into the full spirit of it, a more magnificent instance of it than that which is recorded in the closing words of the eighth of Romans, where he has been speaking of the sufferings of the whole world; where he looks upon the creature delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God, and says, "The whole creation is going on still groaning, and it is still travailing in pain." And then, after reasoning on all the light and darkness in which the world moves, he says:

"What shall we say, then, to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

And now look at this magnificent defiance with which he throws down the gauntlet to every conceivable form of earthly misfortune:

‘Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, [and where is there such another magnificent burst of joy and cheer as this?] in all these things [in tribulation, and distress, and persecution, and famine, and nakedness, and peril, and sword] we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded [and now his thought overleaps the bounds of time and earth, and takes in the universe] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Now, I ask you whether the whole view of the Christian religion, as it is laid down in the New Testament, is not one of joyfulness-whether that is not the preeminent element, the genius, of it. I ask you whether the religious life which has been handed down to us from the church of the mediæval ages is not, after all, so stained through with a sense of melancholy and restriction and loss and narrowness and suffering that the popular impression is that religion, if not morose, is yet moody and melancholy, sad and sorrowful; that its joy lies in the things that are to be in the life which is to come, and not in the thing itself. I ask you whether the

ascetic view has not been preached, and is not still preached, unconsciously, by men who disown it in terms, and who yet make representations of great doctrines in such a way as to impress the minds of their fellow-men with the conviction that to do the things that are noblest, best, divinest, in accordance with the highest law of true manhood, requires great suffering; and that it requires a special dispensation of grace to enable men to do those things, because they are not only so hard, but so painful in the doing.

This ascetic view of religion is false in general, and in particular it destroys its power. It is for the welfare of the race that they should understand not only that the highest line of manhood is possible, but that it is the most redolent of joy. This is a secret which the world ought to have disclosed to it, whatever it may cost. No miner is unwilling to work night and day, if only gold follows his work. The very mother, in the midst of travail and anguish, rejoices, forgets her pain, because a man child is born into the world. No man counts the suffering that is victorious in the end. But it is needful that the world should understand that religion is not a series of sufferings which are in the nature of a price paid for a joy by-and-by, but that it is a revelation of God to this world of that higher law of true manhood which carries with it, now and forever hereafter, the highest happiness of which men are susceptible.

I declare that every single Christian duty laid down carries its own pleasure in it. I declare that if men want to know the sources and secrets of the highest joy they will find them in those very things which are ordinarily esteemed as most difficult and only to be done under a sense of duty— things that men balance, saying, "Shall I deny myself, or be damned? Well, on the whole, I'd rather deny myself. It's hard, but still it's better to pluck off my right hand than to go to hell." And so they consent with themselves to do things that are painful, onerous, bitter, disagreeable in every way, revolting, as they think, to nature; and they do it because they are afraid, if they do not, that by-and-by the settling will be harder than they can bear.

It is preeminently desirable, therefore, that men should

understand that whatever may seem to be the difficulties and pains attending the performance of Christian duties, they carry in themselves, as the fruit of doing them, the very reward of good. They are not so hard as men think they are, and they are not so painful as the devil tempts men to think they are; but they are as full of joy as the tree of life is of apples that are shaken down over the head of the world. It is a misfortune to have it understood that righteousness is sad and painful, and that joy and hilarity are to be sought for only in physical life. It is a misfortune to have it understood that sufferings and tears and mortifications belong to the spiritual life, and that gayety and liberty and joyfulness belong to the fleshly life. It is a slander, and it is a slander that carries detriment and damnation to uncounted thousands.

When our Master stood in the midst of Palestine, looking out upon the currents that were flowing, sometimes north, and sometimes south-the various impulses, the various ambitions, the various lines of endeavor-he saw men fluctuating from right to left, and from left to right, all seeking happiness; and he, as it were, questioned the world and the men that were in it, and found that they were barren of happiness. Power sought it, and power did not find it. Riches sought it, and riches did not find it. Vanity sought it, and it was not in vanity. Men sought it in the flesh, and there it died. Looking at all the ways in which men sought to make themselves happy, Christ stood and said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." All the world's joy is but a tantalization. He that wants the peace of joy cannot find it in the flesh, nor in the lower social life, nor in the merely intellectual life, but in the realm of the moral life, where true divine manhood inheres. Let him mount there; let him lay the lines of his life according to that higher spiritual wisdom, and he shall find rest unto his soul-for there is a realm in the soul which never hears the tempest, nor feels the thunder-shock; and the very earthquake may

shake and roll every other thing and not disturb the settled peace that God has given to those who know how to retreat to the innermost divine temple of the soul and there find rest in God.

Consider, now, this law of self-devotion, or this law of self-renunciation, if you choose to call it so, or this law of self-sacrifice, or the giving up of yourself for the benefit of others-call it whatever name you please. It strikes everybody that it must be a heroic thing, but a thing which the world cannot be expected to find or to practice. Men look upon it as painful. They look upon it as necessary, but necessary just as surgery is not because they laugh when they are cut, but because if they are not cut by-and-by they will die; and rather than die they are willing to suffer.

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So men say, "Yes, we are willing to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, to serve other men, to use all the power our being for the happiness and comfort of our fellow-men, looking not at our own things." The trouble is that they conceive of it wrongly. In the first place they think it is ordering them into a realm of labor, of pain-bearing, and storm-bearing, and they do not understand its genius. Then, in the next place, they say, "One thing I do know practically, and that is, that if a man does not attend to his own business his business will not attend to him. I must look after myself; and when I go over to my shop or my store, and you tell me, 'Now, look not every man on his own things, but every man on the things of others,' that is just what we do and we try to get them too." Thus they pervert to selfishness the words which teach the largest disinterestedness.

do—and

But men say, "Business is business; and a man must take care of himself. The law of self-preservation and of individual responsibility leads him to do this. You must look after yourself or nobody will look after you. Do you tell me that I must live a life of self-renunciation? It is the same as saying that I must seek self-destruction. could not stand an hour if that were to be the principle of action."

Society

Let us, ther, consider this a little more at the root,

All the lower forms

When you look at the animal life upon the globe in its lowest stage, you will see that the lowest form of animal life has but two substantial functions. One is self-preservation, and the other is propagation. of animal life have but these two substantial functions. That is their law to themselves. They have not the faculty for anything more. Many creations below them have not the faculty even for that; but if you take the lion, the tiger, all beasts that eat and flee or fight, they have talents for these functions; but to organize ideas, or to form communities, is not in them. They have not the aptitudes for such things. The law of the lowest life-the life of mere flesh-is to take care of self. That is the prime end of life in the mere physical realm, and its occupants are not equipped for anything more than that.

As you begin to rise in the development of animal life, a new element comes in-namely, that of congregations or communities. Animals begin, as they are more largely developed, to live together. Now, to live together, in its nature, implies the thinking of one animal or creature of another animal or creature. There must be social equation. In one way or another that must be established. So, in the progressive development of animal life, there comes in something more than self-preservation; there comes in the power of social existence, which implies, more or less, the fitting of one to another, which is a very low form of self-abnegation. That is, we give up some things for the sake of some other things.

So society, in its earliest stages, is formed. Men come together for mutual defense. They augment power. For there must be intestine government, and there must be submission thereto. These things are nascent and crude ; but, nevertheless, as compared with the state of the animals below. them, the society of the savages in this world is an immense growth toward development.

But as you go still higher, you will find not only that this is true, but that there comes in the social, as distinguished from this animal conservation. There is developed the society life of the household. In other words, even in savage life flowers blossom here and there, in the midst of rudeness and coarse