commit sacrilege as David, when he ate the showbread; be an assassin like Brutus, and a sabbathbreaker like the disciples, who plucked ears of corn, because they were hungry, and becausé law was made for man, and not man for the law."

The letter of morality kills: the spirit of morality, which is the love of right, the love of truth, an inward truthfulness of soul, a fidelity to one's own highest nature, an aspiration after whatever things are pure and lovely and noble, this it is which fills the soul through and through, at once with magnanimity and humility, at once with courage and modesty; makes us faithful without pedantry, and holy without cant and pretence.

This, then, we say, is the chief difference between man and man. Some people, in whatever they do, follow dead routine; others, a living law: some see only what is customary; others see always what is needed: some are bound fast to what is usual and what is proper; others are made free by the sight of what is beautiful and good.

No man is a master in any work till he works according to the spirit. A man cannot be an able mechanic. if he is a man of routine. The able mechanic is one whose mind is wide awake, and who is open to the incoming spirit of discovery; who is hoping to do better than he has done. So he makes a high art of any work. Such men as Stephenson and Bramah, Fulton, Ericsson, and Nasmyth, were greater poets, and lived a more imaginative life, than

the parrot poetasters who rhyme like Tupper or Dobell. The grimy workshop of these men is all transfigured with music, song, and ideal lyrics.

Every occupation has those who follow it after the letter or after the spirit. The first do their best to kill their calling, and destroy all the respect that is felt for it in the minds of men: the other class elevate it, give it dignity and worth.

There is, for example, the physician after the letter, who follows blindly the traditions of his school, whatever it may happen to be. He degrades his profession, in the minds of men, by the way in which he uses the terrible instruments in his hands; until at last men say, "Our chance of recovery is better without the doctor than with him." Thus the letter of medicine has killed medicine.

Then there is the pedantic scholar, who lives among dead words; who studies languages, not for the sake of the great literatures to which they are the portals, but for their own sake. Languages, being taught so, at last lose all their interest for the human mind; and so young men study Latin and Greek for six or eight years, and end by not being able to read a Greek or Latin book. The letter of scholarship has killed scholarship. Teachers, thus teaching after the letter, invariably destroy all interest in the subject which they teach. Meantime, the teacher who teaches with enthusiasm, because he is interested in the substance and spirit of what he teaches, excites a like enthusiasm in the

mind of the scholar. Every thing thus learned is remembered; and the whole subject, thus vitalized, is thoroughly and deeply known.

During the last century, history was written according to the letter. Excellent, painstaking men collected all the facts, dates, and names belonging to a period, put them together, and called it all "history." It was only dead annals. Who took any interest in these histories? Who cared for them? The letter of history had killed it. Then came historians in France like Michelet and Thierry; in England, like Carlyle and Macaulay; in America, like Bancroft and Motley. Then the curtain was lifted from before the Past. It came up before us with its tragedy and its tears. It was as when Eliphaz saw in his vision the spectral form: "In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and trembling. Then a spirit passed before my face." We saw men, like ourselves, on the stage where these great dramas were performed. We saw the wild, stormy promise of the French Revolution, and its pathetic end. We saw the poor King of France flying under the dewy night to Varennes. From earlier centuries came forward the living forms of stern Keltic chiefs and Druid priests; of Norman sea-kings, cruel and terrible; Cromwell and Hampden, earnest Puritan deliverers of English liberty. The spirit had once more returned into history, and it was again alive.

We see by these varied examples the truth of the

apostle's statement, that the letter kills. We should hardly have ventured so bold a statement. We might have said that the letter without the spirit was inadequate. We might perhaps have gone further, and declared it useless. But to call it positively pernicious; to say that the letter of religion, of the Bible, of worship, kills religion, the Bible, and worship, we should scarcely have ventured to do that. It would have seemed a dangerous statement. But an insight and experience like that of Paul enable one to say what would be thought dangerous by one standing on a lower platform. Now that he has said it, we also can see it. In every thing, the letter kills, and the spirit makes alive. The mere letter of the Old Testament and the New Testament kills piety. The mere letter of morality kills goodness. The letter of our daily work kills our interest in life. Edmund Burke says, "There is an unremitted labor, when men exhaust their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark."

But when we are open to the spirit, and let that flow into all our work, thought, and life, then every thing is once more vitalized; then the Bible becomes a new book, full of intense interest; nature is new, being full of God; and man becomes a new creature, with a new heaven and a new earth.

III.

PROPHETS WHO HAVE BEEN SINCE THE WORLD

BEGAN.

Luke i. 70: "PROPHETS WHO HAVE BEEN SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN."

A

PROPHET is not merely one who foresees, who knows the future, who beholds events as they draw near: he is this, and more. He is not merely

Prophets do that ;

one who rebukes a nation's sins. but that is not all they do. He is not merely one who teaches truth. The essential thing which makes him a prophet lies deeper than any of these partial definitions take us. A prophet is one who goes back of all traditions in religion to the original reality; behind all creeds, to the primal insights out of which they grew; beneath all expediency, to the creative law of justice and eternal right. This makes him a prophet; this helps him to foresee; this charges him full of noble indignation against all falsifiers of truth, and betrayers of justice. Such men are naturally and necessarily the teachers of their race. They do not teach officially as a profession, but from the need of utterance. He who sees, must say what he sees. "We also believe, and therefore speak."