Consider the quantity of church-going there is - the amount of preaching; the amount of sermons a man hears in his life; the moral instruction which has been poured into our ears by parents, by teachers, by preachers, by exhorters! If we had been marble, so much doctrine falling on us should have worn and moulded us into the desirable form. It has been "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little." What a singular want of memory we all have in moral and religious matters! How we forget sermons, however eloquent, splendid, convincing; in a week they have fled; like the early dew which glittered in ten million diamond globes on the grass but an hour ago, and now all is gone. Where is all the instruction which has been poured into our ears and heart from childhood, by ever-faithful parents, aunts, sisters, brothers; by teachers, professors and guardians. It has all gone. Ask us about these systems of religion, of ethics, of morality, of theology, and we stand helplessly silent. Again, how we forget our own good resolutions! We arrange our life, at the beginning of the year, into a perfect order. We select the faults to be conquered, the virtues to be acquired, the studies to be pursued, the good actions to be done. At the end of the year we look back and find that all these resolutions were presently forgotten, and we went on as before. Again, we forget our duties. "You are one of the most perfect. of men," said Lamb to Coleridge," with only this one slight fault, that if you have any duty to do, you never do it." We remember everything but our duties — these slip from our memory too easily. We forget our promises and engagements. How very mortifying to find that we have promised to do a multitude of things, and that we have forgotten them all! We think we shall never do so again, we are so ashamed of it; but directly we find ourselves in the same lamentable condition. So at last, in

sheer despair, we abstain from promising anything, thinking it better not to vow, than to vow and not pay. Alas! and worse, we forget the kindnesses done to us. At the time we feel very grateful, but gratitude becomes burdensome, and so, after a while, we have forgotten our benefactors and their good deeds. How little we think of those who took such care of our childhood, who devoted themselves to protecting us from outward and inward evils, who took pains to help us when we had no claim on them, who gave us their good-will, unbribed, unbought. We forget them, but do not forget those who have injured us, who have wounded our pride, opposed our views, uttered some words of severe censure or idle satire. Ah! we remember all that too well; the deadly arrow adheres to our side;" we treasure up for years the very words of every supposed innuendo, or slight, or neglect; we remember the evil and forget the good. We forget the holy love of Christ, the ever-present providence of God, the impending judgments of the future, the certain retributions of conduct and eternal laws of heaven. Who shall give us the system of moral and spiritual mnemonics by which to remember these things?

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And yet these truths which we forget are the all important truths which we need most of all to remember. And the same law applies to those spiritual and moral truths which we have seen to be the rule for the memory of external objects. "We remember that to which we give our attention and we give our attention to what interests us."

The difficulty is that we are not really as much interested in the love of God, in duty and spiritual progress as we are in other matters. The whole world of spiritual realities is not as interesting to us as the world of sight and sense. We do not give our mind to these highest and noblest objects, as we do to the others. They do not interest us, that is why we forget them.

It is a law of constraint, and not a law of liberty, by That is why we forget so easily. We try duties because we think we ought, and that that is a good deal. But we do not really

which we act. hard to do our is something care for them.

But we have all seen those who did not suffer from this

fatal want of memory. Some people we all know who never forget their friends, never forget their work, never forget to be helpful and sympathizing, whose aid is always at hand when it is wanted, who are full of good deeds and overflowing. How is it that they remember so well?

It is love which quickens all the powers, memory among the rest. What we care for much we are not likely to forget. Conscience, solemn and austere, is the great lamp of human life, but it is not the chief motor-power. Without love we dawdle over our duties, we postpone them till tomorrow, we forget them, we excuse ourselves for not doing them.

But see those children, that youth and maiden, who have, as we say, fallen in love with each other. Yesterday they hardly knew each other. To-day, they can think of nothing else but the strange, sweet attraction which has given a new charm to their lives. No danger of their forgetting each other; no danger of their forgetting any engagement they make to meet. No. Every act, look, word, is graven on the tablets of the heart; every scene where they have met, and as long as life lasts it shall not be forgotten.

Did Dr. Howe ever forget his blind people? Did Mr. Garrison ever forget his slaves? Did Howard ever forget his prisoners? Did Dorothea Dix ever forget her insane persons? Did Florence Nightingale forget the sick soldiers? Did Lincoln forget the dangers of the country which he served? Or did Jesus ever forget his disciples

or his work? No. All these, having loved their own, loved them to the end. Where the heart goes, there memory watches, a sleepless sentinel, ready for every occasion.

Only to hear about truth, therefore, profits nothing. We must do it ourselves in order to know it. Lazy acquiescence in another's opinion is not knowledge.

Easy assent to the established creed is not belief. Enthusiastic admiration of the eloquence of some favorite teacher is not faith. Truth helps no one who has only heard about it. Truth helps those only who see it with their own eyes. All that we can do by preaching is to testify of what we have seen of God and God's truth, that others may be moved to look at it, as we look at it. Therefore the apostle says, "He who looketh into the perfect law of liberty." To hear one talking about the perfect law of liberty does not help you unless you look into it yourselves. You may see your face reflected in his words as in a glass, but when you have gone away, when the sound of these words grows faint in your ears, you will straightway forget what sort of a person you are.

Do you think that confessors, martyrs, heroes of the faith, were ever made by listening to sermons? No, indeed; but by one's own insight, by the sure knowledge of the truth we have actually seen for ourselves, do we grow strong and brave, and not otherwise.

Until we are doers of the word, as well as hearers, we are like the clocks and watches in the watchmaker's shop. He sets them all to the right time, and winds them up; but till he touches the pendulum and sets in motion they cannot keep time. So we go to church every Sunday, and the minister winds us up by convincing arguments and by the truths of the gospel; and then he appeals to our feelings, and touches our hearts, and we are set exactly right. The

hour-hand and minute-hand are right to a moment.

The

moral chronometer is regulated to a second. But we ourselves must set the pendulum in motion, and begin to go; else what does it profit us? To be set right and regulated every Sunday morning, what use is there in that, unless we keep going through the week?

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

When we are hearers and not doers, we deceive ourselves. We become cased around externally in a whole system of excellent opinions, which is like an outside armor; not making any part of our own real life, though good for protection against any outward attack. All our thoughts are excellent, our ideas of duty correct, our sentiments noble : we take the highest grounds on all occasions. But this is all outside of our central life. We wash our hands, but not our hearts. We make clean the outside of the cup and the platter. Because we are so familiar with what is true and right, we forget at last what manner of men we are. So we deceive ourselves. We can easily mask every selfish motive under some plausible pretext of duty. If we like to do anything, we can always show that it is duty. We can easily prove that gain is godliness. All this comes from hearing and not doing. truth, when we refuse to act it out, ends in opinion, and opinion in talk, and talk in self-deception. There is a good deal of cheating in the world, but people usually cheat themselves more than they do others. We repeat by rote, what we hear, and think that we know it. We talk well and imagine that we are what we say. We hear a truth, and imagine that it is a part of our own character. So we deceive ourselves.

our sacred

Hearing the

The man who is only a hearer deceives himself. He thinks himself a better man for listening to good things. Because