Creed And Deed

ivered on Sunday

w life that has waked in the forest: be glad, all nature cries, summer is coming. And the freshness of the season enters into our own hearts, our pulses beat more quickly, our step is more buoyant. We remember all that is joyful in exist

ready well nigh exhausted, are drained to prepare for the emergencies of conflict. With a secret thrill of terror we read that beds for the wounded and millions of roubles for hospital appliances are being voted by the municipalities of Russia. Readily the imagination can picture to itself what these ghastly preparations mean. It is true, so long as all is well with us, the larger evils of the world do not greatly disturb our equanimity. Man has the happy faculty of abstracting his attention from things remote. The accumulated woes of a continent affect us less than some trifling accident in our immediate vicinity. But when the messengers of evil have cast their shadows across our threshold, when calamity has laid its heavy hand upon our shoulder, it is then that the general unsatisfactoriness of life recurs to us with added force in view of our own experience; the splendor fades from the surrounding scene; every dark stai

ssibly tender satisfaction. But with a certain class of minds-and their number, I believe, is on the increase-the consoling influence of this doctrine is marred by the fatal uncertainty in which the whole question is involved, and which no efforts of man have ever yet, nor ever will, avail to remove. Christianity indeed claims to have settled the point. The Deity himself, it avers, intervened by dire

ce of a world of souls beyond our own. But the phenomena on which it lies are in part dispute

open one and might be answered in the negative. The belief in immortality has been held in this way by some of the greatest intellects of the human race, Spinoza among the rest. If we knew that we shall continue to live, we should not therefore

as fervently for their health as though their present state were the sum total of their existence. And yet he should rather hail the day of death as a day of thanksgiving, and rejoice that those whom he loves have been translated to a sphere every way so much more desirable than our own. No, the natural feeling cannot be suppress

drink the coarsest in quality and the least possible in quantity; we should avoid the attachments of love; we should be poor in spirit, and despise wisdom. The ascetic ideal took firm root in Christianity at an early period of its history. The extravagance of the Egyptian anchorites is well known. The "pillar saint," St. Simeon, who is said to have passed some thirty years of his life on the summit of a column twenty yards in height, taking only the scantiest nourishment, eschewing ablutions, covered with filth and sores, was worshipped as a holy man by the multitude and his example was followed by others, though

any loss. But with the pains, the joys of existence have likewise fled. The human being walks as a shadow among shadows, a soulless substance, the

s planet of ours, nor heed our presence. If we chance to stand in the way, they grind us to pieces with grim unconcern: the earth opens, the volcano sends forth its smoldering fires, populous cities are overwhelmed, locusts devastate the country; they do not pause before the field of the righteous; they have no moral preference. The seeds of disease also are scattered broadcast over the land, and the best, often those whom we can least afford to lose, are taken. These are the hostile forces, and against these man must contend. To them he opposes his intellect, his moral energy; he seeks to adapt himself to his place in the universe. He discovers that these foes are blind, not necessarily his enemies, if he can trace their path. If he can read the secret of their working, they cease to threaten him; he holds them with the reins of intellect, and binds them to his chariot, and behold like swift steeds they carry him whithersoever it pleases him, and on, on, they draw his car of progress. In this manner the sway of man's genius is extended on earth. Already life is far easier than it was among our ancestors ten thousand years ago; the epidemic is checked by wise sanitary regulations, greater justice prevails in government, and the means of happiness are extended over wider areas of the population. What we thus behold realized on a partial scale, we conceive in our visions of the future to be indefinitely prolonged, the course of development leading to higher and higher planes, healthier conditions, wiser laws, nobler manners

not blindly follow the law of his being, but that he is himself the author of the moral law, and creates it even in acting it out. We are all soldiers in the great army of mankind, battling in the cause of moral freedom; some to fight as captains, others to do valiant service in the ranks;

ught the feelings can gain no entrance. There, after the first spasms of emotion have subsided, we may find at least a temporary relief,-there for hours we drink in a happy oblivion. But more is needed, and the discharge of the duties of the heart alone can really console the heart. There is this secret in the affections, that they constantly add to our strength. Constant communion between allied natures leads to their mutual enrichment by all that is best in either. But when the rude hand of death interferes, we are as a stream whose outlet is barred, as a creeper whose stay is broken. A larger channel is needed then into which the waters of our love may flow, a firm support, to which t

ill do as thou hast bidden me." And the woman took up the dead child, and began her search. From house to house she went saying, "Give me a mustard seed, kind folk, a mustard seed for the prophet to revive my child." And they gave her what she asked, and when she had taken it, she inquired whether all were gathered about the hearth, father and mother and the children; but the people would shake their heads and sigh, and she would turn on her way sadder than before. And far as she wandered, in town and village, in the crowded thorou

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ason are impotent to stay its course. Prepare a channel therefore to lead out its swelling

loss, and no preaching or teaching can ever make it otherwise. The question is, whether it shall weaken and embitter us, or become the very purification of our souls, and

e abysmal gulfs of woe. In hours of great sorrow we turn in vain to nature for an inspiring thought. We question the sleepless stars; they are cold and distant: the winds blow, the rivers run their course, the seasons change; they are careless of man. In the world of men