MUSIC-HALL SER31kONS
BY
WILLIAM H. H. MUIRRAY,
PASTOR OF PARK STREET CHURCH, BOSTON.
BOSTON:
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1870.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
FIELDS, OSGOOD, &  CO.,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co.,
CAMBRIDGE.




PREFACE.
ITH  the exception of a few verbal alterations, these discourses are now given to
the public in the precise form  in which they
were delivered.  Prepared as they were while
the writer was under the pressure of continual
duties, -  in  weariness  often, and  mid  many
distractions,-  he  is sensible of their literary
imperfections.   He  laments  most  that  the
truths he aimed to inculcate suffer because of
the weakness of the utterance.
W. H. H. M.
BOSTON, March, 1870.








CONTENTS.
SERMON  I.
PAGE
THE TENDERNESS OF GOD...  1
SERMON  II.
THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES..   23
SERMON  III.
THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.           47
SERMON  IV.
To YOUNG MEN..71
SERMON  V.
BURDEN-BEARING.....  95
SERMON  VI.
NEARNESS OF GOD..                            118
SERMON  VII.
DIVINE FRIENDSHIP....                       140




vi                   CONTENTS.
SERMON  VIII.
HOPE FOR THE FALLEN...   162
SERMON  IX.
THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD....   182
SERMON  X.
THE CHURCH, - ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY..200
SERMON XI.
THE POWER OF CITIES.. 222
SERMON  XII.
THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON, AND HOW TO IMPROVE IT...... 244




SERMON I.
THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.
" A bruised reed shall He not break." - MATTHEW xii. 20.
T HE world is hard, — hard in its policies, feelings, and acts. Its judgments are harsh, and
its penalties are cruel. Socrates it poisoned, and
the Messiah it slew.
We may differ in our opinions as to the cause
and origin of this state. You may have your views,
I may have mine; but we shall not differ as to the
result. Each mind, advancing along its own path
of reason and observation, comes to and halts at the
same spot.  The world is hard: in respect to that
we agree. Its very religions have inoculated it with
an evil virus, - made it dogmatic, unmerciful, and
fierce.  In India, a woman's hope of heaven lies
over the funeral-pyre of her husband, and from
slavery here she passes through smoke and flame
to servitude hereafter.  Maternal affection- that
holiest instinct of the human breast  is converted
into an engine of destruction, and the arms which
should protect fling the babe into the waters of the
1                        A




2            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
Ganges. Every faith has had its martyrs, every
creed been written in blood, and every benediction
emphasized by an anathema. The honest convictions of the human heart have in every age been
derided, and men have lifted up their voices and
shouted in brutal violence over the ashes of human
constancy. The best men, as the world counted
goodness in the time of Christ, hated Christ the
most. The teachers and exponents of God persecuted God the most bitterly when He was manifested in the flesh. He came unto His own, and
His own received Him not.
There is nothing sadder than this retrospect of
human perversions of divine knowledge and faculties imparted to man. The verdict of man's own
acts is against him; and Calvary remains to-day,
and ever will remain, the superlative expression
of the natural cruelty of man on the one hand,
and the tender love of God on the other.
It has been granted us to live in a Christian
age and land. The fagot and the torch are behind
us. The arena no longer smokes with innocent
blood, and the dungeon is no longer regarded as an
agent of salvation. And yet, the judgment of the
world through other media of expression not unfrequently reveals the same harsh and unmerciful
spirit. The Pharisees still live; and were there a
Christ there might yet be a cross, and stoning an
expression of their creed.




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.             3
I am to speak to-night of the tenderness and
patience of God toward human weakness and
human sin. Would that my words might open to
your understandings clearer and truer views of the
Divine nature than some of you perchance have
yet obtained. Would that I might aid you to conceive of your Heavenly Father as He is, —full of
forbearance and tender mercies; yearning over you
with a love you cannot conceive; drawing nigh to
your hearts through His providence and the Gospels, as the sun, through every beam and ray, draws
nigh to the earth in spring with gentle ministries
of encouragement to growth, and sweet solicitations
to fragrance and beauty. Then should you indeed
be taught and comforted; then would your natures
be quickened and stirred, and all their deep-rooted
and wide-branching faculties of thought and feeling
thrill with new and vernal expressions of life. The
gratitude of our hearts would rise as incense before
His throne, and each would say, "The doors of this
place have been to me to-night like the gates of
heaven and the portals of peace."
It is pleasant for me to minister to you this
evening.  It is pleasant for me to think that here
we can worship and investigate together. Various
in the experiences of our lives, various in our intellectual conceptions of God, manifold in our wants,
strangers by face; still our thoughts, like waters
colored and enriched by the several soils through




4             MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
which they come down to a common junction, can
mingle and join in this hour and place. Hail to
the hour when differences fade away; when strangers meet as friends; when the long-lost brotherhood of soul with soul, the almost forgotten fellowship in song, the bond of common impulse, is found
at last in Christ!
I would first speak of the tenderness of God as
shown at certain periods and seasons of our lives.
There are two ways of looking at man morally:
one is to regard him as always struggling and always winning; the other, as never struggling and
never winning at all.  Both of these ways are
wrong. On the one hand, there are times of great
moral despondency and dejection, - when the soul
lies limp and inoperant, when the moral faculties
seem benumbed and drugged into fatal lethargy,
when the call of duty awakens no response or
elicits only rebellion; but there is never a time of
stagnation. The soul, like the ocean, is full of
currents, and they channel and pierce it with agitations. Life is full of impulses. It is breezy and
tremulous; and as the winds of heaven sweep down
upon the ocean and ruffle and convulse it, so upon
us influences are poured, at the coming and pressure of which we cannot remain passive.
I think that in the heart of almost every man and
woman, underneath the covering of forms, underneath the crust of heartless custom, underneath the




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.              5
habit of selfishness, you will find a generous inpulse, a desire to grow better and to aid others
in worthiness. God has not withdrawn His spirit
from  mankind.  Above us is a moral firmament,
and in it that spirit, like a more resplendent sun,
is suspended.  The rays of its light and warmth
penetrate everywhere.  They reach and minister
to the lowest and coarsest forms of spiritual life.
There is not a thought so dark, there is not a wish
so ignoble, there is not an ambition so vain, that
it is not less dark and ignoble and vain because
of this influence.  The God of the rose is the God
of the bramble as well; and even the thorn-tree
must leaf, and sweetness is extorted from the brier.
This desire, this generous impulse, must find expression.  The warmth above stirs the deadness
beneath, and makes barrenness uneasy. And yet,
in spite of all this, spiritual dejection comes, despondency and heaviness of heart ensue. We have
struggled so much, and won so little; we have
fought against circumstances, and by circumstances
been defeated; the summit seems so far off, and the
path so steep, that our courage fails at times, and
we sink in despair. Between the triumph and ourselves are the Garden and the Cross; and, standing alone in the darkness of the night, we wring our
hands and cry, "If it be possible, let this cup pass
from me!"  Sometimes a great temptation circles
us on all sides; its circumference of blackness gir



6             VMUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
dies us, and we seek in vain for an outlet to escape.
We drop upon our knees in prayer, but prayer
brings no relief.  We dash madly at the awful
belt, but find it to be like a cable of triple steel.
We rush frantically from  side to side; circumstances conspire in evil conjunction.  We are
dazed, we are hopeless.  The madness of despair
seizes upon us, and sinking down we say, "Why
struggle longer,  it is in vain? Fate is against
me, Heaven is not for me: I can do no more, I
can only die."
My friend, don't you die; and never, never
cease to contend. When you have reached that
position, know that you have come very near God.
Weakness is ever near God.  He draws nigh to it
as a mother draws nigh to a suffering child. What
man or woman here, if, when walking at night,
you should hear the cry of a deserted babe, would
not follow the sound, and, running to the little
thing, lift it in your arms and carry it to shelter
and care? And do you think God is less merciful
than you? Do you think that you can teach Him
sympathy, or show Him how to be tender? Do
you think that He ever heard a deserted soul crying in the night of its trouble, and does not go to
it and lift it to His bosom, and carry it to the light
and shelter of His love? If a poor bruised reed is
sacred in His sight; if the weak and wounded things
in the natural kingdom —the trodden grass, the




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.             7
broken bough, the falling birds - are not beneath
His notice, who is he that dares to say the poor
bruised soul is not for Him to love, that the prostrate spirit and the breaking heart and the stifled
hope are beyond the limit of His care and the
reach of His helping hand? Why, consider this
in the light of history and revelation a moment.
Who are they that whiten heaven with the
flowing  of their garments? whose hands lift
those ever-vibrating harps? whose heads are
crowned and wreathed? whose brows are illuminated with that new name given them  of God?
Are they not those who came out of great tribulation; whose robes are washed and made white
in the blood of the Lamb? Who first followed
the Saviour along the path of his ascension, and
demonstrated in the sight of heaven the efficacy
of the atonement as an act already accomplished?
Was it not the thief who hung on the cross? Unto
whom was given the keys of the kingdom, the
badge of honor and high esteem? Was it not
unto him  who denied his Lord? Who was appointed to break the boundary of Jewish prejudice; to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, and make
it free as the water that runs and the light that
shines? Was it not Paul, the persecutor of Jesus?
And whose heart here to-night is fullest of gratitude? whose lips beyond the grave will open
quickest in thanksgiving? - whose?  Of that




8             MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
one among is whose darkness was the most
dense when the light of mercy broke through
and illumined it!
No, no, my friend, don't you despair; there's
hope in your future yet.  There is not a hand'sbreadth of sky between you and the grave to-day
that is not of azure so long as in your heart lingers one regret for sin, one desire of doing good,
one longing for God, one hope of moral mastery. Put yourself in the right, then endure unto
the end, and you shall be saved.  What a joy it
is to preach a gospel of hope to you!
Again I would remark, that if the bruised reed
may represent our broken hopes, it may also represent our broken resolutions.
I have said already that our lives morally were
marked with fluctuations.  Our feelings rise and
sink like waves of the sea.  If at one moment we
gain the wished-for elevation, the next we are
shaken from it as a bird is blown from the topmost branches of an exposed tree when a gust
strikes it.  And yet how  noble is the mind of
man in its conceptions! How far it can flash its
thoughts! Along what interminable lines, across
what vast spaces, the intellect can pursue its investigations! How exalted those emotions which
inspire the soul at times, and lift it as on mighty
and invisible wings above the earth and earthly
surroundings! You have all had these moods, 




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.           9
these reachings out and elevation of feeling. You
have had longings and dissatisfactions with self, and
travailed in the birth of strong desires, begotten of
God, to be better and accomplish more good. And
you have more than once resolved that it should
be so. In the street, in the office, and in the chamber, in the closet, in company, or alone with yourselves, conscience has smitten you, and you have
said, "This thing must stop. I will change my
course to-day, and be no more as I have been."
And some of you can date a great change from
such moments, —such a change as comes over a
rose when it blossoms, or over the heavens when
the rising wind sweeps it free from clouds.
I believe every soul has such moments of conviction and resolution, - moments when more by
far than we can see depends upon how we act;
when our own happiness and the happiness of
others hang poised on the decision of a moment.
It takes but an instant and a single revolution of
the wheel to turn the ship, but by that movement
it is decided whether she shall anchor on this side
of the globe or on that. It takes but an instant
for the mind to act, yet in the passing of a thought
it is often settled what will be the direction and
issue of a life.
Now the past is full of such experience; such
seasons of introspection and resolution have come
to us all. Time and again have our souls mounted




10            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
from the low level of our lives, like a lark tremulous with song; but no sooner had we poured
forth the raptures of the passing impulse, than
we dropped again into the marsh, and were ashamed
at our own fickleness.
Now, friends, God, as I conceive, is never nearer
to one than when he stands dissatisfied with himself and manner of life, and longs to be better.
When the mind is about to make a needed resolution, God invariably draws nigh to help it.  Because you have broken one resolution, never imagine that He will not assist you to keep another,
made with greater wisdom and a more determined
purpose. The temples of God, so far as we represent them, are all constructed out of ruins. He
builds from the fragments of an ancient overthrow.
Be persuaded of this, that nothing good in you
ever escapes the notice of God. He is not, as some
seem to picture him, a heartless overseer, standing
over you whip in hand, and watching for a chance
to get in a blow.  His observation is like a gardener's.  There is not a bud of promise that can
open in your soul, there is not an odor that can be
added to the fragrance of your lives, that he does
not detect it and rejoice in it. Whatever beautifies
you glorifies Him.  He delights in your developnent, and smiles on your every effort in that direction. God is always ready to give a man one
more chance.  The world is hard and smiting in




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.           11
its judgments, and swift as lightning in its censure; and its condemnation falls on a man as a
huge beam of timber falls on the body, crushing it
down to the ground and holding it there; but
God is slow to wrath, full of forbearance and tender mercies. He prunes away the dead and soggy
branches, He transplants and grafts; but He never
cuts a tree of productive nature down, yea, after
three years of barrenness the tree has yet one
more year of grace, and the last year is fuller of
care and nurture and enticements to fruitfulness,
than all the others.
Now, I suppose that if tie good resolutions we
have formed and broken were represented materially to the eye, we should all appear to those that
gazed upon us as standing amid fragments of former beauty and the cast-up foundations of former
strength; and I suppose that morally we do so appear in the sight of God to-night. And the spectacle of our dejection and overthrow, of our failure
and prostration, of our ruin and despair, stirs him
with pity, and awakens all his mercy and compassion
in our behalf. And if there is one here who is
worse off morally than the rest of us, —one who
stands more bewildered and hopeless amid the
debris of the commandments he has broken, - one
who is more scarred and bruised than the majority
of us, — God by an election of mercy draws nighest
to that soul, and through the prayers and hymns




12            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
and words of this service, the memories and uses
of this day, He seeks to encourage that man to
renewed spiritual effort and inspire him with hope
to try again. Why with hope?  Because no man
ever attempts anything without hope. There is not
the least element of heavenly progress in despair,
and the first thing the Spirit of God seeks to stir
in the soul is a great expectation of a coming good.
That Divine influence comes out of the heavens
upon a soul as a strong current of air, after a day
of fog and storm, comes out of the west, clears up
the clouded horizon of his life, sweeps the longgathered and thickening darkness from over his
head, and brightens the firmament with stars.
Would that one and another of you here might
feel this Divine Spirit coming to you in this manner to-night, feel the atmosphere of your sluggish
or stormy lives vibrate to the incoming of such
change-wdrking influences, and that ahead of you
were years of sunlit effort, and at the close an hour
of radiant decline! In this spirit of hope or prophecy - I know not which - I point you all to lives
nobler than you have thus far lived, to a moral
elevation of feeling higher than you have thus far
experienced, to sympathies for man wider, deeper,
more generous than any you have thus far felt,to a consecration of all your powers to God's service, and to an hour at last of spiritual victory and
supreme reward.




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.            13
And I want you all to feel,-because it is true,that all this is made possible through the tender
love of God for you, as revealed by analogy in
nature, and more fully yet, as through a more perfect medium, in the life and death of his onlybegotten Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.
This passage, this quotation from the Old Testament in order to illustrate the spirit of the New,
suggests to my mind another thought, which grows,
as I live, more and more delightful to me. It is
this: that Christ does not and will not apply the
least force or violence to propagate his law or
religion.
Now, if there is one thing that my mind revolts
at more than another, it is at any rude and violent
interference with its independence, with the law
and order of its free action. If religion meant surrender of intellectual freedom, if it meant subjugation of any faculty to superior power, if it meant
bondage of thought and terror of motive, there is
not a principle in my nature which would not rise
up in arms against it.  Heaven must not be made
to appear to my mind as a vast corral, into which
souls like cattle are stampeded by force or fear.
And I know not of any style of speech more obnoxious to me than that which presents nothing
higher, nothing nobler to men, to inspire them with
religious tendencies than the motive of fear. The
horror of hell can furnish no well-regulated mind




14            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
with an impulse toward heaven.  And a preacher
who appeals to fear, to sheer cowardice, in his audience, is unfit to proclaim the Gospel of Christ.
Such a speaker perverts and belittles the Gospels.
He insults intelligence.  He can find no warrant
for his monstrous misinterpretation of God, and
outrage on intellectual laws, in the teachings and
conduct of Christ or the Apostles. Why, you might
as well try to frighten a flower into lifting its face
toward the sun as to frighten a soul into lifting
itself toward God! The attraction of light and love
from above, and not the propulsion of fear from
beneath, is what accomplishes the beautiful result.
There is no need of any such rude and tyrannous
force, such violent benevolence. In the soul are
certain capacities and affinities, and God is to them
their natural object of love and service. To clear
away the obstructions which Satan has pushed up
between the soul and God, to enlighten the understanding and thereby correct the judgment, to interpret God properly to the mind and heart of the
hearer, is the preacher's duty and the preacher's
joy. To send each hearer away at the close of a
service feeling that he is thankful that the heavens
are what they are, and God is what he is, and he
himself is as he is, save as to his sin, is the highest
triumph of preaching.  Why, you cannot frighten
man even in the inclination of his appetites. You
cannot break down and disrupt by force even the




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.            15
bulwark of his sensations. If any particular species
of fruit - a pear, for instance- is distasteful to a
person, you cannot annul by force or fear the law of
his sensations; you can, indeed, compel him to eat
it, but it is repugnant nevertheless, and yields no satisfaction to his taste; and if man, along the lower
ranges of his nature, thus defies your insane attempt
at compulsion, do you imagine that you can conquer him by the same method along the higher? If
you cannot subjugate his body, the weak and perishable part of him, do you conceive that you can
subdue his mind and soul, and the mighty and immortal faculties of his being?
Now God, inasmuch as he is our Creator, understands the structure and law of our minds, and
never offers the least violence to their free exercise. Indeed, our independence is his glory; and
the unforced, spontaneous character of our obedience and praise is what gives them the chief value
in his sight. No, my friend, God will use no compulsion with you.  He loads neither scale of the
balance.  You sit your throne of self-sovereignty
in undisturbed possession.  You are free in the
exercise of your volition, —free as God himself.
Your salvation or damnation will be the result of
your own voluntary act.  To-night your feet are
at the fork of two roads: the one is narrow and
straight, and few there be that tread it, but those
who walk it are walking forever upward; the other




16            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
is wide and crooked, and multitudes throng it, but
those who wheel and rush along that populous
road are going downward.  Some of you, I say,
stand at the fork of these divergent roads this
evening; and you are free, perfectly free, to enter
either. Pause and reflect before you take your
next step, for that may decide the entire journey.
I wonder which path you are deciding to enter 
Have you ever thought how many weak things
there are in the world? Look at the natural kingdom. How few are the oaks and how many are the
rushes! There is a rose, with a stem so fragile as
to almost break under the burden of its own blushing and fragrant bloom. Yet God is God of the
reed and the rose. There is not a spire of grass
bruised by the trampling foot; there is not a leaf
fluttering from a twig; there is not a bird that flies
nor a worm that crawls, - no, nor any order of created life, - so low and weak as to be beneath His
care. Now look at man. Look at society in its
component parts.  Consider men and women as
they live and move to-day. Are they strong or
weak? are they happy or sad? are they joyful or
do they need comfort? Why, friends, I sometimes
think that there is no such thing as happiness in
the world. So much disappointment, so much misery, so much concealed pain, so many hidden sorrows, so much studiously covered wretchedness,
comes to my knowledge that I almost lose hope




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.             17
and heart at times, and feel like crying out: "Society is a vast charnel-house, where everything
that is bright in hope or cheerful in expectation
lies buried.  Life is a monstrous disappointment,
and death the only portal to peace." There is not
a day that passes in which virtue does not sell
itself for bread; in which some poor, harassed, or
frenzied creature does not rush madly upon death;
in which the good are not persecuted and the weak
trampled upon.  Behind windows you look at
heedlessly, tragedies red as history or fiction ever
painted are being acted, and faces you admire mask
with smiles an inward torture worse than the agony
of the rack. Who, even in this audience, has realized the fulfilment of his early hope? Whose life
has not its mortifications, its bitter concealments,
its studied evasions, its poignant humiliations, its
wild uneasiness, its wrestlings and defeat? But we
do not represent life; we represent only the fairest
portions and the highest level of it. Below us are
the great masses of humanity, and they writhe and
moan and weep, they toil and starve and curse
and fight and die. The world goes roaring on as
heedless of those who fall as the gale in autumn is
heedless of the leaves it strips from the tree, or the
branches it wrenches away.  But God is mindful
of it all; he notes it all, and I would fain think
that, in the infinite resources of healing, is balm
for all. "Come unto me, all ye who labor and are
B




18            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
heavy laden, and I will give you rest."  What a
promise that is! He will not sell it to us, nor
loan it to us: he gives it to us. And what a reach
and stretch there is in the assurance, "Come
unto me cll ye"! It includes every one. Not the
rich, not the refined, not the pure, but the poor
and the coarse, the fallen' and the weak; those
who have been wrecked by others, and those who
have wrecked themselves, -all can have rest. Rest!
Who gets rest in this life, outside of God? Whose
mind gets rest?  Whose soul gets it?  Does the
ocean get rest? Does the wind get it? Does
the torrent find repose? Yes. For the ocean has
its calms, and the wind lulls, and the torrent in
summer ceases to roar; but the life of man is
rougher than the sea, and fiercer than the wind,
and more headlong than the torrent, and in himself man finds no rest, and no repose, and no
season for repose, until the vault darkens over his
head and that long night with its dreamless sleep
comes on. And God sees all this and feels it all,
and the beat of his sympathy is without intermission.
Now there are a great many things that tend to
keep us from God, but nothing, no, nor all other
hindrances put together, so much as wrong views
of God. There is a girl whose virtue lies like a
soiled and trampled flower, unable to lift itself.
She cannot go to God, because her purity is gone.




