among them what remains, and eat it all up, to the last crumb. Do this, if it seems to you proper and devout. Tithe the mint and the anise, if you will; but forget not the weightier matters of the law. Do not forget, that far more sacred than any consecrated bread is that true bread which came down from heaven; that sacred, divine gift of the soul which God has placed in man; that power of aspiration, capacity of progress, sense of right, knowledge of infinite truth, fitness for boundless love and thought and action. Do not let even the crumbs of this fall to the ground, if you can save them; for, of all holy things on earth, nothing is so holy in the sight of God as the soul of man.

D

XIII.

ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S.

Ezek. xviii. 4: "ALL SOULS ARE MINE."

URING the past week,* two Christian festivals have been celebrated by the Church of Rome, which I should be glad to see celebrated by all Christian denominations. They were instituted in days when the Church was truly Catholic, and had not become exclusive, the days of church unity and universality; and these days are festivals of a universal Church and of a true unity. In the year eight hundred and thirty-five, the first day of November was appointed by Gregory IV. as a festival for all the saints; and it has ever since been known as AllSaints' Day. It is a day on which we may remember the saints and martyrs of every time, every land, and every creed; a day on which the war of theology should cease, the bitterness of controversy subside; which should be a "truce of God" amid warring

* This sermon was preached on the Sunday following the festivals of ALL SAINTS and ALL SOULS, Nov. 1 and Nov. 2.

sects. On this day, recognizing the fact that eminent goodness is monopolized by no party, that devoted piety and disinterested humanity are to be found in every denomination, all sections of the Church might unite in one great procession, to visit, with grateful love and memory, the holy tombs of all the good. Catholic and Protestant, Methodist and Quaker, Orthodox and Heterodox, might kneel together in grateful prayer around the graves of St. Francis and St. Charles, of Oberlin and Fénélon, of George Fox and John Wesley, of Milton and Priestley. On this day, the Church would be truly universal. As the first day of November is the Feast of All Saints, so the second day of November is the Feast of All Souls; and is, in its idea and spirit, even more universal, more catholic, than the other. If the first is the day of the universal church brotherhood, the other is a day for universal human brotherhood. It was originally established in the eleventh century, in commemoration of the souls of those who had departed during the year. It is not intended for the great and distinguished alone, not for the eminently good alone; but for all,-all souls. It is not for the holy and happy alone; but for the unwise, the unhappy, the unholy also, those whose present lives seem to be failures. It is a feast of Christian hope, of hope for all, hope founded in the indestructible elements of the soul itself, as made by God, and made for himself.

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This last is the subject for our meditations to-day.

Let us see how it is that all souls belong to God; what it is that is meant when he says, "All souls are mine." Let us see how the despised, forgotten, abandoned children of earth still belong to God, and still are dear to him.

When we look at the world from any other point of view than the Christian, we are led to despise or to undervalue the mass of men. The man of culture looks down on them as incapable of mental improvement; the man of righteousness sees them hoplessly immersed in vice and crime; the reformer turns away discouraged, seeing how they cling to old abuses. Every thing discourages us but Christianity. That enables us to take off all these coverings, and find, beneath, the indestructible elements and capacities of the soul itself. We see standing before us a muffled figure: it has been dug out of the ground, and is covered with a mass of earth. The man of taste looks at it, and finds nothing attractive: he sees only the wretched covering. The moralist looks at it, and finds it hopelessly stained with the earth and the soil in which it has so long lain. The reformer is discouraged, finding that it is in fragments, whole limbs wanting; and considers its restoration hopeless. But another comes, inspired by a profounder hope: and he sees, beneath the stains, the divine lineaments; in the broken fragments, the wonderful proportions. Carefully he removes the coverings; tenderly he cleanses it from its stains; patiently he re-adjusts the broken parts, and supplies those which

are wanting and so at last it stands, in a royal museum or pontifical palace, an Apollo or a Venus, the very type of manly grace or feminine beauty, a statue which enchants the world. The statue, broken and defaced, is our common humanity; so broken, so defaced, that only the far-reaching hope, founded on God's interest in the human soul, can enable us to do any thing adequately for its restoration.

1. All souls belong to God and to goodness by creation. God has evidently created every soul for goodness. He has carefully endowed it with indestructible faculties looking that way. Every soul has an indestructible idea of right and wrong, producing the feeling of obligation on the one hand, of penitence or remorse on the other; every soul has the tendency to worship, to look up to some spiritual power higher than itself, better than itself; every soul is endowed with the gift of freedom, made capable of choosing between life and death, good and evil; every soul is endowed with reason, with a capacity of knowledge; and especially is every soul endowed with the faculty of improvement, of progress.

Compared with the capacities and powers which are common to all, how small are the differences of genius or talent between man and man!

Now, suppose that we should see, in the midst of our city, a building just erected with care and cost. Its foundations are deeply laid; its walls are of solid stone; its various apartments are arranged with skill for domestic and social objects: but it is unoccupied