you are living yet, strangers to God, and with no hope for a great future into which you may be precipitated. Oh, would it not be better for us to get our nature through the Grace of Christ revolutionized and transfigured? For I want you to know that God sometimes changes His gait, and instead of the deliberate tread He is the swift witness, and sometimes the 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 the best impulse of your heart, and that is toward Christ and heaven. Do not fight the Lord that made you and offers to redeem you.

Philip of France went out with his army, with bows and arrows, to fight King Edward III. of England; but just as they got into the critical moment of the battle, a shower of rain came and relaxed the bow-strings so that they were of no effect, and Philip and his army were worsted. And all your weaponry against God will be as nothing when he rains upon you discomfiture from the heavens. Do not fight the Lord any longer. Change allegiance. Take down the old flag of sin, run up the new flag of grace. It does not take the Lord Jesus Christ the thousandth part of a second to convert you if you will only surrender, be willing to be saved. The American Congress was in anxiety during the Revolutionary War while awaiting to hear news from the conflict between Washington and Cornwallis, and the anxiety became intense and almost unbearable as the days went by. When the news came at last that Cornwallis had surrendered and the war was practically over, so great was the excitement that the doorkeeper of the House of Congress dropped dead from joyful excitement. And if this long war between your soul and God should come to an end this morning by your entire surrender, the war forever over, the news would very soon reach the heavens, and nothing but the supernatural health of your loved ones before the throne would keep them from being prostrated with overjoy at the cessation of all spiritual hostilities.

THE END.