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.            19
"God is white," she says, " and how can I go to whiteness? " There is a man of business, who will not be
a Christian because he has no time. As if it took
time to inhale the perfume of a bank of violets,
when the wind blows it into your very face. Here
is another down upon whose faith and hope and life
a great blast of tribulation has swooped, and torn
everything up by the roots, and prostrated all the
growth of twenty years of religious education; and,
standing over the grave or in the empty house, she
wrings her hands, and cries out: " There is no God
in the heavens, or if there is, he is hard and
harsh and cruel, for he has taken from me my
husband and all my children at one rude blow!"
I met a man the other day who had lived like the
prodigal; wasted the substance of body and brain
in riotous living. A magnificent wreck he was.
A man who stood as I have seen a tree stand after
a fire had swept through the forest, - blasted and
charred to the very core, all the life and vigor
burnt out of it; yet keeping its magnificent girth
and symmetry of proportion, even to the topmost bough. So that man stood.  I took him
kindly by the hand, and said, "Friend, there is
hope in your future yet." He drew himself slowly
up until he stood at his straightest, looked me
steadily in the eye, and said, " Do you mean to
say, Mr. Murray, that if I went to-night to God,
He would pardon such a wretch as I?"




20            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
See how he misunderstood God! See how we
all misunderstand Him! Pardon! Is there any
one He will not pardon? Is there a noisome marsh
or stagnant pool on the face of the whole earth so
dark, so reeking with rottenness and mire, that the
sun scorns to shine on it? and is there a man so
low, so heavy with corruption, so coarse and brutal that God's love does not seek him out? How
is the world to be redeemed if you put a limit to
God's love? How is the great mass of humanity
to be washed and lifted if the thoughts of God are
like our thoughts, and His ways like our ways? It
is because He does. not love as we do, because lie
does not feel as we do, because He does not act as
we do, that I have any hope for my race, - that I
have any hope for myself.
A  bruised reed He will not break.  Let our
thoughts, like a song, close with the sweetness of
the opening note. As those who, leaving home in
winter when all is bleak and drear, come back in
spring to find the trees in blossom, and the earth
exhaling odors, and everything more lovely than
when they left; so I would call your minds back
to the assurance of the Scriptures, the tenderness
of God, and the opening thought of our discourse.
This evening we have been permitted to meet in
this place for worship. Let it stand in your remembrance as the expression of His love. This is
the sabbath hour; let it be remembered as the hour




THE TENDERNESS OF GOD.          21
in which so many of us worshipped and adored
together. Are we strangers? No, we are friends,
and the day and audience warrant the word. The
bitterness, the jealousies, the rivalries, the piques,
the misconceptions to which life has exposed us,
die out in our hearts as we sit here together; a
tenderness not unlike the tenderness of God steals
into our bosoms. The throb of mutual sympathy,
the lifting of common prayer, the aspiration for a
higher life, bind us together. Who wishes ill to
any? None. Who remembereth ill done or ill
received, save to forgive or ask to be forgiven?
Not one. We yield our hands to the clasp of a
universal brotherhood, and our thoughts fly out in
love toward the poor and the ignorant, the weak,
the sinful, and the lowly, the world over. God
pity them all; and most of all we pray that He
may use us to make His tenderness and mercy
known to them.
And thus I commend you all to the tenderness
of God. May the thought of it comfort you when
you need comfort, and strengthen you when you
need strength! And when you shall meet at last
face to face what men most dread, but which I do
not doubt shall prove to many of you here your
best friend, may the same tenderness be over you
as the face of a mother is over her waking child.
This earth is not our home.  God is beckoning
us onward. We shall depart. We shall pass into




22            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
forgetfulness. We shall sleep. We shall be changed.
Into what we know not; but this we know, that
we shall be satisfied when we awake in his likeness.  What will that waking, what will that
likeness, be?




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.            23
SERMON II.
THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will
toward men."-LUKE ii. 14.
S a matter of history this verse is exceedingly
interesting.  It shows us how the birth of
our Redeemer was celebrated.  Heaven recognized
the magnitude of the event, and through its representatives congratulated the earth. Toward God
the attitude of heaven was that of praise,- praise
of His love and wisdom and power.  Toward the
earth it was one of sympathy and felicitation. The
angels appreciated the value of that birth to man,
and predicted the era of universal peace and goodwill. In this the angels only expressed what the
Scriptures everywhere confirm; what Christ loved
to say of Himself, what the prophets said of Him
from the beginning; what the Apostles wrote, and
John foresaw.  If ever peace was made visible in
outward form, it was in the person of our blessed
Lord; if ever good-will to man found expression,
it did in the life and teachings of Christ; and
whether you look at the influence of His deeds or
His nature, we can in very truth assert that " of His
peace there is no end."




24           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
Previous to Christ there was no peace, either in
principle or expression, among men. War was the
normal condition and practice of mankind. The
strong ruled the weak. The world was divided into
two classes,- oppressors and slaves. Wrong had
become systematized.  Civil government, which
should be a fountain of peace, was a source of
war; and nations were as wild animals that have
no law but their appetites and their fears.
Men in their individual relations were antagonistic and rude. Humane impulse had not been
born. Brotherly love, as of one stock and race,
was unknown. The Jew hated the Gentile, and
the Gentile retaliated on the Jew. Even religion
begat animosities, and men inspired by it became
cruel and perverse.
Now, Christ came to change all this, and the
angelic heralds truly proclaimed his mission. He
came to introduce a new and higher order of life
and feeling,-to awaken the dormant power of
sympathy in man, - to bridge the chasm of hatred
which divided nations and races, and bring them
at last to the acknowledgment and practice of
universal brotherhood.
I propose to discuss before you to-night the
subject of Peace and Good-Will among men, and
the result to which they would lead. I must omit
the national relations of it, although they are
worthy of attention. God works up through the




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES,           25
individual to the nation, and through one nation
to all nations.  This is the law, the drift and tendency of His administration, and I have no doubt
but that eventually all differences between nations will be settled by friendly arbitration, and
not as now by the sword.  But I must pass this
point by this evening.  I wish to notice, in the
first place, the personal and church relations of
the subject, and remark upon the cheering progress which is being made toward union of all
moral forces in society, and the harmonizing of all
differences which provoke discord and enmity.
Secondly, I shall allude to the relation of this principle to us as individual Christians, and show how
and when we shall find peace.
Now, any one who observes the present state of
things about us must see that the good are not
united as the bad are.  Evil has a coherence,
a unity, a oneness of purpose and combination
of energies, to which goodness has not as yet attained.  The wicked all pull one way, and they
pull with all their might.  Wickedness is always
unanimous, and self-collected, and at peace with
itself. The Devil never rejects any help, come from
what source it may.  He welcomes direct, and he
welcomes indirect assistance also.  Whatever can
debauch men, whatever can  lead them  astray,
whoever will assist him  by little or by much, is
accepted  and  enrolled among  his  forces.  By
2




26            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
this process, by thus utilizing every agent and
agency, he is enabled to accomplish vast results,
and keep his seat and throne in the world.  It is
not so with the good.  They have not as yet
learned  the lesson of combination, the power
which lies in organization and unity of effort. If
a man or organization is half wrong, Satan utilizes
that half, and works it in somehow to advance his
schemes of mischief; but if a man or organization
is only half good, good men stand off and look
askant at it and say: " No, we cannot affiliate with
that; we must not have anything to do with it
lest we are misunderstood, lest we hazard our influence."  And so the sum total of correct influence in society is lessened.
The good are thus divided and separated one
from  another; differences are perpetuated, and
union and peace deferred. You may take this city
for an illustration, - and it supplies us with a good
one too.  Here lines are drawn; and one class of
power stallds on this side, and another on that.
One man says, "This view of God is the true
view," and will have nothing to do with another
who disputes it. And so it comes about that we
are fighting evil here in companies and squads,
and under a dozen leaders, and not by regiments
and brigades and divisions, all under one leader,
assisted by co-operation of all his forces.  Not
only so, but some good people seem afraid lest old




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.        27
differences should not continue, and the old suicidal and wicked division of moral forces endure.
They seem to think that to be faithful to truth
they must keep knocking somebody down, or be
continually knocked down themselves, and that,
if opposition to them should cease, and former opponents begin to coalesce with them, the truth
for which they have so long struggled would in
some way be endangered, and their relation to it
changed.
Why, I am astonished at the way some men
talk and act. There is a certain class of orthodox
Christians in this city, who seem to be afraid to
have any one outside of their own sect agree with
them.  They have made orthodoxy consist so
much in theological opposition  that they are
frightened to see those who have held different
views begin to harmonize with them. If a man
preaches the Gospel with such demonstration of
love and spiritual power that it reaches the heart,
and a person supposed to be a Unitarian says,
"That's good preaching enough for me," they begin at once to be suspicious of the preaching and
the preacher. Just as if bitterness and difference
and wrangling were to continue forever in this
city! just as if God had nothing in store for us
here but perpetual alienation, division, and hostility! I do not believe any such monstrous prediction as that. The world moves; and it moves,




28            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
as impelled by God's spirit, toward harmony and
peace, and a union of moral forces, here and the
world over, under one banner, in order to accomplish certain blessed and needed results.  For one,
I hail, as an auspicious omen, these symptoms of
returning good sense and correct views and loving
fellowship together under Christ. I would go farther to find one point of agreement with a good
man than. to discover five of difference.  My
brother, in love to man and faith toward God, -
brother still, although differing in views, - tell me
what you hold in common with me; tell me where
and how we can join hands to teach the ignorant,
and clothe the naked, and feed the starving, and
reform the vicious; and leave whatever difference
there may be between us for God to settle and explain when we have entered His presence.  There
is such a thing as a man standing so straight as to
fall over backward, and it is possible for a Christian to make so much of his denomination or his
creed as to forget the Gospels.  The Puritans were
orthodox enough, but they were not precisely such
models as we should follow  in their treatment
of dissentients. They drew their inspiration from
the Jewish rather than the Christian dispensation.
The Old Testament and not the New, misapplied
and perverted, was the baleful torch with which
they lighted their witch-fires.
Now it seems to me perfectly natural that men




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.          29
who  have opposed  evangelical religion should
gradually drop their opposition and begin to harmonize with it.  A vast deal of opposition to orthodox opinion in this city springs from a gross
ignorance of what it teaches and its holders believe.
Men have been educated to believe a slander and
a lie. They have been educated to believe that we
of evangelical views preach "that hell is paved with
infants' skulls," - that " men by nature are as bad
as devils, as bad as they can be,"- and other enormous and outrageous propositions, which no orthodox preacher preaches or believes. And when, one
by one, they are undeceived; when they hear us
preach of the love and tenderness of God for human kind; when they hear us preach a gospel of
hope, of love for others, of cheerfulness and progression, they are surprised and say, "Well now,
if that is orthodox preaching, then I am orthodox."
There is another thought in this connection, and
I am glad to call your attention to it, for it requires
frankness on my part to suggest, and candor on your
part to consider it. The great joy of my public life
is that I am in a city where free speech in America
was born, where it has been nurtured, and where it
still thrives. Your intelligence is such that you not
only do not fear, but you desire the freest utterance
on the part of your speakers, the fullest discussion
of passing events; your city has been the theatre
of a great religious revolution; some of you can




30           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
remember perhaps the earthquake which shook the
doctrinal structure of many churches to the ground.
You heard the crash and the shouting which followed. And now another great movement is beginning to make itself felt. Men who have been trying
to build a house without mortar and without brick
are beginning to search for the old foundations, if
peradventure they may find, in modified form, some
basis for their faith to stand on. I doubt whether
men were ever more dissatisfied with the old faith
than they are with the new, ever more adrift and
uneasy within themselves as to what to believe.
Seventy years of experiment have demonstrated
that negation is not religion, that scepticism is no
adequate equivalent for faith, and that men who
can do nothing but tear away and pull down and
destroy are no fit guides to those who believe in
right and wrong and the immortality of the soul.
And we who attempt to discuss these matters,
whom you have chosen as your watchmen, are
bound to tell you how the heavens look and which
way the wind blows.
Well, the thought which I would suggest is this:
It is the law that all revolts from established order
of thought should go first to extremes, and then to
gradually correct themselves. Men do not at once
see the logical results of revolution.  They do not
see that anarchy is removed but a single step from
independence. When this city broke away from the




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.          31
position of the fathers, many of the prime movers
in that theological stampede never dreamed to what
madness their followers would go. Channing never
dreamed of a Frothingham.  I speak from  the
evangelical stand-point, of course, and I say, that
there are thousands of Unitarians, so called, in this
city to-day, - men and women of holy lives, who
love the Bible as much as we do,- who are appalled
at the radical wing of their denomination. They see
as plainly as we - no one with eyes can help seeing
it -that the drift and tendency of their teaching
is toward infidelity and the baldest scepticism.
They are alarmed, and, like merchantmen that have
discovered a pirate in the fleet, begin to draw off.
They are not prepared to throw  overboard the
Scriptures, to call Christ nothing more than John
Jones, to dig a pit and cast their long-cherished
hopes of heaven into it; and their natural inclination, the logical tendency of their position, is to
get back-to safer ground.  I verily believe that a
practical, if not a nominal, union will erelong be
made between this class of Unitarians and the
great body of evangelical believers. The date of
that happy event may be retarded by unforeseen
circumstances, by pride and perversity on either
side; but it is bound to come.  Over our graves
our children will join their hands and the Commonwealth, to found which the fathers labored
and died, will stand, the disastrous schism healed,




32            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
clothed once more in the unity of her ancestral
and triumphant faith.
Come, then, Peace, and breathe upon us! Come,
as the wind comes from  the south, warm  as the
touch and fragrant as the breath of love! Come,
as the dove came to the ark, bearing with thee the
symbol and evidence that the waters of death are
ebbing, and a new world of promise is rising into
sight! Come, as the angels came at the birth of
Christ, and tell us once more of peace and goodwill to men!
There are other reasons than those I have mentioned for this hope, among which is this, - that
similarity of labors begets similarity of feeling, and
results in a practical union. Men are looking and
planning for the union of all denominations, on
the ground of doctrinal unanimity.  They think
that this denomination will give up one point,
and another some other; that each in the interest of union will pare off some denominational
corner, and shade down to a commnon hue some
exceptional color, until at last everybody will
think alike.  My friends, that day will never
come; at least, it is too remote for us of this
generation to debate.  It is a dream, to the fulfilment of which the structure of the human mind
itself is opposed. Mien will never think on any one
topic precisely alike.  They cannot look at truth
from  exactly the same point of view, any more




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.          33
than a hundred persons can look at an oil painting from precisely the same angle of vision. The
light and shade will not appear the same to each.
Education, temperament, predilections, amounting
often almost to a prejudice, -these will come in
and cause divergence of opinion.  So long as the
Bible is a necessity, so long will different interpretations be patronized.  While we see God
through a glass darkly, our views of Him  will
vary, because dimness and the moving of many
shadows are between us and Him.  Not until we
have risen above the heavy atmospheres of this
mortal life,  not until, through the crystalline
medium  of heaven, we behold Him face to face,
and from that altitude, with holy and instructed
vision, see all the outgoings of His nature, all the
sequence of His doings, from  beginning to end,
shall we see Him  as with one eye.  In the light
of that demonstration differences will fade away,
and the multitude of the redeemed will stand,
hand clasped in hand, around a common throne.
But until that day, my friends, I look for no intellectual unity.  While theology is a science,
and knowledge of God depends on human, and
hence, fallible and conflicting, interpretations, men
will continue to differ in religious matters. Doctrinally they will stand apart from  and opposed
to each other.  When we see God face to face,
we shall all see Him  alike, and not until then.
2*                        C




34            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
No. The path of union and peace in the religious world lies not in that direction. Individual opinions will obtrude their obstructions in
front of us in the future as in the past. They
cannot be levelled and graded down. You cannot
make a composite of men's conflicting views, and
macadamize the future so that the world will roll
onward and upward without a jolt or jar.  The
true and only practical ground of union is found
in union of effort, and not union of views; in
oneness of feeling, and not oneness of opinions;
in similarity of conduct, and not similarity of
belief. The Methodist, so far as his head goes,
will be a Methodist still, the Baptist a Baptist,
and the Unitarian a Unitarian; but in heart, in
purpose, in hope of heaven, in labors for man, in
the emotional and benevolent energies of our natures, we find our union.  Recruited from many
States,- of complex opinions,- differing in our
views as to the causes of the rebellion, and how
the campaign should be fought out,-agreeing
only in this, that we are. willing to unite and act
together as against a common enemy, we put
ourselves under one Leader, blind to all else save
this, that the banner over us is love. This is a
union to be desired; this is such a union as it
is our duty to have; and this, thank God, is
nearly ours.
Men say that I am hopeful, and so I am; but




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.         35
my hope is not a vain dream, a poetical aspiration. It is a hope born of knowledge; it is based
upon the apprehension of a law, - a law which I
trace through all the pages of history as a man
traces a golden thread through a piece of cloth
which is being unrolled before his eyes. The law
is this: That the world has moved onward and
upward by an accelerated motion and ever-multiplying accumulation of forces. The driving power
has increased as the train has gone thundering on;
and never did good influences move so fast, never
did they control and shape so many, as they do
to-day.  The progress made toward union and
peace in religious matters, in the last two centuries, is a matter of astonishment. A few facts
will illustrate this to your satisfaction, and show
you with what long and rapid strides we have
advanced.
Two hundred years ago tyranny ruled here, and
the worst kind of tyranny at that; for it was tyranny, not over men's bodies, but over their minds.
About all the religious freedom the Puritans knew
was, "Think as we do, or suffer the consequences."
Two hundred years ago two men were tied to the
tail of a cart, and whipped through your streets with
knotted lashes, —"with all the power the hangman could put forth," as the record says,-their
mouths being stopped with wooden gags to prevent
their cries of agony from being heard.  And what,




36            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
pray, was their offence?  Simply and solely because they were Quakers! A woman, - and a recent mother at that,- with her babe in her arms,
was tied to the whipping-post which stood on the
Common, near the corner of West Street, and
beaten nearly to death. And why? Because she
was a Quakeress. And when released from that
brutal violence, she dropped upon her knees, poor
woman, and prayed that God would forgive her
persecutors, and bring, at last, a day of liberty and
peace to this city.
That day is come.  It is here, and we are living
in it; and the soul of that saintly Quakeress looks
down from heaven, and sees the fulfilment of her
prayers this evening, and rejoices at the sight I
Two hundred years ago, within a stone's-throw of
Tremont Temple, where Brother Fulton is preaching, a man was cruelly and publicly whipped for
being a Baptist.
Why do I mention these things?  Simply that
you may realize the progress which the world has
made in the last two centuries toward union and
peace; that you may see that, when one expresses the belief that not many years hence all
who obey God and love their fellow-men shall
stand together, he does not deal in extravagant
speech, but makes a prediction which all history
warrants and renders probable.  I tell you, friends,
the old warfares, one by one, are dying out. The




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES,           37
sounds of bitter contention are being  hushed.
Death is gradually bringing a conclusion to past
bitterness, and traces of conflict are being covered
by the grass which grows on graves.  We are all
moving, as a ship, after a period of storm, goes
moving into the west.  The clouds are broken
and rolled upward.  The sea and sky are crimson,
every sail is a sheet of orange, every rope a line of
gold.  And so it moves along its path of emerald,
crested with fire, gathering a deeper glory as it
moves, until the winds die out, the waters sleep,
and night, brilliant with stars, settles over the
tranquil sea.
Not only does the course of history corroborate
this view, but the very nature of the case makes
it probable.  Why, what is the great aim  of the
Gospel?  What is its drift and tendency?  To
separate  and  antagonize the good? to divorce
and divide and set one in array against another?
No; the tendency of Christianity is to bring the
good together.  Christ'is as a great magnet, and
those who feel the attraction of His name and spirit
converge and are drawn nearer together themselves, being drawn nearer to Him. When we sing
"Nearer, my God, to Thee," we petition not only
nearness to Him, but also nearness to all His creatures.  The good of all ages and climes belong, in
a peculiar sense, to each other.  Not one of all
that vast multitude who died at the stake; not




38            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
one of the thousands who laid down their lives
for liberty; not one of that long list who died before the dawn of the day in which we now rejoice,
sighing for light; not a man or woman is striving
or dying for man's good to-day, but that is knit
and united to me.  I appropriate the spirit as
truly as the results of their lives. For what is
history,- for what civilization,-  for what the
arts and appliances of letters, - for what the element of sympathy in man, - if not to unite us to
the great and the good of all time? I anticipate
the fellowship of the pure that shall be mine in
heaven, as the gardener anticipates the rich perfume of the blossom  by the first suggestion of
fragrance in the bud.  We enroll ourselves in the
great fraternity of God's children on earth before
we enter the fellowship of His children in heaven.
My friends, as the power of the Spirit is more
and more felt in our hearts, so will this Divine
unity of love between all the good be more realized in our souls. It is not for me to say who
will feel it, it is not for me to say who is worthy;
but all who are worthy will feel it. Names will
continue to exist, nominal distinctions will survive; but, deeper than all, dearer than all, the
unity of the Spirit will be felt.  We shall still
abide each in his own house, but the intercourse
of love and community of feeling will exist untrammelled and unchecked.  From  the ashes of




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.        39
former differences peace shall spring, more perfect
in plumage, sweeter in song, than the Phoenix of
the classics, and man shall be to his fellow-man a
brother.
Now, having spoken of the union and peace
which are to be experienced among masses of
men, - of that " bond of perfectness " which is to
unite and adorn the pure and good, supplanting
present alienation and difference, I would allude
to the second point, and direct the application of
my theme and text to individuals.
I remark, then, that Christianity produces a
union of the powers and energies of the individual
soul.
The soul,- by which I mean all the operant
faculties of man's nature,- is now divided, and
half is hostile to half.
Take any man or woman in this audience; - let
any one of you analyze your emotions, recall your
past; and you will find that, since the birth of conscience in you, you have been at war with yourself, your soul has been the arena of conflict.
Duty and inclination have been at war. Your
very emotions have joined in the unnatural contest, and often risen in rebellion against what you
knew was right. The good in you has held its
own, as a man holds his own in battle, fighting
against odds, at the point of the bayonet. My
hearers, I do not say that there are none who




40            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
float through life,- men and women who do not
struggle, have few temptations, make few falls:
some may be protected by circumstance; some, by
their very weakness and lack of fibre, may have
stood unhurt, as grasses stand, when the gale overhead is wringing and wrenching the branches
from the oaks, and riving them to the very heart.
But natures that have any girth to them, any upward reach, any latitude of emotion, any tree-like
formation, are exposed to pressure, - are often
made the sport of converging currents and riotous
forces.  Such natures are constantly agitated and
blown about, and full of writhing and groaning.
In this category most of the race, and I presume
most of you to whom I am speaking, belong. You
have not floated through life as a feather floats
upon the evening air; nor will you sink, as that
feather falls, unknown and unnoted, into forgetfulness. In different spheres of labor and life you
have toiled and suffered; you have made your
wealth or daily support, not by luck, but by years
of application; you have done some good, and
wrought some evil, and  the war between the
higher and lower parts of your nature still wages.
Even this blessed Sabbath is not so much a day
of rest as a breathing-spell; for to-morrow, and all
the days ahead, will be full of panting and struggle, until breath fails and the conflict is over
forever.




