what was right as each occasion offered itself, he found at last the unvarying condition of all thought, feeling, action, which enables us to pass from the transient to the permanent, from the fact to the law, from the event to the providence, from the day to eternity, from earth to heaven, from the neighbor whom we have seen to God whom we have not seen. That is the way of life. This is the glory of Christianity, because the Father comes to us only as we seek him. The infinite can not be imported into our natures any more than the ocean can be imported into a hollow shell; but as we open our souls, it comes in and fills us to the extent of our capacity—no further. And how much capacity we have, depends upon how far we have traveled in the right way. As much as the mind has found of truth, the heart of love, the conscience of right, the soul of God, so far have we traveled in the way, truth, life which lead to the Father. Have you struggled up half the mountain-path? You command half the prospect. Have you reached the summit? It is all yours. And since this is the inevitable law of human growth; since no man can perform the journey of life for us, nor carry us to the Father, nor bring the Father to us, how priceless is the life of one who has found the right way, of a human brother who has struggled so far upward that he calls to the nineteenth, as to the first century, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall find rest."

Now this, the preeminently blessed element of Christianity, is just the element which the church as an organization has steadily refused to accept. She has seized upon certain words and acts of Jesus, certain historical facts about him, and made them ends in themselves. She has not nightly pitched her

"moving tent

A day's march nearer home."

She has not hurried each traveler on after his swift fore runner; but, building her walls around his ancient campingground of a night, has set her sentinels to proclaim it the celestial city, where his and our journey ends. Thus we miss that which we most need in Jesus—an open way, a tendency, a condition of life. This may be owing in part to the difficulty of organizing any thing so subtile, so impatient of corporeal touch, as this wonderful way to the Father. We can fence in a field and obtain a title to it, and measure every inch of its surface, and say who shall and who shall not enter it; but it is impossible to encompass an endless highway, reaching from the weakness of man to the omnipotence of God, and make it the property of a sect. The most we can hope is, that we may fix our habitation beside it, that it may serve us, though it can not belong to us. That which God needs most of genius, (if we may speak of his needs,) is that it should prepare a way, open a door, set free a fountain, through which he may pour out somewhat of his truth and beauty upon man; or perhaps, better still, through which the soul may go to him and find him in higher truth and diviner beauty, through which it may go in and out and find pasture. All those who have been schoolmasters to the race were far greater blessings as ways than as ends. Socrates bequeathed nothing to the world that was comparable with his method. Of all else we know little. He has not learned the a, b, c of art, to whom the picture, the statue, the symphony, the cathedral, of the great masters, is not a way over which his soul flies quickly into the presencechamber of the infinite beauty. Luther was a way in his best days. When he ceased to be a Protestant against the

wickedness of Rome; when he gave up the grand old cry, "The just shall live by faith," and became a Lutheran, and fought for his attainment as the end, the result beyond which no man could go, he was shorn of his peculiar strength, and ground like Samson in the Philistines' mill. Protestantism was a way of life by faith, and involved the right of each soul, without priest or church, to go to God in his own way. Lutheranism is only a mile-stone showing how far one man had traveled on that endless road. Millions have traveled on his way, but few have pitched their tents for permanent repose in his hostelry. Unitarianism is a way, and not an end. Dr. Channing consecrated himself soul and body, not to the defense of his results so much as to the assertion of the right of each soul to worship God in spirit and in truth as it would. And he will live as the representative of a tendency, the advocate of a method long after he is forgotten as a father of Unitarianism. What is the first thought which his magic name brings before you even now, at a remove of less than a quarter of a century from his day? Is it not of a pure and fearless soul seeking truth in the love of God and man, and pushing aside every creed or form which comes between him and the object of his search? The defender of a sect is an afterthought.

II.

ALL THINGS ARE YOURS.

How could Paul, that feeble, penniless man, matched against a world of prejudice and power-how could he make such a triumphant assurance as this to disciples poor and friendless as himself? How could he encourage them to forsake all and follow the truth on the strength of such an assurance? What was the nature of this possession? What was this claim to man, and wealth, and experience, and all time? It was clearly not the claim of property. They had no rights of monopoly over the earth and life. There were many men in Corinth who could have shown a thousand possessions to the Christian's one. Paul had learned to regard every thing as his which could serve him, and he teaches the Corinthians that the great secret of possession is to put the soul in such an attitude toward the world, and life and death, the present and future, that they shall serve it, and that this is the highest and best ownership. Just as a man who places his ship in the right relation toward the winds owns the winds. He could get no more nor better service from them if he owned them. The best uses of all things abide in that to which our title-deeds give us no possession. The mere fact that we can call a thing ours by the law of the land, is no proof that it is ours by the law of the spirit and of life. Indeed, we may be owned by the very things which we possess. persons build a great house and fill it with splendid furni

I have seen

The

ture and say, "That house is mine;" when in reality they and their whole family were slaves to the house. house owned them. When the carpet said, "Shut the blinds, or I will fade," they would shut them and sit in unwholesome darkness. When the chairs said, "Cover us all up, or we will catch dust," they would cover them and lose all their beauty. And so it was ever. The house owned them. The most casual comer, who felt his higher nature ministered unto by all the beauty and comfort there, owned the house more than the owner. To possess any thing is to make that thing of service, and to possess it most truly is

The only reason that

to make it yield the highest service. we try to own a thing is that we may control its service, and thus better secure it. But the moment we fail to comprehend the true use of that which we own, or fail to secure its legitimate service, it ceases to be ours and it begins to possess us. A man may own a large library of beautiful books from which he is not able to derive any real service. He may have bought them to gratify his pride of possession; and he may have a hired servant who reads them in the garret after the labors of the day are over, to whom the books belong more truly than to the owner.

Now, this is clearly the true relation of each mind toward the world's great teachers. One never knows how to value them rightly until he has felt that his own personality is the most sacred thing which he possesses or can possess; and that teachers, no matter how great or good, are nothing but a mischief the moment they ignore his personality and take entire possession of him. Yet how many persons there are who are owned by men; who have no opinions except such as they receive from some favorite Paul, Apollos, or Cephas; who dress, and study, and plan, and recite