PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.

Most merciful God, thou art our fathers' God. They trusted in thee, and were never put to shame. Thou didst in darkness bring light to them; in danger, succor; in perplexity, guidance. By them thou didst achieve great and glorious things for the honor of thy name, and for the welfare of thy cause upon earth.

We rejoice that our lot was cast in this land, and that for us there has been, since our very childhood, the ministration of truth in freedoom and liberty. We rejoice that we have been reared under these benignant skies, and in this abundant land, amidst plenty. We rejoice that thy gracious providence hath timed and guided events for the furtherance of thy honor, and for the welfare of humanity.

Be pleased, Almighty God, to breathe upon all this great people the same wisdom, the same forbearance, the same courage, the same seeking for the highest treasure, which shall bring in its train all earthly good.

We beseech of thee that thou wilt be pleased to bless the great citizenship of this land, mingled together a rolling mass, deep as the sea, and as wide, and multitudinous as its drops. Thou hast brought hither this great people that they may be grounded in knowledge, and that they may be mighty in virtue. Take away from them, we beseech of thee, easily besetting sins. Take away from them all temptations to lust, and intemperance, and greed, and avarice, and corruption of every kind. Grant that they may be obedient under the laws, and seek for rulers men that are wise and just.

We pray that thou wilt grant the light of knowledge to all the dark mass who are yet in our midst. We pray that thou wilt kindle in them a zeal for knowledge that shall increase until it shall be as the burning sun. Give daylight to this great nation, we pray thee.

We pray for all who are in authority-for all judges, magistrates, and rulers-that they may be men who fear God, and esteem the interests of their kind, and do not pursue their own selfish ambitions. We pray that thou wilt grant that justice, and purity, and truth and righteousness may prevail everywhere.

We pray that this nation may never embroil its hands in blood needlessly. May it be kept back from ambition, from invasion, from all mingling with the affairs of men which shall entangle it guiltily. May it fear God. May it love mankind. May it desire, by example, and by all its legislation and policy, to pursue the things which are for peace, and things whereby one may edify another.

We pray for the nations of the earth, that they may learn war no more, having no more need to learn war. Grant that knowledge may release men from weakness, and that they may become too strong to be handled by tyrants. We pray for the uprising of men, not by revolutionary passions, and not by the rolling tide of war. We pray that thou wilt advance the light of knowledge, and more and more subdue the heart to the amenities of love; and more and more may mankind rejoice that so they may be free.

And bring to pass, we beseech of thee, those great and glorious promises which portend the latter-day glory, when all the earth shall

dwell in peace, when right shall shine, and when Christ shall come and reign a thousand years.

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

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON.

Our Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt bless the memory of those who are gone-of all that have wrought well, and of all that deserve honor. Grant that their shadow may fall upon the young who are coming forward, and that men may not take counsel of the basely thrifty and prosperous; of men who shall die in their success; of men who are corrupted by their gains. We pray that thou wilt inspire in the minds of the young a loftier conception of character, and a purpose to educate themselves disinterestedly for the promotion of the welfare of their fatherland. Join their hearts to their race. The time has come when men belong to all mankind, and when all mankind are brothers. Grant, we pray thee, that this spirit may be more and more developed; and may the blood of martyrs nourish it.

We pray for more purity, for more truth, for more simplicity, for more straightforwardness, for more exalted aims, for riper principles. Deliver us from the power of bad men and evil examples, and make this nation as great as it has promised to be.

Accept, we pray thee, our thanks. Acccept our gratitude, that this church has been permitted to stand in these days a light in darkness. We thank thee that it has sent out words of truth and fidelity and courage for the right. We thank thee for the many names of those who have gone from among us. We thank thee for those who yet remain, and rejoice to see that their labor has brought success. O Lord, let this church live. Let it be for ever more a church working for the poor, for the needy, for all mankind. May the time never come when it shall be held by shackles, when its eyes shall be darkened by policies, and when its heart shall be dry, or turned into narrow channels. We pray that from this place may go forth the word of universal truth to universal man. And when this church can no longer serve God in the interests of humanity, may it die, and may something better spring up in its place.

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

SAVED BY HOPE.

"For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."-ROMANS viii., 24, 25.