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.          41
Now I want to speak to you who have been tossed
and buffeted amid the conflicting experiences of
life; and I want you to feel that every word comes
directly from my heart to your hearts, that my
soul speaks to your souls; and I say to you, my
brother and sister, that all you have felt and suffered, and borne up against, and been prostrated
by, was a part of God's merciful dealings with
you.  He has blown and buffeted you, he has
wrung and wrenched you, that he might teach
you the lesson of your weakness and dependence.
You have been honored by chastisement; you
have been strengthened by opposition; you have
been glorified through suffering. W'h.en you draw
nigh to heaven, you will draw nigh to it, it is true,
as ships creep into harbors after a night of storm,their masts broken, their sails in tatters, and their
decks all littered with wreck; but you will enter
it with hymns of praise and thanksgiving for
your deliverance.  Nor will you lack welcome.
Heaven is full of sympathy for such as barely
escape wreck; and the shining shore will shine
all the brighter because of the glorified faces that
shall throng it as your souls are floated up toward
the golden marge.
And you must also feel that, even in this life,
victory, in part, will be yours.  As the days pass,
you will find that, as a reward for virtuous effort,
self-mastery is slowly but surely coming to you.




42            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
Every tempest will cause you to root yourself
deeper in, and twine yourself more closely around,
Christ as the great, immovable Rock of your salvation. And when that last and strongest galewhich blows for all, and overturns many-shall
bear cown upon you, the unification of all your
powers having been completed, and with every
thought and purpose and hope of your heart
purged and perfected, you will stand triumphant,
exclaiming, "0 death, where is thy sting? O
grave, where is thy victory?"
But, my friend, where will you be in that hour, 
you who have no Saviour to whom to cling,where? -No, I will not tell you.  What does
your heart say? What does your conscience say?
What does the Bible say?
You see, my hearers, what gateway leads to
peace. The hope, the only hope of it, is Christ,
the author of all peace, in you, working out the
peaceable fruits of righteousness. Through faith
in Him, and in the direction of God's providential
dealings, the good in your natures gains the ascendant, and the evil gradually retires.  Stone by
stone, and block by block, the temple of your hope
is rising. Every stone represents a struggle, every
block a mighty effort. Without God you would
never have started to build, and without Him
you can never even now finish.  If any soul here
is looking for peace in any other direction, if he




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.         43
thinks it will come to him  in any other way,
that soul will surely be mistaken.  You must
fight and pray if you would win. The cross, by
the law of God's appointment, precedes the crown.
These are trite sayings; but they express a truth
which underlies all Christian hope and inspires
all Christian effort.
But, friends, do all you may, fight bravely as
you may, still victory will come only at the setting of the sun. The land of peace lies on the
other side of the grave. That is the outer door
of sombre surface, behind which the gates of solid
pearl emit their splendor. Never let your minds
dwell on the grave, -that gateway to a happier
world, - as over something dark and repellant.  In
ignorance the world draped it in sable, and made
their funeral gatherings around it with lamentations. Nothing short of the resurrection of Christ
could have dispelled this fear, and stemmed the
tide of human superstition.  In His death He
made a greater revelation than in His life.
The tomb had been from  the beginning the
terror of the world, - a deep, dark, impenetrable
mystery.  But Christ did not shrink.  He went
down into the shadow of its silence; explored its
unknown recesses; felt His way along the crumbling edge of His mortality; threaded the labyrinth
to its farthest extremity; and, reascending to the
light, the world beheld Him again.  But how did




44            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
they behold Himn? heyey beheld Him leading captivity captive!
He was sown in weakness, but He was raised
in power: He was sown in dishonor, but He was
raised in glory.
In the light of that investigation and that result we know what the grave is, and its relation
to the good.
The world is full of failures which this life can
never retrieve. Many of you have lost what you
will never find on the earth, for the- waves of
death have cast it high up on the farther shore.
Some of you have missed what you most purely
longed for; the songs you might have sung fail in
your throat, and laughter serves to prevent a groan.
Your early hopes have not been realized, and you
are now too old to hope.  The strings of the harp
are broken, and it is now too late in the night to
retune the tangled cords.
But, friends, let no one of you, in such straits,
be overmuch discouraged.or cast down.  Peace
will yet come to you.  Death will bring to you
the opportunity of a new start.  The conditions
of this mortal life will not pursue you beyond the
grave.  All that hindered, all that burdened, all
that vexed you here, will be no longer felt. In
the quiet of its shadow, in the fulness of life
beyond, the wicked cease from  troubling and the
weary are at rest.




THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES.          45
Thus, by the gradual rectification of our natures
and the unification of all our powers in holiness,
and. then - as the finishing and perfecting providence - the change which death shall work in our
condition, mankind at last will find their peace.
Thus God's great plan in Christ, of which the Angels sang, shall be consummated, and peace shall
be on earth and good-will to man.
But what is the cause of this peace, and through
what medium  does it primarily come to us?  I
answer, that the love of God is the cause, and
belief in Christ is the medium through which it
comes to every heart that opens to receive it.
There is not a man, there is not a woman, there
is not a youth, in this audience this evening, I
care not how widely you have wandered, nor how
deeply you have sinned, nor how great has been
your rebellion, to whom God in his love does not
come and offer this peace, as secured to you in the
death of your Saviour.  Only drop your hostility,
only forego your rebellion, only throw down your
arms, only utter a cry, only make a sign, he says,
and I will pardon you here and now. This is the
love of God to you, my hearers, as held by the
Evangelical churches.  Was there ever a lovelike
unto it? Think of your life, now far spent' perhaps,- your life of neglect, of indifference, of ingratitude, of opposition, and then tell me if you
have ever known, in father or mother, in husband




46            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
or wife, in any friend living or dead, a love to be
compared to this Divine love for you? There are
faces back of me over which as they sleep the
evergreens wave to-day.  There are faces which
nightly by the side of couches and in the flush
of morning are lifted to heaven for me in prayer.
They express all that the human heart may feel
of love and solicitude for man.  Yet in the face
of Him who lifteth the light of His countenance
upon me as I speak, I behold the expression of a
love deeper, a tenderness more tender, a longing
more intense, than ever heart of flesh might feel
or human features express.
If all these voices should be hushed, all these
faces averted, all these eyes turned away, the love
of God for me would still remain unchanged and
unchangeable.  By the ministrations of it while
I live shall I find all needed support, and at
death be folded in its embrace forever.
The centuries seem rolled together as I speak,
the past becomes the present, and out of the distance, like notes of music from afar, swelling into
the distinctness of utterance as they roll, culminating  over your heads in benediction, I catch
once more the song that never dies, —" On earth
peace, good-will toward men."




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.  47
SERMON  III.
THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.
"Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works
was faith made perfect? "- JAMES ii. 22.
T HE Apostle is here insisting on the value of
works and their relation to faith.  There is
a certain earnestness and urgency in every line of
this chapter which show that James was greatly
wrought upon by his subject.  He was evidently
a very zealous worker himself, and thoroughly
awake to the importance of Christian activity.
W~hat a rubbing of eyes and pricking up of ears
there would be on the part of our drowsy churchmembers if the Apostle could visit Boston in the
flesh, go down to North Street, and then stand in
our pulpits and tell the churches what he had
seen and heard, and what needed to be done in
this Christian city! Of all the Apostles I do not
think that I would surrender my pulpit to any of
them so willingly as to James.  No one can read
this chapter and not feel that the writer was all
aglow with the conviction that the churches were
in imminent danger. There is a certain tinge of
impatience, of moral indignation, running through
these passages, as if they were in peril of falling




48            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
into a fatal error as to what constituted Christian
living, and he could not refrain from  telling them
of it.  They were in danger, and the danger was
this, - they were exaggerating the value of an intellectual belief. They were making religion to
consist overmuch in mental conception and too
little in practice. Christianity was becoming a
matter of the head, and was being divorced from
the hand and heart.  James saw the danger, and
threw himself across the path of declension and
said to the churches, "You cannot go a rod farther in this direction unless you walk over my
warning and my authority."   Now  I  ask the
thoughtful men and women in this audience if this
is not precisely the peril to which the church is
exposed to-day.  The faith of the Evangelical
churches is sound enough, the forms of belief are
correct enough, but the actual working power of
the churches is dangerously weak.  Take a dozen
or twenty persons out of every hundred of their
membership, and what would  become  of the
churches?  The fact is, -  and the sooner we look
the fact squarely in the face the better it will be
for Christ and us all, - the fact is, a small minority
of the church do all the work that is being done
in the church.  Many of our religious organizations are like unused, reservoirs, into which the
living water runs and then stagnates. The church
in its internal structure is essentially the same




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   49
that it was a hundred years ago. It ignores the
difference between city and country life, between
agricultural sections and great commercial centres,
between the wants and opportunities of a small,
thinly populated parish and the wants and necessities of a densely crowded metropolis. In its internal organization, in its power to give the public
what it wants, the church is an anachronism. You
might as well think that a hundred wells with
the old-fashioned bucket and sweep could supply
this city with water as that you can convert this
city while your churches use only the same means
of instruction and reform as were employed fifty
years ago. The Young Men's Christian Associations are a standing protest against the blindness
and slowness of the churches. They were formed
by active Christian men, and are working outside
the church because the church did not attempt the
work inside itself. These bodies of young men
are doing what the churches should have done.
Twenty years ago every Evangelical church in
Boston should have had a young men's Christian
association in it. What a harvest might have
been reaped for God, and where might correct doctrine have stood to-day, if the Orthodox churches
had earned the gratitude of those young men who
have flocked into this city for the last twenty
years! Those young men, now middle-aged, own
and control one half of Boston to-day. Error will
8                        D




50            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
never be headed off here by preaching and praying alone. When error represents intellect, when
it represents philanthropy, when it represents art
and culture and music, you must fight it with its
own weapons.  Match eloquence with eloquence,
match culture with a higher finish, match its philanthropy with wider plans and a more generous
outlay for human weal.  Indolence can never
overcome activity.  Lethargy can never conquer
wakefulness. Faith can never hold its own against
works.  No creed can be as beautiful as good
deeds. The teaching and the feeding of the multitude must go together.  A  belief without any
adequate expression in acts is like an organ, when
all its pipes are silent and its keys untouched. It
is dumb.  It charms no one.  It attracts no one.
But bring forth the player; let him press the keys,
let the dead air in all the choral columns be started
into vibrations, and how the anthem swells, and
how hearts are lifted on the waves of sound, and
all the thousands applaud, some with their hands,
others with eyes filled with happy tears.  That
which was dumb has spoken, and the multitude
hasten to give it praise.
So it is with a creed. Write it out with whatever
care you can; let it be perfect in its phraseology,
skilful in its definitions, indisputable in its authority, this and nothing more, - and who cares for it?
Does it touch any one's heart? Does it gain adhe



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.  51
rents? No. The world will never again fight
over words as it once did. There will be no more
church councils, like the Council of Trent, to
last twenty years. Men are too busy nowadays
to spend half a lifetime in debating theological
dogmas. But bring forth a man who has a good
creed which he expresses in acts,-let him say,
"I love God with all my heart, and my neighbor
as myself," and let him show it,- and men will
point to him  and say, "A religion which will
make a man act as Mr. A. does is the religion for
me."  And so religion is honored by his conduct,
and his creed gains adherents.
This, then, is what I wish to speak of to you
this evening, —the relation of a creed, or a set
form of belief, to practice; and I hope to show
that a creed is influential, and influential for good
upon the practice.
It is fashionable nowadays to say, " I don't care
what a man thinks, if he only acts rightly."
The better way to put it would be, "I don't care
what a man thinks, if he don't act rightly."  For
a notoriously bad man has little influence in shaping public opinion, and hence he can do comparatively little mischief. But a good man has influence, and hence his every word becomes potential.
There are two classes here in the community at
the present time, both of which are in the wrong.
The one class is composed of those who exalt




52            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
the form of belief; loving and valuing creeds in
themselves considered, disconnected from practice.
They prize the church for the truths it holds, and
not for the work it performs.  Or, rather, they
think that if the church is sound in the faith, if
its doctrinal position is correct, if it holds to the
form of sound words, - it is doing a great work, it
is meeting the demands of the age; and they listen with impatience to any criticism  which may
be made of it.  They are apt to resent any strictures upon their conduct as an impertinent, injudicious, and unwarrantable interference with what
in their eyes is well enough as it is.  Now, my
friends, this position is all wrong. It is essentially
the same position that James in his epistle to the
churches so vigorously inveighed against. It is
elevating faith above works.  It is putting too
much stress upon the form of belief, and too little
upon its practical expressions. It not only divorces faith from works, but it arrays the two - which
by nature are as closely allied as the spring and
stream —against each other, thereby creating an
antagonism  which does not naturally exist.  The
value of a belief is measured by the same law as
the value of a well.  The question is, not how
much it will hold, but how much it will yield; not
solely as to the purity of the water or the amount
of it, but the great point is, How much thirst can
it quench? how many dying ones can it revive and




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   53save?  This is what gives value to a belief; this
is what makes Christianity so precious to man.
The second class who are in error is made up
of those who say, " The belief is of no importance
anyway.  I do not care what a man thinks, if he
only acts rightly."  Well, friends, there is truth in
that, and it is because there are some grains of
truth in it that it is dangerous. The Devil never
sends his sowers out with bags full of pure tareseeds.  He mingles a few dozen tare-seeds in a
bushel of wheat, and so he gets his evil doctrines
scattered and sown broadcast in the public mind,
- scattered, too, by good men who suppose that
they are sowing nothing but God's own truth all
the while.
Now this is the portion of truth in the saying, " I don't care what a man thinks, if he only
acts rightly," —namely, a mere sentiment over
against an act weighs little.  A  man's opinion
may affect only himself, but his acts affect society
at large.  A man may think it right to steal; but
so long as he refrains from stealing, no one suffers
but himself because of his opinion.  A person
may think it right to throw a railroad train off
the track; but so long as he does not do it, the
travelling public is not injured. On the other
hand, a man may be kindly disposed and sympathetic in words and thoughts; but if he gives no
material expression to his charity, who is the bet



54            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
ter for it? The Apostle puts this idea excellently
in this illustration.  It comes down nearer to the
nineteenth-century style of speaking than almost
any passage of Scripture.
"If a brother or sister be naked and destitute
of daily food, and one of you say unto them,' Depart in peace, be you warmed and filled'; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are
needful to the body, what doth it profit?"
So you see, if James was in the right of it, it
is what a man actually does that meets the demands of duty and benefits society.  And so far
they speak truth who say, "It is what a man does,
and not what he believes, that we care for."  But
the'error lies in this, that this form of expression
overlooks one great point, namely, the close connection which exists between believing and doing. It
ignores the fact that back of every act and as its
parent is a thought, and that the child is apt to
be of the same character as the father.  Man is a
thinking and reasoning being.  He acts from convictions, or from impulses which are the result of
previous conviction; and hence it is that his conduct and his views have a very intimate relation
to each other. It will not do to say, "I do not care
what a man thinks," when in fact it is what a nan
thinks that decides how he will act.  Going before and as the cause of every act is a positive
mental decision, and every decision is the result of




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   55
previous education and reflection. To say otherwise is to dethrone man and take the sceptre of
self-sovereignty out bf his hand. I want to make
every young man in this audience feel that it
makes a vast difference with his life and prospects
what opinions he forms and what views he adopts;
and hence it makes a vast difference what instructions and what instructors he has.  I want to
illustrate, on the level of every one's comprehension, that it makes a great difference what a man
thinks, because of the influence which opinion has
upon practice.
Take, for instance, one of your city police, to
test the influence of one's views on his conduct,
and the relation of the two. Suppose that a policeman should get it into his head that he is the
best and most proper judge of guilt before the law.
Suppose that he has a very poor opinion of courts
and judges as agencies to administer law, (and I
am not so sure that he would differ from many of
us if he should.) Suppose he should say to himself, " I know what the law is, - where it is right
and where it is wrong, where it oppresses and
where it protects with a wise and needed protection, and I will administer it myself." He is conscientious in this, as I can conceive a police-officer
might often be, and resolves himself into a judge
and the station-house into a supreme court, and
proceeds to adjudicate on every case that comes




56            MIUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
within his cognizance,- tries one, exonerates another, sends the third to prison, and hangs the
fourth, —takes the entire administration of law
into his own hands;- does it honestly, does it because he feels it to be the best thing for the city.
What would you men say to it?  What would the
law-making and law-interpreting power say to such
conduct?  Say! They would say that such usurpation of undelegated authority strikes at the very
root of all government.  Nor would the justice
of the officer's decision affect the matter at all.
Crime might be the mnore swiftly and surely punished, but the evil of his conduct would remain
the same.  The virtue and efficiency of the man
would tell all the deadlier against free institutions.
A just tyrant is the worst of tyrants.  So you see
that it does make a difference what a man thinks,
if he happens to be on the police force.
Or, again, take a merchant as an illustration.
Let him be a man whose sole ambition is to amass
wealth, who halts at nothing, provided it will bring
him money, and not subject him to imprisonm.ent.
He laughs at honesty; ridicules integrity as an oldfashioned and obsolete idea; cheats and swindles
and steals, only in such a way that the law cannot
get its grip on him.  Take such a man, —  one of
your prosperous villains, - and what is the effect
of his life and practice? In the first place, I ansiwer,
such a man degrades business, and brings a stigma




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   57
npon an otherwise honorable pursuit.  He assists
also to debauch public sentiment, and lower the
tone of public morals.  He gives to commercial
life an ignoble object, and inspires young men,
dazzled with his successful trickery, with a base
ambition.  He sets a bad example to every one of
his clerks, to every young business man in the
city; and thereby does much to make its business character bad, not merely for the present, but
for the future.  A man whose virtue is supported
on one side by the fear of public opinion and by
the terror of the jail on the other, who swindles
honest men by " cornering" some railroad stock,
and withholds from the government a portion of
his taxable income, is a cheat and a public peril.
Such a man, like any other nuisance, ought to be
abolished. So you see that it makes a difference
what a man.believes if he happens to be a merchant.
Or, again, take a judge.  Let him be a man indifferent as to justice, caring only for the salary
and emolument of his office, unbraced by any
nice sense of official obligation, -  such a judge as
some of our cities are cursed with, who sit like an
incubus on the neck of our jurisprudence, strangling and loading it down with the weight of their
iniquitous decisions so heavily that it can barely
keep its feet and stagger along,- a judge who
holds the balance in one hand, while the other is
busy is taking bribes. Take such a judge, I say,
3*




58           MIUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
and tell me if it does. not make a difference what
a man's views are; if it is so small a matter, after
all, what opinion a man holds and what theory of
legal administration he believes in?
Well, society is not composed solely of policemen and merchants and judges, but nearly every
person exerts more or less influence upon it; and
what is true of one is true of all, that what a man
thinks decides in a great measure what a man
does, and so it is of vast importance to the community that every member of it should have proper
views and hold to proper opinions.  By as much as
men are ignorant and prejudiced, by as much as
they have wrong views of government, by so much
will their actions be wrong and their influence hurtful. And in nothing else is this so evident as in
matters of religion; and upon no other thing is it
so essential that the public should be rightly informed as concerning its views of God and those
relations which spring from his control over us.
Now in this city, unfortunately, there exists a
difference of opinion concerning some of the principal truths of revelation. I say that this is unfortunate; for both parties cannot be in the right, and
therefore the influence of the one or the other
class must be hurtful.
You may take the matter of the divinity of
Christ. A majority of the city hold that Christ is
divine, that is, truly God. A minority, on the




