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evil and to sweeten corruption as it is about anything besides. Christ has a great deal more need of the cultivation of the small patches that He gives to the most of us than He has even in the cultivation of the large estates that He bestows on a few. Responsibility is not to be measured by amount of gift, but is equally stringent, entire, and absolute, whatsoever be the magnitude of the endowments from which it arises.

Let me remind you, too, how the same virtues and excellencies can be practised in the administering of the smallest as in that of the greatest gifts. Men say--I dare say some of you have said-“ Oh! if I were eloquent like So and-So; rich like somebody else; a man of weight and importance like some other, how I would consecrate my powers to the Master! But I am slow of speech, or nobody minds me, or I have but very little that I can give." Yes! "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." If you do not utilize the capacity possessed to increase the estate would only be to increase the crop of weeds from its uncultivated clods. We never palm off a greater deception on ourselves than when we try to hoodwink conscience by pleading narrow gifts as an excuse for boundless indolence, and to persuade ourselves that if we could do more we should be less inclined to do nothing. The most largely endowed has no more obligation and no fairer field than the most slenderly gifted lies under and

possesses.

All service coming from the same motive and tending to the same end is the same with God.

Not the magnitude of the act, but the motive thereof, determines the whole character of the life of which it is a part. The same graces of obedience, consecration, quick sympathy, selfdenying effort may be cultivated and manifested in the dealing out of a halfpenny as in the administration of mill. ions. The smallest rainbow in the tiniest drop that hangs from some sooty eave and catches the sunlight has pre

cisely the same lines, in the same order, as the great arch that strides across half the sky. If you go to the Giant's Causeway, or to the other end of it among the Scotch Hebrides, you will find the hexagonal basaltic pillars all of identically the same pattern and shape, whether their height be measured by feet or by tenths of an inch. Big or little, they obey exactly the same law. There is "much food in the tillage of the poor."

II. But now, note, again, how there must be a diligent cultivation of the small gifts.

The inventor of this proverb had looked carefully and sympathetically at the way in which the little peasant proprietors worked; and he saw in that a pattern for all life. It is not always the case, of course, that a little holding means good husbandry, but it is generally so; and you will find few waste corners and few unweeded patches on the ground of a man whose whole ground is measured by rods instead of by miles. There will usually be little waste time, and few neglected opportunities of working in the case of the peasant whose subsistence, with that of his family, depends on the diligent and wise cropping of the little patch that does belong to him.

And so, dear brethren, if you and 1 have to take our place in the ranks of the two-talented men, the commonplace run of ordinary people, the more reason for us to enlarge our gifts by a sedulous diligence, by an unwearied perseverance, by a keen look-out for all opportunities of service, and above all by a prayerful dependence upon Him from whom alone comes the power to toil, and who alone gives the increase. less we are conscious of large gifts the more we should be bowed in dependence on Him from whom cometh every good and perfect gift; and who gives according to His wisdom; and the more earnestly should we use that slender possession which God may have given us. Industry applied to small natural capacity will do far more than larger power

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rusted away by sloth. You all know that it is so in regard of daily life, and common business, and the acquisition of mundane sciences and arts. It is just as true in regard of the Christian race, and of the Christian Church's work of witness.

Who are they who have done the most in this world for God and for men? The largely endowed men ? Not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called." The coral insect is microscopic, but it will build up from the profoundest depth of the ocean a reef against which the whole Pacific may dash in vain. It is the small gifts that, after all, are the important ones. So let us cultivate them the more earnestly, the more humbly we think of our own capacity. Play well thy part; there all the honor lies. God, who has builded up some of the tower. ing Alps out of mica flakes, builds up His Church out of infinitesimally small particles slenderly endowed men

The old fable of the man who told his children to dig all over the field and they would find treasure, has its true application in regard of Christian effort and faithful stewardship of the gifts bestowed upon us. The sons found no gold, but they improved the field, and secured its bearing golden harvests, and they strengthened their own muscles, which was better than gold. So, if we want larger endowments, let us honestly use what we possess, and use will make growth.

The other issue, about which I need not say more than a word, is that the final reward of all faithful service

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touched by the consecration of His they realized an equal rate of increase. love.

III. Lastly, let me remind you of the harvest reaped from these slender gifts when sedulously tilled.

Two great results of such conscientious cultivation and use of small resources and opportunities may be suggested as included in that abundant "food" of which the text speaks.

The faithfully used faculty increases. To him that "hath shall be given." "Oh, if I had a wider sphere, how I would flame in it, and fill it!" Then twinkle your best in your little sphere, and that will bring a wider one some time or other. For, as a rule, and in the general, though with exceptions, opportunities come to the man that can use them; and roughly, but yet substantially, men are set in this world where they can shine to the most advantage to God. Fill your place; and if you, like Paul, have borne witness for the Master in little Jerusalem, He will not keep you there, but carry you to bear witness for Him in imperial Rome itself.

