And out of redeemed men God is making a redeemed world,— a world in which there shall be no more curse, a world which is growing better every day. Have you and I this hope in us? Are we expecting the larger redemption? Is our religion only a sentiment? Is our higher life of spiritual aspiration a mere vision for a holy hour, or is it a force in our lives, spreading, and deepening in our natures, till it shall possess us altogether? What a hope this is! What a joy and glory is this vision of the apostle that nothing is common or unclean! that, (as in Peter's vision of the many beasts let down from heaven and received up again,) the life descending from above has power to draw upward again all earthly elements, all base, brutish things, and so to redeem and glorify all!

Then will our true humanity be fulfilled, when the divided creation of God is joined together. The spiritual and the natural will be one, and the body will have its rightful use as the servant and revealer of the soul. God has made two worlds,- a material and a spiritual. They revolve in separate orbits with perpetual jar, perturbations, and eclipse; but in the end their orbits become the same, and they move around the Sun of Righteousness, singing the same celestial song to the glory of God. Let us all be sure that every faithful day, every self-conquest, every deed of loving service, will not only bring order to our souls, but will bring our whole being— body, mind, and spirit into the harmony of the divine creation.

SAINT PETER, MARTYR.

[A monk with finger on his lips. A picture hung over a clock.] BOVE the noises of thy life's brief day

"A

Eternal silence watches. Oh, make haste! Wherefore these idle words? Why wilt thou waste Thy soul's pure force on things that pass away? Tame thy false heart, and bid its sensual clay Long draughts of mortal man's keen anguish taste; Think on thy sins, thy death, and self-abased,

Serve God the silent, uncomplaining way."

So speaks the cowl. God's true church hears the voice,
And half approves; then to earth's fruitful fields,
Singing and smiling, turns with dauntless cheer;
In all brief gleams of gladness doth rejoice;
Covers her graves with lilies, while she yields

Due praise to Heaven, and cries, "Our God is here."

GREAT THINGS FOR SMALL.

"Give, and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.”— LUKE vi. 38.

THE subject here suggested is one which does not lie very clearly in my own thought, and yet I am certain that no subject is more important. I may call it the law of action and reaction which runs through all our life. If you push against the wall, the wall pushes back at you with exactly the same force. There it is on the plane of mere brute force. But, the higher you rise in the scale, the more the reaction is greater than the action, the more what is given you is greater than what you give. Remember, that in every sort of work a man's hands can find to do, the essential half of what he does is done not by himself, but by the elements he works in; that is, part of the work is man's, part nature's. Think this out concerning the simplest needs and labors of the human race. Look at the farmer, how he ploughs his broad, brown acres; but, to do this, he must have a soil that yields to the ploughshare and a plough that cuts the furrow deep. He cannot plough in granite, nor with a plough of straw.

The ploughman's toil is only

possible when beneath the strong and cunning hand, as fellow-laborers with it, are the loamy earth and good iron blade. Look at the weaver at his loom. How wonderful his craft is! How swift the shuttles fly, how smooth and even-lined the fair web rolls forth. beneath his hand! And yet, whatever the machine employed, whether the distaff of Penelope, or the power-loom of our own century that has revolutionized a civilization, the conditions of the weaver's art are the same. His cunning hand, his dexterous shuttles and wheels, can only weave in substance that is weavable,― cannot operate on wax or cobwebs, can find no fibres in marble,- can spin the white plumes of the cotton-seed, but braid no robe of the shining thistle-down, not even for an emperor's array.

We might analyze in the same manner any species of human toil, and always with the same result. What man can do is only what Nature lets him do. He can only watch her tides, and launch his bark accordingly. Music gives us still clearer illustration. Man can only make the music which his soul desires, which his soul creates, upon Nature's resounding strings, her singing brass, her vibrant wood, her melodious shell, from which by a hundred patient arts is shaped the orchestra.

—

Or to use another musical emblem - think of a little child, who stands, let us say, under some monster bell, such as stand by temple gates or are lifted cloudward in cathedral spires. So long as the child But the little hands

is still, the great bell is silent.

take hold, and soon the ponderous mass, that seemed

so immovable, so lifeless, will swing resistless to and fro, and solemnly toll or wildly throb from its iron heart with peal on peal, and fill a whole city with terror or surprise. What a far-sounding peal, what a mighty commotion, the little restless child has made! Such is man in his relation to this sounding dome of Nature which hangs over him. The music which it utters is mighty, beyond all proportion to the light touch that stirs it. With all his science and all his so-called mastery of new forces, all his experience and art, his bold trial of new combinations and unprecedented strokes, what is man's learning—but how to strike the great temple-bell of time, and more and more to make it ring with music of soul-searching tone, that speaks to a listening humanity, of mysteries of faith and love, and calls our thoughts upward to eternal things?

Let us now keep clearly in our minds this conception of the life we live. Our life is ours: therefore, we must act, we must achieve, we must strive and strike and strain; and yet our lives are given us, and therefore we must do something more than bestir ourselves, something more than toil and reach up. We must watch and listen, must wait, ponder, and receive. Our eager prayer must bow in wise submission: our strong endeavor must learn what power can only come of a quiet heart and the strength of standing still. We must both ask and receive. We must act,— act boldly and earnestly; and yet we must know in our hearts that whatever we would achieve or win must come to us by laws we did not make, will be rolled up