effectually show its dreary and ignoble nature, whatever its specious glow and foamy sparkle, than its utter dearth of any beneficent enterprise to gladden the sorrow or remove the moral degradation of one dark spot on the wide earth. For any fruitage of spiritual blessing to the degraded nations, or even of spiritual help and hope to fallen individuals, its whole history has been one interminable moral Sahara; and by this token, if no other, it stands known and condemned. All the benign movements which tend to illuminate the darkness and lift the heavy burdens of fallen races and men have been fed by the thoughts and themes of God in his glory, of Christ and his work.

Here then we see, first, the remedy for our human infirmities, and the secret of growth. It is found in inspiring affinities and upward aspirations. We grow, not negatively but positively, by the force of an inner heaving life; a life that will itself close up the wounds and slough off the excrescences of our sin. How much idle breath is expended in mere fault-finding with children; how much baffled effort put forth by men in the purely negative struggle to break off their own faults! The child will never be cured by carping, but by cheering. The man will never starve out his vices, except as he feeds up his virtues. We must be drawn from above, not pushed from below; drawn by "the cords of love and the bands of a man." We want the inbreathing of a vital power tending evermore upward. What volumes lie wrapped up in that phrase, "the expulsive

power of a great affection"! When some thoroughly magnanimous purpose takes possession of a man, how often it steadily purges away the meaner qualities of his character! How it makes the boy a man, and the girl a woman, and steadies them in all the whirl and giddiness of youth! And when the spirit of Christ, with all its high motives, enters a soul and takes possession, what a legion of devils it can cast out! The distance between the crabbedness of Jacob's youth and the serene beauty of his old age, between Saul and Paul, between Kapiolani sunning herself all day naked on the beach of Hawaii and Kapiolani transfigured and toiling with womanly dignity and power all the remainder of her life for every good and noble thing how infinite! And what made it?

We see, further, the remedy for our human littleness. It is found in binding fast these little lives to the things that are great and good, that we may share all that greatness and goodness. In this Babel of a world how small are we! In this great onflow of time, how our life dies out like a ripple on the Mississippi! Ages ago the psalmist had the same thought when he exclaimed: "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" But he learned to answer his own questioning: “Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." Yea, there are alliances which carry us higher than the angels, influences in our power as deathless as the life of God. When a woman ceases to be heir and successor of a dead silkworm and keeper of crystals of carbon, and

diffuses heaven-kindled warmth and brightness and blessedness through the home and through all social life, so that Quincy Adams feels for fourscore years the hand of his praying mother on his head, or Neander labors grandly on under the watchful care of a sister's love, or Ann Haseltine not only lives on in her husband's adamantine toils, but transmits the memory of all her queenly qualities to the daughters of the future, this indeed weds mortality to eternity, earth to heaven. When the man ceases to live as the highest, or the lowest, of the animals, or to fulfill the function of the chilled-iron safe whose combination lock death will force open; when he lives to bless his fellow men and honor his God with all disinterested labors, kind offices, and kindly affections; when in private life Harlan Page and Hedley Vicars draw men upward and Godward, or Bunsen and Wilberforce give talent and culture to the establishment of truth and righteousness, or when the Phillipses and their kindred spirits and successors devote the mighty power of wealth to the transmission of hallowed and benign influences that work on when the body crumbles to dust, and all for Christ's sake,

this is indeed to magnify and multiply our little life; and so "as trailing clouds of glory do we" go to “God who is our home.”

Young Gentlemen of the Graduating Class: You have reached the point where ponderings and questionings press heavily on many of your minds. It is a sober time when a man passes from the state of pupil

age to that of entire self-dependence and responsibility; when the wide world opens before him with its boundless horizon, and from its infinite possibilities he is to choose once for all his unknown path. We know it, for we have passed through it, and felt, mingling with the excitement and the hope, the solicitudes also that will come at times in view of the solitary struggle. The question now lies before you, and each of you, whether your departure hence shall be a going up or a coming down. And that hinges on the further question, with what agencies you cast in your lot; whether or not your lives are identified with what is good and lovely and true and holy. Choose then your position on the side of every righteous cause, of every high principle, of every right measure, of every benign enterprise. Calmly and firmly maintain your loyalty to these things without fear or anxiety. Standing on the height where the old patriot stood, you may say to each baser appeal, each paltry ambition, each seductive snare, and each petty strife, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down to you." You need not much concern yourselves then for your position or estimation. They will take care of themselves. You will find your level. You shall reap as you sow. No one can greatly harm. you but yourself. He that is intangible shall be intact. Nehemiah grandly reared his massive wall; Sanballat and Geshem gnashed their teeth and passed away.

Make your whole life a good work. Let every legitimate joy and pleasure find a place therein, but let all be chastened by the deep undertone of sober earnest.

Above all, rouse yourselves to the noble ambition of doing good, and reap the blessedness of being a blessing. Lift your eyes to the height of the occasions and the breadth of the opportunities in these stirring times. In your riches of ability or influence or wealth, learn the privilege of laying largely on the altar of Christ; or in your poverty of all these, bestow like one who gave more than they all, because she gave from the full heart. So may your lives flow happily along. Return hither from time to time, three, or ten, or thirty, or fifty years hence, able to say: "I have been doing a great work and have not come down"; or, perchance, before that time stand before the throne of God saying, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do."