will pause and con

upon their various errands! For, if you sider, you will perceive at once that the fullness of time which corresponds to that succession of events which we call history is hollowness and emptiness compared with that fullness of time which has been correspondent with the actual conditions of the ever-changing world.

For while those great events which we call history were taking place,-Cæsar crossing his Rubicon, Xerxes shat tered at Salamis, Charles Martel hammering the Saracens at Poitiers, William crushing Harold at Senlac, the English barons forcing Magna Charta from John's unwilling hand, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation, while all these things have been taking place, Time, that illimitable continent, has not been filled with these alone. These alone would have rattled round in it, like the Positivist audience "three persons and no God"

in a great London hall. For, even while these things were going on, getting accomplished in one way or another, how much more was going on, getting accomplished in some other way!-suns rising every day and making every evening beautiful; stars shining with their punctual light; the inconstant moon keeping her lovers company in their varying moods; the old bounty going on without a word of explanation; men and women telling each other the old, old story of which they never tire; uncounted millions going forth to their work and their labor till the evening, and, with that, the aching weariness and the welcome rest; the constant miracle of birth and mystery of death; wonders of art and song; science penetrating to the heavenly and terrestrial arcana with infinite patience and, at times, "great trembling of the heart." Even while the great things which we call history were getting accomplished, all of these lesser things were going on,-lesser individually, but in their aggregate how much the greater part! And, were it not for these and such as these, what would "fill up as 'twere the gaps of centu ries," the immense interstices and voids between the events which even the fullest of our chronological tables have set

down for our instruction? Time was not empty in those unrecorded years. The days did not drag that brought no Marathon or Philippi, no Agincourt or Poitiers, no Austerlitz or Waterloo. They were full of light and beauty, love and toil, joy and sorrow, life and death. They were too short for all the labor to be done, and all the happy interchange of lovers' gifts, and all the mothers' crooning over their sweet babes, each last the noblest offspring of all time. The thing that has been shall be, and it is.

'Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen;
To-day slinks poorly off, unmarked, between ;
Future or Past no richer secret folds,

O friendless Present, than thy bosom holds."

It is a most contracted limitation of the Present which includes only events of that great magnitude which marks the greatest headlands on the coast of the historian's chronology. How many of the wars and tumults that we read about with a throbbing pulse and leaping heart were the merest battles of a few kites and crows compared with that pro-slavery resolve and passion to enslave our continent, and that antislavery resolve and passion that the monstrous thing should not be done, which for twenty years confronted each other in the pulpit and the press and the political arena, and then for four years more on the embattled field! Yet this whole history, in its more definite aggregation of events, has been a matter of the present time, within the lifetime of men and women who are only just beginning to grow old. Meantime there has transpired in theological circles an intellectual change so great that the whole history of theological opinion has nothing to compare with it in the same length of time or ten times over. We are told that the world's material wealth has been increased by a more splendid aggregate in the last century than for a dozen centuries before. And the increase of its intellectual wealth has not been less magnificent; no, nor the increase of its theological intelligence and liberality. Why, here is this great Presbyterian body

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which, only a few years ago, we imagined as impregnable to any skyey influence of modern critical science as the ice-cap of Greenland, over which Lieutenant Peary has been sledging for our entertainment and instruction, to any influence of the Northern sun; and, behold! it is as if that had begun to crack and heave and melt and detach great portions of itself, and send them drifting off, until, in warmer latitudes, they should be resolved into the general flood! The case of Dr. Briggs presented so many points that there was danger of intellectual confusion in our apprehension of the matter. Take just this one: Dr. Briggs singled out Dr. Martineau as a good Christian, salvable and safe here and hereafter, notwithstanding his Unitarian and critical opinions. And how much of a heretic is Dr. Martineau ? So much of one that he is forced to the conclusion "that Christianity" (I copy his own words), as defined or understood in all the churches which formulate it, has been mainly evolved from what is transient and perishable in its sources; from what is unhistorical in its traditions, mythological in its preconceptions, and misapprehended in the oracles of its prophets. From the fable of Eden to the imagination of the last trumpet,' ," he continues, "the whole story of the divine order of the world [as related in the traditional theology] is dislocated and deformed." Dr. Briggs, aware of this overwhelming accusation of traditional Christianity from the pen of Dr. Martineau, nevertheless "finds no fault in the man." And in full view of this the New York Presbyterians, in their solemn meeting, inquiring what is the matter with Professor Briggs, answer that, if he is not perfectly sound, he is sound enough to enjoy the fellowship of the Presbyterian saints. Truly, to this complexion have we come at length: that one may entertain the most destructive criticism ever urged against traditional Christianity by a great thinker and scholar, and not be cut off from the eternal hope nor even from the visible Church.

But if the "friendless Present" were not characterized by events and processes that ask no handicap for any others in

the course of history, in order that they may be even with them in the race, how full the time which has contained these great events and processes would be of wonderful and precious things! How full of life! Some fourteen hundred millions of human beings alone surging up out of the mysterious background of the world since the beginning of our Civil War, as many more since Garrison said in the first number of the Liberator, "I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard." And what has this life been full of in its turn? Of emptiness, no doubt, to a considerable extent, or of mere greedy appetites and sordid cares and trivial enjoyments, but here and there, in a few million cases, of faithful work, of unspeakable fidelity, of unmeasurable happiness and peace and joy. But the fullness of the time has not been by any means exhausted by the swarming human life. About five hundred thousand different species of plants have contributed their quota. Species, mind you! How many varieties does that mean? There are seventy species of the golden-rod alone; how many varieties I do not know. Of the roses there must be many more, and the apple-blossoms are the prettiest of them all. Think of the individual plant-life which these species and varieties involve! You cannot think of it. A single dandelion-blossom furnishes two hundred and fifty thousand pollen grains, a single peony three or four millions. There is no such prodigal as Nature in the Father's house, and every day he makes a feast for her and kills the fatted calf. The species of plants are absolutely many, but compared with the animal species they are few. There are only half a million of the former there are two millions of the latter. And that means how many individuals? Again, you cannot compass it. Too many, you may think, when the census is of the house-fly or mosquito. But you should look at the matter from their point of view. Let us be glad there are so many living things to revel in the joy of life, and not grudge them now and then a drop of our own blood to cheer their tiny hearts!

To life, add beauty. How full the days, years, and generations are of this commodity! Much of it is the beauty of life, of the plant's flowering, of the tree's handsome bole and swaying limbs and multitudinous leaves, of the iris mantling on the burnished dove, the swallow's motion and the insect's wings, of that human body in which Michel Angelo found God as nowhere else revealed, and the human face which artists love, and which young men can hardly look upon and live. And still how few of all the many things which fill the continent of Time have I yet named! The stars are in it, more than a hundred millions of them every pleasant night; the seasons' various round; the morning and the evening's splendors of the rising and the setting sun; the mountains and the sea; the magnificence of the lightning and aurora; and the glorious hurly-burly of the storm.

"I saw the beauty of the world
Before me like a flag unfurled;
The splendor of the morning sky,
And all the stars in company.

I thought, How wonderful it is!

My soul said, 'There is more than this!'"

And there is more, even the soul itself.

"Thou gazest on the stars, my soul;

Oh, would that I could be

Yon starry skies with thousand eyes,
That I might gaze on thee."

That would be to see something much more wonderful, much more beautiful, much more enduring, than the stars. And Time is full of soul, full of its thought, its purpose, and its love. And it is full of God. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out. For of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be the glory forever!

We hear it said that time will stanch the wounds and heal the sickness of our hearts. But time is nothing of itself.