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business men, who were searching for evidences of immortality, and as they met each would ask the other: "Have you any light on that question that we were talking about?" and each one answered: "Nothing." How could they have? How can a man immersed in business see it? How can a man simply dealing with affairs see it? He can not. He is as blind as a mole that is brought up out of the earth into God's sunlight; his eyes are accustomed to other things. Evidences not for him are seen by others.

Frank Buckland, the naturalist, loved God and little fishes, and thought there would surely be a place in eternity where he could pursue that work which he and God loved so much.

And Emerson, loving his boy Waldo, says:

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Heart's love shall meet thee again."

Newton, whose mind was ever voyaging out over vast seas of space alone, knew that he should not spend eternity gathering only pebbles.

Mothers know that they shall see their own again. Listen. "That night, before we went to bed, the children were allowed to go in and kiss their mother goodnight. This privilege had been denied them lately, and their hearts responded with joy to the invitation. Mamma was better or she could not see them. She was very pale when they saw her, but smiling, and her first words were, 'I am going on a journey.' 'Will you take us with you?' said the children. No, it is a long, long journey.' 'Mamma is going to the south,' said one. I know the doctor has ordered it. She will get well there.' 'I am going to a far distant country, farther even than the far distant south is; but I am

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not coming back.' 'Are you going alone?' 'No, my physician is going with me. Kiss me good-bye.' In the morning she was gone. When the children awoke their father told them of the beautiful country where their mother had gone, and in which she had safely arrived while they slept. How did she go? Who came for her? The chariot of Israel and the horsemen.' There are people who wonder at the peace and happiness expressed in the faces of those motherless children. When asked about their mother, they say to us, 'She is gone on a journey,' and every night and morning they read in the guide-book of that land where she now lives whose inhabitants shall nevermore say, I am sick, and where God wipes away all tears from their eyes."

Now, this appreciation of the world that is and the world that is to come, the world beautiful at the gate of which we stand, and the world, wonderfully beautiful, of which we get glimpses, this is the new thought of the new age. And it is a thought that has come to us from Jesus of Nazareth. It is the light which his life has cast upon the world that has made us love these flowers, that has made us love little children, that has made us love common men and women. When you take up a lily and think that God's providence is there, when you pick up a pebble from the shore, and think that God's providence is there, and when down in a dew-drop or drop of water you see God feeding the animalculæ, you can not doubt his presence or his power. When you look at his rising or setting sun in beauty, when you see the common faces of men becoming beautiful as a new thought of life comes to them, nothing can be ugly to you any more. When a little brown Syrian baby becomes, as it were, one of the gates of the kingdom of heaven, has a right of entrance there which strong men may plead for and not

find, then no child can ever be common; then the light that never was on sea or land, the consummation of the poet's dream, the light that falls from setting suns and gems the green earth and shines in common daily faces of men and women, and makes a divine beauty upon children's faces, is seen to be the light of God that is reflected upon nature and upon humanity from the face of Jesus Christ.

And now let thy blessing be upon us, as we separate; go with us where we go, and stay with us where we stay; watch over us by night and defend us by day; give us health of our bodies and sanity of our minds; hope and courage and resolution and strength, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH.

Our heavenly Father, once again we come into this presence. No fear drives us, but love draws us here, memories of past days, hopes of revelations yet to come, the attraction that the truth has always for those who seek the right, the fascination of the mystery of existence, the sense of something that is interfused with our life, that is deeper than our thinking.

We come to face the great facts of life, we come wearied with the struggle, beaten back and disappointed with the effort, to get new strength again. Bearing the burdens which life imposes upon us, and which our ignorance imposes upon us, we come for strength. We hear the call of Christ which sounds through the centuries, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you life." It is not rest we need so much as the quickening of life to bear the burden aright. And now we pray thee that there may be to every one that is here the answer to the secret wish of the soul; for, as thou hast provided for us the sleep that has rested and the food that has nourished, so thou wilt provide for us all needed strength and hope and comfort.

Each heart knows its own bitterness; a stranger can not intermeddle therewith. One heart can not answer for all; one heart can not bear the sorrows of all. Each one comes to thee out of his own experience. Thou canst answer all the questions of life and bear all the burdens. So thou canst meet each one of us today, those who are feeling their way out into the light and those that are homeless and forsaken and need a friend, and the fathers and mothers of little dead children who bear the ache and the loss always with them, and the freshly bruised and broken hearts. Thou canst

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