and Health and Success. The repression of evil comes in obedient, when we overcome evil with good. As you and I go about carrying our good tidings to those who need them, we are to show them that they are indeed good tidings. We will make people more truly live. They had yesterday a personal and finite motive for this or that duty. To-morrow, they shall have an infinite motive for every duty. They shall be allied to the Infinite Force who moves the world. This means more life, every day,-life extending its old practice and method. To the man who will listen and try the experiment, it means that he walks better, he talks better, he dances better, he swims better. It means that he remembers better, he argues better, he perceives more quickly, he enjoys more keenly. He eats better, he sleeps better, he digests better. He is more graceful; he is more manly. He is less shy, less conscious, less awkward. He reads more thoughtfully. He adds his figures more accurately. He draws more naturally. He persuades more certainly. He keeps his temper better. He keeps his resolutions better. He is master of the flesh. He is master of his brain. He bids it do this, and it does it. He bids his feet take him yonder, and they go. This is because he loves as an infinite being loves, believes as an infinite being believes, and lives not on the dusty earth alone, but in the infinite kingdom of heaven. When he drinks of the elixir of life, it proves, as always, that life can work the miracle. We should not gain this victory if we attempted only to improve the mechanism of the engine. That is the mistake of all unsuccessful teachers. Such a one bids a pupil copy a drawing. The pupil does it wrong,- knows he does it wrong, and the teacher comes and says, "You have done it wrong." That is all. The successful teacher works not on the method, but on the pupil,- makes him see the thing as he has never seen it, try as he has never tried, resolve as he has never resolved, shows how there may be twenty methods to represent the thing to be drawn, and makes him put his life into the endeavor. So is it in this higher gospel ling to which the Church is set. You and I are not to hammer over the engines. These seem to be very good engines. We are to put more steam behind the piston. To these children of Godstrangers of our own households all around us, we are to show what is the great experiment of life; and we are so to bring them to that great ocean, with every loving inducement and suggestion, that they shall not be afraid to throw away whatever binds them to the more earthly side, and loyally to plunge into the flood, to try the great experiment, and to find out what it is to live. Life shall be unlimited. It shall have the joy and strength of freedom. - who are To live and work in heaven. Men shall learn that their life is not confined in this shop, or this house, or this town. It is in the heaven of God that I live and move and have my being. What I say goes from life to life, from family to family, from town to town, from country to country. What I read and hear has come to me from Rome and Greece and Jerusalem, from Japan and from India. Those speak to me to-day who are now angels and archangels in God's higher service. For I may talk to-day with Isaiah and Elijah, with Peter and Paul, with the Lord Christ himself as he sits by the well-side. I will not forge a nail with the poor thought that we are living for to-day alone. It is in the kingdom of heaven that we are living. This enlargement of my life-such life in the infinite relations compels me to live for that child, for all children, for my brothers and sisters in the house, for my brothers and sisters in the street, for all sorts and conditions of men. If I really live in heaven, I must live for man,—for man, and not for myself. It is not my hunger I feed. I am working for the black man in Carolina, for the sailor under the line, for the Turk in the East, for every one this world over. So is it that God has united us together. He has made one all na tions of mankind. Let me quicken my pupil to know this, - that he is an officer intrusted with the welfare of who shall say how many thousands outside himself,- and his strength for duty, his purity in temptation, are multiplied a hundredfold. And because he has such duties to man, because he lives in the Infinite Life, inevitably he forms relationships closer and closer with the Lord of Life, Author and Fountain of This Power all around me, who makes for righteousness,— I float on its current, I accept its law. This Infinite Force which has directed history,- I will know its conditions, and govern myself by what I learn. This present God, who lives in the life of the world, I will know him, and he shall know me. 66 'Father, show me what I am to do. Father, show me how to do it. Father, give me of Thy strength, for I have not enough of my own." In heaven, for man, with God. This is the sum of the religious life,— Hope, Love, and Faith. And the man who enters on this life succeeds. He works the miracles. He does what you said was impossible. This strength is what religion is for, it is what it is. "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, that He would grant you that ye may be strengthened with power through His spirit in the inward man, to the end that ye may be strong." |