We are said, sometimes, to be saved by faith. It is said sometimes, as here, that we are saved by hope. It may at first seem as though there were contrariety because there is variety. There is in the action of every mind never any one element working alone. There is a combination of elements or of faculties that lead or guide; and when they are all congenial and co-operative, and stand connected with the certainty of men's right living and right dying, then you may say, indifferently, of them all, that you are guided and saved either by one or by another, since they all are present in this blessed partnership of salvation.

One thing is sure, that of all books which ever were written, there is none that tends to project a man's thoughts into the future, and to thrust a man forward, so much as the New Testament. Never was there a book that, directly or indirectly, opened elements which belonged to the future as it does. Never was there a book which laid down a schedule for conduct and character which of itself necessitated forward action of the mind and feeling so much as the New Testament. Never was there a book whose latent and undisclosed philosophy implied so strongly as does the New Testament the on-going of men, or their opening and development, which is always a work toward the future.

Now, hope covers all that ground which the mind occu

SUNDAY MORNING, March 22, 1874. LESSON: Rom. viii., 15-39. HYMNS: (Ply. mouth Collection): Nos. 130, 1,230, 660.

pies in looking into the future for certain great values or results-not merely in forelooking, but in looking forward with special and concurrent joy.

Hope is distinctively and universally recognized as a pleasure-bearing faculty; and when men are said to be "saved by hope," it is meant that they are saved by a generic exercise or conduct of the mind by which it works forward for itself toward its destiny-toward all the things which it esteems most highly, and which it most desires. And it works not bitterly, nor with acerbity, nor with any sense or feeling except that of cheer, and happiness; and peculiar happiness-happiness that, although it stands in a certain relation to our past experience, looks at the future as a sort of escape from the present, as a realization of our ideal, and as something which is higher and better, and which removes us further from trouble and vexation in this world. It is a mood of mind which, while it does not refuse the past as a source of knowledge and guidance, and as a sphere in which lie great duties that are incumbent upon us, yet furnishes men with spirit and aptitude for present living by opening in them such a sense of their future as shall bring upon them new joys; joys from fresh sources; joys not tainted with evil; joys springing from ideal conceptions; joys as pure to the soul as the dews are to the flowers in summer.

This saying that we are "saved by hope" is only, as I have already intimated, a conformity of the spiritual philosophy of the New Testament to the actual facts of man's existence, and to the problem of life. For men here are never born at their full. They never grow up in any assignable number of years to a perfect condition. There is a side (and that is the side on which they are almost always looked at) where men are imperfect and sinful; and they mourn their imperfection and sinfulness: but there is another side. which men ought to bear in mind, which is fully recognized in the New Testament, and which God certainly bears in mind-namely, the side on which, out of limitation and imperfection and even sinfulness, is growing a constitution of things which is developing better and better ends, better and better characters, better and better conditions.

It pleases me to see my oak-trees growing. I wish they would grow faster and become larger. I should be very glad if I could make them grow a hundred years in one, so that I could sit under them as I sat under the great live-oaks in the South. But they will not grow in any such way as that; I see that they are little things; and when I think of big oaks, I say to mine, "What poor little sniveling things you are! How insufficient you are as trees!" Nevertheless, I do not despise them because they have not yet grown. I say to them, "Grow on. You will come to it by and by. You have it in you." And from year to year they grow more and more; and in time they shall become large trees, with widespreading branches, underneath which men shall sit, in the boughs of which birds shall rest, and which shall be crowned. with beauty and majesty; for the summer shall caress them, and the winter shall make them strong by its storms, and in every way nature is engaged working upon them to develop them. I should be a poor dendrologist if I walked every day along the border of my little paradise on the hill, and flouted my trees. "Oh! this ran onus arboris. What an apology for a tree it is! This is an Austrian pine; now I have seen the Austrian pine on Austrian mountains, and this is hardly even an apology for it." If then I said of my ashtree, "Well, that is a poor ash. Why, I could almost jump over it; whereas the true ash of the field is so high that the birds can scarcely fly to the top of it;" if I thus went on calling my trees to nought because they were so thin in stem, so narrow in spread, so low in height, so imperfect and crude, how unfair and unreasonable I should be. I do not do so at all. I go around among my trees, and say, "Ah! how much larger you are than you used to be! How you are growing!" And I imagine how much they will have grown when they are five years old. They almost touch each other now; and I say to myself, "The time will come when some of these trees will have to come out in order to give the others a chance to spread, and when those that remain will have to be pruned." I take as much pleasure with my quarter-ways as I should if they were half-ways; and I shall take as much pleasure with my half-ways as I should if they