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"For Thou hast made him a little lower than God"? Do you not see glories and possibilities in your own life of which you never dreamed ?

III. We are not apt to take in the profound significance of Christ's incarnation. The union of God and man in His Divine Person was meant to teach our nearness to God, both by creation and redemption. His actual humanity demonstrates the possibility of such union and the exalted sphere in which man should live, move, and have his being. A sinless man cannot be otherwise than in fellowship with God. Jehovah does not mock us by the exalted standard of perfect holiness. He simply pays a tribute to our capacity and inherent moral grandeur. The redemption of man is simply a reincarnation. The glory of humanity is that God does actually reside in His people. They become transformed into His likeness. They become glorified by His life.

To even conceive of these mental and moral conditions is to demonstrate the possibility of their being realized in our own lives. That which the mind can know and the heart desire is by that very fact within the reach of actual experience.

IV. Such are the possibilities of the human soul. And with such capacities of mind and heart, what manner of persons ought we then to be? By creation God made us kings, for He placed man at the head of the created universe and put all things in subjection under his feet. By redemption He made us both kings and priests, restoring our sovereignty, and introducing us to the intimate communion and privileges of His inner sanctuary. He has opened to us all realms of His universe for discovery and knowledge. The soul of a Mozart or a Beethoven may roam at pleasure through all the harmonious aisles of nature's majestic cathedral, and never reach its limit of rapture and achievement. Earth and heaven are open to all searchers for truth, to all who respond to the infinite possibilities of their own being. The doors of God's

temples are ever wide open to those who aspire to the cultivation and enrichment of their own immortal natures.

What are the thoughts that occupy us? Are we using the muck rake, when we should be reaching up for the proffered crown? Are we feeding our souls with the vanishing husks of worldly enjoyment, when the substantial realities of intellectual and spiritual wealth promise the soul eternal felicity and growth?

"Look how we grovel here below,
Fond of the earthly toys;
Our souls can neither fly nor go

To reach immortal joys."

The good things of earth are simply ministers to our higher need. Have you ever understood the profound philosophy of Christ's words: "Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment"? Even the lily in its loveliness and the bird in its ecstatic freedom ought to teach you of higher things. Life is character. Life is enrichment of soul. Life is the unlimited expansion of the immortal capacities of mind and heart. Life is the substantial attainment of knowledge and holiness. Life is the free, unfettered exercise of all the faculties of the soul in the pursuit of the beautiful, the true, and the good. Life is fellowship with God.

Is this what life is to you, dear hearer? We never can rest in the enjoyments and wealth of earth. "Our souls are restless, oh God, until they rest in thce," said the great Augustine. His great heart soon sickened of the cheap pleasures of a day. And any soul conscious of its own dignity and worth will transfer its affections from the fleeting to the substantial, from earth to heaven. V. I love to dwell upon the possibilities of eternity. We are bounded here on every hand. The body hampers the soul. Sinful environment hinders development. We all feel in the quiet moments of serious reflection that we are not what we ought to be or what

we might be. We feel as though the wings of aspiration were clipped. We are conscious of unrealized possibilities in the soul. When we hear the ora torio of the "Messiah," we are confident that there is capacity in us for coming closer and closer to the mysteries and delights of Handel's inner life. We feel that there are latent possibilities in our natures which God intended for development and exercise. Every great life touches us in the same way. We would like to follow the footsteps of Newton as he explores the wonders and mysteries of the universe at large. We covet opportunity to develop the mind until we can have fellowship with such men as Shakespeare, such artists as Raphael, such refined characters as the saintly John.

the captains. Its author is the same boy David that kept sheep against the lions and the bears on the plains of Bethlehem, and put to flight the armies of the aliens under Goliath of Gath, the king, the captain, the poet; a man that could do things and sing them. He rejoices in God as the Lord of Hosts; the God of battles; the Being who constituted him for service; who taught his hands to war and his fingers to fight; who covered his kingly crest, nay, earlier his naked head, in the day of battle; who sent His messenger from above, and took him and delivered him out of the great waters, and from the hand of strange children. But the war he celebrates is a war that ends in peace. The Philistines go down before the Lord's Anointed, as they always must. The

Now, beloved, these longings are yet mailed hand of the God-guided warrior to be realized.

The strings of the soul are to be unloosed in heaven. Its capacities will have the freest scope for exercise and expansion. Your love for music, for art, for science; your desire for growth, for holiness, for God, will be met and satisfied. The only true employment of life here is in preparation for such a life hereafter. God made us in His own image. We shall never be fullgrown men until that image is restored, until all the capacities of the soul revel in the sunlight of His love and roam at pleasure over all realms of knowledge and enter into all the joys and secrets of holy life.

is only to pluck for the people the nettle-bloom of safety, so that industry and integrity may dwell together undisturbed for the psalm closes with pictures of serenity and beauty almost unequalled. "That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters inay be as corner-stones polished after the similitude of a palace; that our garners may be full, affording all manner of store; that our sheep may bring forth thousands and tens of thousands in our streets; that our oxen may be strong to labor; that there be no breaking in nor going out; that there be no complaining in the streets. Happy is that people that is in such a case; yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord."

