each person's heart, and carried on step after step, by disci pline, by instruction, by influences of a thousand kinds; and although, being begun, it is carried far forward in this life, often it is perfected only in the life which is to come.

We have been taught that men by nature are without holiness. We have been taught that by reason of the fault of our great ancestor we are all of us inheriting a certain something, a part of which is a want of righteousness. We are taugnt that we are not good naturally-that we are not by nature holy. It is just as true as it can be that we are not holy by nature. Whatever Adam had to do with it, one thing is very certain that every one who is born into this life is born as empty of the kingdom of God as possible. So a man is born empty of walking. A man is born empty of seeing. And a man is born empty of hearing. We are told that men lack original righteousness. Well, they lack original muscleness. They lack bones. A man is nothing but gristle to start on. When he begins in this life he does not know how to stand, or move, or run. He is empty of saltatory accomplishments. He is empty also of carving, and painting, and arithmetic, and geography. He is empty of science. He is empty of everything. He is a bundle of emptinesses that are to be filled up. And men are born destitute not only of physical accomplishments, but of intellectual, social, and spiritual elements. They are born destitute of spiritual elements, because they are born destitute of everything. They begin below everything, and then quietly develop, and rise up, step by step, and come, not to righteousness alone, but to every physical excellence, and to every social excellence. Whatever they reach, they come to by a process of education and unfolding; and at the beginning they are not more deficient in spiritual and moral elements than in social and physical elements. It is given to man to be born as a mere collection of tendencies; and it is the business of life to develop these tendencies.

Men will develop differently, because there is a potent force which exists in different proportions in different individuals. The great question of heredity comes in here. Men start composed differently. They have the same faculties,

just as all English literature has one alphabet; but as with this alphabet infinitely different spellings are allowed, and words and meanings are multiplied, and phrases and sentences are varied and combined, so men having the same faculties have them in different proportions; and men starting differently are ultimately to represent very different formsor, as we are accustomed to say, very different characters. All are substantially alike in general: it is only specifically that they are different.

In this work, then, of building up the kingdom of God, esch man is regarded in his separateness; and the root in each man is to be developed, and the kingdom is to be established by each one in himself. It is only another name for education carried on to the higher forms of the faculties. We understand perfectly what it is to develop the physical Lingdom which consists of strength and skill. We know what it is to educate men intellectually. We know what it is to educate them socially to refinement of manners and accomplishments. We understand how to develop the kingdom of society, the kingdom of matter, and the kingdom of thought in men; and by precisely the same lines and analogies we are to develop the kingdom of heaven, or the higher spiritual graces and elements, in men.

It would seem as if, since this is the highest and comes the latest, it would be the most difficult. It is in fact, but not in philosophy; for there is in the development of man as a spiritual being a central element which does not belong, that I know of, to any other part of his development. When a man is being educated physically, you are obliged to think of a thousand things; you are obliged to watch over the different relationships which he sustains to matter, to food, to air, to water, to light. There is no one central element which, being observed, takes care of the others, in the physical development of man. And the same is true of his intellectual and æsthetic and social education. But when you come to the spiritual and highest realm, there is a distinctive peculiarity in that range-namely, that there is given to us in our higher nature, in our spiritual relations, a central and sovereign disposition which, when it is brought to force,

to power, regulates and controls all other elements. This is the great central element of love, of which the New Testament is so full, and of which theology is so empty. This great central spring when once put in play, so that it acts in full force in its own sovereign tendency, regulates, expels things that are to be expelled, throws out excrementitious matter, harmonizes, subordinates, and gives tone to the mind. If a man takes care of that one central element, it in turn takes care of all the other elements.

Now, there is no one quality or tendency in the physical realm which, being educated, brought into the ascendant, and cared for, takes care of everything else; nor is there anything in the intellectual realm which, being once made central, impleted and kept full, acts as a regulator; but in the moral and spiritual realm, in the dispositions which are the hardest to attain, which are regarded by men almost as shadowy, and sought for in a thousand difficult ways, there is this central regulating principle of love to God and love to man, which, being strong and active, exerts an influence under which everything else takes care of itself---under which humility takes care of itself, meekness takes care of itself, and patience takes care of itself. All qualities that seek to establish themselves according to righteousness will fall out naturally under the influence of continuous and purified love to God and to man, and will come of themselves, as do all flowers under the influence of summer.

