Board. Then, too, he foresaw the re-adjustment that the church needed, in order to serve the present age, and in his preaching and his living he was a pioneer of the new day and way.

Intensely alert and open to the spirit of the age, sympathetic with the wage-earner in his struggle for adequate recompense and the good things of life, he never became a fanatical sentimentalist, a wholesale, undiscriminating assailant of a class that, though it has its faults, owes its comfort and pleasures more to thrift and foresight than to dishonesty and selfishness.

While sensible of the faults of the church he never felt it necessary to malign it in order to reform it. To be concise, he impressed all the Johns Hopkins University students, who heard him from time to time, as one who had a level head and a warm heart, each aiding and restraining the other.

I am sad when I think of the loss that the world has suffered by his departure, for he had the spirit, the knowledge, the method of discovering truth and formulating it, that would have made him a great leader in the century just dawning.

I am glad that I knew Mr. Lawrence as a friend. He was more in my life than I can express. But what must this loss mean to you, his mother, and to the one who was to be his wife? Life brings no bitterer disappointment than hers. Our warmest sympathy goes out to you both.

Another editor of the Congregationalist, Rev. H. A. Bridgman, writes:-"In a peculiar sense, he belonged to the denomination, and he was just coming to the point of his greatest usefulness. It does not seem as if we could spare his ripe judgment, his courageous grapple with problems in church and state, and his unclouded personal faith."

At the Washington Conference of churches, February 17th, 1891, Edward gave an address on "Reading," from which by special request large extracts follow:

READING AS A SOURCE OF PERSONAL RELIGIOUS CULTURE.

"The colleges," writes Emerson, "whilst they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books, and I think no chair is so much needed."

This chair you ask me for a few moments to occupy. So I will talk, not like a book, but like a reader and lover of books, to those who also love and read them.

How shall we read? What shall we read? When shall we read? The use of reading for this object is mainly that of food. But here begins the difficulty. Practically we are born and bred in the midst of libraries in our homes and everywhere else.

Our library has all its contents for use as food; some is medicinal and remedial, some is preventive and hygienic. But the main purpose of this whole mental dietary is nourishment. Here each can

find his own if he only knows how. But all need much help. A professor of books were a boon to every household. This food must be selected according to individual needs. It must be appropriated according to nature's demand and laws. The instinct of each reader is a guide in part; experiment also teaches. But an experienced friend is the best guide to tell what to read, how to read it, and what to let alone. And the crime of giving a child free range in an apothecary shop would hardly be greater than the crime of letting children read unhindered and unguided, in a great public library.

This assistance of friends is most needed for the purpose which we are considering, and when we have received that, we may well pray for the Holy Spirit to teach us how to read as well as how to pray.

How then shall we read to this end?

"Some books," says Bacon, "are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." It is this last few that mainly concerns us in treating this subject. A few of these few will be named later.

By another classification, books are divided into literature of knowledge and literature of power. The last class again are for us. There are books, once more, of the spread-out harvest, whose grain must be threshed, winnowed, ground, bolted and baked ere it becomes bread. And there are seed-grain books which drop into the open heart and expand, grow, flower and fruit there. These seedgrain books are what we mainly want for our soul's development and redemption. When we have found the right class of books, we shall know better how to use them. But for our personal religious growth it is plain that we must read somewhat after this manner:Leisurely, however briefly; not hurriedly, with that hurry and worry that gets into the blood and the conscience, and distorts the view for the True, Good, or Beautiful.

Meditatively, with a hidden inner train of thought that binds our author's words not only to one another, but to ourselves and to the world about.

Fruitfully, with many a germinant thought roused to life, so that at its stirring we put the book aside to let our own soul have free play. Reading is often a shower where mere drops of rain awaken sleeping seeds of grain.

Sympathetically, with a heart not only open to the author, but open to God and the world, in love with our brother.

I might say, too, that we should read,

Repeatedly, coming back again and again to loved, familiar, marked passages, until they are wrought into our blood and brain and heart.

Broadly, mingling with divers authors, striving to get the secret of each rather then to find our secret everywhere.

