fore there has been time or opportunity for skill to be developed in it, how much more is it wrong to do so by a faculty which has to go through a much longer apprenticeship, which requires great patience, and which cannot come to symmetrical union with the other faculties except by a protracted experience of joy and sorrow, of burden-bearing and pleasurable emotion, of all manner of fare by the way? Does it take scores of years to make an efficient veteran or an able general? and ought it not to take as long to make a soldier of the Lord, who faces no visible antagonist, and the weapons of whose warfare are spiritual, and whose enemies are in high places the prince of the power of the air, leagued darkness, concealed temptations, hidden evils of every kind?

We patiently wait for perfectness in any direction, if we have foresight and hope that God, in the great scheme by which he governs the world, means that we shall be steadily developed, and shall go on and on, to higher and higher attainments. We are patient with our pride, not in the sense of pampering it, but in the sense of waiting for the more perfect subjugation of it by love. We are patient with our vanity, not blinding ourselves to its weakness, but by culture converting it into a noble sentiment. We are patient with irritable tempers, not because we wish to excuse them or justify them, but because the fire that is in them can be put to the noblest uses.

So we wait patiently, or should, along the line of our whole life, and look forward, saying to ourselves, "I live by hope; and every step forward is preparatory to the next. live by faith; and every stage of excellence that is developed in me is a prophecy of better things in the future. I live with my thought projected onward and upward. I throw forward my life, and run after it."

As sometimes during a battle, in a crisis, when the fight is hottest and the chances are uncertain, the color-bearer hurls the flag into the midst of the enemy, so as to inspire the soldiers to rush forward and rescue it, and bring it back; so men, in the conflicts of life, throw into the future their hope of all that is dear to them, of fidelity, of purity, of Christian attainment, that they may more earnestly, more

zealously and more courageously press forward after it, and finally attain it.

I remark, then, first, that any presentation of the Gospel which does not produce a cheerful forelooking is characteris tically defective. All ways of preaching the Gospel of Christ which, as their characteristic result, inspire men with despondency and with an overpowering sense of difficulty, tending to discouragement and making the heart gloomy, are untrue to the spirit and genius of that Gospel. I cannot conceive of any burlesque more grim, or any hemispheric and continental jest more hideous, than that which has been perpetrated by the mountebanks of time, where men have been taught that they are brought into this world on livid errands of eternal damnation, and that all things are fixed both in the secret counsels of God and in the everlasting overt decrees of God, holding them more mightily than a lion's paw holds the mouse; and that, do what they will, there is the line laid down for them, and they are impelled along that line. Just as the shuttle is impelled, by irresistible power, to carry the thread which is put into it, and weave the fabric that has been designed, it being never consulted; so it has been taught that men were sent into this world to carry on, without volition of their own, and in spite of them, a process tending towards their eternal damnation. And this has been called "Good News"! There is where the jest comes in. Why, out of the Egyptian caves they had a doctrine of fate which was as good as that. All through Roman life, back into Tuscan life from whence much of its spirit came, there was a doctrine of the future which was hideous enough without any further intensifying of its hideousness. Nature had groaning enough; the great animal-bearing globe had fierceness enough and inevitableness enough; and to add to that groaning, to that fierceness and to that inevitableness a doctrine which should enslave the intellects of men so that they could not extricate themselves, and then to preach that as the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ, and call it "Good News"-was there ever another such awful jest!

A jailor goes to a prisoner-the father of a household-a man full of the purest love to his companion and children,

who has lost all his friends, and all his property-a jailor goes to such a man, smiling and joyful, and says, "My dear friend, wake up! I have something to tell you that you would like to hear." The man, startled, wakes himself, and says, "What! am I pardoned ?" "Oh, better than that!" "Well, am I to have a new trial ?" "No, better than that; the Court has taken your case into consideration, and has decreed that you shall be cut into inch-pieces, and that your wife and children shall be permitted to sit in a balcony where they can see the operation and rejoice over it"!

Do you tell me that God and the angels are to look into hell and see the torments of men who were foreordained from all eternity to reprobation, and that they will look approvingly upon the scene, and take comfort in it? and do you call it " good news"? and do you send it out into the world and tell men to preach it everywhere? Why, the devil could have preached that without any help. He did not need any help or special skill for that.

