of them combined, they have a far more comprehensive knowledge of it than they would have if they only saw it from their individual standpoints. When each one has made his statement of it, and infused into it all the elements that are in him, they will be nearer to a full presentation of it than any one of them could come simply by his understanding of it.

Men want unity of belief; but I would like to know how they are going to have it so long as they are made to differ as they do now. For instance, here is a man of enormous selfesteem. Firmness stands like an adamantine column in his disposition. He sees everything in the light of duty and law. He says, “It is the business of men to obey the law;" and he sympathizes with the magistrate. Says he, "If men have sinned they ought to be punished; the law was made to punish sinners"-and he would like to be the man to carry it out. He is, every particle of him, in sympathy with government and law.

Take another man. He has enormous benevolence; he has not much self-esteem; and he sympathizes with men instead of laws. He sees everything in its relations to the poor and suffering and needy.

One of these men will say, "The law is broken, and penalty must follow." The other will say, "Oh, poor transgressors! what will become of them ?"

How are you going to make men who are organized so differently read the Bible and see everything alike? When you read the Bible you will see one thing, and when another reads the Bible he will see another thing, owing to the differences of your organizations.

If you mix on a plate iron filings, pieces of flint, a little Indian meal, and a little flour, and take a magnet, and draw it through, it will not touch the meal nor the flour nor the flint, but it will pick up all the iron filings.

Now, men are magnets, and if you draw them through the Bible they will catch the things which they are sensitive to, while they will pass by the things which they are not sensitive to. Proud, domineering men will catch the elements which tend toward government. Kind, generous,

democratic people will catch the elements that tend toward kindness and generosity and democracy. Men who are characterized by taste will catch the elements of taste. Those of imagination will catch poetic elements. Each one will catch those elements which are peculiar to himself.

How, then, are you going to take men as they are made, and make them believe alike? Some persons are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month, and it would not go through their skin. No explanation would suffice to make them understand it. They must accept it by faith if they accept it at all. And yet, there are other persons who are so sensitive to everything that is humorous or ludicrous that probably there is not a thing on earth that does not, first or last, suggest something funny to them. How are you going to take such minds, and make them look along the track of truth and see alike? They are made differently, and it is not without a purpose. For variety-organized variety-is strength. A community is strong by the differences and not by the liknesses that exist in it.

Suppose every man in a town were a blacksmith, and nothing else! Fortunately it is never so. Among the people in a town, some are tinners, some are hatters, some are weavers, some are carpenters, some are painters, some are merchants, and some are bankers. The town is rich by the variety of its trades and callings.

Now, in beliefs there are certain great stable, fundamental facts which nobody doubts; as, for instance, that of sunrise or sunset. We all believe in the revolution of the globe. All men agree in regard to certain fixed truths in mathematics. There is no great schism in the matter of arithmetic; everybody acknowledges that two and two make four. But when you come to questions which involve feeling, probably no two persons agree at all. If you could sharply look in and see just how the same proposition strikes two persons, you would probably find that if it was a proposition where emotion was concerned they would not agree. It is colored in one, perhaps, by imagination, which is predominant in him, and in the other by a predominating reflective One person is cautious and hesitant, and another is

reason.

headlong and venturesome, and these facts make it impossible for them to view the same truth in the same light. One man is remarkable for coolness, and another for intensity of feeling; and they will differ in their impressions of a truth according to their individualisms.

These things being so, how preposterous it is for any church to undertake to give a solution of the nature of God, which involves every conceivable question of human disposition! We can know God only so far as we have sparks of him in ourselves. To delineate the whole history of divine providence for thousands of years; to explain the various questions of moral government which arise; to determine the various methods and doctrines of responsibility and penalty and reward; to unfold the whole theory of the human mind; to undertake encyclopediacal knowledge, running through the whole career of the race-how shall this be done so that everybody shall see everything just exactly alike? It is absolutely impossible. God laughs when he sees fool Man trying to do it. It is against nature. So, all the strifes and quarrels of the different sects, to bring everybody to see things just as they see them, are waste work. It never will be done.