The subject which I want to discuss this morning is Plants and CornerStones; or, Youth-Element in Family Life."That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner-stones polished after the similitude of a palace." Ah, the havoc that war makes with

PLANTS AND CORNER-STONES. BY J. E. RANKIN, D.D., LL.D., PRESIDENT OF HOWARD UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C. That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner-stones polished after the similitude of a palace.-Psalms youth! It is the youth of a land, the

cxliv. 12.

THIS psalm might be called a warpsalm. You can almost hear in it the din of the conflict and the shoutings of

first-fruits of home-life, that go with their fresh lips and brave hearts into the imminent deadly breach when war It is the youth of the land that

comes.

come trooping in their unstained manhood from the embrace of mothers and sisters; that lay down the implements of labor on the farm and in the workshop; that fling away all the dreams of their book-life in schools and colleges, the glowing perspective of manhood; that trample on the aspirations of their dearest ones even, and, girt with the nation's uniform, and marching under the nation's hallowed emblems, go forth for God, for home, for native land. "That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth." Ah, how touchingly in his poem on Waterloo does the poet Byron speak of the unreturning brave! They go forth, and disappear from life forever. For four hours I once stood in the shadow of Willard's Hotel, in Washington, while President Lincoln reviewed the troops of General Burnside, as they filed past on their way to the battles of the wilderness-a large number of them never to come back. The unreturning brave! What a history beneath every one of those uniforms; what ties going back to thousands of homes--ties to be sundered forever!

The Psalmist David was a warriorking. He knew what war costs in young life. He knew what all that meant which was predicted by Samuel, when the Israelites wanted a king to reign over them; wanted to set up a family establishment of royalty among the nations. "He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen ; and some shall run before his chariots." The fathers and the mothers want the sons in their homes. They are the beautiful staffs on which their parents would lean when sorrow comes, when old age comes. There is nothing more attractive or holy out of heaven than the reverence of a true son for his father -is not God our Father ?-than the love of a pure boy for his mother. The boy to whom his father is a kind of elder brother-how holy is the epithet, since Jesus has hallowed it, by becoming ours; the boy to whom his mother is

the ideal of all excellence. Yes, the boy that is in love with his mother is the boy that can be poorly spared from the scene of existence. I never see a boy with his mother leaning on his arm but my heart is touched to tears. The coarse-textured, blustering braggadocios, who are afraid of the rude boyopinion, the bully-opinion that is among boys, that makes a lad think of his being in his mother's society as being tied to his mother's apron-strings, and of his father's kind counsels as the faultfinding of the governor; ah, how cheap is the stuff he is made of compared with that which goes into the constitution of such a boy as honors his father and his mother, and thus purchases of God exchange on the future : "That thy days may be long in the land which the Lord, thy God, giveth thee."

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That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth.' Youth is for growth; growth is the business of youth. It is sad to see youth put prematurely to work; to severe study, even; stunted by pressure of business anxieties and cares, so that growth is impossible. Humanity needs time for unfolding, as a tree does. The psalmist sees a period in the national history of his people when young men shall have a youth in their own homes, under the eyes of their father and near the heart of their mother. It is home training, home memories, home inspirations that are the hope of our youth. They are the qualities that go into their manhood. Better one ounce of mother than ten ounces of boarding-school; better one pound of father than ten pounds of college. I do not mean that boardingschool and college are not right and needful for some boys-perhaps for many boys; but happy are those children whose very homes furnish them with school training that is near by. The physical, intellectual, and moral growth, the religious growth, are thus all, in a certain sense, under the parental eye-as parent-birds watch their young ones in their nest.

I do not think any young man has

the foundation for true greatness who does not foster reverence for home life, who has not instinctive and holy reverence for his mother. I remember going as a pilgrim, one day, to the former residence, in Marshfield, of Daniel Webster, perhaps the greatest statesman America ever produced. There, in the library, among the elegant oil paintings of great English and American statesmen-Lord Ashburton and others--was hanging a little old-fashioned silhouette profile, inscribed, in Mr. Webster's handwriting. "My honored mother.D. W." Here was a man who had stood before kings; nay, who was him. self a king among men; the most noticeable man of his generation, who would gladly have lavished uncounted treasures upon the skill of the artist for a true picture of the woman who, in that old Franklin inn, kept by his father, had, in some inscrutable way, set his eye upon the true goal of life, and helped him reach it—“My honored mother.-D. W."

