"Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God." Dreamy meditators on the past, active strivers in the present, hopeful prophets of the future ; preach, all of you, the kingdom of God, by faith, by hope, by love. As time and all of its works, possessions, joys, are passing rapidly away, secure that which is unchanging and eternal. Have faith in God. Faith, not opinions, or dead belief; but faith. Faith, which learns to see God present in nature; present in providence ; present in the soul; which finds him in all changes, him in all joys and sorrows, him in the near duty of the hour, him in the large vision of the ages. Have hope, active hope, which shall enable you to work in the cause of justice and humanity; to Work, though in a minority; to work, though no success nor reputation seems to come. Work, not merely conscientiously, but hopefully, and you will work successfully. Hope to do some good thing for some one. Hope to make joy and peace where you go and where you stay. Hope to serve God by serving man.

And most of all, have love. If there is any bitterness in your heart towards any human being root it out. It is a corroding poison in your soul; get rid of it. Love; that is, go out of yourself; go forth in sympathy with others; go forth to do them good, by the power of God in your own soul, by the grace of God in your own heart. By your own hope of a grand future, lift others out of their skepticism, their doubts, their despair. These things shall last; they shall not pass away. Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Faith, hope, and love, the heavenly sisters, the three Christian graces, with arms sweetly intertwined, like yet unlike, as becomes sisters; not the same aspect to each, yet not wholly different ; these three shall cause that you be not barren nor unfruitful. Begin life so, and it will pass joyfully to its close.

VI.

BARE GRAIN.

"THOU SOWEST NOT THE BODY WHICH SHALL be, but bare GRAIN."

URING the last week we have had a second edition

Do our a secDURING

of our summer, which seemed almost gone

ond edition, abridged, condensed into a few days, but charming, because unexpected. We thought the summer over; it has suddenly returned, like a friend who has taken leave of you, and, when you go back solitary, feeling a little lonely, into your empty house, lo! he comes back, and says he will give you another day or two. So summer comes back to-day, as Indian summer, the steady south-west winds sweeping up from tropical regions some strange aroma, hinting of the equator; long days full of purple light, the air soft and balm to the lungs. No wonder the poor Indian, with untutored mind, lonely in his narrow thought, feeling after God, if haply he might find him, dreamed that he saw in the haze illumined sky of October some glimpse of the happy hunting-fields where his fathers roamed.

We enjoy the more this little scrap of summer, this crumb fallen from the table of Mother Nature, because it is something extra, and something unexpected. Workpeople in Europe, beside their regular wages, expect some little extra gift, which they call, in Italian, buono-mano. And they seem to take more pleasure in their buono-mano than in their regular wages. These warm days in Septem

We

ber are Nature's buono-mano. It is something extra. become accustomed to that which comes regularly, and think it our right. We consider ourselves hardly used if we do not get our regular allowance of food, sleep, health, amusement, and the like. Give a child the thing once,

and the next time he claims it as a right. He says, “You gave it to me once, papa." We are all children in this. As soon as any of God's gifts become regular, we transfer them from the category of favors to that of rights, and expect them as a thing of course. And I think, therefore, that God has left this margin of the unexpected, the casual, around all the majestic machinery of law, in order to give us the joy of feeling the gift, to give himself the joy of being loved as the giver. Around the steady order of things floats evermore this uncertainty of events. The worldly man calls it chance, the religious man calls it Providence. We have detected law everywhere, and extended its domains more and more, and so built up scientific knowledge. We can calculate an eclipse a thousand years forward, a thousand years backward, to the fraction of a minute. But there are some things which remain forever incalculable. Who can calculate beforehand an eclipse of the heart? And who would wish to do so? Who can predict beforehand, by algebra, or calculus, the unexpected advent of a new affection? Let us be thankful that there are some surprises in the world, some things which elude mathematics, some Indian summer days which come when no one has predicted them, to warm the heart through and through ; because being unlooked for, they seem more like a direct gift from God.

This return of summer in the form of Indian summer has suggested to me the subject of returning events, of recurrence in human affairs, of the circular and spiral movement in history and life.

Things come back, but when they come back they are seldom exactly what they were before. Summer returns as Indian summer; history is always repeåting itself, but on a higher plane. Even the good man commits the same faults in age that he committed in youth, but in a nobler way, so that the fault almost ceases to be one. Every living thing which seems to die revives again, and comes up in a new and higher form. So history repeats itself, not in a circle, but in an ascending spiral. We return to the same spot, but always a little higher up.

The difference between two men, one having Christian faith and the other not having it, is this: both commit the same faults, and repeat the same experience, but the one repeats it always high up. He rises to a higher spirit: he sinks to a deeper insight. He has more faith, more hope, more love to God and man. Thus he takes the past with him, as precious seed of a better future. He loses nothing, leaves nothing behind. His youth departs, with its golden summer days, but returns again an Indian summer with mellower warmth, and a more enchanting peace. Let there only be faith in the heart in God as a friend and father, and it fills life with hope, and hope leads to constant progress. The Christian army marches ever to the East, with the dawn shining on its white shields of expectation.

But just in proportion as this faith is wanting, life goes round and round, in a mere mill-horse circle of routine. Faults repeat themselves exactly as before.

Experience, with a world of sighs

Purchased, and pain and heartbreak, have been hers,
And taught her nothing; where she erred, she errs."

The planets move round and round forever in the same ellipse. The seasons of the year return with little change, and no seeming progress. Man's life is a repetition of work and rest, day and night, eating, talking, sleeping.

66

"We live and die; eat, drink, wake, sleep between ;
Walk, talk, like clockwork too;

So pass, in order due,

Over the scene."

The

If we look only at this, life grows very tiresome. despair of the Book of Ecclesiastes comes over us, and we say, What profit has a man of all his labor that he takes under the sun?" For all " things return, according to their circuit."

But the New Testament teaches another lesson than the Book of Ecclesiastes. It is a proof of the divine origin of these Gospels and Epistles, that they are full, through and through, of the spirit of hope. They have filled the world with faith in progress, with an undying expectation of improvement, with a trust in something better to-day than we had yesterday. Throughout they cry to us: "The life we sow to-day is seed of something better to come tomorrow. We do not plant that which is to be, but only its seed. Our present life, which we are leading now, compared to that which is to come to us, is only as naked seed is to the green and graceful plant which springs from it." The Old World, of Pagan religion and philosophy, was very much ennuyéd. It had grown morose and cynical. It expected nothing, it had little hope left in its heart. One man said, "It is better to stand than to walk; better to sit than to stand; better to lie down than to sit; better to sleep than to wake; better is a dreamless sleep than dreams; death is better than even a dreamless sleep; and never to have been is the best of all."

Now, I think, that the new life of Christianity consisted very much in giving hope to the world. See Paul, the poor Jew, writing to the Romans, masters of the world, telling them to take courage, and to hope. "Now the God of all hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,