Well, as you cannot have external and organic unity, nor an exact unity of beliefs, from the very structure of the human mind, there seems to be but one other kind of unity that you can come to; and that is the unity of the Spirit in the bond of perfectness, or sympathetic unity.

Come, go with me into a house where there is father, where there is mother, where there are eight children, where there are two servants, and where there are three or four friends. They are all of one church; they are all of one business; they all live under one roof; they all either are of one name, or are very nearly associated in name; and you say, "They are at perfect unity." No, they are not; they quarrel like cats and dogs. It is an unhappy household. They have all the unity that the church is striving after; but it does them no good.

Go with me into another house. There are father and mother, and eight children, and two or three friends; and they are sweet-tempered, genial and kind; but they belong

to very different churches. They are gathered together from various quarters; but they all happen to be alike in loving each other. They think differently and believe differently, but that does not prevent their being united. Difference is perfectly compatible with unity. For, are there not four parts to a good tune? and do not all these parts help each other? Differences are only methods of unity, provided they are concordant.

In the great family here at this [Twin Mountain] house there is more unity to-day than there is at large in any church or sect in Christendom. You have come together from every direction; there are hardly any two of you of the same name; you are crowded into this room under circumstances of very great inconvenience; and yet you are polite one to another. You are willing that all others should have seats (—after you are provided for !) There is no strife here. You are harmonious. You wish well to each other. You are even kindly disposed to believe what I say. And yet you are from different churches. You belong to sects of almost every name; but still, there is a genial, kind sympathy existing between you. In short, you are gentlemen and ladies-for the time being! Everything moves in unison. And I will venture to say that there is not a room in this house where there will not be greater happiness after this service. I will venture to say that you will feel kinder to each other, and nearer to each other, and more helpful of each other, during this week for the experience of this morning; it is the natural result of a season of united feelings. And I ask you if such unity is not the best kind. I ask you if inward, sympathetic, benevolent unity is not the unity that does good.

This, then, is the dominant Christian idea of onenessnamely, unity of the heart. A man who is royally endowed with bodily and mental gifts, and who holds himself in such a sweet alliance with every human being that he carries himself genially and helpfully toward all, is a true Christian. Of course such a man carries himself so toward those that he loves as his own; but let a man who is blessed with a supemor intellect, with rare physical endowments, and with cir

cumstances favorable to their development and use, carry himself in a spirit of kindness and gentleness toward the poorest, the lowest and the meanest, and he represents the ideal of Christian manhood. When a man comes to that high state he is Christ's, not only, but he exhibits Christ to men. When the church comes to that state it instantly becomes the true catholic church-that is to say, it becomes the church which is going to take possession of the world—the church of the heart, the church of sympathy, the church of benevolence, the church of love.

By this spirit of sympathy one with another, I remark first, all hatreds, and all injurious conduct under different names of pretension, are forbidden. We have no right to inflict pain except as a physician administers bitter medicines. We have no right to make men suffer except as a surgeon amputates a limb. We have no right to resort to penalties except as the schoolmaster punishes his pupils. We may inflict pain and cause suffering and resort to penalties so far as they are necessary to prevent the repetition of evil in an individual, or to prevent others from experiencing them, under which circumstances they are not cruel. No human being has a right to cause any form of injury except for a benevolent purpose. The doctrines that teach that God's administration in the world is one of vengeance, and that it is continued for no other reason than because God chooses to perpetuate it, make God a demon, and not a Father. All pains and penalties are to be beneficent, and they are to be administered beneficently. A judge has no right to judge a man with a cold, unsympathizing heart. A father has no right to punish a child with an unfeeling, angry spirit. No man has a right to mulct his neighbor, or inflict suffering upon him in any way, except for his good. No man knows what justice is who does not know what love is. There is no justice except the equity that moves under the influence of love. This is the Christian doctrine. All other doctrines are anti-Christian.

Secondly, this spirit of universal sympathy, this spirit of brotherhood between man and man, forbids envy and jealousy of every kind. You perhaps do not believe that there are such