ing the organ consists in securing such a combination of stops, and such a tempering of the strong, intermediate, soft and weak tones, that every part shall have justice done to it.

Self-government does not mean slaughter, except metaphorically. We are not to crucify anything that has been created in us. There is no one appetite or passion or faculty or power of the whole make-up of a man that is not necessary to his being. What we want, therefore, is to temper together the various elements of our constitution so that they shall stand in their ranks, affiliations, and co-operations, those which are very strong being kept down, and those which are yet weak being stimulated and brought up. We are to add temperance or self-government—that is, the right management of everything that is in us-to knowledge.

Well, when you have added that to knowledge and virtue and faith, you have added a great deal. It is said that if a man governs his tongue he is a perfect man. It used to be so hard to do it that a man who could do it was thought to be capable of doing anything. A man who is naturally dumb, and governs his tongue, is no better for it; a man who does not want to talk may govern his tongue, and it will be no great sign of virtue in him; but for a person who is alive with curiosity, who is intensely desirous of hearing everything that is said or can be said; who, by reason of various inflammatory emotions, is excessively garrulous—for such a person to govern his tongue is to govern a great deal that is back of it.

Now, if a man can govern his temper, his passions of every kind, all his emotions; if he can add this temperance, or self-control, to knowledge, as that is added to virtue, and as that is added to faith, then certainly he is a great distance on the way toward a Christian education.

"And to temperance [or self-control], patience."

Ah! it is getting harder and harder. A man may, perhaps, for a little while, by a good deal of effort, hold on, keep down, push up; but to continue to do it day by day and not get weary, to undergo perpetual provocation and not give out, is not an easy thing. One can bear pain of body for a little while, but continuous pain exhausts patience and

overreaches courage.

And so in regard to a man's emotion, or in regard to that discipline of Providence in which he is placed, to hold one's self calmly balanced, well-ordered, rightly governed, even for a day, is no small matter. On so balmy a day as this glorious Sunday has been, with the heavens propitious, with the earth beautiful, with God intermingled with all things that the eye delights to look upon, or that the ear delights to listen to-on such a day as this, one might walk in peace; but who shall hold the man in the same mood to-morrow, and the next day, and the next, patient, so as that the provocations, and agitations, and swellings, and surgings, and oscillations which come from men busy in life shall not be able to shake him from the steadfast purpose of self-government?

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And to patience [when you have it] godliness.”

Do not be content to maintain yourself in a beggarly equilibrium, partly by the support of your household, partly by the support of those around you, bolstering yourself up, as it were, by your own affairs, so that men shail see that you are living a quiet, upright, temperate, self-governed life, and look upon it as a beautiful morality: nay, let there be prayer, devotion, spirituality, godliness, so that this shall not be a mere secular experience, but an experience manifestly reaching up to and taking hold of the sublimest realities of the other life.

Well, is not adding godliness enough? If a man is godly is not that sufficient? No. I have seen a great many godly men who lacked many things that are desirable. I have seen

very godly men who did not take any notice of children. I have seen men who were so godly that they had very little sympathy with men: they sympathized with God pretty much altogether. I have seen men who were so godly that they lived in the thought of the divine government, and the divine justice, and the divine nature, and were forever talk. ing of God, and of his kingdom and of his realm, and were forever praying to him, and had no thought for their fellow

creatures.

So, then, we are to add to our patience godliness, and to godliness-what do you think?

"And to godliness, brotherly kindness [sympathy of man with man]."

Come out of your closet as Moses came down from the mountain-with his face shining, though he did not know it himself. Come with all your inward control, your aspiration, your devoutness, your fervor, your knowledge, your faith. Come with all the Christian elements which we have thus far enumerated. Do not act as if you were better than other people, or lifted above them. You may be one of God's aristocrats; but that is no reason why you should hold your head up among men and walk superior to them. Add to your other virtues that sweet brotherly sympathy which shall unite you to all those who are around about you.