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   59
other hand, respectable in point of numbers, and
of considerable influence, hold that Christ was
simply a human being; or rather (for there is great
latitude of opinion among their own members),
that He was a created being, and, being a creature,
less than God. Some hold that He was purely
and simply a man like Socrates or Plato or John
Brown, while others maintain that He was a superior being, an angel, a prince among angels perhaps, but in no sense divine.
I am not to repeat before you to-night the
evidences of Christ's divinity.  I have not the
time, nor does the object I have in view in this
discourse require me to do it. I simply wish to
make the statement, to show the difference of opinion between these two classes, and the difference
that it must make in one's conduct whether a
person thinks that Christ was God in the flesh
or simply a man.
On the one hand, if He was simply a man, then
the entire significance of the New Testament is
changed from what it is if Christ is God; for it
makes a great difference in my mind and yours,
in my life and yours, whether the central figure
which moves through all its history and gives its
dignity to it, is God in human form, or a mere
man, — simply one of the millions of the human
race. When Christ speaks, it makes- and I cannot prevent it-a great difference, in my views of




60            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
Him, whether I regard His words as the utterance
of the Deity Himself, or the expression of an individual opinion; when He says, alluding to God, " I
and my Father are one," I must decide, in order to
know what to thinlk and do, whether it is the caln
statement of conscious divinity, or nothing but the
extravagant and blasphemous assertion of a Galilean peasant; and the influence of the New Testament on my life, in shaping my daily conduct,
is largely decided by what I think of Christ. For,
as all of you will admit, Christ is so intimately
connected with it, He is so much the light and
life of it, that my regard and reverence for it rises
or sinks with my opinion of Him.  He is the colnmn around which all its history, its precepts, its
doctrines, are twined; and with the fall of the
central shaft all the pendent surroundings are
cast in one tangled and disordered mass to the
ground.  If a man, then is the Sermon on the
Mount no more to me  than  the dialogue of
Socrates with his friends in the prison before he
drank the fatal cup, or the speculations of Plato.
If God, then is it the utterance of Heaven itself,
and I regard it as the supreme expression vouchsafed to man for the government of his dispositions and the salvation of his soul.
Or, again, if Christ is God, then is He the fit object of prayer and worship, and my soul can go to
Him as unto the ultimate object of its desires and




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   61adoration.  If only a created being, then is it sin
for me to address Him in prayer and praise; for
we are solemnly forbidden to worship any but God
alone.
My friends, be pleased to observe I am not arguing the matter.  I am  simply stating to you,
impartially, certain facts, and deducing from them
certain conclusions, to which I think all of you
who are intelligent and candid must assent.  And
my point is to show, not what we should believe
of Christ, but that it makes a great difference with
ourselves and others what we do think.  It is not
a matter of little importance, but of the most solemn interest to every one of you, and not alone to
you, but to all those, your children and friends,
upon whom, by example and instruction, you have
influence.  And I hope none of you will ever say,
"O, it don't make much difference what you
think about Christ, if you only act rightly."  For
it does make a vast difference.  First, because we
should think of Him  nothing but what is truth,
neither adding to nor detracting from his dignity.
And, secondly, because our action toward Him depends very much on what we think of Him.
Now, I wish to mention one other point of disagreement in public opinion here, concerning religious matters, in further illustration of my theme.
It is this. There are those who say that, spiritually, men are not by nature very badly off, and




62            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
that when the Bible insists on repentance and
faith as the sole conditions of salvation, the expression is not to be taken literally. As men are
not very bad by nature, they do not need a Saviour,
and little anxiety need be felt about the matter
any way.
Another class maintain that men by nature are
very badly off; so badly that they are lost, that
is, morally alienated from and opposed to God,
through whose favor alone salvation can come.
That a great change is needed, on the part of every
soul, to fit it for heaven; that this change call be
secured by accepting of certain terms published in
the Gospels, and in no other way; and hence a
most urgent duty rests upon every person to examine into the matter and make a positive decision.
Now there, in substance, are the two positions;
there are the two beliefs. Suppose that they are
held in equal sincerity, and observe the influence
of each upon the believer.
This is one of those fortunate methods of investigation where the inquirer can reach a conclusion
as accurate as a mathematical definition.  You all
see, at a glance, what is the legitimate effect of
each of these beliefs upon the mind and heart.
The tendency of the first is to remove all anxiety from the mind concerning one's own spiritual condition, or that of others, and lessen to a
corresponding extent the motive to act.  For no




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   63
one will warn or entreat another, unless he is
persuaded there is peril ahead. And it is the
law, both of self-preservation and solicitude for
others, that the effort put forth is commensurate
with the felt imminence of the danger.
The legitimate result of the other belief upon
the mind is to deepen the impression of danger, provoke investigation, and elicit effort. And
here, too, as the belief is sincerely held and the
awful truth in its fulness apprehended, will the
effort tally with the conviction.  All missionary
effort now being put forth in the world, all personal solicitude felt for friends, is inspired by this
motive,-  to save men from  a threatening peril.
There is not a prayer uttered, there is not a petition sent up to Heaven's throne, there is not an
anxiety felt, there is not a loving endeavor made,
for man's conversion that has not this fear, this
belief, for its parent and source. This, too, is the
origin of that sublime motive which keeps the
gospel ministry full of faithful laborers. Back of
me, ever, as I speak to you, as a vast energy pushing me ever on, and holding me ever up, is the
thought that many of you are in danger of living
and dying unreconciled to God; and that I am set
to warn and persuade you, and bring you penitent
and rejoicing to our common and loving Father's
presence. Do you think that any young man of
capacity - which always carries with it ambition 




64           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
would deny himself the honors, the  possible
wealth, and, what is stronger yet with men, the
keen exhilaration of secular life, and devote himself to teaching men the way of salvation, unless
he felt that men were in danger, -- a danger from
which he might possibly save them?
My friends, it is because I believe that many
of you are in peril that I am here to-night. It
was the conviction that men were morally wrong
by nature, and liable to make an eternal wreck of
themselves, and that I might possibly, by God's
aid, save some of them, that I put my foot on the
dream of my life, and entered a profession which
was by no means my first choice. It is this thought
and hope which hold me to-day in a position
which, left to my own inclination, I would that
any other man filled. I dare to say that many a
young man in the ministry wishes that he was
pastor of a city church, and is planning for the.day
when he shall be. He knows nothing of what he
desires. A city life, as many of you by dire experience know, is a grinding kind of a life. It
grinds the hope and life and vigor out of a man.
It wrinkles the face, and whitens the head, and
puts burdens upon men beyond what flesh and
blood can bear. It taps and exhausts all the reserved forces of one's nature. It destroys all individuality, and makes a man to be no more than
one ant amid countless numbers of its kind. And




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   65
there are few of you here who are under its influence, who feel the cruel and pitiless friction of
its ponderous and ever-revolving pressure settling
with every year more heavily upon you as it revolves, but that long for the quiet and rest, the
healthy toil, the broad scope and free air, of the
country.  And were it not for the duties and responsibilities which bind us here, many of us
would break away and escape forever from what
we feel is slowly but surely killing us.  The duty
which brought and keeps me here is born of this
thought, I say, that many in this city are morally
in a wrong position, and that I must go as a brother, prompted by love, to tell them of their danger.
I fear that many of you in this audience are not
spiritually right and at peace with God; your lives
are not such lives as you might live, and as you
ought to live, and I am here to tell you of it, and
warn you of a danger you do not see. My friends,
there are gales on the ocean, and your ships are
not prepared for storm.  You are blind to the
lightning and deaf to the angry mutterings of the
thunder. The heavens are black over your heads,
and the swell of a coming tempest begins to make
itself felt in your fears, and I charge you to-night
to seek the help of Him who alone can walk the
waters you soon must sail, who alone can break
the bank which rolls up toward you black arnd
heavy with destruction, and scatter it in golden




66            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
mist. There is but one safe pilot on the river of
death: he is Christ. There is but one voice able
to say to the elements which threaten to engulf
you, "Peace, be still!"  It is the voice of Him
who of old rebuked the Galilean surge.  He who
preaches salvation to men who cannot be lost
stultifies his intelligence, and spends his life for
naught.
I have thus from  several directions brought
you down to a common conclusion, and, you all
see and say with me that it does make a vast
difference what a man believes.  It makes a difference with a police-officer, and with the merchant, and with the judge, and. with the preacher;
for it decides what his conduct and teaching shall
be.  Back of all loose practice, and as a parent
of it, you will find, by searching, a loose opinion
What we think is a spur to what we shall do, and
all action is but the result of previous decision.
Were this not true, of what value would education be? What would it matter whether we were
educated rightly or wrongly?  Of what use would
the mind itself be? Why carry so costly a pilot
as reason, if it matters not whether we steer this
way or that?
Here in our midst is a mighty force moving us
as the wind moves the ship, and according to the
direction and force of it are we blown to favor and
fortune or the reverse. We call it public opinion.




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   67
It is mightier than law; for it can take the strongest and best law ever enacted, and make it of no
more account than a piece of parchment, that a
child can tear with its fingers and cast to the
winds.  It is mightier than governments; for it
can level thrones and change constitutions.  It is
mightier than all armies; for it speaks, and at its
word armies melt away, — one returning to his
shop, another to his farm, and another to his merchandise.  Yea, it is mightier than the church itself; for creeds and covenants yield to its touch,
and orders, sacred with the sanction of centuries,
at its command yield their existence and pass forever away.  But what is public opinion, and of
what is its mighty energy composed?  It is made
up, my friend, in part of what you and I think.
There is not a vibration in the air but that can
contribute something to the hurricane,. and make
its rush fiercer and its roar more to be dreaded.
There is not a single beam of all the myriads that
the sun sends out that does not increase our comfort, and make the earth healthier and happier.
And so there is not a thought of our minds, there
is not a'dream of our life, there is not a word of
our lips, which does not enter that vast volume
of power called public opinion, - enter to make
it stronger for good or for evil. It is a question
of public importance, therefore, what you and I
believe.  It affects society and the world at large.




68           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
It affects men's lives here and their destiny hereafter, what we think of the Bible and of Christ,
who in it is called the Lord and Saviour of all.
I wish you to understand, therefore, that, in the
long run, neither your own acts nor the acts of
those whom you influence will be better in character than your thoughts.  If you are mean and
bigoted and envious and spiteful in your thoughts
of men, you will very likely be the same in your
acts toward them. If you are a business-man,
and dishonest in trade, you are educating all your
clerks in dishonesty, and doing all you can to degrade and debauch business in this city, and people it with dishonest tradesmen ten years from
now. You are not only giving a bad character to
the city to-day, but deciding that it shall continue
bad. And now what need I say further? You
came here to be taught and quickened in mind
and heart, and I have done what I might to help
you touching the matter discussed.  The pleasantest thought of my ministry here is, that you who
make up my audience from evening to evening do
not come to sleep, but to think, - that mind and
heart and enterprise have here an audience. I
dare say that some of you do not always agree
with me, and that you who do not are sometimes
in the right; but this does not stir a ripple of fear
as to the result.  For the more men who are striving to grow in the understanding of every duty,




THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE.   69
and to get at the root of things, - the more such
men think and investigate, the nearer will they
come together; for truth is a fixed point, and all
who seek it - no matter how widely they be apart
- must inevitably converge. The people who butt
against each other are those who run about blindfold.
And now, friends, y-ou who are of like theological
opinions with myself, know this, that the great lesson for us to learn is, how to express more of Christian spirit in our acts. We are to let the world, we
are to let this city, see, not what our faith is, nor
what our works are, but how our faith works with
our works, and is to them what the sun is to the
rose, -  the source of its color and fragrance. I am
convinced more and more that it is not by logic
and argument and verbal demonstration that Christ
is to be set forth to the intellect and heart and
conscience of this city. Nor by denunciation and
pharisaical isolation can ignorance be enlightened
and enmity converted to friendship.  We must
raise the level of our lives; we must widen and
deepen the channel of sympathy for man; we
must so act that Christ shall have, as it were, a
second incarnation in our own persons,- or ever
that banner, which is white as an angel's wing,
lifted by universal suffrage here, shall wave unchallenged over all. If evangelical doctrines are
better than other doctrines, then should the lives




70            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
of those who hold them  be better, their charity
wider, their love for man warmer, their zeal greater, and their acts, more than the acts of other men,
like His to whom they claim to have come nearer
in the understanding of His truth.  To this test, I
warn you, evangelical religion must eventually
come for measurement.  In this balance, before its
adherents and opponents, I confess to-night it is
just that it shall be weighed. For the resources of
statement were exhausted centuries ago when Christ
declared, "By their fruits ye shall know them."
Here and with this plummet, then, we at last
touch bottom.  Before such a demonstration of
the value of our belief error could not live.  So
far as it was honest, it would be converted; so
far as it was only cunning and wickedness, it would
be detected and despised. Let that religion which
is the quickest to feed the hungry, to clothe the
naked, to enlighten ignorance, to lift the fallen, to
cheer the hopeless,- and which has the most charity toward its enemies, be the future religion of this
city. Write it over the doors of all your churches
in characters that shall never fade; print it as the
caption of every profession of faith; teach it to
your children; proclaim  it to the winds, and
charge them to bear it to every land, - that hereafter in this city he who loveth man the best is the
truest disciple of Christ, and the best representative
of God.  Let this be our creed; and we invoke this
as the final test, in the years ahead, of our faith.




TO YOUNG MEN.                  71
SEEMON IV.
TO YOUNG MEN.
"I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong,
and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the
wicked one."- 1 JOHN ii. 14.
Tr    HE idea of strength is intimately connected
with youth. Age is the synonyme of weakness,   at least, of diminished vigor. The human
frame with its once hardy flesh and swelling sinews
shrunk and shrivelled, the erectness of its stature
gone, the lustreless eye, the tremulous hand, the
unsteady knees, - these speak of vigor departed, of
motion checked, of beauty fled.  They suggest the
settling of the current, and the ebbing of the vital
powers.
But youth is strong.  Neither weakness nor decay belong to it. It is full of growth and facile
movements.  Observe a grove of trees when in
green, luxuriant prime.  How  lithe and flexile!
With trunk sunk like a firmly set pillar deeply
in earth, braced and fastened by a hundred lateral and far-reaching supports, and with branches
whose beginnings are in its very heart, stretching
wide out on either side, pliant and tough, each
tree, with tossing top and streaming foliage, stands
against the blast tremulous with  delight, and




72            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
laughing defiance at the wind.  What cares such
a tree for the gale? It meets it like a broadchested man, inhaling new life and vigor from its
violence, and tosses its flexile branches against
it in disdain.  How often we have all seen such
trees, and sat and watched them  sway and bend,
stoop and rise, while every leaf stood out straight
as a streaming flag! Such trees type the qualities
and characteristics of youth.
Take a young man inured to toil,- I do not
mean a slim, fragile lad, such as are nestled in
babyhood in the suffocating down of your cities,
but such as were rocked on the hard oaken floor of
the country,- broad in the chest, with shoulders
thick and square. Bare his breast and neck. What
breadth, what fulness I See how the blue veins
cross it, taut with healthy blood! Turn his head,
and observe how with the motion the great ridges
of the well-twisted cords come out. Lift the arm;
move it up and down in the socket, and mark the
play of the tough sinews.  Watch the face with
its broad brow, the keen, lively eyes, the crisp
beard, the wide, squarely set jaw.  Who has ever
looked on such a piece of God's creative power,
and not marvelled? And who of us, with such a
picture in our mind, wonders that the Apostle
should say, " I have written unto you, young men,
because ye are strong"?
Well, this idea of strength, of capacity, suggests




TO YOUNG MEN.                 73
the sequent idea of responsibility. For youth is
not sluggish, nor is its strength unexercised. But
no one puts forth strength, —no one whose life
has a river-like motion to it, —but incurs responsibility.  A life which flows through society,
sweeping all before it, lifting everything up on it,
is something to watch and direct aright.  It is
easy to imagine that John had this in mind when
he wrote this Epistle, and said, "I have written
unto you, young men, because ye are strong," active, and hence responsible.
Perhaps, generally speaking, the thought of his
responsibility is not the uppermost one in a young
man's mind, as he plunges into the bustle and
excitement of an active life.  Fame, wealth, personal appearance, how he can best enjoy himself,
- these and the like are the thoughts which fill
his mind and inspire him with motive power.  He
looks upon the present, with all its richly tinted
clusters of Sensuous pleasure, as free to his hand,
and that he has a perfect right to seize and drain
them  into his cup.  Of the remote influence of
his action, either upon himself or others, he rarely,
if ever, thinks. He forgets, or does not wish to
remember, the effect of his conduct and example
for good or evil upon the community; but such
thoughtlessness, such forgetfulness of moral obligation, is cognizable by justice. God never framed
one law of responsibility for the old and another
4




74            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
for the young; and never are men so responsible,
never are they so worthy or unworthy, never so
royally justified or so fearfully condemned, as
when their brains are the most active, their bodies
the strongest, and the current of their life at its
fullest flood and flow.
N Tow, this idea of responsibility is not calculated
when rightly considered, to fetter and gag a man,
and does not. He who feels it, having conceived of
it rightly, energizes none the less, and laughs none
the less. And I am never more vexed than at the
views hypochondriacal people  have  upon  this
point.  There is too much of this feeling extant,
that the eye of God is on a man just to ascertain
when he can punish.  God is a kind and loving
father, acting on the level of our sonship with
Him  in Christ, and not a keen-eyed, heartless
overseer, standing over us whip in hand, goading
us to unpaid toil, and finding joy in our' looks of
fear and terror. It is a crying shame'that in the
full, mellow light of the Gospel, which has warmed
the earth with a genial and fructifying warmth
these two thousand years, men and women should
be found lashing themselves like mediaeval monks,
and talking  as if penance is piety, and slavish
self-denial discipleship.  Nothing so favors selfrighteousness as the opinion that severe regimen
and mean clothes and pharisaical exactness give
evidence of adoption.  These folks will find, in




TO YOUNG MEN.                 75
the great hour of transition, that it was Christ's
blood, and not their severe morality, their crabbed
and unamiable strictness, that saved them.  I often think that some good people I know will fancy
for a moment, after they have been wafted into
the singing and jubilant throngs, that the upbearing and attendant angels have dropped them  a
little too soon and in the wrong spot, so happy
and cheerful will the faces around them be.  And
what if the harps should have a livelier tone, and
the jubilant hands less solemnity of gesture, than
accorded with their notion of heavenly action on
earth!
No, the love of God toward us, my friends, is
not a kind of severe charity, breaking the bread
of his bounty only to the deserving and to those
whose lives are cut after the strictest regulation
pattern; but a warm, genial sentiment, rather, feeding without question and without rebuke all the
hungry and the faint who will accept of its blessed
provision; yea, casting far and near on the waters
of life that bread which, if once eaten, forbids further hunger forever.
Revelation is not the only fountain out of which
the waters of His healing flow, and in which His
face and form are mirrored.  Nature, in other colors, and from a less palpable negative, prints Him
to the eye. The flowers and grasses, the stars, and
every lovely sight and sweet smell we see or in



76            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
hale, are of Him. In them you see the Divine nature working itself out in all manner of beautiful
colors and forms, - the same nature that gave us
in compassion Christ, and yearns to-night, beyond
the yearning of a dying wife for her absent husband, over ever? erring sinner in this audience or
in the world.
Be it remembered, then, that the responsibility
which a young man incurs by his every word and
act, be it never so grave, is not a feeling to repress
him. The requirements of God are not like so
many withes bound tightly around the limbs, congealing the blood and benumbing the senses.  The
grace of God enlarges every part of a man, as
moisture and warmth do a tree. A Christian not
only grows in the fulfilment of duty, but in the
enjoyment of it as well.  He is not only taught
how to touch one string and call forth one note,
but he sweeps the cords of a harp whose strings
are multitudinous, and whose ever-growing volume
and richness of tone are a daily surprise to him.
His conscience is not only rendered more acute,
but his susceptibilities of enjoyment are more keen
and abundant.  Grace acts on the soul, as water
on a sponge. It puts it into a condition to absorb
and take in more than before it was thus moistened and made yielding.  Hence it is that a man
feels more and better, acts more and better, has
larger hopes and keener joys, is more companion



TO YOUNG  EN.                 77
able, charitable, and generous, as he grows heavenward.  Thus it comes about, in the case of young
men, that God does not seek to check the strong
tides of feeling which throb and swell in'their
veins.  He welcomes them, as the miller hails
with joy the rush and roar of torrents in the hills
above.  The aspirations of youth, the ambition of
early mlanhood, are the very waters with which
he drives the wheels of a thousand activities, and
sets a thousand spindles in motion.  God does
not want stagnation, but movement, impulse, action, the whir of wheels and the whiz of belts, by
the well-directed force of which the woof and web
of His formative providence are growing day by
day.
But while this idea of responsibility should not
repress a man, should not fetter or gag him, it
should quicken him to great caution and care.  It
is with a man as with a horse.  Speed, vigor, fire,
while they enhance his value, call for the exercise
of great watchfulness on the part of the driver.
Blood and spirit are excellent in a horse; but it
needs a taut line, a strong bit, and a steady hand
to guide such. But, in spite of this, who, with
any sense of judgment, any appreciation of noble
qualities, would choose an old, rickety, shambling
hack in preference to a deep-chested, strongly
hipped roadster, that will go swinging along at the
rate of twelve miles to the hour without tiring, -