I recall a passage from Mr. Webster's own lips-those lips which always grew eloquent when he thought of the manner in which the inmates of that home had spent and been spent for those that were rearing there: "It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin; but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin; raised amid the snow-drifts of New Hampshire at a period so early that, when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the hardships endured by the generations gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode. I weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are now among the living; and if ever I am

ashamed of it, or if ever I fail in affectionate veneration for him who reared and defended it against savage violence and destruction, cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof; and through the fire and blood of seven years' Revolutionary War shrunk from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice to serve his country, and to raise his children to a condition better than his own, may my name and the name of my posterity be blotted forever from the memory of mankind."

Of Mr. Webster's mother it was true, as has usually been true of the mothers of eminent men, not only that he resembled her, that he was the seed of the woman, but that she had in her sons a maternal pride, and an aspiration that they should excel not in any narrow and limited sphere, but in one as large and wide as it is possible for human ambition to fill. This gave them elevation and direction. Edward Everett-Mr. Webster's biographer-says, "That the distinction attained by them, and especially by Mr. Webster himself, may be well traced to her early promptings and judicious guidance." Ah, did she not hide all his promise in her heart?

"That our daughters may be as corner-stones polished after the similitude of a palace." Sons are out-door plants; daughters are in-door adornments. Sons grow up in out-door strength; daughters clothe a home with attractiveness and grace. Our translation of this passage does not seem to be quite perfect. The picture it suggests to us of a palace, with its pillars, polished and graceful, is rather masculine, and does not seem to have been in the mind of the psalmist. This seems to be his thought. He passes from the growth of the out-door plant to the corner-carvings with which it was customary to decorate the inside of palaces. It is said that to this day, in Damascus, many a reception-room is thus decorated. "This decoration," says Wetystein, "has a great advantage in saloons from two to three stories high, and is evidently designed to get rid of the darker corners above the ceiling;

comes down from the ceiling in the corners of the room for the length of six to nine feet, gradually becoming narrower as it descends."

I do not believe in woman as a mere ornament, as we use the word. She is God's masterpiece. He finished with her. Man needs something more for a helpmeet to complete his outfit for life than a woman who would be described in any such effeminate manner. The word ornament is largely used in the Bible to describe qualities that are moral and spiritual. In Proverbs we read, "My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother, for they shall be an ornament of grace to thy head, and chains about thy neck." Again," As an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover." And St. Peter speaks of woman in this manner: "Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold and putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible; even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." Where, therefore, in the text the Holy Spirit speaks of female adornment in our times, He means chiefly, I think, those graces of manner and of character which cannot be taught in any earthly school, but which fit one to walk with God here, and for the society of God and of heaven hereafter. And here, lest I may be misunderstood, in quoting the above passages from St. Peter, I want to say that I do not think the Holy Spirit intended to forbid the wearing of gold or the broidering of the hair. Of course my exegesis may be defective. But this is my idea that He intended merely to contrast two kinds of adornment, and to show the one which was especially pleasing to the Being who looks not on the outward appearance, but upon the heart. I do not think the Creator would have made it natural for woman's hair-her glory, as the Bible terms it-to fall into waves, or would have given to man, whether father,

brother, or husband, a sense of what is graceful and beautiful in woman, were it not proper to afford it healthful and legitimate gratification. No man wants to be mortified by the disregard paid by his sister, his wife, his daughter to legitimate graces of form. But, for all that, I think the Bible intended to magnify that which may belong to the most unattractive in person, to the least adorned in exterior-namely, the hidden being of the heart; that in us which only God can see, and in which God alone can take the greatest delight. I think the Bible intended to teach that God has put this crowning womanly grace within the reach of the humblest, just as He has put His kingdom there; that the mother, or the sister, or the wife in the lowliest cottage may be just as beautiful in the eyes of the angels as though her outward graces and adornings were queenly; as, perhaps, her inward adornings are. You and I have seen a woman with all the outward adornment that wealth could procure; with a grace of manner as bewitching as though she had caught it from the courts of queens; with a personal beauty that defied painting or poetic description; with an intellectual culture which gave her mastery of all languages and all literature, and brought men of genius to sit at her feet; who, to speak in the mildest terms possible, could not lay claim to any of that inward adorning which in the sight of God is of great price; could not compete in the judgment of God with some humblest mother in Israel; who did her own work, as perhaps your mother did, and my mother did, and yet found time to be at the bedside of the sick, and made her personal ministrations of love exhale from her as an atmosphere.

I have known more than one woman who began life in her father's humble home, the oldest sister, like a family heroine, taking the brunt of all the battles with hardship and poverty which the family waged; standing as her mother's chief counsellor and comforter, the pride of her father and her

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