They are like ghosts among a market full of busy men and women. How old is the material world, and yet forever fresh and young! So is it with the human world. If the race of men be thirty thousand years old, then there are a thousand fathers between us and the first man; and yet you and I are just as new and fresh, and just as near to God, as the first father and mother. We derive our humanity from Him, not them; and hold it by divine patent from the Creator of all. Mankind never grows old. You and I pass off as leaves are blown from the trees, decay, and are exhaled, becoming but vapors of the sky again. So also do nations grow old and pass away. At the gate where Egypt, Assyria, Judæa, Greece, Sparta, and Rome, were admitted through, stand Spain and Italy to-day, beating at the door, and crying, "Divinest Mother, let thy weary daughters in!" They will pass to the judg ment of nations, and in due time Britain and America will be gathered to their fathers, but mankind will have still, as now, the bloom of immortal youth about his handsome brow. Thirty thousand years, perhaps sixty, nobody knows how long, has he lived here; still not a hair is gray, no sense is dull, the eye of this old Moses of humanity is not dim, nor is his natural strength abated; and new nations are still born as vigorous as the old, and to much better estate. The last three generations have done more than any six before in science, letters, art, religion, and the greatest art of bearing men and building them into families, communities, nations, and the human world. The religious faculty vegetates into new churches, animates into new civilization men and women. Tell me of Moses, Isaiah, Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Pythagoras, Jesus, Paul, Mohammed, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin—a whole calendar full of saints! I give God thanks for them, and bare my brow, and do them reverence, and sit down at their feet to learn what they have to offer. They are but leaves and fruit on the tree of humanity, which still goes on leafing, flowering, fruiting, with other Isaiahs and Christs, whereof there is no end. As the tree grows taller, the wealth of blossoms is more, and so too the harvest of its fruit. When the woods have not a leaf, when the ocean has not a drop, when the sun has not a particle of life, still shall the soul of man look up to God, and reverence the Infinite Father and Mother, love and trust; for God created man in his own image, and gave him to be partaker of his own immortality, and no devil can filch his birthright away from the meanest man. No virtue fades out of mankind. Not over-hopeful by inborn temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue. The little charity which palliates effects sometimes fails,but the great justice which removes the causes of ill is as eternal as God. So the most precious corn of humanity which I gather from the pastures of ethics and history, and out of the deep, well-ploughed field of philosophy, I sow beside the waters, nothing doubting. Some falls on a rock, where suddenly it starts, and presently withers away. The shallow-minded bring no fruit to perfection, and only produce ears of chaff. Some drops by the wayside, and covetousness, lust, vanity, and ambition, devour it up, rioting to-day on what should be seed-corn for future generations. Some is blown before bigots, who trample it under their feet, and turn again and rend me with their sermons and their prayers. But I know that most of it will fall into good ground, earnest, honest men and women, where in due time, if not in my day, it will spring up, and bear fruit of everlasting life, some thirty-fold, some forty, some sixty, and some a hundred. Hopeful mankind is not forgetful to entertain strangers, nor lets an angel pass for lack of invitation. Tenacious mankind lets slip no good that is old. nor ever will. "One accent of the Holy Ghost But while the human race is on the earth, its continuing city, ever building, never done, our individual life has also another spring. Death is but a blossoming out from the bulbous body, which kept the precious germ all winter long, and now the shards fall off, and the immortal flower opens its beauty, which God transfers to his own paradise, fragrant with men's good deeds and good thoughts; nay, where their good wishes and prayers pass at their proper worth. There runs a story that one Passover Sabbath day, when Jesus was a boy of twelve, he stood with his mother at the door of their little cottage in Nazareth, his father newly dead, and his brothers and sisters playing their noisy games. And he said, "O mother, would that I had lived in the times when there was open vision, and the Lord visited the earth, as in the days of Adam, Abraham, and Moses. These are sad times, mother, which we have fallen in." Mary laid the baby, sleeping, from her arms, and took a sprig of hyssop out of the narrow wall, and said, "Lo, God is here! and, my boy, not less than on Jacob's Ladder do angels herein go up and down. It is spring-time now, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land, and the blossom of this grape-vine is fragrant with God. The date-tree, the white rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley, root in Him. He is in your little garden out there, not less than in grand Eden, with Adam and Eve. Look how the setting sun has sketched out all the hills! What a purple glory flames in the west, and is reflected in the east, where the full moon tells us it is Passover day." 66 'Nay, mother," said the thoughtful boy; "but He has left the soul of Israel for their sins. So Rabbi Jonas told us in the synagogue to-day. Oh, that I had lived with Elias or Amos, when the spirit fell on men! I had also been filled with Him." And Mary took up her wakened baby, who began to cry, and stilling it in her bosom, she said, "The sins of Israel, my boy, are like Rebecca's cry. God is more mother to the children of Israel than I to her. Do you think He will forsake the world? This little baby is as new as Adam; and God is as near to you as he was to Abraham, Moses, Amos, or Elias. He speaks to you as to Samuel. He never withdraws from the soul of men, but the day-spring from on high comes continually to the soul of each. Open the window, and the sun of righteousness comes in." And Jesus paused, the story tells, and sat there, and while his mother laid the little ones silently away in their poor cribs, he watched the purple fade out from the sky, and the great moon pouring out its white fire, with a star or two to keep her company in heaven. And when the moon was overhead, there came two young lovers, newly wed, and as Jesus caught the joy of their talk to one another, and smelt the fragrance of the blooming grape, there came a gush of devotion in his young heart, and he said, "My Father worketh hitherto; I also will work," and laid him down to his dreams and slept, preparatory to the work which fills the world. 5 THE NATURE OF MAN. THE GRANDEUR AND THE BEAUTY OF MAN. Fall the wonderful things of God, man the won OF derer is himself the most wonderful. He is so well-born, so variously and richly gifted with personal faculties, which are so numerous for action, and which aspire so high; so amply furnished with material means to exercise his faculties and achieve his aspiration, with all eternity for his work-day, and all immensity to grow in,—it is amazing how much is shut up within how little; within a creature a few feet high, living on earth some threescore years! Man is the jewel of God, who has created this material universe as a casket to keep his treasure in. All the material world is made to min-. ister to man's development, a cupboard of food or a cabinet of pleasure. The ox bears his burdens; the arctic whale feeds the scholar's or the housewife's lamp; the lightnings take their master's thought on their wings, and bear it over land or underneath the sea. The amaranthine gems which blossom slowly in the caverns of the ground, these are the rose-buds for his bosom. The human Elias goes up in his chariot of flame; he has his sky-chariot, and his sea-chariot, and his chariots for land, drawn by steeds of fire which himself has made. You admire the height of the mountains. But man's mind is higher than the tallest of them. You wonder at the "great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts," as the Psalm |