132 Ye who have a share in unpopular movements, be not disheartened when you find that there are laggards and stragglers and gloomy prophets. Whoever deserts a righteous cause, God never disowns it. He may not at once appear to hasten its triumph, but his heart is with it and with every man or woman who espouses it, and sooner or later his presence and power will give it success. At the first, Methodist was a term of reproach and even so good a man as our own John Brown of Haddington blessed God for having "kept him from following that man of sin, John Wesley." Yet who now would question the appropriateness of Adam Clarke's epitaph written with diamond on a pane of glass in his study window in Manchester -"Good men need not marble; I dare trust glass with the memory of John Wesley, late fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; who with indefatigable zeal and perseverance, travelled these kingdoms, preaching Jesus for more than half a century by his unparalleled writings and labors. He revived and spread Scriptural Christianity wherever he went, for God was with him." Yes, God was with him and is with every faithful servant and will at last bring forth his righteousness as the light and his judgment as the noonday. God is with every worthy cause and will sooner or later make it to ride upon the high places of the field. Some day Love shall claim his own, We hear much in our day of the necessity for a practical religion - a religion that will straighten out the tangles of the present world rather than offer a way of happy escape to a better world. As it is expressed in a recent work on Social Evolution —" Christianity is intended to save not only men but man and its mission should be to teach us not only how to die as individuals, but how to live as members of society." But what is the preaching that affects living? Not moral essays without reference to a moral Governor not sensational thrusts at manifest evils that curse society not denunciation of doctrine and dogma with a fling at our fathers but old-fashioned Bible truth, brought home with blood-red earnestness to the hearts and consciences of men. The world needs motive as well as vision and there are no motives like those that come from Sinai and the cross from the awful majesty and the amazing love of God. The religion that takes hold on the other world is the most practical for this. Eliminate from it every invisible element God and heaven and hell-providence, eternity and responsibility — and what have you left worth speaking of to constrain men to live for the elevation of themselves or their fellowmen? Let a man live with God and for God and he will have the best preparation for living with man and for man. Religion's all. Descending from the skies Members of the graduating class of 1895, aspire after the filial fellowship with God which characterized your Saviour. I know not what trials may be in the path of any one of you, what desert places you will pass through, what sharp crisis will come to you when decision will tremble in the balance, what disappointments you may have in friends and associates in labor. But I do know that this way has been trodden by Christ and that his passage over it has made it easier for you and me. I know no better provision for your happiness and safety than to take God with you. Do not be afraid of being thought religious. Let the world know that you stand with God-fearing men and women. Speak daily to God in prayer. Listen to Him as He speaks to you in His Word. Cultivate in all appropriate ways a sense of the Divine presence. Be a thorough-going Christian. Be a living branch of the life-giving vine. He that hath the Son hath life life that is life indeed. A month ago or more some of the trees were just putting forth their green and tender leaves and giving promise of a rich and abundant foliage. But one chill and desolating night destroyed their beauty and black and withered and dead they seemed for weeks. Will they revive? Or will they stand abashed through all the live-long season? They have life and life contains the potency and promise of victory. Already new branches displace or overshadow the old and life exults in her triumph over desolation and death. May such life — vigorous, dominating spiritual life belong to every one of you! Then come what will, you will survive the hindrances and dangers of your post. You will be able to stand the chill and shock of every adverse circumstance. You will overcome by the renewing, transforming, irrepressible power of life in Christ Jesus. "I am come," says Jesus, "that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly." When God scattered the children of Israel among the heathen, he gave this assurance to the remnant that believed in his name -"I will be to them a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come." I trust this promise will be fulfilled to every one of you, wherever you may be scattered in our own or other lands. May the Lord be to you a sanctuary a sacred and sure refuge. I wish I could convince you that this is not mere rhetoric. I speak of the basis of the best lifeof real life of your life and mine if we will. It is possible for you so to live that like Jesus you can say everywhere and always "The Father is with me." - God likewise told the Children of Israel of a time when he would gather them again to their own land and put his Spirit within them and write his own name upon them and claim them as his own. Such a gathering time will come by and by for all the sons of God on the plains of the promised land on high. We'll all meet again, will we not? Yes, we'll meet again by the grace of God in that far off land. We can already hear the welcome of him who has gone before. Centuries ago, he said "I go to my Father," and the words he spake before he went yet linger in the ear of humanity —“ In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." It will be no more the experience of faith -"The Father is with me," but the experience of open vision I am with the Father and see him face to face. - home after many wanderings home to stay. Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen." SERMON XI, 1896 THE GIRDLE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS Faithfulness shall be the girdle of his reins.— Isa. 11: 6. M&American Commonwealth," mentions among our R. BRICE in just and friendly criticism of our salient features" a fondness for bold and striking effects an enthusiasm for anything that can be called genius with an over-readiness to discover it." A distinguished American lecturer does not hesitate to speak on a Boston platform and within hearing of all the English-speaking world of American reverence for successful sharpness.' Are these estimates as just as they are frank? Do we run wild after brilliancy in achievement? Do we admire most what may be proclaimed upon the house-top, or in more modern phrase may be spread abroad by posters and headlines? Do we care less for something to say than how to say it for elocution than for education for the clapping of the hands of the multitude than for the consciousness of honest attainment? Do we prize most the shining, conspicuous qualities of men and women rather than their quiet sterling worth? If these things be so, we are not true to the beginnings of our nation's history, to the examples of our forefathers. They were men who lived under the inspiration of duty rather than of glory, who cared as much for the cornerstone as for the capstone, who built year after year for truth and right and God all unconscious of the greatness of their endeavor. Washington, in his modesty and reserve and fidelity to duty was a fit exponent of the men of his time and his words in the darkest hour of the |