78            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
or a gay, foxy-looking animal, with the blood of the
desert coursing beneath his velvet hide, and with
a motion so swift and a look so spirited, that as
you watch him  you say with delight, " The old
fable is true, —that horse was born of the wind and
the sunshine." And so it is in the case of young
men. Away with your dull, sluggish, and inert
natures, that are content to doze life away in the
same narrow sphere their fathers filled, and who
bring out in all their living nothing higher or
more noble than a poor repetition of the past I
If there is one thing which Christianity favors
more than all else, it is this,- future improvement
on what has been.  In the Scripture doctrine of
the millennium human effort finds its highest incitement and human progress its amplest vindication. From this doctrine, alike applicable to every
age, as from  an unfailing cruse, the lamps which
have lighted men forward have ever been filled.
The fact that there is to be a state of morals purer
than the world has yet reached, and a state of culture higher than the mind has yet achieved, proves
that we must go on. By this sublime prediction,
man, whether willing or unwilling, is pushed, as
with the hand of a giant, to greater things than he
has yet attained.   The beautiful thing  about
Christianity is that it improves the individual
man.  It elevates the masses through the dissemination of personal virtues. It begins with one




TO YOUNG MEN.               79
man and in one heart, and reforms it, and then
multiplies this one result into thousands by the
same process.  The human race - each contaminated soul in it, made to be the temple of the
Holy Ghost-is to be renovated, as houses are in
an infected city, one by one. Religion means the
cleansing of what now is soiled, the straightening
of what now is crooked, the widening of what is
narrow and cramped.  It means progress, development, invention.  Now every young man should
keep this in mind.  He should forget what is behind, and reach forward to that which is ahead.
The past is dark, sombre, unsatisfactory,- like a
bank of clouds silvery as to its upper edges, and
crossed here and there with lanes of crimson; but,
on the whole, suggestive of cheerless fogs and chilling rain. The future, like a clear azure-tinted sky,
such as a golden sunset gives us after a day of storm,
illuminated from unseen sources, with its enlarged
activities, its ever-widening possibilities, in which
Christ is to stand in the majesty of a universal
and a universally acknowledged sovereignty, is
what should inspire and constrain you. No young
man should be content to be as his father is. We
have never had moral forces enough in the world
to convert the world. That, at least, is certain.
The millennium will never be reached by a reproduction of what has been.  He should be wiser
and better than his father. He should know more




80            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
of God and do more for man.  He should stand
one grade higher, in all that ennobles character,
than any of his name who have gone before him.
Over this road, wide as hope itself, and macadanmized with promises of the Most High, the generations of the future are to march until they
shall come to that city whose maker and builder
is God, whose walls are salvation and whose Gates
are praise.
I know  that occasionally you hear some bemoaning the present, and growling out dissatisfaction with everything modern.  Owlish by nature, they perch themselves above ruins, and croak
their dismal cries over departed greatness.   To
such, the age which has seen more conversions to
Christ than any preceding is the most wicked,
and the fifty years that have  built more schoolhouses and colleges than half as many centuries
before are the years in which wisdom find virtue
have been rapidly declining.  But who cares for
such croakers?  If the owl and the bat can tolerate them, we can.  We know that their predictions are only such as the graves have ever made
to the cradles.   God's providence never halts,
never retires.  Railroads and the telegraph have
not backed us into the Dark Ages.  Free schools
and free Bibles and free governments are not so
many clean victories for the Devil.  As the rods
which Agassiz planted at the foot of the glacier,




TO YOUNG MEN.                 81
and which he found on his return had blossomed,
revealed how far the icy mass had receded, so our
progressive enterprises and institutions, the rods
which God has struck into this age, reveal how
fast and how far the ponderous mass of ignorance
and superstition has melted and is melting away
under the potent influence of the Gospels.
Say, then, young men, knowing that you speak
on the reliable basis of facts, say to all these
shrivelled, mummified specimens of despondency,
"Croak as you please; refuse to see if you will
that the skies are bright and the grasses green;
shut your eyes to the Godlike upward tendencies
in man, which, inspired and strengthened by faith
in Christ, are lifting the race heavenward: yet
never was there an age so rich in the realizations
of that hope which is an anchor, so blessed in the
actual possession of liberty, or so auspicious with
promise touching the future, as this in which you
live and in which you ought to rejoice."
The very earnest repetition by the Apostle of
this same idea emphasizes his solicitude for that
portion of the church included  in the phrase
"young men."  One reason of his anxiety may be
found in the fact that this class is a very important one to the Church.  From  it she draws
her teachers, and though her servants age and die,
the ministry is always full. It is on young men
also that she most relies to push her benevolent
4*                         F




82            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
enterprises among the unregenerate and ungodly,.and to conduct the more active canvassing incidental to seasons of great religious awakening.  A
church without a corps of efficient young men in it
is like a tree without branches, or a ship without
sails. But, on the other hand, let no one suppose
-as some, I fear, do - that this class can meet all
the requirements of a religious organization. The
older are as necessary for the proper administration of affairs as the younger members. To continue the preceding figure, the aged are to the
church and to the younger members themselves
what the trunk is to the branches.  They give to
the organization stability, dignity, strength; and
if the fruit is found upon the outlying branches,
is it not because the parent trunk kindly sends
the vitalizing sap out to them? The fact is, these
two classes should work in loving and helpful conjunction.  Any divorcement in acts or sympathy
is unwarranted and hazardous.  Any organization
in which the two are not joined labors at a vast
disadvantage. Spiritual forces depend in part on
experience and character, and these do not come
to one in a day.  No church, for instance, can
afford to dispense with the prayers of the more
aged of her membership.  There is a certain reach
of thought, a certain profound apprehension of
God's mercy and of human need, which seems to
come only to the weakened and those who feel that




TO YOUNG MEN.                83
they are nigh to their graves. In ancient times
and in certain countries no man could ask a favor
of his monarch until he could show a scar; and
nothing so lifts one up as to hear a battle-scarred
veteran of God plead for favors in the presence of
his king.  Each word goes up as the cry of one
hard pressed before and behind with foes. It is
the voice of one who, feeling that he stands on a
treacherous element, cries, "Help, Lord, or I sink."
Young Christians never get that cry, and never
can, until time, and trouble, and conflict with the
adversary have revealed his mightiness and their
frailty.
There is another thought which aids us to estimate the value of young men to the church, and
reveals why, like John, we should feel solicitous
concerning them.  It is this,  they keep the
church progressive, and thus make it attractive to
the masses, thereby adding to its efficiency. Let
it be remembered that the race has risen in improvement, not as a man is lifted bodily by pulleys, but as one mounts a ladder, step by step, one
round at a time. " Now each generation is such a
round.  The world, in its progress upward, stands
for a moment upon one, and is upheld by it, and
then passes up and puts its weight on the next
above.  By this order of growth, the hope of the
world is ever kept buoyant, its sympathies deep,
and its faith active; for it is perpetually renewing




84            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
its youth. In this law of growth the Church especially shares. She must share in it, or else come to
a dead stand.  Go back to her origin, and recall
her history.  The Church, as organized in Christ,
was not an army of defence, for she had nothing
to defend, but an army of ilv.asion recruited for
the express purpose of attack and capture. Her
banners are not such as float over the walls of a
citadel or an intrenched camp, but, rather, such as,
held in bravely uplifted hands, stream  fluttering
out along the line of battle and above the heads
of charging columns, crowding to death or victory.
This fact it is which reveals why a bold, wideawake, progressive church is so effective in its influence upon the world. Great success does not
surprise such a church. Plans based.upon the
expectation of such  success do not appall it.
It provides accommodation ahead of its present
wants and the wants of the public.  It heightens
and lengthens its dam, that no unused water escape.  It adds wheel to wheel and stone to stone,
that no water lie stagnant in the meadows above;
and even then, not content, still eager, filled with
divine expectation, it looketh continually unto
the hills from  whence cometh its strength for
fresh and fuller outpourings of power-bestowing
grace.  Would that we had more such churches 
I fear that nothing would surprise some of our
churches so much as a revival.  Should the heaven




TO YOUNG MEN.                85
open, and the wind-like Spirit of God come down
upon them in power, it would take, in their astonishment the very breath out of their bodies!
Now, friends, in an earnest, progressive church,
young men always are, and must, from  the very
nature of things, be prominent. Any attempt at
repression against this class on the part of the
office-bearers of the church, any policy or management that shall alienate it, is as if a man should
extract the blood-supplying  elements from  his
food and expect to live.  Such management, such
administration of affairs, whether the managers
realize it or not, no matter how honest the motive,
is simply church suicide.  It speedily becomes a
poor, withered, and fruitless thing. The Church in
her aspirations, in liberality of opinion, in charity
of judgment, in soul and body saving activity,
must be kept in the van of the age.  If you
would direct a stream, you must channel ahead of
it, and not attempt to log up with obstructions its
irresistible flow. The more orthodox a church is,
the more wide-awake and progressive it should
be, - the more ballast, the more sail. The more
stanchly it adheres to essentials, the more liberal it should be in respect to non-essentials. A
church need not fear any amount of lateral swinging and swaying so long as the anchor of its faith
is struck deep into the Rock Christ Jesus.  Heterodoxy has won nearly all her triumphs on side




86            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
issues and by that greatest blunder of Orthodoxy,
-its stand-still-and-do-nothingism. She has filled
her granaries from fields we should have reaped,
and out of the quarries we should have worked
for the Lord she has hewn the material for her
structure.
Now, the value of this young element in the
church is that it will prevent this blunder from
being repeated.  The man who stumbles twice at
the same stone, says the Spanish proverb, is a fool.
The future will not be as the past.  No more
pointing at ships and saying, " See! ours are the
best, the only well-ballasted ships in the harbor."
Reeve in the sails, call your crews aboard, spread
the canvas of every activity, and sail out upon
the broad ocean of opportunity which stretches
away beyond all voyaging of human thought, carrying such blessings to every part that gratitude
shall belt the world with your praise. The future
will do more than repeat the past.  Orthodoxy,
strong as white-oak and pliant as mountain-ash,
shall be so interpreted as to be understood, and
therefore loved, by the masses.  Into the fibrous
and plaited base of her wreath, woven from her
doctrines, leaves many-colored, and flowers not a
few nor lacking fragrance, shall be placed, and her
garland shall be worthy the forehead of that system of salvation which has for its parents both the
justice and the love of God. No longer dogmatic,




TO YOUNG MEN.               87
no longer uncouth, tolerant hereafter toward everything but sin, no longer repellant, she shall adorn
herself with the choicest culture, attracting the
multitudes by her honesty on the one hand and
the grace of her appearance on the other.  No
longer behind the age, filled with the spirit of
progress, she shall light the race cown the ages
with the two orbs of her faith both luminous and
at full glow, —love toward God and equal love
toward all men. And the realization of that high
hope to the Orthodox Church, founded in this
country, through the agency of our fathers, by God
Himself, is to come, more than from  any other
source, through the action of the young men today in the church.
As a further reason to warrant solicitude for
young men, we might mention the intimate relation they must sustain to the future character and
opportunities of the Church.
It is evident that the Church has reached that
point at which her grandest and final triumphs are
to be won.  She stands upon the threshold of a
future ablaze with the illuminations of victory.
Upon the generation now coming into power God
imposes such obligations as no preceding one was
ever honored with. I say honored with, for the
responsibilities which are of God spring from enlarged possibilities of usefulness. The character
of that piety and virtue exhibited by the young




88           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
men of the Church for the next thirty years will
largely decide what its piety shall be for the next
three hundred years.  God has given it to our
hands to sketch the outline of that typical Godliness into which the world is to grow as into the
very stature of Christ.  I pray you, young men,
let that piety in you which is to type the piety of
the future be measured by the utmost demand of
Gospel requirement. Feel as though in your lives
day by day you were laying the foundations of
that temple the cap-stone of which centuries hence
the happy, because redeemed, nations shall come
together and lay with shoutings.  Live so that
from that remote age he who is chosen to express
the thought of the multitude will point his finger
to your graves and say, "The men and women
who sleep there began what we to-day finish, and
gave, through their lives, the first perfect expression of that piety which at last, as our eyes behold, has made the whole earth one."
To this end, gauge the opposition, that you may
be stimulated to the requisite effort. Remember
that your feet stand amid snares and on the edge
of pitfalls.  Remember that low  piety in you
means low  piety wherever your example and
influence extends. Your fall is not disastrous to
you alone. It is equally, perhaps more fatal, to
all whom  your fall discourages and drags down
with you. No life to-day is single or isolated.




TO YOUNG MEN.                 89
Life is manifold and complex. It is intermingled,
woven in and woven out, with other lives.  As
a transverse thread in the woof brings, by its irruption or fracture, looseness and severance to the
entire piece, so the lapse of any man from virtue
entails weakness and loss to the entire social and
moral structure of which he is a part. Be steadfast, therefore, and watch unto prayer.
The Apostle writes unto young men, because,
as he says, they are strong.  But when is a young
man strong?  Is he strong when he is held and
shaken like a very reed in the clutch of some base
appetite?  Is he strong when he is scourged and
driven at the hand of some lust like a slave, and
like a slave submits without shame or resistance?
Is he strong when a low-bred sneer, a stinging
taunt, or a silly banter can sheer him from a noble
purpose?  Is he strong when the breath of a woman expressed in an invitation to taste the winecup can blow his resolution and pledge into the air,
and whirl them, as the wind whirls a feather, out
of sight and thought?  Is he strong when he is
too cowardly to stand by his convictions of loyalty
to Christ and virtue?  No, a thousand times no!
such a young man is' not strong.  If there is any
such young man here to-night, within the sound
of my voice, high or low, rich or poor, let this
judgment come to you.  I cast it at your conscience as men shoot flaming arrows into caverns




90           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
to light up their horrible darkness.  You are
weak, - weak as a cord of flax in the blaze of a
candle, or as last year's reeds on the banks of a
river. John did not write to such as you. He
wrote to young men who were strong, evidenced
by the fact that they had " overcome the WVicked
One."
Now that is a wonderful statement. And yet
it is true in the case of every young man who has
broken away from  Satan and joined himself to
Christ.  Such a person has won a great victory.
He never will know how great it is until from
heaven, with holy and instructed vision, he contemplates the doings of Him who " spoiled principalities and powers, making a boast of them openly."  To overcome Satan is to get the mastery
over one who shook the thrones of heaven with jarring strife, and into this earth brought, even when
weakened by defeat, sin and death. Marvellous
conflict! transcendent triumph! a struggle which
sets us forever free, and closes an unaccountable
rebellion with an unending peace!
But this victory won by man is not of man.
God nerves the arm that deals the blow, else powerless. The dead come forth, but only at the
quickening word.of Christ. This is a great mystery,    how man is free and God supreme, how
we can strike and He do all the cutting.  lut
what is hidden will by and by be plain. The fog




TO YOUNG MEN.                91
will lift, and we shall see what current drifts our
boat. Young birds are always dim of sight until
their wings are plumed for upper air.
But though overcome, still the "wicked one"
does not give up the contest, else a Christian's life
would be fruition and not warfare, and we should
all sit on thrones and not be running in the dust
and heat of the race-course.  The principle of
evil has a sort of ugly immortality. In it lurks
a subtle  and deathless element. Diabolism  is
abused divinity.  So  it comes about that the
Christian is always winning, yet always fighting.
He conquers, and is always attacked; victorious,
yet never at peace.
Now, young men, I take it that this is the case
with us. We did once, each of us, with the Spirit's aid, wrestle so stoutly as to overcome the adversary. Yea, we got him down and had our knee
on his breast and our grip on his throat, and we
bore so hard on him that he lay powerless, and we
thought that the life had gone out of him, and
that we should be no more troubled by him forever. But scarcely had we risen and turned to go
our way, when lo! our adversary stood before us
as desperate, if not as strong, as ever. And so it
is in the experience of all. A man can barely rise
in the morning before he is set upon and must
lock in for a close hug with his stout-backed foe.
And many a bruise and painful fall have we all




92            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
gotten in these rough encounters.  And it behooves us all to make ourselves expert in the
modes of spiritual attack and defence, to " prove
every spirit," and be as wise as wrestlers, who
study how to trip and recover and cast in their
brave frolics.
Now, one thing that all young men need, and
which God expects you to exhibit in this warfare,
is high, undaunted resolution, -or, to put it in
Saxon, grit.
To live uprightly and purely in this age is no
play. A young man who resolves to do it must
put himself, as a fencer does when about to be attacked, on his guard.  He needs an eye like a
swallow's, and a wrist pliant and well nerved, to
parry the thrusts and ward off the passes of his
foe. A mild and dove-like disposition does not
hold a man up to the line of duty at all times.
There are the mild, and there are also the heroic
virtues of Christianity, and both find their proper
moments of expression.  There are times when a
young man must say no, and bring it out like
the snap of a frosty file.  There are times also
when he must say yes, and make it ring like the
blast of a trumpet.  Never did young men need
this quality and temper more than they do to-day;
never were there more opportunities for its exercise.
Old issues are passing away, new ones are rising
into view.  In politics everything is chaotic, and a




TO YOUNG MEN.               93
Christian must pick his way by the exercise of his
own conscience and judgment.  God has given to
this generation the rare privilege of changing its
course without mortification, and its suffrage without inconsistency. He has made the line between
right and wrong, between temperance and drunkenness, broader and clearer than ever before in the
history of the world.  No eye can fail to see it;
and no confusing of issues, no partisan jugglery,
no evasion of duty, can ever wipe it out. At your
feet it is drawn, and there it will continue ineffaceable and well defined, until your position at the
last assize shall be decided by your relation to it.
In social life the same is true. In parlors, and
saloons, and on festive occasions, you will more
than once be challenged by the tempter, and must
needs bear witness for temperance and piety.  At
such supreme moments I entreat you not to flinch.
Avoid rudeness, but never surrender principle.
Never be so deceived by the sweetness of the
draught as to swallow poison.  Harmonize with
no fashionable folly.  Be not moved by sneers,
nor swayed by banter, nor captured by entreaty.
Be true to your highest conceptions of right, to
those views of duty given in the Bible to man, and
to those aspirations for holiness which come to
you in moments of supreme moral elevation.
To conclude, I would say, —and I would say
it personally to each one of you, - if you have




94            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
ever yielded to temptation, ever stifled conviction,
ever acted counter to your sense of right, ever
been influenced by ridicule, ever joined in with
less scrupulous companions, you did a weak, a wicked, and a silly thing.  Never, so long as you draw
breath, so misdemean yourself again. Live, henceforth, so near the Deity, by faith in Christ and
along the line of correct conduct, that, in the
hour of your supremest trial, you shall not only
be justified, but also glorified, in the presence of
God and those most holy angels of His, among
whom  as with fellow-servants you shall thenceforth live and love and adore forever.




