simply have any man stand up and say; This is to me the truth, and I will stand by the consequences of it. It creates a center of faith around which all things can begin to crystallize. Now, these thoughts which are put forth somewhat didactically, may apply to religion, to business, to politics and to our homes. We are to search in religion for the truth, and this search goes along the line of obedience. Live in obedience to the highest thing you know and you will see yet farther. He who climbs the mount of obedience stands at last on the mount of vision. In business it is the same. Truth of word and act must obtain. There can be no compromise with that which is false here, and no wealth that may result will compensate a man for the fact that he has sold himself to the false and is a degraded man in the eyes of the universe, however his fellow men may count him. Truth in politics insists upon it that a man shall hold to his convictions and shall be independent in his judgment when great issues come. Of truth in the home I say only that we ought of all things to teach our children to speak and act the truth, and not to bring them up in any lies, of religion or politics or business. The method which we take is this: Obedience to every obligation, however minute, creates a sensitiveness to the reception of fine moral distinctions, and strength of will to choose and carry out the dictates of conscience. And the truth we speak, says Paul, must be spoken in love; and that is a thing people forget. Do not make of truth a bludgeon or cudgel with which to break down somebody else. The witness to the truth at last issues in the cross of Christ. The end of all true living and speaking, for some years, will be Calvary of one kind or another, for the cross of Christ was this. Christ's death was a witness to the truth. It is that which gives to the cross of Christ its significance. It is the most powerful symbol the world has ever known. Its power lies in the fact that at a peculiar period in the history of the world a man of like nature and passions with ourselves, of humble birth, saw the truth about life and became obedient to it, even unto the death by the cross. He died rather than be silent about it; rather than to be false to it. He was faithful to the facts of life. That faithfulness has made the world Christian. The facts of life were not new. But it was new that it was a man's duty to die for them. The great facts of life which he uttered were that God is the Father of the human race, and that all men are brothers. And from these simple statements there could be deduced the duties of worship and the duties of justice and of love. Truth to these facts cost Jesus Christ his life upon the cross. Truth to these facts made a center of faith in a faltering and failing world. Belonging as they did to the very nature of things, one with the process of the suns and with the growing corn, when once death consecrated them they became the law of the world. All religions silently crumbled before the disintegrating touch of those facts; all kingdoms rocked through the revolutionary forces that are in the world to-day. The uplifted cross is a sign to the world that one man kept his faith and his truth even unto death. The truth he kept was that life is a trust to be used for the good of the world. The teaching of the cross is that we must all keep our truth and bear our witness to the spiritual facts of life. THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. M Y subject this morning is the law of mutual aid. I shall introduce it by a little story which I have cut from a paper. A workman in a pottery factory had one small invalid child at home. He wrought at his trade with exemplary fidelity, being always in the shop with the opening of the day. Every night he carried to the bedside of his "wee lad," as he called him, a flower, a bit of ribbon or a fragment of crimson glass, something that would lie out on the white counterpane and give color to the room. He was a quiet, unsentimental man, and said nothing to any one about his affection for his boy. He simply went on loving him, and soon the whole shop was brought into half-conscious fellowship with him. The workmen made curious little jars and cups, and painted diminutive pictures upon their sides before they stuck them in the corners of the kiln at burning time. One brought some fruit, and another a few engravings. in a rude scrap-book. Not one of them whispered a word, this solemn thing was not to be talked about. They put the gifts in the old man's hat, where he found them; he understood all about it. Little by little all the men, of rather coarse fiber by nature, grew gentle and kind, and some stopped swearing as the weary look on their patient fellow-worker's face told them |