hind him, finds nothing. He is ever searching, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. Some things we must know; we are made to know them. The New Testament assumes that we know them, and does not teach them. Both Old and New Testament assume the existence of God, duty and immortality. Some things may be taken for granted in our belief. They cannot be proved, and are not meant to be proved. Man is made to believe them, and cannot help himself. We must believe in our own existence; in the existence of an outer world; of day and night; men and women; space and time; cause and effect; the infinite and the finite; right and wrong: God and nature ; duty and immortality. As a good father does not send his child out into the world naked, but gives him a trunk of clothes, a chest of tools, a little money to begin with, so God furnishes us with a mental outfit of common and universal beliefs to begin with. We are not to be uuclothed of them, either in this world or in the next, but clothed upon with more.

All negation is going backward. It may be necessary to go back and to begin again, when we are going wrong. So negative reforms, and negative moralities, are going backward in order to begin again. All the "antis" go backward; even anti-slavery. Society organized on slavery was badly and wickedly organized, but it was organized. The abolition of slavery disorganized society, and if we had stopped there, we should have only taken a backward step, not a forward one. Free labor, therefore, had to be organized instead of slave labor; and because the Southern States refused to accept free labor and organize it, it had to be done for them by the general government. Failing this society at the South would have remained “unclothed, not clothed upon."

That is the justification for the course taken by the North

in giving the ballot to the negroes, and in attempting to aid the South in its re-organization. It is also its excuse, though not its justification, for having gone too far and interfered too much. The new body should be left to itself, to grow; we must not be forever interfering with it. It is clothed upon with a new house, which, compared with the old one, is like a house from heaven. Let it not be perpetually unclothed, but learn to wear and use its new raiment. It has been unclothed from slavery; let it be. clothed upon and with freedom freedom both for whites

and colored people.

Look at Nature in this affluent season of Spring, when the voice of God is saying, "Let there be life." See how Nature swallows up the old in the new; see how she absorbs the old vegetation in the coming grasses; how earth, bare and dead, is clothed upon with new and wonderful forms of growth. Little seeds in the earth have heard God's voice, and begin to stir inwardly. Little buds have heard it, and begin to swell. These million germs of life are to sweep away and clear up the vestiges of decay. Dead leaves and grasses are to feel the new summer. Presently, in a few weeks, the whole surface of earth will be carpeted with grass and flowers; the trees clothed with delicate, fairy foliage, with fragrant, lovely blossoms; mortality swallowed up of life; a resurrection of dead Nature into a new existence.

The affections are a clothing and a home for the heart. God's method is to give us always better and higher affections, and to made the lower a step upward to the higher. "He who loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?" All human love leads up to divine love. It is a Jacob's ladder, leading up to heaven. Everything which draws man out of himself does him good. The smallest act of sympathy

helps us. To say a kind word does him good who receives it and him who gives it. I see two little girls walking hand in hand. They are playmates. They play together, they study together, they quarrel sometimes; but they are little friends. That is the first round of the ladder of love, the highest step of which is the divine piety of Jesus towards his Heavenly Father.

I see two young men, fellow-students, seekers of the truth together. They struggle through the same doubts, they have the same bitter experience of evil; they may commit mistakes together; but amid all errors and wanderings there is this golden thread of a generous, unselfish friendship for each other. That is good. Let them never be unclothed from that love, but clothed upon with a higher

one.

Much of earthly affection is, no doubt, poor, weak, unworthy. It is idol worship; it is a blind and foolish affection; it is also weak and changeable. But such as it is, it is always better than nothing. Do not destroy it; fulfil it. I would be very tender of any idolatry. I often find people adoring very enthusiastically books, or artists, or people, who to me seem poor and empty. careful not rudely to criticize their faith.

But I am very They think some

I will not say a

poetaster to be a great poet. Be it so. word against it. They are groping after pearls. They think a man a great orator, and burn with enthusiasm for him, while to me he appears only a rhetorician, a man of words. Nevertheless, I say nothing harsh against their idol. They admire a preacher, who to me seems talking verbiage and commonplaces. Well, who knows what real religion may come to them through this channel? We have this treasure in earthen vessels. I will not be an iconoclast, except when absolutely necessary. If truth requires me to blow a jarring and dissonant blast, I will do it, but not

otherwise. Idolatry, in the divine order, may be the first step to true religion. Let it not be unclothed, but clothed upon.

All love, so far as it is love, is good; and it is good in this way, that it takes us out of ourselves, making us for the time unselfish, and also, that it makes us for the time truly pure. Those who love are emancipated from doubts, hesitations, terrors. Perfect love casts out fear. Two friends who are together two school girls, perhaps — how they talk! how they flow out, how they say all that is in their heart! That does them good, and prepares for something better. With your friends you feel at home. You dread no misconstruction, no censure. You do not have to stop to explain, to define your position, to guard against misconstruction. There is no envy, no jealousy, in that relation. I do not think (as Cicero says) life worth living, that does not contain such a friendship. Every one needs to be able to be with those, sometimes, to whom he can speak of anything he chooses, without any doubt or anxiety or hesitation. Then he is at home. That is home, the home of the heart.

So God educates us for himself; teaches us how to love him, by teaching us first how to love our brother. All true love educates us for heaven. The love of nature is a nascent piety. The delight in God's sky and land, his ocean and mountains, his stars and flowers, his sunrises and sunsets, educates us to love him, the giver of it all. He sends us little children to teach our hearts tenderness; he takes them up to himself, and our tenderness goes up to heaven. The love for heaven, for books, for children, for friends, leads us towards God. Every patient watching by the bedside of those we love teaches the heart something. Every tear dropped on a friend's grave is another step towards heaven. Every generous effort to do right, every noble

struggle against evil, every warm throb of love for what is good, true, fair; every patriotic and courageous act of devotion to our country, is clothing us with a house from heaven.

These may, indeed, be only tents to live in till we reach the promised land; but we know that when these are struck and folded, we have a building of God waiting us beyond the veil of time. God, who provides the tent for us here, will provide the house there. He who gives us in this life the wonders and beauties of nature, the lessons of truth, the opportunities of action and endeavor, the helps of friendship, the charm of love, the nobleness of life and the pathos of death, will provide for us better things beyond, 'which eye has not seen, nor ear heard."

Therefore, O human heart! trust and hope and look forward, and do not doubt nor fear, but go from truth to truth, from love to higher love. We do not wish to be unclothed of this world's affections and interests, but clothed upon with higher. This life is not the end, but the beginning. This poor body of ours, poor, but yet wonderful in its mysterious faculties, is the germ of a higher body. The friend who has left us, the dear child, sister, brother, father, mother, we shall meet again; and that divine grace which charmed our heart shall smile on us when we enter heaven, with a more profound and angelic beauty. The radiance which flowed from those eyes shall be more radiant. The inspiration which dwelt on that brow shall be more inspired. Yet that sublime and heavenly love shall be as tender and near as in this world; a home for our heart, as it was below.