Moralists are like men who want flowers in winter. Every flower that a man gets in winter he has to look after. If he gets twenty geraniums, he has to take twenty roots, and put them in twenty pots, in twenty places, under glass; and has to keep them warm by means of furnaces; and has to watch against their being destroyed by frost; and has to keep them from aphides, and everything else that threatens them; and he gets just what he seeks for, and nothing more; and what he gets, he gets by the hardest.

But when June and July come you do not get alone just what you plant in your garden. If you put in roses, and tulips, and hyacinths, and daisies, you will get these, to be sure; but you will not stop with these; because the sun,

shining and warming the atmosphere, will bring forth all forms of vegetation; and myriads of flowers and grasses besides those which you plant will edge your bed about. All nature broods, and broods, and develops many things which man does not sow, nor plant, nor cultivate.

Now, there is this same analogy in the moral realm. Men often seek to build up this, that, or the other petty virtue. One man learns to hold his tongue. Well,-that is a good thing to do-(and, on the whole, I was unfortunate in that illustration; because I recollect that one of the apostles somewhere says something to the effect that if a man is able to hold his tongue he is a perfect man. The declaration is, substantially, that if a man can do that, he can do anything else—not that he necessarily does.) But, men attempt in spots to es tablish single virtues. They attempt in special emergencies to bring out a certain Christian quality just as they deal out medicine. There is an ache; and there must be this pilule or pill, as the case may be,hich is special to that particular trouble. So men are ying to be Christians by specialties. They try to build up a moral and spiritual character by watching against separate temptations here and there. But the truth is that a man whose soul is educated in the atmosphere of divine love has that within him which ministers to all these qualities, all the time; and the soul is full, and is constantly overflowing them automatically. It is summer in a man, and everything is growing there, when once you raise this element into ascendancy in him. Furnace heat will be no longer needed when the solar blaze, this wonderful principle which germinates and regulates everything, gains control. Without it, everything is force-work; with it, everything is spontaneous. Without it, everything is clashing and irregular; with it, everything is harmonious and perfectly orderly. Without it, everything is special and partial; with it, everything is systematic and universal all through life. If one can mount up to that higher development of the soul where God's kingdom lies; if one can come into possession of that conquering benevolence which is of God, which is like God, which goes back to God, and which has in it something of the infinite power of God; if one can establish himself on

that, and give it force and instrumentality, then he occupies a position in which he is master of himself and the various elements that are around about him. The whole work lies in this one thing—and that is more than you can say of any other development.

We have heard it said that the higher forms of spiritual growth are the most difficult. They have been the most difficult because men have attempted to produce them by specialties. They have undertaken to unfold this virtue and that virtue as elements independent of all others. In so doing they have reversed the true order. If one, at the beginning, rises to this great central principle; if he unites himself by faith with the spirit of Christ, then with that spirit comes regulation, and harmony, and growth, and all spiritual truth.

The true work of life, then, is the development of this divine disposition in the soul, not simply for the sake of the thing itself, but for the sake of all those other things over which it has an expulsive or educating force in the mind.

This never happens of itself. We come to this divine dominant disposition not by chance, but by choice. If any man supposes that men are born into life absolutely good, he knows but little of human nature. Some men are born far better organized than others; men are born relatively different; but after all, there is an element which is not born with men, and the tendency to which is not born with mennamely, this central God-element-this disinterested benevolence. Centrality of power in efficient love—this is not born in men. No man gets it by waiting. It does not come by accident. No man receives it through an unexpected flush. It is a matter of deliberate intelligence and deliberate choice. Men must obtain it as we obtain anything else—the seed-form coming first, and the developed form afterwards.

The beginnings of the kingdom of God in every man are not knowledge, not zeal, not conscientiousness, not truthand that I say without any imputation on these things. The true soul-force which is to recreate every man, and prepare him for heaven, is this central disposition of divine beneficence. There is a definite order of development; but the beginning and the end of it are love. There is an crder of development