the history of the material world, or the intellectual world, or the social world, or the moral world, or the religious world, nothing is clearer than that God never was in a hurry, and that He can afford to wait. He knows the way He takes, and the means to it, and He sees the end of it from its beginning, and all goes calmly and in order on. It comes of our smallness and our greed, that we are always making haste, and always saying to other people: "Make haste, be quick!"

I am not insensible, of course, to the fact, that when we look about us, we see plenty needing to be done, and to be done at once. Every great city in the land is a sink drawing into and towards itself the foul and the vile from all the country round about, and making them together to be fouler and more vile. And if one looks at the higher ranges of society, one sees worldliness everywhere, and the love of money more prevalent in its power of evil, on the whole, than anything else in our day. And, as we contemplate the seething sum of all social wrong and bitterness and abomination, we are apt to get impatient with it all, and be eager to undertake some great and sudden thing against it. We cannot persuade ourselves to be willing to work slowly upon it from within, as the leaven works upon the loaf, as the life-principle of the mustard-seed pushes itself up into the tree; but we want to attack and vanquish it all somehow from the outside. But that was not the way which Jesus took; He never attacked anything from the outside; and He did the will of His Father.

Ah, I would have you think less about being "good,' and being "kind," and more about being just. I would have you earnest not simply to talk about religion, but to be more honest toward the little despised, neglected duties of each, day by day.

You feel out of heart, sometimes, that you don't get faster on. And yet likely you have not made any really great effort, after all. You say, perhaps : “Ah, it's hardly any good trying!" But then you are almost driven, when you

sit down calmly to think of it, to the confession that you haven't been trying much notwithstanding.

You get discouraged, very likely, because there are so many people in the world who do not seem to be really capable of such a thing as a genuinely spiritual idea. But let God mind His own; we have nothing to do with that. We must not be discouraged because of the great things we cannot do, into omitting the little things we can do.

It seems to me, sometimes, as if God had taken great trouble to make us. The problem was how to do it. I hope you don't think God made us, and made the world, out of nothing. I don't believe God made anything out of nothing; I think He made all things out of Himself. And making us thus out of Himself, the problem was how to make us so that we should be ourselves; and so I sometimes think He took a great trouble to throw us off, as it were, so far out of Himself as that we might become ourselves, and develop a will and a free-will of our own, and with that free-will turn around and seek Him. Men often confound will with impulse, as if these were identities, instead of opposites. As when they say of a child that continually goes astray: "What a determined will it has toward evil" -the fact being, all the while, that the child has no power of will at all, to resist the dominion of unbridled passion that leads it continually astray.

Now friends, you who want to be good, to be just, to be faithful, where lies your hope of deliverance? I do not speak to you as a motive-of a hell, for I do not think you need it. But, do you know, I think from the extreme of the old-fashioned teaching that God made men on purpose to damn them, some modern theologians are much exposed to the going over to a very dangerous opposite extreme, and teaching that God will not damn men at all! I do not seek to drive you toward goodness with this fear of God's damnation, but let the man who persists in hardness and impenitence, and who goes on and on and out of the world scorning and neglecting the mercy of our Heavenly Father,

be sure that there will be for him a future condemnation terrible to bear. But you, who are tender-hearted, and who want to be true, and are trying to be, learn these two things from our text: never to be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here, and never to fail to do daily that good which lies next to your hand. Do not be in a hurry, but be diligent. Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord! Be charitable in view of it. Be earnest in the faith of it. God can afford to wait, why cannot we-since we have Him to fall back upon! Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits. Trust God to weave in your little thread into the great web, though the pattern show it not yet. When God's people are able and willing thus to labor and to wait, remembering that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, thousand years as one day, the grand harvest of the ages shall come to its reaping, and the day shall broaden itself to a thousand years, and the thousand years shall show themselves as a perfect and finished day!

and a

The sermon, which was about thirty-three minutes in length, was of a character essentially unreportable, and I am sensible that the above sketch is very imperfect in its suggestion of it; but I believe it fairly conveys its prominent ideas in very nearly the order of their occurrence, and with something of the flavor of their speech. It was streaked everywhere with fine touches of poetic expression, which no report can convey, and held the closest attention. of his listeners. The manner of its delivery was somehow fragmentary and twitchy, with frequent pauses, which — and his prayers had the same peculiarity were a little displeasing at first, as suggesting a view to effect, but which gradually failed to give that idea, as he warmed into his subject. I think my readers will agree with me that there was very little tendency toward Universalism in the discourse; and that it rather confirms a report which I have heard, that Mr. MacDonald, if he ever leaned in that direction, has seen the error of that way. I am sure he would be heard with deep interest in our American pulpits.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

NOTES ON CURRENT EVENTS.

