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Every soul is sent out from God as a ship upon a voyage with sealed orders. We do not know where we are to go, our fathers and mothers can not tell. We can not ourselves foresee any experiences that await us. But each day, each hour, and each moment, somehow there is opened up before our consciousness some sealed orders. We go from this port to that; from this day into to-morrow; from this experience into that experience by sealed orders. There is no time schedule for a human soul. You can not tell when it will arrive at any place and at any experience. You can not tell anything that awaits you. Life is a mystery, the meaning of which is kept with God; and all we have is a succession of sealed orders which experience is opening up for us every day, every hour, every moment of our lives.

That is why I have taken as an illustration the sealed orders of the revenue cutter Russia. We have reduced our steamships on their ocean service to outlined paths and to appointed hours. We run the trains upon our railroads close to their schedule time; but a human soul can not and will not be run by any laws of political economy; by any plan of salvation; by any science of education; or by any scheme of reform. The mysteries of its laws, its comings, and its goings, are largely due to the impulsions of the great Over Control. Now, it has always been a belief with thoughtful nations and with thoughtful men and women, that there existed something in this world called by various names which controlled the thoughts and acts of meu. Little children think they can do as they please. Foolish men and women think they can do as they please. But, by and by, to the most foolish man and woman, there comes the consciousness that what they please to do is largely what it pleases some other one that they shall do; and that the limitations which are set upon the human will

and caprice are such that we may only take between narrow walls, our own personal preference.

It was called in the old days Fate; and the Greek said the immense mind of Jove can not be transgressed. The Turk knew it and he said that the Destiny of Man was written upon an iron leaf which could not be broken. The Persian understood the same thing when he said:

"On two days it steads not to flee from thy grave,
The appointed and the unappointed day;
On the first, neither balm nor physician can save,
Nor thee on the second the universe slay."

Jesus, the Christ, understood it when he spoke of the Will of God which a man must obey. Matthew Arnold Calls it the Stream of Tendency by which all things fulfill the law of their being; or, in yet another place, the Power not our own that makes-irresistibly-for Righteousness. And it is recognized also in later phrasethe Reign of Law. Now, let any one call it what he will -fate, destiny, stream of tendency, power that makes for righteousness, will of God, reign of law—we mean always that there is a control that is exercised over human thought and human feeling which we must obey.

Certain phases and expressions of this control come to us in what we call the laws of nature. We have found a few of them, and we know that we must obey them. We use a few of them in order to accomplish our results; and in as far as we use them we are successful in life. But there still remains the large unexplored mystery that a man's soul is something directly in touch with this great power and presence. This power is shaping and directing, by means of sealed orders, the individual life of every man and woman. There are some things which are not referred either to

chance or to understood law; and such is the soul of man. It loves not according to law. It hates not according to law. He can not understand why he loves, or why he hates. Great gusts of passion sweep across a soul, and they can not be calculated by any gage, spiritual or other, to tell along what path they have swept or what next they will encounter. Life is inspirational and not mechanical.

No man can tell just why it is he does a certain action. Lord Clive said to a man going out to be a Judge in India, "Do not try to explain why you have given a decision; you do not know why you have decided thus ;. your judgment is apt to be right, but your reasons or your apparent reasons are apt to be wrong. You can not tell why you make up your mind." Now, we have sealed orders. There is given to us that which we open. every day. Into the nature of a little child these things are put. No microscope can see them, no chemic test will discover them; but they open up as we come to this and come to that; as we march our hour's march, our day's march, they are opened up before us and we read what we are to do next. We do not find these orders in a Bible or book of history or book of law, but we simply find written upon our spiritual consciousness, in letters that we can read: Go forth, Do this, Do that. If we stop to ask why, the word comes: "What I do, thou knowest not now; thou shalt know hereafter."

Is there one of you who is here to-day who can not remember that your life has been a continual surprise to yourself? Do you not realize that little monitions of the unseen, propulsions as of the pressure of an invisible finger, beckonings as of a hand, welcomings as of a voice-something has been drawing you on or pushing you on, out of yesterday into to-day, out of this experience into that, until you say, "My life is to me more of a surprise, in its erraticisms and eccentricities,

in its strange incongruities, than it could be to any one else." I have gone up a mountain and reached the place where I expected to arrive, but the way thereoh, through what strange paths I have gone!-going down where I thought I ought to go up, going to the right where I thought I ought to go directly ahead, and yet by and by, from the top looking down, marking this way now seen clearly, I have known each step was an onward one. So we look back over life.

Who is the man that dares say his mistakes have not helped him? That his very sins have not been his messengers of light? We would not dare say to do this wrong thing; but yet it is by this wrong thing that we did that we learned to distinguish the right thing; by the fall made that we reached forward to the higher thing; by the slipping of a foot that we clutched something that we would not otherwise have caught hold of. Life is sealed orders from the time of birth until death. We can not tell where we go. All we know is that a great controlling mind knows where we are going; knows every wind that blows across us; knows all the things that shall happen to us; has calculated the resistance, and knows that we shall arrive at last at that port to which we are bound.

Now, we study life in little bits, and we see this and we see that, and we measure ourselves and each other by it. That is not a fair standard. Burns put in that plea when he said about the "Unco' Guid:

"What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what's resisted."

A man is measured by the attempts he makes to rise. If he falls ninety-nine times, God does not care for the number of times he fell; he tried to stand upon his feet again. It is not mistakes and errors and sins that count, but it is the endeavor to rectify mistakes and to

correct the path of life, and to be rid of the sin which did so easily beset us.

The paths across the ocean are now laid plain; the charts mark out each rock and shoal; but for all that the man who is charged with the responsibility of a thousand lives, consults his chart and takes his bearings, just so many times each day, waits until the clouds move so that he can get a glimpse of the sun, moon or star, and then makes his calculation as to where he is. And a man who is to live an inspirational life and to rectify his life continually, is a man who takes his bearings as he goes along.

There are two things God gives us, by which we may direct our path. One is history, which is the record of human variation and human achievement. History tells a nation what it has accomplished and up what path it has come. It tells us by what paths we have arrived at the achievements of to-day. We read history to know our path, the trend and direction of it. Then we have that within us, the unseen light, by means of which we tell where we are. If I want to know God's word, I do not open a book, whether it is a Bible or a dictionary, to know it. I look down into my conscience. It is the living record of God, and I open some sealed order which I find there, and it tells me what to do next. A Bible is a record of human experience and therefore valuable. A statute book is a book of human experience in the endeavor to make laws. Customs, habits and human opinion are the record of experience, and we study them up to a certain point. But each one is made responsible to himself, and the whole history of his life but throws light upon to-day and helps him to read these letters, somewhat hieroglyphic and mystical, in which these sealed orders are written.

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