He that got two talents made two more out of them, and he that had five did no more; for he, too, but doubled his capital. So, because the poorer servant with his two, and the richer with his ten, had equally cultivated their di versely measured estates, they were identical in reward, and to each of them the same thing is said: Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." It matters little whether we copy some great picture upon a canvas as big as the side of a house, or upon a thumbnail the main thing is that we copy it. If we truly employ whatsoever gifts God has given to us, then we shall be accepted according to that we have, and not according to that we have not.

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THE CAPACITIES OF THE SOUL. BY REV. DWIGHT M. PRATT, M.A. [CONGREGATIONAL], PORTLAND, ME.

And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him.Gen. i. 26, 27.

THIS is what inspired Scripture says of man. The average person has no adequate conception of the profound significance of this statement. Consequently he is ignorant of the glories and possibilities of his own nature. If he is debased it is because he has never learned God's estimate of his endowments; and thus has debased views of himself. When David discovered the mysteries and inherent grandeur of his own being, he exclaimed, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Looking up with devout adoration to Jehovah, he said, What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" Thou art mindful of him only because thou hast made him but a little lower than God. The fulness of this truth is brought to light in the person of Jesus. The glory of God and the dignity of man both have intimate and unceasing fellowship in his incarnate life. And man is exalted in proportion as he takes God's estimate of his being and endowments.

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I. I have been thinking of late of the capacities of the human soul. What infinite possibilities are wrapped up in every human being! What mighty achievements have been wrought by the intellect in the various realms of investigation and discovery! How the soul of man has winged its flight to the infinite in every department of thoughtin science and art, in music, poetry and philosophy, in the study of man, and in visions of God.

1. In the realm of mathematics, for example, look at Newton, the discoverer of the Calculus and the author of the Principia, which the great La Place regarded as pre-eminent above all the productions of the human intellect. His

keen eye penetrated the secrets of nature. Back of the visible manifestation he saw invisible law. He stood intellectually on so lofty an eminence that the whole universe seemed open to his piercing gaze. He tracked the planets through the labyrinth of space. By one flash of thought he saw that the force that determined the fall of the apple was the very force which curved the cannon ball in its flight, the moon in its orbit, and the sun in its majestic circuit through the skies. Thus he discovered the law of gravitation. Thus his penetrating mind fathomed the distances of space, and invented methods of investi gation and analysis so intricate and so profound that only a few of the world's brightest intellects have been able to follow him. And yet from this lofty eminence of vision and knowledge, even while his sovereign mind was taking unfettered excursions into the realms of infinity, he said, "I know not what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing with pebbles on the sea-shore, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

2. Every great intellect demonstrates the marvellous capacities of the human soul. And their diversity of endowment gives additional suggestion of the soul's infinite possibilities for expansion and achievement. Newton embodied one phase of power, Shakespeare another. As the one saw into the profound depths of the material universe, so the other saw into the profound depths and mysteries of human nature. Shakespeare's mind was cosmopolitan. He was the greatest uninspired student of man. He seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of the human soul. He fathomed its secrets. He understood its moral and spiritual laws. He had the power to place himself in intelligent and vital connection with men of every age, race, and condition; with infancy and maturity; with peasant and king; with devil and saint. Hypocrisy could not deceive him, nor virtue outstrip his vision of purity. With equal accuracy he

measured the shallowness of folly and the profundity of wisdom. The mental condition and moral character of mankind at large seemed to be open to his searching eye. He spanned the distance between heaven and hell. He demonstrated in the 'nfinite sweep of his own vision the capacity of every soul to take in, understand, and con'ciously reproduce the satanic or angelic. What possibilities of fancy, of knowledge, of moral diversity, of spiritual attainment his thought reveals! The soul of man is bounded only by the eternity and infinity of God.

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3. Consider another illustration of its marvellous and diverse capacity. Perhaps no musical composer has ever surpassed Handel in majesty and sublimity of conception. His "Messiah" is the prince of oratorios. The average mortal, in the discord and ignorance of his being, is hardly able to conceive of the workings of such a musical soul. thinks in music as we think in language. Indeed, to him the highest language is the harmony of sound; the highest thought the revelations and possibilities of such harmony. Words fail in such composition; words are no longer needed, as the soul voices its discoveries in the articulate language of the celestial world. I know nothing more suggestive of heaven and of the infinite capacity of the soul for endless attainment and felicity than the divine oratorios born in the mind of mortal man. What capacity for invention, what wide excursions of creative thought, what visions of glory in giving birth to the "Fidelio" of Beethoven, the 'Requiem" of Mozart, or the " 'Messiah" of Handel! Yet the capacity for music and harmony is a universal endowment. In every human soul there are possibilities for beauty, harmony, joy, glory, of which the world has not so much as even dreamed. Man was made in the image of God. "In the image of God created He him."