In looking over a file of papers containing reports of speeches made during the anniversary meetings in May last, we could not fail to see how often the self-congratulatory feeling was manifested by some of the prominent men in the Unitarian party. We were getting rather tired of so much talk in the same strain, when we came across the remarks of Rev. George H. Hepworth, and the change was truly refreshing. Mr. Hepworth so clearly recognized the fact that other denominations were doing something for the cause of true religion, and presented so forcibly to his hearers the true work of every minister, of whatever name, that we think our readers will be pleased to see some extracts from his speech.

After a few general remarks, Mr. Hepworth says:

6

"I am so glad, dear friends, that we come here not as a theological body only, but as a band of Christian brothers; that as a denomination we know no creed, and we allow to each one within our limits the largest liberty of individual action and thought. I am glad to feel that the whole religious world, in all its parts, is by slow degrees approaching the common centre, where is built the only true Christian Church. The time for theological controversy is fast passing away. 'Apostolic blows and knocks' are no longer required. Preachers need no more beat the dust out of their pulpit cushions in order to prove their abstract problems. The world does not care any longer for theology; it demands simply honesty of purpose and absolute purity of life as the only essential conditions of final salvation. The time was when there were fences reared between all the various sects. Once in a while we heard men with warm hearts and loud voices speaking to each other over the wall. Now, perhaps, it is so low that we can stretch our hands across to our neighbors in the other denominations, and bid them God-speed in their various works. I hope the time is not far distant when these walls will disappear utterly from the face of the earth, and all Christian ministers shall stand side by side, a solid phalanx, under the only commander that has a right to rule Jesus Christ, our common Lord."

When speaking of forms and ceremonials, he says:

"Some people need more, and we call them Catholics; others need less, and we call them Episcopalians; some need none at all, and we call them Quakers. But with or without ceremonials, we are brothers in Christ, and God is our Father. The first sentence of the Lord's Prayer contains the only theological dogma that is worth having; the only dogma that will last forever. And yet I cannot quite agree with my dear brethren, almost all of them older than I, who have indulged in so much self-gratulation. I think

that the Unitarian denomination is doing a good deal, but I do not believe it is running the world. I think it is having a large influence, and it is well enough for us to be proud of it, with that kind of pride which shall make us work harder; but a little humility would become us, after all.

"I believe that we are doing no more than others; I hope we are doing as much. We certainly do not give as freely; we certainly are not as compact in our organization. Nay, more than that, sirs, we do not stand by each other as we ought to. There is work to be done, and if the Unitarian denomination is to achieve its evident mission, it has yet to learn how to crystallize itself, and its pulpits must learn to speak not simply with that glowing eloquence which pleases the ear, but with that finer rhetoric which touches a man's pocket. A religion that hits the head is good, but a religion that makes a man hold out all that he has, and give it to the Lord, is better."

"You may talk as much as you please about culture; what Unitarians want is consecration. Cultured or unlettered, rich or poor, you need it, and if you can find a plough-boy who has a heart in him, put him into his place, as the Catholics do, as the Methodists do."

"No man can preach a moment unless his theology is so defined that he can present the person of the Lord Jesus in such a way that he shall represent to his audience the character of God. . . . You may talk until the crack of doom about the abstract goodness of Deity; you may talk about the eternal principles which make up the Godhead, and you cannot move men a single pulse. . . . But when, on the other hand, we stand in our pulpits and preach the simple Sermon on the Mount, as a revelation from God; when we speak of Him who preached it as the only authoritative preacher to the whole human race, we draw men's attention to a particular point; we compel them to love the person, and in loving Him they love the Unknown. "When I look back into the past, and see that nebula of mystery that hangs about the cradle in Bethlehem; when I see that deepening cloud gathering first over the waters of Jordan, and opening with the voice of God coming through; when I see it growing darker and darker, until I can catch the outlines of the cross upon it; when I see our Master and Lord going from village to village, curing the sick of the poor as well as of the rich, raising the dead, giving hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind; when I see Him wandering through the streets of Jerusalem, and finding his dreary road to the top of the hill; when I see Him nailed there; when I look a few days after, and see Him risen, and then ascending, I tell you, dear friends, that if I can carry that story into my preaching; if I can make those facts real facts; if I can tell my young men, as I do tell them, or try to, that they must look to Him of Nazareth for their light, for the only power that will be vouchsafed them, by means of which they can reach God, they will come around the cross, they will lift their hearts in reverence, they will bow their knees in prayer, and through Christ they will learn the secret of true religion."