for young Samuel? Happily, the answer is at hand: "She came up with her husband." Did you husbands hear that? "She came up with her husband"-do not lightly pass over that part of my text, O men and fathers! Very little is known of Elkanah, Hannah's husband. Hannah seems to have been a full-fledged suffragette before New Jersey and New York were on the map. Evidently, she was the guiding spirit of that far-off home. Elkanah, from all accounts, simply occupied a position of "benevolent neutrality." And yet, as little as we know of Elkanah, that little is most important. It is this: He did not attend church by proxy. He did not say: "The temple is well enough for Hannah and the boy; but-" No; he did not say that, and then turn to the pink edition of the Jerusalem Daily Times to feast his eyes upon the latest sensation or reptilian scandal! Elkanah went up with his wife to the house of God, where their child was being wisely and definitely moulded for time and eternity.

And this is one of the things we are commemorating tonight: The influence of the Junior Congregation upon the Senior, the leadership of childhood in its relation to men and women. You fathers owe a vast debt to the little folk assembling here throughout the years. The trust of a child has put many a man's blackest doubts to shame. A friend gave me a story the other day of the famous men who met at Ferguson's house in Edinburgh.

Dugald Stewart, the philosopher; Hutton, the geologist; Adam Smith, the author of "The Wealth of Nations"; and Robert Burns, the Scotch skylark -all of them were there. Yes; and a little towheaded boy named Walter was there. Looking at a picture on the wall, Burns read beneath it a couplet that appealed to him. He inquired the author of the lines, but none of the famous men knew. Yet the little towhead knew, and he whispered the author's name to the man nearest him, and the man told the great poet. Then Burns called the boy to him. Placing his hand on his head, he said: “You will be a greater man than your grandfather." Sir Walter Scott-for the little towheaded boy became the world-famous wizard of romance-said that the moment when Robert Burns put his hand upon his head was the hour of his ordination in literature. Now, my friend had written upon the margin of the white sheet to which the story was pinned, these words: "Ordination of a child." Can you guess the name of my friend? Well, while you are guessing, let me say that this same friend, many years ago in the city of Philadelphia, was asked to go on a serious errand. It was night, and the man who called at the pastor's house had the face of a criminal. He said he wanted the minister to go to see a sick child. And the minister went. The house was located in one of the desperate sections of the city; and, indeed, the haunt where the sick child was resembled a den for criminals more than a house.

As they climbed up the dark, tottering stairway, the minister was greeted by the growls of a ferocious bulldog. "Weren't you afraid?" I asked, breathlessly, as he told me the story. "Well, you see," he replied with a twinkle in his fun-loving eyes, "under the circumstances I wouldn't have been altogether human not to have felt a few chills chasing each other up and down my spinal column." And then he paused, adding quickly: "Just then I heard a sick little child crying, and I knew I was safe." A child had ordained his safety, a child had led him on the mission of the Master, and all these years he has been one of the faithful servants of our children. When Mr. Widener died last week, he was described as a capitalist, a philanthropist, an art collector, and a lover of children. The supreme distinction is the last, and without which the others make life weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. And it is because you are a lover of children, Doctor Farrar, (I must break my promise, and be personal for a moment,) that we love you. Through your ministry to children, you have not only served them, but you have made a profound appeal to fathers and mothers, who, because of you, have dedicated themselves more joyously and devotedly to the religious nurture and training of their children. Because of this, and because of you-you, with your great big, brothering, childlike heart-we bring you the greetings of the city. "Look for me," said Francis Thompson, "in the nurseries of Heaven." May it be a long,

long time before we miss your familiar figure from the streets of Brooklyn; but when we do, we shall know where to find you-in the nurseries of Heaven, still loving little children, still loved by little children, and still led by little children into everenlarging dimensions of your own Christlike manhood!

V

THE HIGHER UNITY

There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."-GAL. III: 28.

I

N hours of crises, a great soul sometimes catches

and flashes forth a light which can never be extinguished. Ever afterward, amid life's spiritual, mental, and social darkness, that light shines upon the pathway of the race like a beacon from the infinite morning. Such a light shines out in our text. Kindled by one of those eager, passionate, white-hot, soul-creative moods when a man's being is on fire, it defies the winds of the world to blow it out. They simply blow it on, not out, up and over and across, until the world is encircled by the glory of it. All that was dear to Paul -his teaching, his life-work, his spiritual vision, his faith in God-was at stake. The proposition he had been challenged to meet and settle was this: Was Christianity to be the ultimate world-religion-— thrilling with history and throbbing with eternity— or was it to be supplemented by Judaism? Was it to go forward, majestic, life-giving, invincible, or was it to go backward, dwindling at last to the