of an idol, and has the spirit of God, of the Lord Jesus Christ, he may call him what he pleases-Jupiter, or Jehovah, or anything else. God does not live in a name, but in a quality; and if a man anywhere, in the darkness of heathenism or in the light of civilization, is led to put his trust, his faith, in qualities that constitute the true God, then those qualities are the true God to him, without regard to names.

Well, then, we are not to give up the church; for it is important in the educating work; it is necessary that it should stand as an example, as a light, as a teacher; yet the attempt of the church to administer God's whole trust of human nature is a piece of arrogance and impertinence which ought to be rebuked in our day, as it has been by the divine providence in days that are gone by.

No theory of atonement, I remark secondly, can be valid, that has not been, to the whole world, in all their conditions, fixed by the providence of God. It was not the Calmuck's fault that he was born in a den; it was not the Bedouin's fault that he was born in the desert; it was not the North American Indian's fault that he was born in a wigwam; and it was not any nation's fault that it was born under cramped customs and laws and institutions; and if God so loved the world that he gave his Son to die for it, if he is disclosed in the Lord Jesus Christ, the way of salvation is open to all men, everywhere, and there is atoning mercy, and a providential supervising of it, reaching out to all nations, races and conditions. How shall it come? I do not know. In what way shall it work? I do not know. I cannot unravel the inward counsels of God; but I know that they who seek God and his righteousness shall be accepted and saved. I believe that for every class on the created earth there is power in that atonement which is God himself. Of that atonement which is God himself, Christ was the translator; he brought it out, and made it apparent; but the power to forgive sins lies in the irresistible love of God himself. The power to transform men lies in the inherent nature of God. No act is so powerful as the actor; no event is so powerful as the influence that caused it; and in the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ there is a power which

though you may not be able to follow it, or interpret it, or conform it to the canons of received philosophy, is universal, reaches out to every human creature; and he who limits it, or withdraws it, is, I think, like a man who steals medicine from a hospital, bread from a famished city, or water from those who are perishing of thirst.

No theodicy can satisfy the thinking mind of to-day but that one which makes God's government a government over the whole world, and not an oriental household. In the old times there was the wife and her children, and there were the concubines and their children. There were Sarah and Hagar -one for the wilderness and what she could get, and the other for the homestead and its prerogatives. There may be reasons why, in a kind of parabolic life, there should be such historic reminiscences; but to take these rude experiences of an early age, and lift them into the heavenly sphere, and call them God and moral government, and say that God is the God of the favored few, and that the great outlying sensitive race are not under his government and sympathy and law, seems to me to be so atrocious that the more men become educated and thoughtful, the more they will resent it.

The fact is this: that in our time the world needs a view of God which shall satisfy the highest reason. God made the reason, and it is that by which we go back to him. Without reason there is no duty, no interpretation of providence, no knowledge of God, and no civilization. They who decry reason as simply a natural faculty, and therefore not to be trusted, rail against God himself.

A view of God which shall meet the wants of the world must be a view which shall satisfy our understanding of the undeniable facts of life. It must be a view which shall reach the real moral sense of the globe, now educated in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It must be a view which shall meet that state of mind to which men have been brought by the divine providence; by the educating influences of the life and teachings of the Saviour. For we are passing out from the age of enforcements, and are coming more and more into a democratic age, not in the lower sense of the term, but in its highest and best sense. We are coming to an age of indi

vidual power, individual judgment and individual rights. We are coming to that age in which men are grown to such an extent that they are beginning more and more to be large as individuals; and they are thinking and acting from motives within themselves, and not merely from exterior and enforcing influences.