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4. Consider once more the capacity of the soul for art. Raphael and Angelo caught the spirit of their age. In

their inmost being they felt the impulse of coming reformation and progress. The Christ of history had given them their ideal of man and their vision of spiritual beauty. In sculpture and painting they reproduced and embodied their thought. The medieval world had never witnessed such an exaltation of Christ as in the painting of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel of Rome. In that picture Christ" stands before us as the head of all humanity, as the goal of all progress, as the consummation of all earthly glory." The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has been called the most eloquent of all sermons on the immediate communion of Christ with the whole united world.

Raphael did for the infant Christ what Angelo did for the mature Christ. He gave to the infancy of the Redeemer the first full tribute of beauty which art could lend. His paintings of the Divine Child have ennobled and purified the thought of mankind for four centuries. Their conception of the perfect humanity, of the perfect beauty and sinlessness of Jesus, reveal in the artist, and conscquently in all men, a like capacity for divine loveliness and symmetry of character. In the lofty flights of his sanctified imagination and in his subtle discernment of spiritual beauty, no subject was worthy of Raphael's skill but the Holy Child Jesus. His paintings are the crown of art. What elegance and refinement of thought! What delicacy of execution! What marvellous capacity to enter into the inner sanctuary of the human soul and portray on canvas the revelations of that most holy place!

The soul of a Raphael or an Angelo suggests unlimited power, boundless vision, and possibilities of eternal development. Infinite stretches of thought are wrapped up in every soul, for he who can delight in the works of Raphael shows within himself degrees of the same power, which are capable of the same eternal expansion.

5. Take one other illustration of the soul's inherent grandeur and power-the capacity for spiritual vision. The Apos

tle John is the highest example of communion with God. Independent of revelation, he demonstrates as a man among men the capacity of the human soul for insight into the profound realities of spiritual truth and for intimate fellowship with his Maker. He leaned upon the bosom of Jesus. This has its spiritual application as well as physical. In his innermost nature he communed with Christ. No other companionship so feasted his soul. The beloved John wrote his gospel to demonstrate to the Church universal that Jesus was the Son of God. But in order to do this, he must first know the proofs of His divinity in his own soul. Every word of the fourth gospel is written out of the deep knowledge of experience.

We stand and look upon the snowcapped mountain glistening in the perpetual glory of the sun's radiance. It is miles above us. Yet we can see its majestic beauty, can catch inspiration from its grandeur, can understand its revelations of God; we can even scale its summit, until, by means of its lofty altitude, our faces touch the sky. So in the realm of character. The Holy Christ towers far above the world of poor sinful humanity, yet by the inherent endowments of the soul we can see and know His divinity, and by means of His own spirit rise into the high altitudes of the Christlike life. In no other realm of thought and experience does man so demonstrate his original likeness to God. The seer of Patmos saw beyond the horizons of earth to the full glory of the celestial world; yet by means of his writings we can see the same visions and rise to the same saintly life. The capacity for spiritual vision and attainment is a universal endowment, and the divinest gift of God to the race.

II. What range of power and what sweep of thought we have just considered power to penetrate the remote regions of space and bring back the secrets of the material universe; power to fathom the deepest mysteries of the

human soul and reveal the inner life of man; power to know celestial harmonies and bring the music of heaven to earth; power to catch the glories of Divine character and reproduce them in marble and flash them forth on canvas; power to see into the holy depths of Christ's nature and enter into eternal and intimate fellowship with Him.

Newton, Shakespeare, Handel, Raphacl, and the saintly John, each represents a distinct capacity of the human soul. In them we see the grandeur and the glory of man's original endowment. Yet these capacities in these men of genius were not isolated gifts. Newton was not exclusively a scientist and Shakespeare solely a poet. In some degree the capacity for poetry resided in the former, and the capacity for science in the latter; for Newton could interpret Shakespeare and Shakespeare understand Newton. So of each and of all; there is a community of endowment among all men, and in some degree, latent or expressed, there are music and poetry, science and art in every human soul, and the capacity also to know and commune with God.

What does this teach us of man's inherent glory and of the possibilities of a glorified eternity? What does this reveal of the exaltation and supremacy of Christ? He is the ideal and representative man. He is the type of what is possible in some degree to all men. He is greater than Newton, for He is the Creator of the universe which Newton explored; greater than Shakespeare, for He made man, whose inner life Shakespeare sought to know; He is the Author of all harmony, the Source of all beauty, the Giver of spiritual sight, and combines in His soul the music of Handel, the art of Raphael, the vision of John.

Now every man made in the image of God has, in his original endowment, likeness to Christ, for Christ is simply the revelation and restoration of man as God created him. Do you not see, dear hearer, ground for the Psalmist's surprising utterance regarding man:

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