Any presentation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that does not come to the world as the balmy days of May come to the yet unlocked northern zones; any way of preaching the love of God in Christ Jesus which is not as full of sweetness as the voice of the angels when they sang at the Advent; any mode of making known the proclamation of mercy which has not at least as many birds as there are in June, and as many flowers as the dumb meadow knows how to bring forth; any method of bringing before men the doctrine of salvation which does not make every one feel, "There is hope for me-in God, in the divine plan, in the very nature of the organization of human life and society," is spurious, is a slander on God, and is blasphemy against love.

[At this point the congregation interrupted Mr. Beecher with an unmistakable and pronounced manifestation of applause, aud then suddenly stopped, as if alarmed or ashamed. Mr. Beecher smiled, and said:]

[Some folks will be very much troubled at that. Don't! We are so refined in modern times that when, in the church and on the Sabbath-day, truths are spoken that make a man's

soul jump, and give expression to its emotions, people think it desecrates Sunday, and dishonors the house of God. I do not know what they would have done if they had sat and heard Christ deliver the Sermon on the Mount, when everybody interrupted him with questions, and there was talking backward and forward. I do not know what they would have done if they had listened to the preaching of the goldenmouthed Chrysostom, when the people felt much, and freely gave utterance to their feelings. I do not know why Sunday is too good for joy, or why a church is too good for the expression of it, if it be a genuine impulse. I like it; but then, do not let my likings mislead you; for you may get into the newspapers!]

There is an error in preaching the Gospel which springs from a worthy motive, but which is mischievous—namely, that of representing human nature as being so sinful, and the work of regeneration as being so difficult and so uncertain, as to throw doubt over the minds of men. There is, it is true, a sense in which our Master did that. He said, "Many are called, but few are chosen." He said, "Straight and narrow is the way to life, and few go in it; but broad is the way to death, and many throng it." He said, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." When asked, "Are there many that shall be saved?" he said, "Strive ye to enter." He said all those things; and I say them, too—that is, to men who are careless, to men who think they are going into the higher life without effort, without development, without transformation, without divine inspiration, without culture. I say it to men who, in the great thundering street, are rushing hither and thither, heedless of the higher life. But to any congregation that are enough interested in the subject of religion to give their hour for instruction in it, I would not say it, in any such way as to shut the door of possibility. I would not say it to men who are willing to hear the truth preached. Is the work of God on the human soul so uncertain that when men go to hear the Gospel a minister is justified in declaring it so as to leave the impression on their minds of supercautiousness and utter discouragement ?

I hold that man, by nature, is low enough. He is an animal; and I hold that only by unfoldings does he come to be a social being, a reasonable being, a moral being, a spiritual being. I hold that every man needs the inoculation of the divine Soul before that which joins him to the divine nature has been developed in him. As there must be the impregnation of pollen before you can have fruit, so I hold that there must be the divine impregnation before divine attributes can be brought forth in man. But I hold that that which Jesus taught in the Gospel was concurrent with the divinely natural tendencies of men. I hold that these natural tendencies lie in the plane of God's original decrees and intents, and that they are in accordance with the purpose and the wish of a guiding Providence. And I hold that the impression which is produced on a congregation should be one of hope, and not of caution, nor of fear, nor of hesitancy.

There is an impression among persons in respect to religion, that one may go through a revival, and enter the church. as a Christian person, and be all right; but that it is a thing so out of the ordinary line, and requiring such a preparation and such influences, that there is not much hope of your succeeding if you undertake to become a Christian.

Now, I say that to every honest man, and every rightly inclined man, living in his household in normal relations and endeavoring to live correctly, who, looking forward into the future, undertakes to guide himself according to the great platform and law of divine love, it not only is not a matter of doubt, but it is a matter inevitable, that he will go right if he holds to his resolution; it is as certain as that if you sow in your garden seeds of flowers that belong to our zone you will have flowers. Now and then there will be a season when the seeds will rot in the ground; and there are many sermons that come to naught; and yet, as even such seeds add something to the richness of the soil, so there is something even in these sermons. There is foolishness in them, at least. Paul speaks, you know, of "the foolishness of preaching." But, as a rule, seeds, when sown, grow; and it is worth any man's while to