BURDEN-BEARING.             95
SERMON V.
BURDEN-BEARING.
"For every man shall bear his own burden." - GALATIANS
vi. 5.
IF you look at the second verse of this chapter,
you will find these words, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ,"
while our text asserts that every man shall bear
his own burden. These two passages, standing in
such juxtaposition and apparently contradictory,
were once inexplicable to me. I found in one a
command to bear another man's burden, and then,
immediately following it, the assertion that every
man should bear his own. How I could bear a
person's burden if he was compelled to bear it
himself, I could not understand. But that experience which years and trials bring to us all has
interpreted these two passages correctly to me, and
harmonized what formerly was discordant. I see
now how it comes about that all of you can aid
me in bearing my burden, and yet how, in spite of
all your well-meant and needed assistance, I must
bear my own burden.
I have not the time to amplify both of these
passages, and thereby show you just where they




96            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
connect, —just where the two statements blend
into one, and give full expression to one and the
same truth. But this, in passing, I will say, that
there are some truths which you cannot express in
a sentence: you cannot condense them into a passage; you cannot bring their legitimate pressure
to bear upon the conscience in a single injunction.
When God, therefore, wishes to express any
great truth,- which is but another way of saying
when he wishes to express Himself, - He is compelled, as it were, to put it in more than one form
of words. Truth is spherical, truth is cone-like,
and the mind must encompass it in order to understand it.  Thus it is with the Scriptures.  In one
passage God gives us one view of a truth, further
on another, and yet further a third; and so, by presenting it to us from many points of view, calling
our attention to this and that side of it, He makes
us at last understand it in its full force and completeness.
Moreover, He uses our experience to advance
our understanding. One day reveals what the day
before was hidden.  There are many things in
God's government over us which we did not comnprehend once, but which we do comprehend now.
There are questions in ethics, there are problems of body and mind, which were once mysterious, but which are now plain.  From the tangled skein of our ignorance and misgiving each




BURDEN-BEARING.              97
day's experience has unravelled some strand. With
some of you the process is nearly completed, and
the mass nearly threaded out.
Now in these two passages the main topic, the
central shaft, is burden-bearing.  This is the truth
which, like a column written all over with hieroglyphs, we are to study.  "Bear ye one another's
burdens."  That is one side of it.  That teaches
us the duty of sympathy, of tenderness, of mutual
helpfulness.  But come round to the side of our
text, "For every man shall bear his own burden,"
and you see the other side, and the letters spell a
different injunction.
Now I wish to show you, this evening, what
burdens every man must bear for himself, and why
and in what manner he is strengthened to bear
them.
This, then, is my first proposition, namely, that
every one must bear the burden of his own sins,
both as concerns this life and the next.
Tile results of sin are strictly individual. It is
with the soul as with the body, with the spirit as
with the flesh. If you thrust a knife into your arm,
it does not affect me. You yourself feel the pain;
you yourself must endure the agony. I may sympathize, I may pity, I may bandage the gash, but
the severed flesh and the lacerated fibres are yours,
and along your nerves nature telegraphs the pain.
So it is with the soul. A man who stabs himself
5                         G




98             MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
with a bad habit, who opens the arteries of his
higher life with the lancet of his passions and
drains them  of the vital fluid, who inserts his
head within the noose of appetite and swings himself off from the pedestal of his self-control, must
endure the suffering, the weakness, and the loss
which are the issue of his insane conduct.
Now  there  is nothing  which  grips one  so
tightly, nothing  which coils itself around  one
with so deadly a compression, as remorse.  When
this feeling gets the fingers of its agony upon
a man's throat, death  itself is a release and a
happy deliverance.  I do not suppose that any of
you can gauge the pressure of this sensation. It is
the law of our nature that we cannot realize what
we have not felt.  Pain is its own interpreter.
There is but one oracle through which agony can
express its thoughts: that oracle is itself. To
know  what remorse is, you must have felt remorse.  The scarred and blasted tree reveals the
hot and withering violence of the lightning, and so
the scathed and shattered soul manifests the ruin
of sin. I said I did not suppose that any of you
could estimate the terrible characterof this sensation, for you have never felt it in its extreme bitterness.  But many, perhaps all of us, have felt it in
part. Recall each of you, then, that period of your
life the memory of which is most painful; that
lapse, that deed, that connivance with evil, that




BURDEN-BEARING.              99
evasion of duty, that hour of evil pressure and of
evil inclination, which most hurt you and others.
Bring back and place clearly before you that dire
experience.  Unbar the gates of your secrecy,
and utter to your own mind and heart that longrepressed confession. What humiliation there is in
that recollection! What a frightful appearance that
lapse has in memory! How it gibbers and shakes
its finger at you, as if it had escaped the bondage
of its cowardly reticence, and become a part of
the world's free and scornful knowledge! I do
not sit in judgment on your conduct.  I pronounce no verdict. This is not an arraignment,
but an illustration.  I only ask you to allow the
remembrance of that day, that hour, that deed,
to assist your imagination to realize what that
remorse must be which follows upon greater lapses
and darker crimes. I do not wonder that men
redden daggers with their own blood, when, looking through the brazen gateway of such a recollection, I behold the lurid fires and glowing pavement which overhang and illuminate with direful light the path beyond.  I wonder most at the
endurance of the human will, which, with agony
here, and no hope in the hereafter, bears up under
the pressure of its self-incurred curse.  Where
can a man with this remorse in his bosom flee-?
Can he escape his own heart?  Can he triumph
over his own thought?  Can he sweep away the




100           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
impending terror of his own forebodings? If he
should take the wings of the morning, and fly to
the uttermost parts of the earth, what would that
avail? If he should mount into heaven, if he
should swoop to the nethermost recess of hell,
neither the light of the firmament, nor the depth
of the bottomless pit itself, could provide him
refuge from the terror of his own consciousness.
My hearers, a man with this remorse of sin in his
heart is the movable centre of a contracting circumference.  The fire of his torment girdles him
about, and over its blazing border he can never
leap.  Wherever he moves, it moves with him.
The evil which kindled feeds it, and the fire of
his suffering will never be quenched. Now, who
can deliver him from his punishment? Can you
or I? Is there a man or woman here equal to this
task? It may be a brother, but can you feel that
brother's remorse? It may be a loved one: can you
bear the agony of her self-conviction? No. That
soul stands alone, like an oak on the plain when
the bolt hangs suspended and about to be launched
above it. The fire will come down, and every leaf
shall be withered. The very trunk shall be rived,
and upon it shall fall the concentrated violence of
the storm. So upon that soul shall the judgment
of Heaven descend, and it must bear the burden
of the Almighty's wrath. The lesson I wish to
teach. is the, individual responsibility of your




BURDEN-BEARING.            101
acts before God. In morals there is no copartnership, no pro rata division of profit and loss.
Each man receives according to the summation of
his own account. By as much as any of you have
done wrong, for that wrong you yourself are responsible. If you have sown to the wind, upon
you alone will fall the pressure of the whirlwind.
If your virtue is weak, if your will is irresolute,
if your appetites are strong, the battle is your
own, and by you must the battle be fought out.
If you have wronged anybody, if you have slighted
anybody, if you have betrayed anybody, if you
have tempted or ruined anybody, - the sin stands
ghastly and ominous at your own door.  Others
may have done as ill, others may have done worse,
but their evil or their well doing is no defence
for you. Each soul is a unit, and virtue is absolute. The oak cannot borrow  a leaf from  the
maple, the fruitful cannot lend to a barren tree.
The solemnity of this thought is beyond expression. When our souls shall stand naked before
God, the heavens will concentrate upon us their
attention. Every heart that is condemned shall
be condemned by itself. The sins that we have
nursed will give their testimony against us, and
wickedness will acquiesce in the justice of its
own condemnation.  In view of that final arbitrament, I ask you all to look within your own
hearts, and ascertain definitely what your con



102           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
dition is. Learn to-night what breezes waft your
ship, what pilot holds the helm, and whither you
are bound.
Enlist imagination in this service. Separate yourself from all your kind, make of the world a solitude, depopulate the globe, and think of yourself
as the only living soul upon which the attention
of Heaven and Hell is fixed to-night.  With all
these innumerable eyes fastened upon you, bearing
the inquisition of the universe, with the scrutiny
of the All-seeing Himself directed like a single
beam  of light upon your soul, tell me, what is
your condition and your hope? Are you prepared
for the hereafter? If to-night its massive gates
should open, and the dark-faced usher summon you
to appear, could you pass beneath its gloomy portal
fearlessly and at peace? Are you ready togo, sincovered as you are, and take your stand before the
great white throne? Would your heart fail and your
limbs falter in that hour of supreme emergency?
Here and now I say to you, wishing to suggest no
fear to supply you with a motive to act, that, if
this subject has not been canvassed, - if this great
problem, - the greatest that ever engaged human
thought, the problem which includes all other problems in it as the whole includes the parts, - if this
has not been solved, you are living neither in accordance with the injunction of revelation nor the
dictates of common prudence. That man or woman,




BURDEN-BEARING.             103
I care not of what faith, of what profession, of
what mode of thought, who does not take the last
element of risk out of the future, acts against the
promptings of ordinary caution.  The man who
does not analyze the possibilities of the future
down to the last drop, in order to extract therefrom some well-ascertained hope, is a marvel of
lethargy and indiscretion. As beings able to think,
challenged to thought by as supreme a motive as
ever quickened intellect, I exhort you to sink the
plummet of your investigation into the depth of
this question to-night.  Touch bottom somewhere.
Reach some kind of a conclusion; and let this
stand as a white day in the calendar of your time,
because, between the rising and going down of the
sun thereof, you ascertained, for the first time in
your life, your moral condition, and fixed by an
unalterable decision the character of your future
destiny.
I have alluded to the individuality of moral responsibility.  I have striven to show  you that
each one must endure his own sufferings, and
abide the result of his own actions, and that in
this no one can share with him.  Not only is this
true in respect to moral responsibility, but it is
equally true in respect to moral growth.
You may place two trees side by side, so that
their branches shall interlace, and the fragrance of
their blossoms intermingle, and yet in their growth




104          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
each is separate. Covered by the same soil, moistened by the same drop, warmed by the same ray,
the roots of either collect and reinforce the trunks
of each, with their respective nourishment. Each
tree grows by a law of its own growth, and the
law of its own effort. The sap of one in its
upward or downward flow cannot desert its own
channels and feed the fibres of the other. So it is
with two Christians.  Planted in the same soil,
drawing their sustenance from the same source,
they, nevertheless, extract it through individual
processes of thought and life. In daily contact and
communion, whether in floral or fruitful states
intermingling, equal in girth and height, equal in
the results of their growth, the spiritualized currents of the one mind cannot become the property
of the other.  They cannot exchange duties. They
cannot exchange hopes. They cannot exchange
rewards, and, when lifted by Divine transplanting
into another soil and clime, the law which governec, which divided, which individualized them
here, will govern, divide, and individualize them
there. No matter how close may be the communion between my soul and other souls; no matter
how intimate and sympathetic may be my relation to you and yours, to me, still it remains true
that whatever growth I have is my own growth;
the hope which cheers me, is my own hope; the
reward which awaits me, if reward shall be mine,




BURDEN-BEARING.             105
will be eternally my own reward.  It is also true
that in struggle, in peril, in temptation, in battle, assist as you may, petition as you may, exhort as you may, the ultimate act, the critical
decision, is of my own will.
Against the future, represented by your weakness and indwelling sin, set your face, then, O
Christian, with a grim and intensely personal sentiment of determination.  Cover yourself with
your own self-sustained and self-advanced shield.
When set upon by anything hostile, seek the
shelter of no' one's back, but look steadfastly
into the eyes and strike boldly out at the person
of your foe. I find nothing in Scripture which
warrants me to seek alliance with others, in order
to escape the necessity of utmost personal endeavor.
Seeking only to know that you are covered with
the whole armor of God, go into battle singlehanded and alone.  Whatever cup God commends
to your lips, whether bitter or sweet, drink it, looking to no one for encouragement.  Draw your inspiration from your own convictions of duty. Live
self-collected; live within yourself. Then, when
the roar of the battle dies out in your ears, and
your spirit stands poised expectant, ready to mount
above the tumult forever, you will be able to say,
leaving it to swell the mighty memories of moral
triumph, "I have fought the good fight, I have
finished the course."
5 *




106          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
This does not seem to be the prevailing view of
Christians living in the churches to-day. Undue
importance, as it appears to me, is attached to
the connection of Christians one with another, and
to the good or bad effect such connection has upon
individual growth. Men seek and depend upon
alliance with others, as if in that alliance they
could find security from evil, and support other
than that which comes through personal watchfulness and effort. They act as if a failure to receive such assistance as they deem proper released
them from obligation, or at least furnished a palliation of their own failure. Young or weakly Christians are apt to fall into this error.  They are
prone to attribute their slow development or nondevelopment to the lethargy of the church, or to
their failure to receive such cordial assistance as
the covenant suggests and they have reason to
expect. I do not say that there is not a certain
modicum of truth in this complaint, which, in one
way or another, so often comes to a pastor's ears.
It is undoubtedly true, that the covenant is not
lived up to in this respect.  Multitudes who connect themselves with the churches do not receive
that fellowship and love which our covenants and
the professed object of church organization lead
one to anticipate; and it behooves us to give due
heed to this complaint, and so act as to make it
impossible.  But when you have granted the ut



BURDEN-BEARING.             107
most that one can rightfully claim in this respect,
when you have acknowledged all that you justly
can concerning it, still you will find that the
complaint is often based upon a misapprehension
of spiritual relations and the causes of spiritual
growth.  This cannot be too deeply impressed on
a convert's mind, that in his own natural powers,
directed and sanctified by the Spirit, he is to find
the source of all his usefulness, his safety, and his
growth. Those processes of thought through which
the Christian's mind passes upward in understanding of God and apprehension of duty are strictly
and absolutely individual. I cannot think for you,
or you for me. We cannot ponder, we cannot
meditate, for one another.  Soul food, like body
food, is assimilated by each man  for himself.
You might as well insist that I could feed you by
what I take into my own system, as that the pabulum which my mental activity secures for my own
growth can minister to you nourishment. Material
wealth can be transferred, property can be willed to
you, and you can be enriched by the result of another's toil; but no one can transfer his thoughtpower to another. You cannot transmit mental capacity on parchment. You cannot reward idleness
with the fruit of consecrated endeavor. In all these
respects religion is intensely personal. Whether
you rear a hovel or a palace, it must stand on
foundations your own hands have hewn and laid,




108           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
and the mortar which cements the structure must
be moistened by the sweat of your own industry.
I wish every young Christian here to-night, yea,
and every old one too, would  bring this truth
home upon his consciousness, that in this respect
he cannot divide responsibility with another. His
church may be lethargic, his pastor may be remiss, he may receive rebuff where he expected
sympathy, and fellowship be only in name, and
yet he is held to the same accountability, he
must be judged by the same standard of duty and
growth. Our graces may be as lifeless as the leaves
of a blasted tree, and yet he is to be perpetually
green. We may fall together, or one by one; yet
over the ruins of our prostrated hopes the turrets
of his citadel are to rise.
The great end of all teaching to-day should be
to make the membership of our churches individually strong. In the realization of that result lies
the hope of the future. The generations to come
are to be generations subject to great temptations.  Like an orchard of young trees planted on
the northern slope of a mountain, our children
will grow up in a morally hazardous exposure. A
nation of cities, where masses of men are crowded
together, -where wealth begets injurious luxury,
and poverty leads to crime, - where travel is a popular custom and a popular necessity, -where nothing is permanent, nothing is settled, - is a country




BURDEN-BEARING.              109
where virtue must be strictly individual; if it is to
survive at all. We must remember that much which
contributed to the assistance of morality in our
fathers' day is no longer with us. The home influence, for instance,  the most potent and beneficent sentiment, - will never again be felt as we
have felt it. Cities, railroads, and emigration make
home impossible.  Your children will not derive
their gravity, virtues, and health from such sources
as were open to you.  Between the young man of
1840 and 1870 is a vast gulf of change, -let us
hope, of progress. The tide ahead runs with whirling swiftness, and the air is full of drifting spray
and patches of froth.  Those who sail the future
must beat their way up in the teeth of the tempest.  Men and women that stand erect under
such pressure as awaits the next generation will
stand because of some other reason than that
they are church-members, or because they are restrained by the fear of public opinion. God alone
knows what public opinion will be forty years
from this.  Such as stand will stand because they
are strong in themselves.  They will stand, as the
granite pillar stands, because it is weighty and
ponderous, and set upon a well-secured pedestal.
I have no faith in a virtue strong only in crutches
and props, which topples over the instant friendly
outside support is withdrawn.  The soul that is
virtuous only becaue of the absence of temptation




110           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
is not virtuous at all; but the soul that looks
enticement steadily in the eye, and frowns it down,
until it slinks away abashed, which has the offer
but refuses the bribe, - to that soul the struggle
and the triumph is divinely strong. His virtue is
not an accident.  It is the result of that heroic
self-control which follows the impartment of the
Spirit.
Who of you here to-night are thus strong?
Whose piety is of that broad-chested sort which
has sufficient lung-room for the healthy inspiration of the whole system? Whose practice in spiritual gymnastics is so well sustained as to keep
every joint supple, every tendon flexile, and every
artery in healthy beat?  Nothing stirs the spirit
of admiration and reverence in me more than to
see a young man of twenty lower himself down to
the weights, clasp the handles, and lift six hundred pounds.  How the creative skill and benevolence of God are brought out by such an exhibition
of physical power! When you see a little man
of one-hundred-and-fifty-pound weight elevate a
mass of iron and lead, every bone perpendicularly
adjusted in its socket, every muscle ridging out,
every little vein flushing with rose-tints the clear,
transparent skin, you realize the statement of
Holy Writ, that man is wonderfully and fearfully
made.
But, friends, there is a soul-power more wonder



BURDEN-BEARING.             11l
ful, more majestic, more divine, than all physical
power.  There is a nobler sight than a welltended, well-developed body. It is the spectacle
of a well-tended, well-developed'spirit.  And
there is no exhibition so beautiful or so magnetic
in its influence under heaven, as that which a soul
presents when it lowers itself to the weight of
some adversity, some dead, inert mass of selfishness, and lifts it; and, with a pressure on it sufficient to crush a weakly one, and cause it to cry
out in pain, stands erect, evenly poised, firmly
planted, Godlike.  I know some men and women
who have lived in the grip of a vice-like pressure
for twenty years, and not a sound has escaped their
lips, not a look revealed to any the burden they
were staggering under.  I know men unto whom
temptation to cheat and lie, and put a price in
money or sensual pleasure upon their virtue, has
come up in confidence, and, like a braggart, challenged them to the test; and they have accepted
the challenge, and without running behind some
other man's back, or the back of the church, or
any other protection, have stripped for a fair fight,
and locked in with it; and, assisted of God, who
never deserted a man yet with such a spirit in him,
have thrown it and dashed the life out of it. Such
Christians never have to fight many battles. Like
Christ Himself, they have their hour in the portico
of the Temple, and their struggle on the moun



112          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
tain's crest, and perchance a night of agony in
some Gethsemane; but their life, on the whole, is
calm, and confident, and full of surpassing peace.
Now I hold such a self-reliant spirit up to-night
as an example for you, - especially for you who are
young, and you, too, who are weak and tempted.
Here is where the heroism of Christian living
comes in. Here is where the triumph and the
victory appear. That man who cannot control his
passions when in full career, who cannot curb his
temper and rein in his appetites, who cannot send
the cloud back into the heavens and scatter it in
golden mist, has never felt the first thrill of kingship.
I wish you all to feel- I wish to feel myselfour personal responsibility in this matter. If any
of you have been doing wrong, you must break
off, and break off, too, by an act of your own will.
Upon you God puts to-night the burden of decision.  I may sympathize, I may warn, I may
entreat, but I cannot decide for you. 0 that I
could! How quickly, then, would I heave you, by
a noble resolution, up to the level of your duty!
How quickly would I lift you from the maze of
doubt and longing and hesitation, and plant your
feet on the firm ground of consecrated endeavor!
But, alas! I cannot. I see you beating about in
the fog, and I can only stand afar off, on the shore,
at the mouth of the harbor, and shout to you the




BURDEN-BEARING.            113
direction: " Ho, men and women! Ho, brothers;
this way, this way!  Steer for the light that
streams from the Cross!"  Ah me! ah me! the
winds and waves beat back my voice, and you, all
heedless of peril, are being buffeted and driven
hither and thither while the precious moments
are passing.
See what determination the world manifests
in  pursuit of carnal things; over what sharp
obstacles men mount to honor and wealth. A
worldly man asks no help from  another. He
plays the game of life boldly, asking no odds.
When he comes to an obstruction, he puts his
shoulder bravely against it, and rolls it aside or
climbs over it. Nay, more, out of the very fragments of previous overthrow he erects a triumph.
Nothing overawes him nor discourages him. He
asks no one to bear his burden. He bears it himself, and finds it to be a source of strength and
power. And shall a Christian shrink from what
a worldling bravely attempts? Shall we unto
whom the heavens minister faint, when those to
whom the gates of power are shut persevere?
M/y brethren, these things ought not so to be.
What is a slip? What is a scar? What is a fall?
They will all testify to the perils you endured and
the heroism  of your perseverance, at the Last
Day. Think not of these. Write on your banner, where, living or dying, your eyes shall behold
H




114          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
them, these words: "He who endureth unto the
end shall be saved."
But, friends, who made it possible for us to bear
our burdens? Who taught us by the wisdom of
His lips? Who, by the example of His life and
death? It was Jesus. He bore His burden when
He cried in the Garden, " If it be possible, let this
cup pass from Me."  No, neither the sympathy of
Heaven nor the power of God delivered Him. He
accepted the destiny of His condition; He set His
lips to the bitter cup, and drained it to the very
dregs. But how canme He, the Innocent One, the
Holy One, to have any burden?? Had He committed sin that He must groan under the judgment? No; His nature was as white as a lily
when it floats on a darkened tide.  The Law of
God had no claim  against Him. He had not
trangressed, He had not violated, the least injunction of the Almighty.  He had wronged no
one; He had slighted no one; He had neglected no
one. How came He, then, to have a burden? and
whose burden was it that He bore? My hearer,
it was your burden and  mine that He bore.
Heaven had claims against us, and He out of love
and compassion undertook to satisfy those claims.
He did satisfy them. It was decreed that He must
leave Heaven for a time, and He left it. It was
decreed that He must take the lot and condition of a mortal, and He took them.  It was de



BURDEN-BEARING.            115
creed that He must die, and the blood of His most
precious life was freely shed on Calvary. All this
was done for us. I mean every one of you, - for
you who accept and for you who reject Him. He
was the only man who ever died for his enemies.
And now, with all that Christ did for you to point
and wing it, I launch this query straight home to
your hearts, What have you done for Him? Have
you loved Him? Have you served Him? Have
you ever even gone and done so much as to express a word of gratitude to Him? Do you feel
any gratitude? Why, a dog is thankful for the
bread you give him, and, faithful unto death to his
benefactor, he will lie down in the mountains by
your side and die. And yet there are some of you
unto whom  that dog might well be taken as a
teacher and an example. The wind will soon come
up from the south balmy and warm, bearing in its
breath suggestions of the orange and the rose, and
every root and fibre will thrill in welcome, and the
dry twigs swell and prepare to unfurl their green
banners, and the buds, unable to restrain themselves longer, will burst into beauty and fragrance.
Shall Nature thus hasten to express her gratitude
to God as the sun comes journeying up from the
tropics, and shall we, over whom that love is ever
at its meridian, raying down its invitation upon us,
quickening us with sweet enticements of growth,
remain silent, unmoved, and thankless? O that




116            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
this coming week might prove a spiritual springtime to your souls! May we be quickened in our
graces, and all the dead things in us start into new
life, and our hearts, warmed into energy, know a
great blossoming of hope and holy impulse, - forerunners of great spiritual fruitage!
But, before I close, a word of cheer, a word of
hope and consolation.
My friends, it is true I know little of your lives,
little of your trials, little of the burdens under
which with varying strength you have walked thus
far. But life has a stern discipline for all, and as
I look into your faces, you seem to me as if each
of you was carrying some weight.  What struggle,
I say to myself, what effort, what manifold phases
of experience, what sighs and groans and agonies
unexpressed, such a vast audience as this must
represent! What lines of recollection, radiating
from this hall, run backward to other days and
scenes! What memories, starting from the past,
throng in upon us here, and hover like a vast cloud
of invisible witnesses over us, until every man beholds the record of his life, written as at the Judgment, in living light above his head. And I think
of that future which awaits us, of the days yet to
be ours, moving in silent and measured procession
out of eternity, and of that day of days, which
shall be the last, and close the calendar of our toil
forever.  Live so as to think of that day with




BURDEN-BEARING.             117
joy.  It is not for me to speculate as to what death
will bring us. I imagine that it will bring us far
more than most of us think. At least this much we
know, it will bring to the weary and the heavyladen rest, and to such as missed the fulfilment
here a renewal of all their hopes. You will meet
with those who journeyed on, being called first, before you, - the brave, the gentle, and the good; and
all that to-night is sweet in hope or dear in expectation, if it be pure and cherished purely, will
come and put its arms around you, and you will
have it with you as yours eternally.  And unto
all this and much beside, yea, unto this vast
temple of life and love, with its magnificent entablatures and majestic spaces, you who enter will
enter through one door, Christ Jesus, our Lord and
our Redeemer.  For unto the city, in which it is
builded, with its many gates, each gate a solid
pearl, none can climb by any other way. For He
is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.




