thanksgiving and praise.

May those who have, through thy goodness, achieved the ends which they have long sought, rejoice because they can associate thy foresight and guardianship with all the stages through which they have come. May it be a thing to be rejoiced over, that by God's great help we live from day to day and achieve successfully the tasks of life.

Be with those who are in the midst of not unwelcome trials and troubles; be with those who are manfully bearing this world's burdens; performing its duties; venturing the things that are to be ventured. May all acquit themselves as men, gird up their loins, and never faint. Taught of thee, and day by day receiving fresh supplies from thy unwasting Spirit, may they go on courageously in the work which thou hast imposed upon them. May they this day have the divine blessing and impulse resting upon them. We pray that more and more they may be able to consecrate their powers and endeavors to the welfare of men, and to the honor and glory of God.

We beseech of thee that thou wilt draw near to any who are weak; to any who are sick; to any who are in the gloom of trouble. Wilt thou irradiate their room, if they be hindered from coming to the sanctuary. Wilt thou be with them wherever they watch, and wherever they wait. Grant that they may easily open their arms, forth from which are to go God's angels, lent to them for a little while.

Draw near, our Father, to all who are poor and who are suffering from the mischiefs, and cares, and anxieties which befall them. Grant that though they are poor outwardly, they may be rich of heart, and that they may trust in the divine bounty, though they seem withheld from human bounty. May they be sustained, knowing that they are pilgrims and strangers here, and that it will be but a little while ere they will go hence. May their faith not fail them. May they not suffer from double poverty-without and within.

We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing upon the young. We thank thee that there are so many who are being nurtured in the Lord. Grant that those that are in our midst may grow up to all manliness; to truth; to fidelity; to industry; to frugality; to temperance in all things; to purity of thought and feeling; to all noble ambitions; to the love of mankind; to the love, and reverence, and obedience of God.

Bless our schools. Bless those who superintend or minister therein. Bless the teachers and officers of these schools. And we pray that it may not be the knowledge of the letter alone, but also that knowledge that maketh wise unto salvation, that shall be imparted and received. We thank thee for so much success as has been granted to these little assemblies. May thy Spirit, with its ever-quickening power, abide in their midst.

We pray for thy blessing upon all those who go forth to make known the unsearchable riches of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, in the waste places, in the by-ways, among the poor and sick, along our wharves, in jails, and prisons, and poor-houses. May those who have volunteered to cheer the unfortunate, and degraded, and desolate, be filled with the very Spirit and with the abundant blessings of the Lord their Master whom they imitate.

Bless, O Lord, the churches of this city, and of our whole land, that are working for thy cause. Be pleased to bless the President of these United States, and those who are joined with him in authority, and the Congress assembled. Grant that all their counselings may be wise, inspired and overruled for the furtherance of thine own purposes. Bless the Legislatures of the different States, the courts, the judges, the magistrates, and all rulers. Grant that the citizens may live obedient lives; that intelligence and morality may prevail; that the hearts of this people may more and more cleave together; and that there may be essential unity throughout the entire nation.

Nor do we pray selfishly for ourselves alone. May thy bounties become universal. May those jealousies cease which have separated nations so long, and those angry passions which have dashed one upon another. May the day come when there shall be the true fellowship of a true brotherhood. May men rise to a higher plane of life. May men seek after the things which shall strengthen, and not for the things that shall weaken one another. May all ignorance and superstition disappear; may the lower feelings cease to rule; may the Spirit of God with all wisdom dwell with all mankind, and this world become as the kingdom of heaven.

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen.

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON.

OUR Father, we pray that thou wilt take away from us the shadow which overhangs the bright and blessed valley through which we seek thee. Bring us at last, we pray thee, to some faith in thy truth. O how long shall the heavens drop down upon us promises! How long shall thy words be in our ears not understood? How long to the dumb and to the deaf shall they call from off the walls of heaven,、 saying, Come? How long shall we believe in things which belong to the body, and not in things which belong to the soul? Blessed Spirit, give to us something of our birthright; something of the vision that belongs to us; and grant that our sorrows, which have so surged about us in the past, may, at the coming of Christ, be assuaged. Grant that our disappointed hopes may seem to be grafted on a better and more enduring stalk in the other life. May we rise up and set our affection on things above, where Christ sitteth, on the right hand of God, and not on things upon the earth. Wilt thou bless us, now, for the rest of this day, and prepare us for its events, and for thy kingdom at last, through riches of grace in Christ Jesus. Amen.

CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS.

6. Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer."-ROMANS Xii. 12.

This may be called a maxim of life, or a very brief, condensed charter of happiness.

