is no longer stopping as in an inn over night, where you have no relation to host or guest. Life is no city of destruction and no escape from it, such as Bunyan pictures in the Pilgrim's Progress. Life is not a market where we buy and sell, and each enriches himself by exchanges. Life is enjoyment of the beauty that is in this world, and the employment of the powers and faculties of the spirit. Man is coming back again to the old Eden, the garden from which the mist rose and in which he was put to till it and to dress it in beauty.

In the early days of 1849 and '50, men went to California, drawn there by the reports of the wonderous wealth so easily gathered from the bed of a stream or knocked from the breast of a mountain; and they had no thought but that they should stay a year or two and go back with their riches then to enjoy their lives. Years came and years went, the secret but unsatisfied thirst for gold still held them there, and their homes were left behind them. Still they searched for wealth, but never planted a tree or turned the sod or grew a flower or built a permanent residence. It is only within the last few years that California has been looked upon as a place where men and women were to live, to beautify it, to enrich it and to enjoy life within it.

So, in our lives, it is only within a few years, within a half century, or a few generations, that it has come to the consciousness of man that God ever meant for men to live in this world as though it were a home; and to love it and to make it beautiful and comfortable for themselves and for others. No man can be satisfied with simply making money; no soul can be happy by simply escaping hell. Life was not meant to make money with, and life is not an escape from destruction. There is just as much selfishness in seeking the salvation of your own soul, to the disregard of the minute

comforts of the men and women that are about you, as if you were an Alexander making the world red with

blood.

Life in this world ought to be a pleasure, not a pain. There is just as much a duty in happiness as happiness in duty. It is possible to have pleasure follow life just as a brook follows a road, glistening and tumbling in tumultuous joy, or lying in quiet shallows and shadows, now lost to sight, now coming out again. Life ought to be a pleasure to every one that lives. Happiness is the heritage of the human spirit, and wheresoever there is unhappiness, it is the duty of the strong man to arise and ask: Who and what have done this thing? The cry of the little child must arouse not only the pity but the indignation of right-minded men and women to ask what has robbed this little child of its life and its song; who has stolen from it its happiness, and what is my duty therein?

I say to you, from the experience of the years that I have come through, that I have had a happy life, and I know why it has been happy. Take the heat of this summer. It has been the best summer I have had for many years. It has been to some the most uncomfortable summer. But when first the thought came of the possibility of taking the children out to Fairview Park, from that moment every hour of the bright day has been a pleasant one, simply because it was conferring a pleasure upon some one else; and it was not hot, the hour was not long, the duties were pleasures, the gathering of the money and the preparing of things was simply the extension of pleasure. This is but an illus tration of life. Pleasure comes to those who give pleasure, happiness to those who seek to make other people happy. Any one who makes the pleasure or happiness of another possible, will find a joy in life and will rightly interpret this world. Make some one glad, and all at

We are

once the gloom is gone and the light plays. thus put in touch with the spirit of God, which is the good and the beautiful, and we know the spirit in which this world was made. And you can not understand anything until you know the spirit in which it was made. We share with God the joy of his creation, and the joy of his happy, helpful business.

The life of every minister, if he has a good theology, if he believes in the thought of God, and the beauty and bounty of God, ought to be one long happiness. No shadows of dread could ever creep over him; no pictures of people suffering in hell, or in cold alienation, could ever come to him. He sees the divine movement from dust up to star, and from poor, starved spirit to beneficent, kindly angel. It is all part of one great beautiful plan, and he stands in admiration, watching God, as he unfolds the plan of his universe, as you have bent with wonder when a night-blooming cereus opens the secret of its heart to the stars of night.

You will find a pleasure in people when you come to look at them, not through the glasses of some bargain, not through the dogmatism of some creed, not through the misconception of some heart; but when you have. looked at them as Jesus looked at them, in their deformity still carrying the lineaments of beauty of the children of God. When Jesus Christ wanted a child of which to say, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," it did not make any difference what child he took, one was as good as another for his word, Syrian babe or child of the High Priest of God.

You will find a great beauty in nature when you come to look at it with a sympathetic eye. Everything has part and place in this wonderful, beautiful universe. You will find a meaning in history, as the plan of God

unfolds itself, and the power that makes for righteousness moves toward its irresistible completion. You will find pleasure in friendship. You will find pleasure in books, which are the stored-up life-blood of master spirits for the ages that are to come. You will find pleasure in studying industry and commerce, which are God's methods for the economic distribution of the products. of nature. You will find pleasure in travel, going over this world to see what is in it and to report it, possibly, to questioning generations that are to come. You will find pleasure in music, broken chords and utterances of the divine spirit; and in art, more beautiful at times than nature even, because it is the ideal and the perfect which nature has never reached. You will find pleasure in labor and in work if it is useful; and in rest if it is earned. You will find pleasure in the thought of the progress of God through the centuries, and of the destiny of man, until in this beautiful world, stimulated by this thought, that there is nothing common as there is nothing unclean, the mere dust that is under your feet becomes instinct as it holds the promise and the potency of a wonderful life.

But my enjoyment of life is but a suggestion that this same enjoyment belongs to every one and lies within the possibility of every one. There is not any one of you here to-day, howsoever dark your sin or shameful your history, but has this possibility of the enjoyment of God's beautiful, bountiful world. I am interested in the labor question, as you know-in the human question, which is larger than the labor question—for it seems to me that this beauty and bounty of God belongs to everybody, and I can not bear to think that there shall be one person into whose ears God's music shall not steal, and into whose eyes and soul God's beauty shall not. find its way. I find no pleasure in a solitary enjoyment. The book I read I want somebody

else to read. The song I hear I wish somebody else to hear. The story at which I laugh I wish to retail again. The view I have from mountain or over ocean, I wish that others could have. It multiplies the pleasure when two and more see it. No man can be saved alone. No man can enjoy this world alone. The sun and moon that shine for all, the common flowers, the common wind, the things that are common to us all, are the things that give us the most happiness. I recognize this feeling in an increasing number of people; the dissatisfaction with their own enjoyment of life, because so many do not find an equal pleasure.

And this human movement, always remember, has two sides. On the one hand, there is the reaching forward of all to enjoy that which is now enjoyed by a few, and on the other hand there is the proffer of this enjoyment which the few have to the many. There is a growing surprise in the world at the fact of solitary possession. How came I to have this thing, and you not to have it? is the question we are asking ourselves, and the discontent of the fortunate is more significant than the discontent of the unfortunate. When we think of a vacation, we wish that other people had a vacation as well; and what pleasure we take in seeing little children in the fresh-air camp at Fairview. Love longs to share its treasures always. Phillip says to Nathaniel, We have found Jesus which is the Christ; come and see him. And whenever a child finds a new flower or has a new doll, she comes bounding out of the house with, Come and see. That is the Christian attitudeCome and see.

It was feared in the old time that the life of the world would win men from heaven. I do not find it so. The new thought looks upon the world as an experience of the human spirit. It is but the gate of the temple; we are to remember that. Emerson tells us of two men,