Progressively, moving on from stage to stage, not ever swinging around in the same circle, but with cumulative power and growth. But this and much more may be summed up by saying that we should read:

Christfully. Let us stand at the very center of our world, which is Christ. In thought, at least, we can do that as we read. Then from this point look out in every direction. The light from the center shines everywhere, and illumines all things.

Now, from this ce..ter describe a small circle. That first circle is the Bible. Through its reading, let us pass to all other reading, and to the world.

Now describe another circle just outside the Bible. Here are the choice classics of the soul, the sifted treasures of the ages; tried, tested, and approved, each ministering to different men and times, in different ways, often gaining new meanings with every change, and thereby proving their own richness.

As we go on, the path broadens. Biographies are choice ministers to the spiritual life. The communion for some weeks with a noble man or woman, through a biography, can make us better.

Devout, God-seeing works of science must do the same, revealing the divine structure of the world. Much is yet to be written in a modern line to carry on the work of Hugh Miller, Chalmers, Mitchell, and Drummond.

And so at last the current topics of the day, the history of which we are a part and which we help make,-these come into the circle of our Christocentric reading.

Out at the farthest rim the best magazines and daily papers, if read in the same spirit as the others, and sufficiently abbreviated, may be a means of grace and growth, whereby, in the turbulence of the time, we discern the signs of the coming of God's Kingdom, the power of his redemptive work, and so learn better how to work with him.

This brings us to the last question, one very important, when shall we read? Take by all means one hour of the twenty-four for good reading. Hedge it in against all encroachment. Make it sacred for yourself and for others. Divide it, if necessary, between morn and eve, but secure it every day. Read the Bible one-half of the hour, and the best half; then spend the other half in this careful, restful, meditative, Christful reading, not "as he that runs may read," nor as he that sleeps may dream, but as he that thinks may think and feel, may pray and see visions and even in reading begin the doing of great acts. Add hour to hour, day by day. That means at the end of the year over one solid fortnight for such food. Some of the time read aloud in communion with another; but read by all means.

Busy men and women will say, "the scheme is beautiful, but impracticable; we shall never find time for it." Try it! You have not time to neglect it. Start at first, if you must, with but thirty or forty minutes a day, divided into periods of fifteen or twenty minutes each, at different parts of the day. Give one period to the Bible, the other to the rest of the list; make sure of the best first, omitting the newspaper if anything. Have a book at hand for odd moments. Beecher read scores of volumes by keeping an open book on his toilet table. Carry a small book in your pocket. By degrees you will find, if you persevere, that you

are wringing one hour out of the twenty-four for the food of your soul. Then how richly will the rest of each day, shortened by this one hour, repay us with lengthened goodness and multiplied powers and graces! We may build up a heaven within by such an hour a day.

CHAPTER XXIX.

EDWARD'S CONNECTION WITH SIGNIFICANT MOVEMENTS.

When to be a Christian is to be a missionary, there will be more Christians.-Rev. Dr. Alexander Mackenzie.

At the 23rd annual meeting of the Congregational Association of New Jersey, April, 1891, held in Philadelphia, Edward gave an address on Christianity and Culture, from which a passage is taken:

Science touches Christianity occasionally, and culture affects it constantly. The end of Christianity is faith, hope and love. Culture is but nature in blossom. The relations of Christianity and culture are such that one is simply subsidiary to the other. The great contest is between life and death, holiness and sin. The law of Christianity is service; the law of Paganism is self. Self-culture is selfexhausting and antagonizes Christianity. Divine culture is identical with Christianity.

During the winter Edward's mother had a violent attack of the grip. Nothing could exceed the skill and the tenderness with which he cared for her day and night. And when she began to gain, he would carry her down stairs and take her on a short walk, and then carry her up again to her room. Early in May she left for the North.

Soon after he writes:-"It is very pleasant to occupy your room, the Masonic sky-parlor. I often think of your hard coughing spells, and with gratitude that they are over. The winter's experience has brought us closer together, and I never loved you so much. You will be glad to know that I have had a letter from our German friend, who says he means never to go back to smoking."

May, 1891.

I finished James last Sunday with a good congregation, making the application to the mechanics of the present day, of the fourth verse in the last chapter,-"Behold, the hire of the laborers who have