Joy is not a faculty; it is a quality of action, or a mood which may belong to any or to all of the faculties of the human soul. There is a double action, both of the physical organization and of the mental. The nerve that is in health, and is directed according to its own nature, responds pleasantly and joyfully. If it be in unhealth, or if it be directed contrary to its nature, it has the inverse power-that of the infliction of pain. Properly speaking, pain is a quality of the body; suffering is a term which designates pain of the mind.

In respect to the faculties of the soul, in one way their action inspires enjoyment. If they be violated, or if they be wrongly coupled, or apportioned, or dealt with, then they have the power of producing suffering.

Now, pain or suffering, whether it be of the body or of the mind, is not primary. It is not the end for which the body and the mind were created. It is cautionary, alternative, remedial. Pain bears to the body, and suffering bears to the mind, the same relation which medicine bears to the physical system. It is not food. It is that which is taken for the purpose of restoring health where it is impaired. And pain or suffering is either cautionary, indicating that we

SUNDAY MORNING, May 3, 1874. LESSON: Eph. i. 11-23; ii. 1-7. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection): Nos. 217, 922.

are going wrong; or remedial, to bring us back from wrong ways; or educational, to inspire us to a higher development of life.

Joy is normal, or it is that which best becomes every faculty. It is the response which we have a right to seek, and which we have a right to expect, from every faculty of the human soul. In us, as imperfect beings, working upward, suffering is needful; but the needfulness of it is a sign. of our inferiority, of our limitation, of our defects; and all forms of discipline, all self-denials, all cross-bearings, all cares and burdens and griefs, are signs of relative imperfection. And they are not to be despised. Nor are we to suppose that any man in this life-at any rate, until the later periods of it-will escape suffering and pain. It is one thing to regard pain and suffering as secondary, and instrumental to a higher purpose; it is another thing to think that they are legitimate things to be sought as if they were good in themselves.

The ideal of perfectness is that of the mind acting in a mood so high that there is pleasure in all its action. Pleasure is the testimony of any faculty that it is acting in health and aright.

Now, is Christianity to be a pain or a pleasure ?—I mean ideal Christianity. Is religion to be a pæan, as of victory, or a requiem, as of defeat? Is it set to the key of joy or to the key of sadness? In reading the New Testament promiscuously, you will find that both things are continuously recognized-namely, the certainty of suffering, and of exaltation by suffering. You will find also that the New Testament is full and overflowing with the idea of joy and rejoicing. It becomes a question, therefore, of rank or gradation: Which is characteristic-joy or pain and suffering? Suffering and pain are characteristic of an imperfect condition; and all right enjoyments are characteristic of growing perfectness, or of a tendency toward perfection. Joy is a sign of health and virtue and holiness. Sorrow is a sign that we are taking medicine for the sake of health, but that we have not yet reached health.

Religion may therefore be a mere yoke, or it may be a

freedom from bondage. It may be, like a tune, set either to the major or to the minor key. It may be played slow, and therefore it may be dull; or it may be rendered with a sparkling effect. The popular idea of religion is on the whole dolorous. It is very much a commercial transaction. We pay a certain amount of sorrow here for the sake of getting a dividend of joy hereafter. We are willing to give up a great many things which are good and desirable now for the sake of receiving an equivalent, or more than an equivalent, by and by. People who are exhorted to become Christians feel that they are called from liberty to circumscription. From the great world, with all its ambitions and freedoms and plenitudes and excitements, to a strait and narrow way of the church in which they are to be children of hours, and days, and methods, and ordinances, and deprivations. To be a Christian seems to most people as my condition used to seem when I was forbidden the street, and the fields, and the forest, and the whole round of nature, and was told that I must not go out of the door-yard. "You may play in the door-yard, but you must not go outside of it," it was said to me; and I remember how wistfully I used to look down the street and see the boys playing in their freedom. I recollect how crazily I heard the drum and fife on military training days, and caught glimpses of the red coats as they marched to and fro down town. How these things used to stir my imagination! and how it grieved me that I, a poor little boy, was shut up there in the door-yard, and made to behave myself!

There are many who think that being in the church is being in the Lord's door-yard, and not being allowed to go outside of the gate, and play with bad boys, nor to roam in the forests. I do not so regard it. To be a child of religion is to be like a bird taken out of its cage, let loose, and taught how to fly through all the air, and in the branches of every tree. It is to be a soul taken out of its prison-house, and given its liberty, and taught how to use it. There is no man so fit to live a religious life as he whose soul has derived freedom from his God.

Religion, as presented to the world, has gone through very many moods. There have been periods of the world in which