in every one, a vital seed of nobleness in the most deadened bosom; and, in thus loving other souls, our own souls will be blessed. While we forget ourselves, God will remember us; while we seek to save others, we, too, shall be safe.

Let us rejoice, friends, in these great hopes. Let us bless God for his creating, educating, and saving love. Let us rejoice that the lost souls lost to earth, lost to virtue, lost to human uses here are not lost to God; that he still holds them in his hand. Let us rejoice that those who will not be led to him by blessings and joy shall be led to him by terror, pain, and awful suffering. Let us rejoice that the glory of heaven and the lurid fires of hell shall both serve God, both work together for God. Let us rejoice in the great communion of souls; saints and sinners, one great family, to be led by Christ to his Father. And let the humble ones of earth, forgotten. by men, know that they are remembered by God,— the nameless martyrs, the uncelebrated lives, all recorded in the Great Book above.

"The thousands, that, uncheered by praise,
Have made one offering of their days;

For Truth, for Heaven, for Freedom's sake,
Resigned the bitter cup to take ;

And silently, in fearless faith,

Bowing their noble souls to death,

Where sleep they? Woods and sounding waves

Are silent of those hidden graves.

Yet what if no light footstep there
In pilgrim love and awe repair?
They sleep in secret; but the sod,
Unknown to men, is marked of God."

XIV.

"THE ACCEPTED TIME."

2 Cor. vi. 2: "Now IS THE ACCEPTED TIME; NOW IS THE DAY OF

T is a distinction of man to live in the past and the

IT

future no less than in the present. The discourse of reason is to look before and after. Animals, indeed, have memory and hope. When a horse whinnies at noon, it shows both memory of the past, and hope as regards the future. He remembers that he has been fed before at that time; and he is expecting to be fed again. But man can live in the past and the future. He can project his soul backward or forward, and dwell in memory or hope, till the present hour becomes nothing to him. To illustrate this at length would be interesting, but is not necessary, and would take a whole sermon. Pass, therefore, to a second observation.

Though it is a distinction of man to be able to live in the past and future, this is not his highest or best condition. To let the past and future pour their consenting streams into his present life is better than

to carry his life into the past or the future. This proposition I proceed to explain.

The lowest condition of man is that in which he is wholly immersed in the present. This implies the absence of all culture. The man's soul is enslaved by immediate circumstances, imprisoned in this square foot of space, in these sixty seconds of time. The moment that one begins to reflect or to imagine, he goes backward and forward, and so escapes from the weight of the present. The moment culture begins, we cease to be the slaves of this Now. The child studying geography, history, grammar, arithmetic, already escapes somewhat from the limitation of the present moment. He is away into Europe, or into the time of Alexander, or into the still more remote abstractions of pure reason.

The second condition of man is that in which he lives in the past or future, or alternately in past, present, and future. It is a higher state than the first, but not the highest. To escape from the present is better than to be its slave, but not so good as to be its master. Some people escape from the present by revery. They go into Dreamland or Fairyland, and have a good time there; build castles in the air, castles in Spain. This gives to them a certain feebleness of character, incapacitates them for work, weakens their moral power. Some people lead a double life, putting only half their thought into their action; having another world of favorite imagination where the other half goes. So many persons walk

about the world as in a dream. They take no interest in the present. It seems to them, as to Hamlet, stale, flat, and unprofitable. But duty is in the present; love is in the present; all real life is in the present; and both heart, mind, and hand must be weakened by not taking hold of the present with energy. Any thing which makes us indifferent to the dawning day, which makes us glad when time passes, which makes us wish it were good that some other time might be here, indicates a morbid state. To live in dreams of the past, or visions of the future, is sickly. You may call it religion, if you will: it is none the less sickly. To retire from life into a cloister, in order to meditate upon an eternity hereafter, is morbid. To lose our interest in the present world, thinking about another, is morbid. Any thing which disqualifies us from our duty is morbid. Symptoms of this disease are when we lose our interest in life and men, get into a habit of staying at home, living in one room, avoiding society, or even in spending all our time in reading, which is one way of getting out of the present into the past. A habit of reading may indicate strength or weakness. It indicates strength when we read for a purpose; when reading is therefore a study; when we plunge into the past, in order to bring something to the present, as the diver learns to hold his breath, and go down fifty feet deep, in order to bring up pearls. But if we read merely to escape from our present life, duty, and work, into another, then it is no more creditable to read than it

is to recreate ourselves in any other way. Of course, we have a right to read as a recreation, just as we may take a walk or amuse ourselves in any other

way.

Some people rush from the present into the future on the wings of hope. Some fly back from the present into the past with the trembling steps of fear. These are visionaries; those are anxious and timid souls. Some step aside into Dreamland or into a cloister. People cloister themselves in their parlors or their churches, their studies or their clubs, their cliques, their parties, their sects. So they escape timidly, I may say as cowards, from the battle of the present hour. For the present hour is always the scene of a great battle between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil; and no one has a right to fly from it into Dreamland or Bookland, or even into meditations on a heaven which God does not deem it well to give us as yet.

The third and highest condition of human culture, therefore, is that in which man lives in the present, but with a life drawn from the past and the future. This is the highest point of development,—to bring past and future into the present. Herein our religion differs from all other religions, and true Christianity differs from all false Christianities. Jesus was most conspicuous for this intense realism, bringing all the past of Judaism and all the future of the kingdom of heaven into the present moment. "Before Abraham was, I am." Thus is the old historic period identi