distinctions between right and wrong. But things do not go to pieces nor dissolve. Men do not become atheists, nor renounce their recognition of right and wrong. All things are permeated with a principle of life which preserves all that is essential to them. Nature has wonderful resources, and is always saving herself by her own vitality. She has taught all her teachers so far, and she will continue to teach them all. She uses her own earthiness to filter the waters of life with which the inspired ones would refresh her, and purifies them in the course of ages from all taint of mortality. This nature will, sooner or later, absorb the wisdom of all its teachers, and still demand more light. It must triumph.

These facts teach, further, that we should have faith in human nature and in God's providential guidance of it. How slowly we learn this! Every teacher, from the parent to the priest, attacks each new type of life as it comes from its Maker, with all the necessities of its destiny asleep in its little bosom, and begins to cut and chisel and hammer it to some other model. I wonder we do not rather stand in awe before each one, and pray that we may help and not harm it! We may indeed guide, restrain, and balance a development—a nature, like a tree, may defeat itself by its own luxuriance-but, for heaven's sake, let us do it, if we can, with nature's methods, not with our own whims or crotchets; much less let us dare touch it in our anger!

There is a tendency everywhere to overestimate teaching and to underestimate the schools of life and growth. We attribute too much to doctoring, too little to exercise. How many specifics we have for saving society! One would save it with Graham bread; another with some kind of "pathy;" another with dumb-bells; another with the positive philoso

phy; another with chemistry; and another with some style of "ism." But I will tell you what will save society-her own rugged constitution which will not break down with all this drugging or without it.

I heard a sermon, not long since, on that subject so common in the pulpit, and always treated in the same way, "What Christianity has done for the world." It made a comparison between the world as it was eighteen hundred years ago and as it is to-day, and attributed the difference to Christianity. I look upon that method as a positive slander of human nature. It argues upon the ground that the world has done nothing for itself during these eighteen hundred years. One might as well compare the strength, and honor, and judgment, and enterprise of a full-grown man with the weakness, and peevishness, and indolence of a baby, and say the change was owing to the effects of a certain boarding-school. That may have had its effects; but the main difference is the difference between childhood and manhood. I wonder whether an unprejudiced observer looking, at this hour, upon the two nations for whom Christianity has done most, would find it easier to tell what Christianity had or had not done for the world.

One half of one nation is in a war of rebellion for slavery; and the other half is trying to suppress it, if possible, without destroying slavery; and the other Christian nation is in full sympathy with that half which she knows to be fighting for slavery, even if the other half is not fighting against it. I think it would not be unprofitable to show what Christianity has not done for the world. But I have no taste for such an inquiry, because I do not think Christianity has been overestimated, but falsely estimated, and that human nature has been underestimated.

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It seems to me that we should have all faith in this uniIt is worthy of it. It is indeed a terrible discipline to keep our faith alive. We often cry in anguish, “O Lord! how long? But it is all the hope we have. There is a volume of truth in a remark of Emerson that, "As we go from the spirited meeting of the transcendental club, or the abolition club, or the temperance club, and walk out into the night and see the stars wheeling on in the old spaces, and find the old, cool tranquillity everywhere, a voice speaks to us from nature, saying, 'What! so hot, my little man ?'"

But let me not close without reminding you that practically there is no rule but Paul's: however much our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, we may not do evil that good may come. We can not get behind

this truth. Because God can and will use our wickedness for the trial and discipline of society, it is not the less our wickedness. Had we been true and innocent, there would have been just so much the less need of trial and discipline. Just as the wood and sand which collect in some noble river may choke its channel and resist its waters, and thus occasion the turning of a million spindles, so we, by our indifference, and indolence, and wickedness, may obstruct the currents of holy influence which are sweeping through society and turn them aside to water other lands and beautify other plains. But can we afford to be only the débris in life's river? Can we afford to be the passive occasions of power when we might be its living sources? The pendulum of our personal life is so mysteriously attached to the vast machinery of Providence that, whether it swing forward or backward, the hand on the dial moves on. But does it make no difference with us? We can, indeed, see but a

short way down the long path of life, and can comprehend but little of the effects of our activities here; but this we do know, at every turn of the road there stands this motto, "Do right, and good must come." The right road can not lead to the wrong place, although that place be never so far away. But let this comfort us in the midst of our work: though our honest plans seem to fail, they do not fail; though our own people will not hear nor receive us, though friendly hands are unclasped, and friendly voices grow harsh and scornful, and we are driven to the Gentile stranger, let us not doubt that our failure is our success and the real gain of the world. Do not doubt that your child's nature, and your own nature, and the nature of society are as dear to God as they can be to you, and the resultant of your labor and their assistance is your providential life-work.

"Chances have laws as fixed as planets have;
And disappointment's dry and bitter root,
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool
Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind."

IX.

EACH A PENNY.

FAITHFULNESS, and not success, is the true criterion of service and reward in the providence of God. It is not those who are employed earliest, nor those who work longest, nor those who accomplish most, who receive the greatest reward from the householder; but those who are most willing to work, those who would be employed, those who wait sadly in the market-place and see the strong and healthful go to the vineyard before them-these also receive their penny. The penny is of no importance in the parable. It is meant to illustrate the equality of God's approbation. The different times of commencing labor are of no importance; they illustrate only the great consoling truth that

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

There are, broadly speaking, two classes of people in the world-the passive and the active; those who wait and yearn and long, and those who labor and struggle and achieve. The active ones naturally regard action as the only service, and are very apt to despise the waiting ones, and look down upon them because they are not hired to labor in the vineyard. The world goes on estimating desert by noise and bustle, divine favor by worldly success, spiritual power by temporal advantage. Yet life is full of those who are waiting in the market-place, who would as gladly serve