Our time, then, needs that which shall satisfy the wants of the great mass of growing and thinking men. For ages men have made gods after their own hearts; they have made gods of their passions; they have made gods of lust; but we are living in an era in which the ideal life is government, and law, and intelligence, and purity, and loving-kindness; and I say that the public sentiment which has been brought under the influence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot but be shocked by the presentation of a God so narrow, so partial, so exclusive, so hard, so cruel, as the God which theology has presented. You may build as many arguments as you please; but, though they be made of iron and steel, clinched and double clinched, you will not long keep before a thinking and acting generation of men the idea of a God that is repugnant and hideous to the sentiments of the human soul. Men that are divinely enlightened will not tolerate the thought of a God that shocks the reason and the conscience, and still maintain his power and ascendancy in the heaven. But, on the other hand, present a God that will not rub out the difference between right and wrong; present a God that makes more and more manifest through the ages that righteousness exalts a nation; present a God that administers over the earth an equable government, pitying and sparing his subjects; make him the Chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely; search the choicest places of human experience; go where the heart in its noblest moods is responsive to the advanced thoughts and examples of the age; go where love suffers and smiles to suffer, and take some letters there; go where friendship is sublimest and most unselfish, and take some letters there; go where heroism is strongest, bravest and noblest, and take some letters there; go where sin is alleviated, where sorrow is illumined, where mercy blesses those who deserve no mercy, and take some letters there; go to

prisons, and hospitals, and battle-fields, and poor-houses, and chambers of sickness, and take some letters there; go to all places where men are yet animals, and not angels, and gather letters, and they will be letters which, when put together, will spell GOD, glorious in the heaven and on earth. And that is a name which is composite not of barbaric forces, but of sweetness, and long-suffering through the ages, and patience illimitable. Make me that God, and I ask no argument. He that has beauty needs no eulogy. He that has power needs nothing but that. A God that reaches the want of the race and the deepest feelings of the soul will stand, though against him are hurled all the storms of infidelity. No bombarding of eloquence or dissuasion of philosophy can keep men from believing in a God who is their health, their life, their joy and their salvation.

That is what the world is waiting for; and if to the great work of ushering it in science can come bringing its offerings, let it come; or if nations can come unfolding their experience, and so do something to help on this end, let them come; if the household, more rich than all other things in its treasures of experience, can come with a sacred love which shall illustrate and glorify the name of this yet unknown God, let it come; if the soul of him that God has inspired in his personal history, and in whom he has unfolded strange and rare conceptions, can come with his contribution of knowledge, let him come; and if all these things can be lifted up and made into an image of God before the world, God will be glorified, man will be redeemed, the race will be saved, and the universe will rejoice forever and forever.

PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.*

MAY God be merciful to these dear children. Thou hast brought them into this great world, where they know not anything. Born into life as to the outward, they are full of darkness as to things in ward. Though they be born into the visible, yet all that is real lies within the invisible. Coming forth from darkness into life, they are still more in the darkness than in the light. And we commend them, little strangers and pilgrims, to thy heavenly love and care, believing that thou wilt by thy providence vouchsafe to them all needed guidance. If not a sparrow falls without thy notice, our Father, shall they? Bless them in the love of their parents; and may it be a love that shall bring forth wisdom. Grant that while they are receiving benefaction from their strength, and experience, and wisdom, these little children may render back a hundred-fold in joy and love, and in the teaching which comes from them to their parents for the service which they receive.

And we beseech of thee that thou wilt open the hearts of thy people more and more to these little ones; for of such is the kingdom of God. May we in them behold what we should be toward thee. May we behold their clinging love, their conscious helplessness, and their implicit trust. May we recognize in thee a Father; and may we have toward thee that trust and that love which a child has toward its parents; and may we have a consciousness that we derive from thee whatever is best and noblest in the upbuilding of that nature which is to outlive death, and which is to stand in glory in the life which is to come.

Remember all the children that are within our congregation, and that are under our care in the various labors of thy servants, in every field, everywhere. We pray that the endeavor to inspire in their parents and in the households where they dwell more fidelity may be blessed of God. May the efforts which we make to instruct and ground them in a sound morality, and to bring them up as useful men and citizens, may receive thy blessing.

We pray that those who are willing to labor and to bear pain may rejoice to feel that they follow, though it be with feeble, incompetent footsteps, the example of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. May none be weary in well doing, remembering that in due season they shall reap if they faint not.

Bless all those who, looking upon their children, are in distress by reason of any fear, any grief, or any trouble that darkens their life or their household, May their faith never fail them. May they feel that they never stand so near to the heart and right hand of divine power as when they are pleading for the welfare of their children; and may they not be impatient because God is long-suffering and waits. In due season thou shalt avenge thine own elect; in due season thou shalt bring forth righteousness; and let none that are turmoiled, let none that are distressed of 30ul, let none that bear burdens complain or murmur. May they wait upon the Lord. And

* Immediately following the baptism of children.