Well, is not that enough? No; because men may say, "I thank God that I was converted in the Methodist church; I do love the Methodist brethren;" or men may say, "I never hear the name of Plymouth church that my love does not go out toward the brethren of that church." There is sympathy between you and those of your own church, and that is all right. Churchmen like churchmen; Roman Catholics like Roman Catholics-that is, under certain circumstances. So men have friendliness and fellowship toward their own kind. And as if they were in danger of narrowing their intercourse and regard, and leaving it in this form, the apostle adds a larger designation which you cannot escape -which takes in everybody:

"And to brotherly kindness, love."

Love is the crowning virtue. It embraces every human being not only, but every sentient or sensitive thing; it is the essential element of God. It is in love that we become partakers of the divine nature, if anywhere; for no man can become a partaker of the divine nature in this world in the matter of infinite power, nor of intuitive and certain wisdom, nor of those profound and mysterious depths of excellence which are unrevealed and unrevealable. God is love; he that loveth dwelleth in God, and God in him; and it is at this point that we fail. It is at this point that virtue, selfcontrol, godliness, sweet fellowship, all the various roots of Christian character, finally come together. It is at this point

of universal love that the apostle terminates the description.

We are not called to church membership; we are not called to the renunciation of this, that, or the other thing: we are called to the nobility of a transcendent character; we are called to strength and manliness; we are called to whatever is large and grand in human nature.

Therefore, let me say, in regard to what Christianity is, that it is the ideal of a certain condition of mankind. It is God's purpose, made manifest through the Lord Jesus Christ, to evolve from the human race a divine character. There are certain externalities of Christianity; there is a historical line of antecedents; but the essential thing in Christianity is that it is the divine plan by which men are to be lifted from the lowest animalism, and unfolded into the grandeur of spiritual beings, and to become partakers of the divine nature.

Therefore, Christianity is not simply a schedule of doctrines, any more than plows and harrows and rakes and spades are harvests. They are not grain nor corn, though they may be precedent to grain and corn. They are indispensable to the production of these things; but they are not the things themselves: they are the mere instruments by which, in one way or another, such results are worked out and elaborated.

Now, the essential element of Christianity is the elevation of the human nature into the divine, or the lapse, the descent, of the divine nature into the human, for the purpose of the exaltation of the human. Whatsoever things come up in this age, that are of moment to men, are, whether they were known by men eighteen hundred years ago or not, part and parcel of Christianity. Christianity is a thing which cannot be written in a book. It cannot be put into language nor inventoried. No man can write the history of a single human soul. We have histories, but what are they? Do you suppose that any man by saying "love" expresses love? Does a guide-board which stands at the forks of a road, and says, "Forty miles," contain the forty miles? Is not the guide-board a mere symbol, or hint, of a fact? And when

God speaks by the words of the Bible, the things of which he speaks are not in that Bible; they are not on paper. When he utters facts concerning men, those facts exist, not in the record, but in the actual lives of individuals.

Hence, Christianity cannot be compressed into a little creed. A creed may point to things which are extremely useful; but the things themselves cannot be put into a creed. The Bible-the Old Testament and the New-is a combination of indices. Its words are but symbols; it is a history; it is a collection of commands; it is an indication of certain traits: but the divine, glorious, loving spirit, kindling in the human soul a corresponding loving spirit; the subjugation of the whole interior man to the lines and limitations of the divine; the awakening in the human soul of aspiration, enthusiasm, courage, faith, hope; the leading that soul to renounce all lust; the producing therein friendliness and sympathy and love-can printer's ink do more than hint at these things? They are made up of throbbing souls.

man.

They spring in vital forms out of the very spirit of

So, not only is Christianity a spiritual condition of living souls, but it is increscent. It cannot be expressed once for all. Many people say, "Will there never be anything like stability of doctrine ?" I hope not. I should be sorry if the world should come to a pause in such a sense as that you could express now all that man is ever to be, or that experience ever is to unfold either in the individual or in the race. As I understand the divine economy, there are to be great riches of knowledge yet. There are to be better social combinations. There is to be a better beginning given to every generation of men. By-and-by, when God's laws are better understood, men will be better born-that is, they will be born in better households and in better communities, and will be inspired by nobler knowledges and educating influences; and there will be experiences such as are not possible We see that we stand better than our fathers did, and that they stood Letter than their fathers did. We see that there are influences working toward a glorious millennial day, no matter what falls out between.

now.