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my selfishness the omnipotent power would step between the natural results of my action and you? Do you not see that the kind of demand that we frequently make of God as to what he ought to do if he loves mankind is a demand that would make moral growth, the development of character, and intellectual attainment on our part an impossibility, and would turn earth into a perpetual nursery of intellectual and moral babes, or imbeciles?

As a matter of fact, we are in a world where it is possible to make mistakes every day, every hour; where it is possible to be thoughtless, selfish, and disregardful of the rights, the happiness, the welfare, of other people. We are in a world where we need to think, where we need to learn self-control. We are in a world where it is possible for us to be men, saints, heroes, as it would be utterly impossible in either of the other kinds of worlds to which we have referred; and these are the only kinds that I can think of. I believe, then, on the whole, and in the long run, considering that we are children of God and that our highest destiny is to be attained by the training and development of our intellectual, moral, and spiritual natures ever more and more into the likeness of God, I believe that this present scene of things for that kind of purpose is the best conceivable, so that, instead of charging God with being the author of human ills and human sorrows, we ought to bring the charge a little nearer home, perhaps so near home as not to leave it even on the doorstep of a neighbor. Possibly we had better take it within our own doors, and, shutting out the world, look it fairly in the face and consider the problem as depending on our own good or evil will. I have said that nearly all the evils of the world are curable by human good will,— this Christmas good will that we talk about so wisely.

Let us consider for a moment what good will means. Good will is not a word, it is not a breath, it is not an easy wishing, it is not simply good nature. It is not any soft, putty-like quality that has no positive power in it, but merely takes the impress of any force that surrounds it and touches

it. What is good? Good is that which touches and leads to the life, the welfare, and happiness of all things that live. That is what we mean by good. Now, what do we mean by will? We find metaphysicians who map off human nature for their own purpose; and that is all well enough, if you remember what they are doing and how little it means. I remember the first book on metaphysics I ever read. The writer divided human nature into three parts,― the intellect, the sensibilities, and the will. We sometimes speak of the will as a captain of a ship, who walks the quarter-deck, and directs its course,- a sort of little divinity that resides somewhere in us, and that tells us what we may do one way or the other. But what is the will? What do we mean by it?

Take the case that James refers to in that part of the lesson I read this morning: If your brother or your sister is in trouble, lacking clothes or food, and you say, Go your way, be warmed and fed: I wish you all the good of the world, is that an illustration of good will? Will means simply the majority force of any man's nature. If you say to a man, I wish you well, and then will him evil by your practical conduct and character, you are playing falsely with yourself and with him. You do not wish him well unless you will him well; and willing him well means turning the entire force of your faculties and powers into the direction of serving his welfare. And, when a man really wills, it is the total, the year-long expression of his life. Find out which way a man is going, that is what he wills. If he wills something else, he would be and do something else. The will, then, is simply the general trend of all the great streams of thought, feeling, character, with all their tributaries, just as I might say that it is the will of this continent that all its mighty rivers should flow to the south, and empty into the gulf. That direction in which all the faculties, powers, thoughts, feelings, of a man tend, that is the trend of his will; and this will is the mightiest power on earth. It is that which has transformed the physical face of the globe,

it is that which has wrought out all the mighty results which make up this great composite that we call the civilized world of to-day. If, then, the will of all men turned towards good, do you not begin to see what it might accomplish?

Let me suggest one or two of the things that it might do, simply as illustrations, and point thus to the different sides of human character and human life, and hint some of the evils under which we groan and that perhaps sometimes we speak of as part of the mystery of God's way of governing the world.

