not something in him to which that call will appeal to spur him to one more attempt to make his escape, to burst his chains, to be a good man, and be saved. And having once heard that cry, can he go on and sin, without feeling, always, that he is doubly obstinate; that he is setting himself not merely against God, but against his fellows too; that they are looking on with sorrow and with pity, as he goes to his self-chosen ruin? This is no illegitimate appeal. It does not dishonor the influence of God, the heavenly Father, when you plead also with a wicked boy, by all the love and high example of his holy earthly father or mother, to turn to nobler things. All is God's influence, however it is brought to bear. And this you must know, I tell it to you solemnly, you cannot sin as if you were the first and only man that God ever made and put into the world. If you will sin, you sin against every high precedent of goodness; you tread on those examples of holiness that have made the world lustrous and sacred; you sweep away the inspiration of sainthood that comes down out of the past, and gathers up around you from the present, like the very breath of heaven; you turn away and go out, obstinately and deliberately, not merely from the kingdom of God, but from the communion of saints. May God help you, and bring you back.

And now my work to-night is done if I can bid any of you away with this great presence of the saints of God surrounding you. Sin is disintegrating. It breaks up and scatters fellowships. It makes souls live and die in solitude. I appeal to you by all the holy society of Christianity. There is holiness all around you to help you and inspire you. You will have to suffer in doing

right. Here are all the martyrs to be your company. You must find Christ and be forgiven by Him. Here is the multitude who have found Him, each with some story of mercy of his own to tell you, till your hopelessness of success shall turn into hope as you listen to thein in spite of yourself. You will need patience. Behold all the waiters for God, each at his watching place in all the ages. You have bad habits to conquer. Here is the old battle-field, and the shouts with which other men who have fought down themselves by God's help are hailing their victory in Him, shall be the prophecy of your triumph as you go into the fight. You must not stand alone. All this strength is for you. Come in among these best souls that believe in and are finding God. I lift the words above all low formality that clings to them, and say, Come, join the Church. Not in mere outward act, but in true inward fellowship. Stand boldly with those who are trying to work for God, and willing to suffer for God here; and then in the perfect communion of saints, you shall stand at last among that great multitude which no man can number, who out of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues shall stand before the throne and before the Lamb, clad with white robes, and with palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice, "Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb." May God grant it for us all.

VIII.

THE MAN WITH ONE TALENT.

"Then he which had received the one talent came."-Matt. xxv. 4

WE must all have reproached ourselves sometimes for the difficulty which we found in liking the best people best. We wondered why it was. A man who was estimable in every way, prudent, just, honest, doing all his duties faithfully and well, did not interest us. If he prospered we were not specially glad. If he met with disaster we could not say that we were sorry. While some mere vagabond of fortune, who, doing nothing to deserve prosperity, was always in ill-luck, has drawn out our kindest feeling. I think that there is something of this kind in our feeling about the people in this parable of our Lord's. The man with the five talents and the man with the two talents come up with their orderly reports. They have been faithful and industrious. We know that they have deserved the "well-done" that greets them, and we look on with calm approval as they pass off to enter into the joy of their Lord. And then the poor fellow who had received the one talent comes. He brings his napkin, a poor show of carefulness that covers up his carelessness, and holds it out with his talent in it. We hear his slipshod and cowardly attempt at an excuse. He stands forlorn and helpless as the rebuke falls on him,

and a sort of pity that is close to love springs up in our hearts, and makes us mourn for him as he is dragged off to the outer darkness.

And a large part of what inclines us to like him and such as him is the show of modesty which appears in what they have to say about themselves. We shall see by and by what their modesty is really worth; but their first defence of their inefficiency sounds modest. "I had but one talent," the poor man exclaims, "what could J do? What place for me among the workers and ex changers? How could I dare to front the world and its responsibilities and dangers? I could have done so little even if I had succeeded. What does it matter whether such a little brain and such weak hands as mine worked or were idle, and so I took the safest and the easiest way. Lo, here is thy talent done up in a napkin." How modest, even if weak, it sounds beside the manly confidence which seems touched with pride as it reports: "Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents; behold I have gained beside them five talents more."

Let us speak to-day about the one talented men, — the men who are crushed and enfeebled by a sense of their own insignificance. By and by they become cowardly and hide themselves behind their own good-for-nothingness, away from care, away from effort; but at first it is a mere weakening of the joints and stifling of the courage by a feeling of how little there is to them, and so that whether they do ill or well it is not of much consequence: that any attainment really worth attaining is totally out of their reach. What multitudes of such men we see. A young man starts with aspirations after culture. He will make something out of this brain of his. Very soon

he comes in contact with the great, the wise, the witty of his own time and of the past, and then he discovers how little brain he really has to cultivate, and he gives up in despair. Let him be a drudge and make his money, or manage his house, or drive his horses. That is all that he is good for. A young man begins to be a Christian. Great wide visions of free and exalted thought open before him. He will not be a mere traditional believer. He will seek devoutly to understand his faith, and to send his spiritual reason as near as he may to the heart of the great problems of God's providence and man's life. How soon he finds his thought baffled and gives up, and, saying to himself, "Poor fool, what right have such as you to think about the high things of religion?" he subsides into another of the unthinking routine believers who fill our churches. A man is deeply conscious of the misery that is in the world. He tries to help it, but when he sees how little he can do, how big the bulk of wretchedness is against which his poor effort at relief is flung, it seems to him so utterly not worth his while that he lets it all go, and sinks back into the prudent merchant or the selfindulgent philosopher, looking on at woes that he no longer tries to help.

This is the history of so much of the inefficiency of so many of the inefficient men that we see about us. These men have looked at life and given up in despair. Once, long ago, when they were in college, when they first went into business, they took their talent out and gazed at it and wondered how they should invest it; but it looked so little that they lost all heart, and wrapped it in the napkin where it has been ever since, and that is the whole story of their useless lives. And yet one thing seems