118           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
SERMON VI.
NEARNESS  OF GOD.
"Thou art near, O Lord." - PSALM cxix. 151.
T HE basis of this declaration is the greatness
and'goodness of God. It is an ejaculation
founded on the conviction that in God exist such
powers of observation  and such faculties that
nothing escapes his notice, nothing is beyond his
control.
Nature accepts this declaration of faith. She
willingly testifies to the presence of a First Cause.
In her every form and order of life you find the
suggestion of Creative Power.  Matter is dead,
inert.  In it of itself is no faculty of action.  It
must be acted upon, it must be vitalized, before
the spirit of combination, the impulse of life,
enters into it. To this formula, this creed, every
living substance assents.
The human mind receives the same idea readily.
The imagination uses this conception in many
lovely and reverential ways. The very senses of
the body rejoice at the thought, and are spiritualized by it. In the operation of laws all around
us, which could not of themselves have sprung




NEARNESS OF GOD.            119
into existence, and the ceaseless energy of which
must have been derived from some outside propulsion, the mind recognizes the omnipresence of
the Creator. Inanimate substances in their dumb
processes of growth and change confess to the same
sentiment.  The tree says, God is near me, for I
am by nature senseless and powerless. I amu but
so much dead matter operated upon by forces uncaused by and unknown to me. In my substance,
in root, trunk, or bough, is no power to occasion
such a change as is coming over me. See, it says,
and every leaf and twig speaks, - see the transformation going on among my branches! Behold
the addition every hour makes to my appearance!
And thus the tree rejoices in God's nearness, and
all nature re-echoes the same devout sentiment.
It is of this Divine nearness to man I would
speak to-night.  It is not my purpose to construct
an argument or make a labored analysis. It is
not logical demonstration so much as suggestion
that I have in view this evening. A sermon is
not a boat which an audience can get into and
sail off securely en a pleasant intellectual voyage
of an hour. It is food to satisfy soul-hunger, to
strengthen present weakness, to revive faintness,
to soothe pain as it is now felt, and illuminate
gathering darkness. At least I would that this
should prove so.
My hope is to make some of you realize more




120           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
fully than you do now that God is near you, and
near you in love, and will be all the days of your
coming life.
I would suggest, in the first place, that God is
near us in the hour of human desertion.
The Psalms of David are wonderful in the manifold-expression they give to human feeling on the
one hand, and the Divine nature on the other.
Some of them are to God what lakes are to the
surrounding and overhanging mountains,  a mirror in which we behold Him reflected.  There is
one passage found in the twenty-seventh Psalm, by
which I have been more comforted, and in which
I have seen a more lovely reflection of God, than
in any one passage of the whole Bible. I refer to
the verse where the writer is speaking of his faith
in God's love. He says: "When my father and
my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me
up."  What a picture of God that is  When my
mother forsakes me! How the mind pauses and
shrinks at the suggestion! My mother forsake
me, I say to myself, mother forsake me! NSever!
What  that mother who gave me birth, rejoicing
in the pain which ushered me to life, who gave of
her life to strengthen mine, and woke my infant
mind to thought, who bore with all my wild,
now often-repented disobedience, who toiled and
watched for me, —that mother who sits far off
to-night with her Bible on her knees perhaps, her




NEARNESS OF GOD.            121
wrinkled and shrivelled hands resting on it, her
head streaked with silvery hair, and her lips moving both in thanksgiving and prayer for me now, 
mother forsake me! Never! But, my friends, if
it were possible; if the sweet current of her endless
love could flow back upon itself, and leave me panting upon the sand; if some great sin, some heavy
and swift-smiting crime, smote nme down and left
me bruised and bleeding; and father should come,
and, seeing me, curse one who had dishonored his
name, and pass by; and mother, pausing only a moment to wring her hands and groan, pass on too;
— then the Lord, yea, God who sits in the heavens, who hates sin but loves the sinner infinitely, -
God, coming after father and mother, would stoop
and take me up. Yet this is the God that some
of you will not love, some of you will not serve;
yea, this is the God of the Orthodox churches,
whom some of you say we make a hard, unfeeling
tyrant, rejoicing in the punishment of men.
Human desertion and loneliness of spirit, - who
at one time or another has not passed through such
seasons? who has not shivered under its cloud, and
come dripping and chilled out of the waters of its
despair? Even Christ was deserted, and bore the
agony of the Garden and trial unassisted by friends.
Loneliness is often the result of our own states
and moods or circumstances.  The mind makes its
own solitude, its own despair, and repels human
6




122           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
approach. Who admits the world to the secrecy
of his thoughts? Who permits the crowd to rush
against -and force the fastenings of his soul's reticence, and hear its whispered doubts and fears, its
terrors and its self-accusations? No one. The fool
babbles, but the mouth of the capable is shut.
Half our lives the world knows nothing of, and
would not understand if they did know. Now and
then one like unto ourselves is admitted into the
circle of our inner life, and carries about with him
the knowledge of our experience; but it lies down
and sleeps in the grave when he sleeps. Our very
position, by the force of nature or circumstance, is
often repellant, and the scorn or sympathy of the
world is turned back, as the rain which beats or
the warm air which floats up against the sides of
the house is turned back therefrom when the windows are closed.  We have protection from  the
rain, it is true, but we lose the fragrance of the perfume.
But there are times when this isolation is made
more complete because of surrounding circumstances.  A great sorrow the source of which we
may not tell, a disappointment which we must
conceal, a lapse which we must cover up, a knowledge we must hide, or an appetite which we must
combat, but whose presence we must not declare,
-each or all of these can produce the same result.
Many of you, perhaps, understand the philosophy




NEARNESS OF GOD.              123
of this statement.  You recognize the accuracy of
the  analysis.  You  have stood  the centre of
some black circle, and felt the agony of the allsurrounding pressure, and you know how powerless the world is to help you at such moments;
how all the wires along which the currents of sympathy ordinarily flow are cut or made useless by the
raging of the storm, so that human affection can
send no message of love, no word of guidance or
cheer, - the mother is powerless to help the child,
the wife the husband, or the husband the wife. At
the two extremes, at the height and depth of human feeling, the soul stands alone.  When lifted
upon the crest of some great emotion, or when sunk
in the depth of despair, its isolation is complete, it
is too far above or below the ordinary level of
life to hear or heed its voice.
It seems to be God's will that at the supreme
moments of our lives we should be alone with
Him.  Moses must die unattended, and the Christ
must bear the agony of the Garden when His disciples were heavy with sleep. The great decisions
of our lives are made when alone, and their great
griefs are borne with our heads buried in the pillow.  More than once are we exiled from  the
world.  More than once have we less than an
island for our home, and a loneliness more deep,
more oppressive, than the absence of human faces,
and the limitless reach of water, weighs us down.




124           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
But, friends, we are never in reality alone, never in
reality deserted. On our right hand and on our left
the Invisible walks. When we stand on the summit
of our highest joy, the Ineffable is with us; and
when we lie in the depth and darkness of our despair, the Divine Radiance is there. To the wicked
this thought is a terror, but to the good and those
who would be good it is a joy and consolation. The
foolhath said in his heart, "There is no God!"
and he repeats it, hoping by repetition to believe
the lie; but he never believes it, and he knows it
is a lie. Like a snake in torture, he kills himself
by the poison of his own fangs.  But the good
and those who would be good say each with a
gladness no voice can ever express, "The Lord is
my shepherd; I shall not want." The soul of the
Christian, confirmed in its faith, and strengthened
by the grace of God, breaks into song in dying,
and, like a swan, whose closing note is the sweetest, exclaims, " Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort
me!"  O the joy of His nearness!  0 the glory
of His presence, in the light of which darkness
melts, and that gloom which men so dread brightens into radiance as they pass away!
I remark, in the second place, that God is near
to us in the hour of temptation.
The existence and operation of a divine influence is no more surely taught in the Scripture than
is the presence of an evil influence. The angelic




NEARNESS OF GOD.            125
and demoniacal influence appear side by side along
the whole course of Scripture narrative, as two
clouds appear at times in the heavens, - the one
charged with positive, the other with negative electricity, and darting into each other's bosom, as they
move along, their fiery opposition. From Eden to
Christ, from Genesis to Revelation, the same antagonism of spiritual forces is seen; and to-day we
are subject to the same hostile forces. Experience
demonstrates this. How often we have stood conscious of this pressure from either side! How frequently we have felt that influences opposite in
tendency and character were bringing each its distinct action to bear upon us, and our wills and
feelings were swayed as ships anchored where two
converging currents meet I For days, perhaps for
weeks, we have thus stood, our decision held at
equal poise by opposite motives, or oscillating up
and down as the higher or lower preponderated.
No one who has ever debated a question of
duty, seeking how to avoid it, no one who has ever
had a temptation of any sort, can doubt that in the
moral world are two opposite forces, ever at work,
and at work, too, on him. Even Jesus was not
exempt from this. The established order' of things
was not modified even to accommodate Him. He
was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.
Now no one can order the time and character




126           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
of his temptations.  An oak might as well try
to order the force and direction of the gale that
shall next bear down on it, as for any one of you
to attempt to say what shall be the nature aild
strength of that temptation which to-morrow shall
entice us. That is one of the chief sources of our
weakness.  Now and then, it is true, a great cloud
rolls up from a fixed point, and we know which
way to scud and what sails to take in.  But not
unfrequently the blackness is spread over the entire heavens, and not a flash or single jar warns us
from what quarter the danger is to come.  And
there is not a person here to-night who can tell
whether he will be tempted on this or that side
of his nature to-morrow, or whether the pressure
will be too strong for him or not.
Now there is, as I judge, a very prevalent feeling that, when a man is being tempted, he is deserted of God.  I need not discuss the origin of
this view. I will remark only concerning the effect of it on the tempted person himself, and what
I regard as the true view.
Now the very feeling that the Tempter wishes
to produce in the person's mind at the time of his
being tempted is that he is deserted of God. In
that thought lies half the force of the temptation.
The fallen or falling man is made to feel that the
heavens are black toward him, that God hates
him on account of his sins, that he has fallen too




NEARNESS OF GOD.             127
far ever to recover, and is given over as lost.
Well does Satan know  that from  this thought
will spring a kind of wild recklessness, a desperation of mind, a sort of mad cabcndon to sin in its
license, which will confirm  and harden him  in
every wicked course and practice.
Now, friends, that is not my theology.  I have
no idea that the arm of God is around me save
when I totter, but that the instant I begin to reel
he withdraws it, and leaves me to stand or fall as
it may chance.  Heaven is no idle spectator of
human struggles, and at every crisis of my life invisible hands have girded my loins and strengthened the braces of my shield.  When an army
goes forth to battle, a true leader goes forth with
it; and never did a man go out to do battle for
truth and right, who did not hear, as he advanced,
the chariot of the Almighty rolling up close behind him.  In the supreme moment of his destiny, whether of downfall or triumph, God always
stands by a follower.  When Satan draws nigh a
soul in enmity, God draws nigh in its defence.
When  evil triumphs, beats down your guard,
strikes you to the ground, and stands fiendishly
victorious, a shield is ofttimes suddenly thrust between the soul and his uplifted arm, and the foe
retires baffled and chagrined.  How many such
deliverances some of us can recall! How many
such escapes we have had!




128           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
I do not mean to say that a man may not so
abuse and outrage Divine forbearance as to be irrevocably hardened and given over of God.  Sin
may, undoubtedly, so far produce its logical results, even in this life, as to take the very productive powers of virtue out of the soul. As it is
with a barren and sandy plain from which the
wind has scooped the nourishing soil, so that not
even a tuft of grass relieves the fierce glitter of
the noonday sun, so it is possible that here and
there a man may be living with not a virtue, or
the germ  of a virtue, in his soul.  But such a
being, if such there is, is not a man; he is a monster.  He personifies, not sin, but the result of sin,
yea, of sin long indulged and persisted in.
But, my hearers, such do not form the rule; they
are the exceptions.  Men are not monsters, earth
is not hell, and the full manifestation of the logical
and ultimate result of sin upon character is not
beheld here.  The human soul is like an instrument of music jangled and out of tune.  It needs
retuning.  It needs the master's hand and the master's touch.  The strings are not torn from  the
frame.  The keys are not displaced.  They are not
loosened.  The discord comes from their temporary
condition.  A  fall, a jar, a wrench, has wrought
confusion.  Set them  in order, bring them  up to
the line of the correct note; then sweep them,
and what melody, what power, what liquid sweetness of sound shall come out of them i




NEARNESS OF GOD.           129
Now you let a man fall into this condition, and
what does God do? desert him, leave him, let him
alone, give him up? Why no, that is not Heaven's
way. Why, think what man has cost God, what
He has done for him already.  The best gauge of
man's value is the effort God has put forth in his
behalf. Put Calvary, put all the prophets from
Moses down, put all the efforts of the Holy Ghost,
in one scale, and man in the other; and the balance
gives the Divine estimate of the human soul, yea,
of your soul and mine. Who here thought God
loved him that much? What one dreamed that
His determination to save him amounted to that?
Now when God sees a man or woman struggling
with temptation, sees you about to fall, sees the
wreck and ruin which will result unless He comes
to your rescue, do you think He stands aloof, indifferent and regardless how it shall go with you?
Do you think Christ could have allowed Peter to
sink? Why, the very buoyancy would have gone
out of Christ Himself, if He had coolly withheld
Himself from His disciple's rescue.  There is not
an element of the Divine nature, there is not one
amid the multitude of His mercies, which does not
mean help and support and salvation to you and
me, in the hour of our deepest need. There is a
lily, - He is thoughtful of that. Yet, what is a lily?
Pluck it; fling its leaves into the air; stand and
idly watch them  as the white fragments of its
6*                       I




130           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
parted beauty drift down the wind. What has the
world lost? The air is not less sweet, the earth is
not less fair.  There is a bird, - a little bunch of
tuneful down.  Even in mid flight, in mid song,
it rolls upon its back, and falls fluttering to the
earth.  A drop of blood is on its breast, two ruffled plumes in its broken wing; it gasps once, a
convulsion quivers through its little frame, it closes
its eyes and dies.  You walk on. You forget it.
You wake next morning.  The garden is as full of
song. Your ears miss no note.  Yet God saw and
noted that little bird go down.
Do you think that He who clothes the lily and
sees when it is torn, He who keeps watch over
the birds, and sees when each one falls, has no
care, no thought, no sympathy for your soul and
mine when an evil power comes up to blacken it,
and kill it, yea, take all the fragrance and song
out of it? No! no! Such a being is not my
God. Neither in supplication nor in praise are my
hands lifted to such a being. My friend, I dare to
say that there are black days ahead of me, that the
future will be as the past, and that more than once
I shall stand in great peril and near death; but
there never will come an hour, from this moment
to my dying gasp, whether I live rightly or wrongfully, when God will not stand in love by my side,
when all a father can do will not be done to save
me from danger, and my soul from death.




NEARNESS OF GOD.             131
Furthermore, the nearness of God to us is seen
in the various experiences of our life and growth.
Now it is hard to analyze the sources and causes
of growth. Ask the rose how it grows. Say to it,
" Whence came your sweetness and the royal color
of your leaves?" and the rising volume of its fragrance is your only answer. It cannot say how
much it owes to the sun, how much to the shower,
how much to the cloud, nor whether day or night
brought most of perfume and beauty to it.  So it
is with the soul. You ask one of these aged
Christians here, - that sweetest one of us all, that
one best tinted and ripened for heaven, -- whence
came her purity, her patience, her calm reliance
and that hope of hers which shines in the horizon
of her closing life luminous as the evening star,
when it hangs like a great opal on the western
rim of the heavens, - and can she tell you? No!
Whether God was nearer to her in youth or age,
in joy or grief, in hours of obedience or the uprising of great rebellions, in sickness or health,
strength or weakness, she knoweth not.  She only
knows that she is as she is through the grace of
God.
This thought is full of the plumage of golden
wings, and lifts the heavy-hearted up. You may
grope in darkness or walk in light, but' He unto
whom the light and darkness are one is ever with
you. You may moan or rejoice, but that ear, sen



132           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
sitive to every humanlcry, hears you the same.
You may be standing erect, with the flush of a
great triumph in your eyes, or lying prone in the
dust crushed under a greater defeat; but the Lord
is with you still. The heavens may be warm or
cold, the air filled with sunshine or driving sleet;
you may come like a lamb healthy and white from
play, or crawl to the door soiled with dirt and gore,
and cruelly torn by wolves, but the Shepherd is
ready to admit and welcome you to the fold.
Is there some one in this audience, then, whose
nature is torn and stained? Indeed, who of us
is white and whole? Is there a man or woman
here who has been in the last years of his life like
a sheep among wolves, and who is ready to fly
from danger and pain to the fold of God's love tonight? If so, I bid you come.  Come as I came.
Come just as you are. Wait for nothing, but
come. Do you think that the blood on the fleece,
and the marks of the teeth on the throat ever kept
a sheep from the fold, ever caused it to be turned
away? And do you imagine that the failures of
your past, the ghastly secrets of your life, the
scars of your sinfulness, the taint of your inward
defilement, will cause Christ to turn you away?
My friend, never believe it.
Answer me this, Did a mother ever send a child
away because it was hungry? Did a father ever
disown a boy because he was sick and in pain?




NEARNESS OF GOD.             133
And did God ever refuse to pardon a sinner because he was sinful? What does your heart say?
What does the Bible say?  SayI It says that
God "would not that any should perish; but
that all might come to the knowledge of the
truth and live."
O the power of that blood shed on Calvary!
Who can estimate it? Is there any scarlet so deep
that it will not wash it white as snow? Is the
crimson of any guilt so red that, touched by it, the
crimson shall not be white as wool?  Ask the
thief how he came to be in heaven, and he will
say, "The blood admitted me here." Ask Paul if
it was his labor, his self-denial for the truth's
sake, his unflinching constancy, or his heroic virtues, which gained him the crown he wears and
the fadeless wreath? And he will exclaim, " No,
brother, no! it was not my constancy, nor my selfdenial, nor my labors and sufferings; the blood
alone gained me all this."  That was the equivalent which satisfied Divine justice, and gave to
mercy the opportunity of exercise.  And how will
any of us gain that entrance to heaven for which
we hope?  By our prayers, think you? by our
works? by any worth or worthiness in us?  I
warn you not to believe it. On the merits of the
blood, if at all, we shall stand acquitted before
God.
But some say that there is no need of the.bjood.