Take a case like this. Two men have been fast friends. They have learned not simply to be business associates, but they have come closely together. They have felt thought answering to thought, heart to heart, purpose to purpose. Not by any means did they necessarily agree on everything. I only wish to point to that inexplicable fact that nobody has yet been able to explain: that in the presence of some people you find inspiration, help, rest, stimulus, while in the presence of others you find just the opposite, so that you naturally seek the one, just as a plant will feel its way through darkness and against obstacles, and struggle out into the light, that being the condition of its life. Now here are two men who have stood in a relation like this. They have helped each other; but there has come now to be a misunderstanding of some sort between them. And this the rarest and in some respects the most precious thing on the face of the earth — friendship — is endangered, and for the time broken and lost. For do you know that there is hardly any other good on this earth that can for a moment compare with the possession of a friend,-a friend with all that that means? Is there anything that money can buy, that position can confer, that a brilliant intellect can bring, that mighty social power can lay at your feet, is there anything quite equal to this possession of a friend? And this, I say, is endangered, lost for a time. Both of them perhaps are a little at fault; but what is the condition of things? Why does this misunderstanding continue? Why

is one ready to sacrifice this most precious possession of all the world? Very naturally, each with a prejudice in his own favor, while willing to confess that he is not quite right, is not willing to confess that he is more wrong than the other. The chances are that he will lay the larger share of the blame on the other side. This will be felt by both; and so selfishly cherishing this pride that is not willing to say, I was wrong, the evil goes on, and becomes a permanent separation. Now, is God to be blamed, or the universe to be blamed, or society to be blamed for a loss that might at any moment have been helped by the active positive force of a good will,- a will that meant and really wished good both to the friend and to the self?

How many families are there, to take another illustration, where anything rather than an ideal condition of things exists! The glow of the early morning has faded out, and the dawn seems so far away that you wonder whether it ever existed. The romance is all gone. It is the heat and the burden of the day. If you look into this present condition of things, will you not find inevitably in every single case that it is the lack of the positive, active good will on the part of one or both? Does it not mean always that one or the other or both, as the case may be, is selfish, unwilling to change the course, the trend of a life that is evil, that is injurious, that is hurtful, that pulls down and levels all the high, sweet ideals that were trying to climb towards the heaven? Or perhaps it is the child in the home, the persistent, prolonged, selfish, thoughtless evil will of the son or the daughter that turns the light into shadow and mourning. Is this God's fault, is it the fault of the universe, is it the fault of society? is it not something that good will might heal?

Take it again in another phase of human life, the relation between mistress and servant. I do not wish to be understood for a moment as saying that where there is not a good servant it is the mistress's fault, or where there is not a good mistress it is the servant's fault; but I do wish to be under

stood as saying that a large part of the friction, the unhappiness, the evils, of this relation, are caused by the lack of good will on both sides,- that active, positive good will which recognizes the real humanity in the kitchen and in the parlor, recognizes the obligations in the kitchen and in the parlor, that recognizes the necessity of care, of mutual service, of mutual helpfulness, that should exist in all relations where there are two or more beings concerned. It seems to me that many times in the kitchen there is a disposition to get as large wages as possible for the least possible service and care; and it is equally true that a great many times there is a disposition in the parlor to get the best possible service for the least wages, the least trouble, the least human sympathy, the least care. In the light of this Christmas hour, this Christmas good will, in the light even of that old pagan custom antedating Christianity, when at this time of the year the servants were placed at table and the master and the mistress for the time became servants and waited on them, is it not well for us to recognize that the difference between kitchen and parlor may be a difference only superficial, that there is the same heart-longing for love and sympathy, the same desire for association, for friendship, for pleasure, for 'a share of all the good things of life? A little consideration both ways, a little of that positive good will which turns into sympathy, and is able from the parlor to understand the kitchen, and from the kitchen to understand the parlor,a little of this may cure, if not all, yet the larger part of the evils under which we groan as though they were things beyond our control.

Then, when you come to the relation between rich and poor, half of the unhappiness of life is right here, the struggle of people to get out of the conditions of poverty, the struggle to get ahead of each other, the struggle to climb out o practical sympathy with those whom we have left behind. us. And, then, the bitterness, the disappointment, the envies, the jealousies, the heart-burnings, of the less favored as they look from their shadow up into the sunlight that they think