134           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
My friends, does the soiled garment need the
soap? does the withered and dying grass need
rain? does the earth need the sun? does guilt
need pardon?  Then do you and I, and every soul
that has acted out its nature in sinfulness, need the
atoning, reconciling blood of the Saviour. Why,
look at your past.  I speak to you who have been
tossed about on the wild waves of life, who have
been lifted and cast down, who have suffered and
sinned.  So far as the world knows, so far as the
world judges, it is an easy, innocent, and comfortable
past.  But in the light of Heaven, in the light of
our consciences, in the light of our own knowledge,
it is a grim and ghastly past, -  a past we dare not
show, we dare not face. Who here would live over
his past, do over all his old deeds, think over his
old thoughts, go through with all his old experiences?  Not one.  Prepared or unprepared, you
say, fit or unfit, the grave is welcome. One life is
enough such as I have lived. I have no heart to
repeat it. If there is such a thing as purity, if
there is such a thing as holiness, if there is such
a place as heaven, - their source, their home,
their eternal residence, -then must I find a saviour outside and above myself.  This is the conviction of every heart that has intelligently measured itself by the Bible. standard. If you would
know how near God draws to you to-day, behold
that.JH  does it, in the blood of His Son, in the




NEARNESS OF GOD.             135
privileges of this consecrated hour, in the best impulses of your hearts, in the fears of the past we
can never wholly escape, in the hopes of that
future toward which in thought we fly, as a bird,
tired and heavy-laden, with set wings and a glad
cry, swoops down to her nest.
I have spoken to you of the nearness of God as
a fact in our daily life, but what makes that nearness of none effect? what hand is it that cuts the
golden wires along which God telegraphs his messages of love? what is it in our atmosphere which
blurs and distorts his face until it becomes a fearful visage to our eyes and full of dread? It is sin;
not sin in the abstract, as a principle, but sin as
committed, sin as indulged.  No man hates you
so much, no man shrinks from looking you in the
eye so much, as he who has ill treated you. Let a
man hate you whom you have injured, and there is
an end to his enmity.  Peparation frank and full
puts an end to his hard feeling toward you, and relays the foundation of prostrated fiiendship.  But
let a man hate you without cause, save such as
his envy, or spite, or bigotry, or vanity supplies,
and his hate is endless.  The worst enemy you
can have is the man who should be your best
friend; that man's enmity is devilish.  Between
that person and you is a great gulf which his own
conduct and feeling have digged; and no generosity,
no frankness, no honorable treatment, on your part




136          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
can bridge it. Well, so it is with us in our wickedness toward God. Sin separates us from Hilm;
sin converts all His love into a source of terror;
sin makes the thought of His nearness a dread.
By so much as you do wickedly, by so much does
God become a being to flee from and avoid; sin
takes all the courage out of a man and makes him
cowardly. How many have died in agony from
this cause! Ay, men robust and brawny, who
could look along the glistening barrel into their
antagonist's eyes at twelve paces and not flinch,
have cried out and screamed, and made the chalmbers they died in ring with their screams and
terror. Why? Why did they shrink from  the
approaching darkness? Why did their boasting
depart and their hearts sink within them as they
saw God, whom they had disobeyed and scoffed at
and defied, drawing near to them? — why? Because they had disobeyed and scoffed at and defied Him. That is why they were frightened and
dreaded to enter His presence.  That is the whole
philosophy of it. If any of you desire to die easily,
live rightly, as the Spirit directs; do this, and you
will go to your grave as a man weary with honest
toil goes to his couch at night, glad that the day at
last is ended, and the time for sleep and pleasant
dreams has come.
Sin not only separates us from God, but from
our fellow-men also. There is something delightful




NEARNESS OF GOD.             137
in human fellowship.  It is sweet for heart to commune with kindred heart. It is sweet to share our
joys and divide our sorrows with those we love;
sweet is it to feel that you are known and know;
sweet the interchange of thought and sympathy,
the mingling of common hopes, the division of
burdens and cares. But sin shuts the mouth and
closes the heart.  It breaks the circuit and interrupts the current.  Guilt makes us dumib. Our
words by day, our dreams by night, become so
many avenues of terror.  It divides love from
love, and thereby chokes up the very springs of
comfort and help. Sin is loneliness. Sin is seclusion. Even fellowship in guilt loosens not the gag.
He who goes over Niagara cannot take his friends
with him.
Am I correct in this? Is this mere word-painting, or accurate analysis? Frightfully accurate 1
But, friends, we cannot always conceal our guiltiness; we cannot forever keep our dungeon.  The
jealously guarded key will at last be snatched from
our hand, the doors of our secrecy burst open, and
all the hidden things will come trooping out and
stand revealed to God and man. What will that
shame, what will that exposure be! Mark you,
I am not appealing to fear.  I seek to spring no
trap of conviction upon you.  This is statement,
not exhortation. This is intellectual analysis,- an
attempt to get at the core of the matter, to cata



138           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
logue and set in array before you the elements and
material for future reflection.  This is all.  Still
it is wise to anticipate the future, and, my friend,
when the hour of exposure shall come, as it surely
will, how will you stand? When all that is in your
character shall be revealed, all that you have
covered with evasion be dragged forth, all you
have veiled be brought under the focus of that last
unavoidable investigation, what will be the result?
My hearer, you and I may differ on other things,
but we, knowing ourselves, know this, - that if you
and I are not covered, are not protected in that
hour by the mercy of God, we shall stand utterly
hopeless, - universally abhorred, and universally.condemned.  That is our only hope.  Should that
fail us —   I check myself; I have no heart to
describe that awful contingency.  Some steadier
hand than mine must draw the dark perspective
which stretches with ever-thickening blackness
into eternity.
Here, then, I pause.  Into the life which awaits
you on the morrow, - if morrow shall be to us, —
I dismiss you.  Its loneliness, its temptations, its
trials, await you at the door.  Amid whatever of
solitude, amid temptations numberless, amid trials
not a few, remember that God is near you.  The
stars are distant, but God is this side the stars.
The heavens are remote, but He who rules them
from centre to their outermost circumference walks




NEARNESS OF GOD.            139
on your right hand and on your left. Sleeping or
waking, laughing or weepn     ing, com ing in or ging
out, the Lord is ever with you. This never forget.
On some future day, even that which shall know
no night, with a vaster multitude, within a larger
temple, by the mercy of God, we may perchance
be permitted to meet. Until which time, living
ever in hope born of His love, I pray peace be
with you, even that peace which the wicked
cannot understand, and which passeth not away.
Amen.




140           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
SERMON VII.
DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.
" A friend of publicans and sinners." - LUKE vii. 34.
T  HERE are many pleasant relations which men
sustain to each other in this world.  Human
lives meet and mingle, and are interwoven like
threads in a texture of glossy richness and manifold colors, and never does human nature appear
to better advantage than when seen in the light of
its relations and connections.  No one thread, no
matter of what richness of color, can rival the
magnificence of the entire robe.
There, for instance, is the relation between parent and child, and it is regarded the world over
with respect and reverence. There, too, is the relation of husband and wife, and when represented
by harmony of taste and temperament between
the two, you might not find a lovelier exhibition.
The relations which exist between brothers and
sisters, between the government and the citizen,
between the church and its members,- all these
are pleasant to contemplate, and are productive of
happiness and profit to man.
But there is one other relation man can sustain




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.             141
to man, which, as a spontaneous and self-created
impulse of one soul for another soul, as an evidence of mutual likes and aspirations, and as a
proof, in its higher exhibitions of itself, of constancy and unselfish benevolence, is inferior to no
other. I refer to the relation which exists between
all true friends,- honest, sincere friendship.
In the relation of parent and child, authority on
the one hand and obedience on the other occupy
the foreground.  In man's relation to the government, material interests may preponderate.  Love
is by nature selfish in its appropriation of its object,-flowing with  a swifter and rougher tide.
But in friendship, neither authority nor obedience,
neither material considerations nor feverish excitement, enter as an inciting cause or result.  It
flows from source to termination with a deep, even,
and ever-widening current,-  a safe, a lovely, and
a fruitful stream.  No wrecks line its shores; no
waves of passion beat mercilessly upon its beach;
no corses float along its current.  Society owes to
its humanizing influence more than it can ever
express, and God regards it with pleasure and
complacency.
Now this is the relation which Christ is said to
sustain to mankind in our text.  In the Bible he
is presented to us in many aspects, - as a Judge,
a Saviour, a Councillor; as a Brother, Prophet,
Priest and King,- but in this passage he stands
forth in the light and garb of a Friend.




142          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
Christ as the Friend of man is, therefore, the
theme of this discourse.
I do not intend to analyze friendship, and enumerate its elements. I will only suggest one or
two of the more prominent.  The first of which
is Constancy.
A true friend is constant. Circumstances may
change and many desert, but he remains the same.
You yourself may change.  Sickness may sap
your powers, misfortune make you its sport, and
reduce you to despair. You may be corroded with
the rust of the world, but no lapse on your part
can divert his sympathy. Let but a cry escape
your lips, and he will be at your side. Let a blow
be aimed at you, and his will be the hand to throw
it up. When other voices clamor to your discredit, his will stem  the torrent of abuse, and
throw the weight of his reputation and advocacy
into the scale of your defence.
Now all this and much more can be said of
Christ in His feelings toward every one of you
here to-night. I say every one. I do not wish
you to understand that Christ is a friend to the
good and pure alone, if such there be here; nor
to those who are correct in their deportment,whose virtue walks into men's acknowledgment
unquestioned.  No; I launch the friendship of
Christ out among you to-night as men launch a
life-boat among a struggling mass of drowning




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.          143
men, and there is not a hand beating the briny
water, swarth or white, that may not seize it, and
there is not a sinking soul in this audience that
may not appropriate the friendship of the Lord.
Now I suppose some of you have failed. Indeed, we have all failed! But I suppose that some
of us have failed more than others. We have
been tempted by others, and we have tempted ourselves. We have been pierced by arrows shot at
us from a distance, and we have taken knives and
opened our own veins. We have fought enemies
without, and we have had a greater enemy within,
and more than once have we been tempted to say:
" It is of no use for me to try to be good. The more
I try, the more I fail. I have forfeited my self-respect and God's love long ago. I will give it up."
My friend and brother, don't you give it up.
While the Friend of publicans and sinners sits
on the judgment-seat, you have no right to despair.
Do not be discouraged.  His friendship for you is
the same - as fresh, as sincere, as strong - to-night
as it ever was. Your despondency is cowardly and
wicked, and from the Devil.  There is not another
arrow in his full quiver with which the Adversary
pierces so many souls to their death as despair.
When a man desponds of being better, when a
woman feels that the path to the throne is so steep
that she never can climb it, then, if funeral-bells
were ever tolled in heaven, might they swing their




144          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
heaviest dirge. Such despair is utterly groundless,
and the Tempter, even as he urges it home upon
you, knows it. Doubt father and mother, doubt
husband and wife, but never doubt the friendship
of the Lord Jesus Christ for your soul. In the
still watches of the night, when memory, remorsefully busy, will not let you sleep, out of the darkness shape a celestial figure, and say to it, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom ";
and in response, breaking the dreadful silence and
the spell of your despair, shall sound the words, "Lo,
I am with you alway even unto the end of the world."
When your soul wanders in darkness, which its
own evil thoughts and deeds have spread over it;
when you revolt at confession, and imprison yourself in your own secrecy, go and tell Him of all
your struggles and agonies, your failures and crimes,
and thus roll the burden off at the foot of the
cross. Why at the foot of the cross? Because
there it was that His blood fell, - the blood which
came from  His hands and head and feet, and
gushed from His spear-riven side, when He in His
own person bore the penalty of human sin, and
made atonement to the transgressed law,   the
blood which cleanseth whiter than fuller's soap,
and, washed in which, your sins and mine, though
they be as crimson, shall become as wool.
This constancy and impartiality of Christ's friendship are what make Jesus such a Saviour as He




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.           145
is. This is what makes Him, the world over, and in
all ages, so near and clear to His followers; and this,
too, it is, which lifts the Gospel plan of the atonement above all philosophies and codes of ethics.
If He was a friend only to the good, or to us
only in so far as we are good, what sort of a Saviour would He be? What application would the
Gospels have to the race as a race? Philosophy
does very well to amuse, and perchance profit the
learned.  Ethics supply the virtuous with needed
and salutary rules of life. But what will you do
with those who are neither good nor learned?
What would the religion of Horticultural Hall
do for the low and vicious, - for the ignorant by
reason of neglect, and for the ignorant by reason of
circumstance, — for the heathen, and those of us
who feel that, if God is just and decides on the
merits of a case, we stand guilty and condemned
before Him to-night? Is there not a craving, my
hearer, in your heart and mine, for a personal Saviour, a living, breathing, ever-constant friend; beside whom rules, maxims, and speculations are no
more than dry and scentless rose-leaves are to our
nostrils.
Now  every life has its different moods and
ranges of thought and phases of experience.  We
do not live on one dead level from cradle to grave;
no, nor on the same level any one day through.
It is marvellous what sharp changes, what sudden
7                         J




146           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
fluctuations, there may be in our experiences between the morning and evening of the same day.
I have often thought that, in the character and
changes of his life, man is as the sky, now all
aflame with the uprising glory of some sun-like
impulse, and anon black with clouds and full of
tempestuous violence. And what we need is a
Saviour who will be a Saviour to us at all times,
and in every mood and temper. The friendship
we need is a friendship which will be the same in
its helpful and saving relations to us, whether we
kneel at the altar or stand white and haggard on
the scaffold's edge.
This brings us to the second element we were to
mention, namely, Sympathy.
Of all helps given of God none is sweeter, more
consoling, more strengthening, at times, than sympathy.  There are seasons in life when it is to
the soul what dew is to a, parched and drooping
flower.  But sympathy is not open to all.  It has
limitations in its nature and exercise. In order to
sympathize with a person you must possess the
power to understand and appreciate the moods and
thoughts of that person. A coarse nature cannot
interpret the trials and experiences of a refined
one. A practical mind cannot sympathize with an
imaginative one. There are ranges of feeling peculiarly individual, at least peculiar to a class of
individuals; and the hopes, yearnings, and trials




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.            147
which one heart may feel may be utterly unintelligible to another.  Take birds as an illustration.
They feed on different kinds of food: what one
eats another rejects; what one recognizes as containing the elements its structure demands the
other turns from  as not belonging to its order of
diet. Each has its own peculiar method of eating
also.  One will eat sitting on the limb of a tree,
another floating on the surface of the water; while
a third eats on the wing, searching the air for food,
darting and wheeling this way and that, making
the necessity of its lower organization minister to
the exercise and amusement of its higher.  So is
it with men.  There are many species in one intellectual and moral genus.  The moral nature of
one feeds on this, another on that.  One class
of minds gets growth and strength from  what
another class rejects as injurious. Thoughts and
yearnings which are the daily food of one soul are
fanciful, vain, and utterly incomprehensible to
another.
Owing to this diversity of taste in people, it is
not always possible to extend a healthful and
grateful sympathy to one needing it.  For you
do not understand, and therefore cannot appreciate, the weakness, temperament, and trials of the
person distressed.  How often we encounter such
cases! Their humors baffle us, their sayings bewilder us; we doubt the reality of their experi



148          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
ences, and deem their words flighty.  But let this
power to understand and appreciate your words
and feelings be given one, - one whom when you
meet him you instinctively know and feel understands you; to whom  your words are not vague
and senseless ramblings of mind; who can catch at
your thought as a quick-witted person catches at a
hint; who can put himself at your stand-point,
and look at your life and troubles for a moment
through  your eyes; who, without having felt
them, understands your feelings; who appreciates
your errors and your virtues, sees your weak
points and your strong ones; who is able to interpret yourself to yourself, and thus add to your
inward knowledge; -such a person, and such a
person alone, is able fully to sympathize with you.
He understands you, and his knowledge is the
medium through which he imparts his sympathy.
Others may stand silent and powerless in the presence of your sorrow, but he is able to say the
needed and comforting word. Others may misjudge you, but he is guided to the right conclusion
by his sure analysis. His presence is a source of
strength and moral inspiration to you. Around
him  the wings of your better life escape the
vacuum, and find an  atmosphere which  they
can beat, and on which they can rise.
I cannot but think that it was this faculty to
understand and appreciate the nature and need of




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.          149
every human heart, finding infinite expression in
Him, which so strongly and tenderly drew people
toward Christ. He could sympathize with the
publican because he saw in their true light the adverse social surroundings of the man, and the terrible strength of his temptations. Everybody seems
to have been drawn to Christ.  He magnetized
people with the magnetism of His goodness. His
character in its tenderness and completeness was
a revelation. He was such to the fallen woman
whom he saved from death at the hands of a
brutal mob, and sent with tender exhortation from
his presence. She had doubtless seen many good
men, but never such a man as Christ.  She had
wickedly studied human nature on many sides, the
better to practise her arts, perhaps; but here was
a new revelation, and a phase of mercy she had
never beheld. Over her swept the wave of a new
and holy influence as He spoke to her. She felt
for the first time that she was in the presence of
One who knew her as she really was.
The very children loved Jesus. How could they
help it? Do you think a perfect flower can command admiration, and the perfect Man of all the
ages go unnoticed? Throngs followed Him whereever He went across the country, listening eagerly
to His every word, and passing it from lip to lip.
What a- pity every word, every syllable, that He
uttered could not have been reported and pre



150          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
served! What a pity that this sole, this unique
Man of all the generations of men could not have
been presented to us in His every phase of speech,
His every shade of thought! We only know that
in Him was a wonderful charm, an inexpressible
attractiveness. The Pharisees, it is true, hated
Him; but they hated Him because they felt that
He knew them, that IIe saw clearly through their
hypocrisy and their cant.
Now I wish you all to feel, and to feel it in every
drop of your blood to-night, that Christ as your
friend sympathizes with you at all times and in
all the moral conditions of your nature. Do not
think that He sympathizes with you and loves
you when in your best moods only; for if you
should you would wrong Him bitterly. A bird is
no more surely noted by the Father of all when,
glancing upward through the morning light, he
pours his liquid notes upon the fragrant air, than
when, stricken by cruelty or evil chance, he lies
fluttering, a bunch of ruffled and bloody plumage, upon the dewy lawn.  And so it is with us,
good friends.  Our souls are not known and noted
of God the most when, light and tuneful, they are
lifted in ecstasy upward; but equally watched and
as tenderly loved are we, when, stricken in hope,
and soiled in spirit, we lie groaning and stunned,
our purposes broken, our virtue stained, our future
dark and forbidding.




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.            151
Why, think of it i Do we love our loved ones
only when they are strong and healthy and prosperous?  Or is there something in weakness and
sickness and adversity which draws from  us a
fuller and deeper tide of feeling toward  those
who are dependent on us?  Say, mothers, do you
love your children less when they are sick? Do
you, father, yearn over your boy less when he is
rebellious?  I  know  your answer.   There  is
something in love which survives all changes of
condition, which keeps its growth long after the
gray veil that no mortal hand may lift has fallen
over the face of the wearied sleeper.  But do you
think that you can show a higher type of character
than Christ? Are our hearts warmer, is our love
truer, is our friendship more enduring, than the
heart and love and friendship of the Lord Jesus?
WTho can say it?  Who can think it?
But the peculiarity which most distinguishes
friendship, and makes a friend so near and dear
to us, is that it inspires one with the spirit of
helpfulness.  A friend means aid in time of need.
In assistance cordially rendered he gives his feelings their proper expression. So essential and
inherent is this sentiment to the very idea of
friendship that you cannot conceive of the two
being separated.  You might as well attempt to
conceive of day without light, or a stream without
a current, as to try to picture friendship unin



152          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
spired with such a motive. A person who would
stand and lift no hand to your assistance- when
assistance was needed would forfeit in. every
one's estimation the title of friend. Not only at
the moments of extreme necessity and peril, but
also in the round of every-day life and experience, a friend serves you to the utmost of his
power.  When your ability is underrated, when
your integrity is called in question, when your
actions are misunderstood, and your words ignorantly or maliciously perverted, the voice and testimony of friendship are lifted in your defence..
No person in business and professional life ever
knows how many unselfishly and nobly are thus
doing him service.  No man knows how much
the success of his life is owing to the strong current of approval started and continued in his favor by the unknown but efficient advocacy of
his friends. Now and then it is given to one to
ascertain the names and service of these friends;
and many of you can bear witness that the names
of those who spoke strong and brave words for
you when strong and brave words were needed
are never forgotten.
But, my hearers, it is unto Christ that you must
look if you would see this the strongest and
noblest element of friendship brought out in the
clearest light. The friendship of Christ means assistance in the highest sense. He helps you by




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.          153
His guidance and consolation on earth, and He
will help you by His powerful advocacy when you
stand before God in heaven. I trust none of us
have lived altogether in vain; that our lives have
not been altogether wrong, and that many on
earth, and not a few in heaven, have cause to
bless us. But we have also wrought wickedness
at times.  Our own consciences, imperfectly educated as they are, accuse us of sin; and what we
need, what every one of you need, is a divine, a
constant, sympathetic, and capable friend to plead
our cause for us at the bar of God. If any atonement has been made to the transgressed law, if
any equivalent to deserved penalty has been offered to Divine justice, whereby the condemnation
can be lifted from my soul, then do I beseech that
through the friendly offices of Christ it may be
set to my account. I trust my case, otherwise
hopeless, to the hands of the great Advocate, and
have hope that His merits may make good my illdesert.
I ask you to note the class and moral character
of the people to whom Christ was a friend. The
text says that He was a friend of "publicans and
sinners," - that is, of those who are morally all
wrong; whose very name and office had become
a byword and synonyme of wickedness and evil
thinking and evil doing. The Saviour I preach,
as moved by the spirit of sincerity, and I trust of
7*




154           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
enlightened understanding, is a Saviour of men
and women who are morally all out of the way.
It is to you whose lives have been as it were a
failure, whose natures, spiritually considered, are
all in ruins, that Jesus comes in the spirit of
friendly assistance to-night. You stand, it may
be, amid broken purposes and overthrown resolutions and shivered hopes, and Christ, the great
builder up of prostrated virtue, comes to your
souls this evening, and, looking upon the ruin and
waste which sin has caused, upon crushed hopes
and buried expectations, says to you," Come, let us
clear away this rubbish, and, working in harmony,
your will with mine, side by side, we will raise
out of these fragments a structure of which the
heavens shall not be ashamed."  It is astonishing
how far a little human material will go in such an
undertaking under the supervision of Christ.
This is the spirit which pre-eminently characterizes Christianity.  It is to the Gospel plan of
salvation what the odor is to the flower, - the most
subtile and exquisite expression of it. The very
chiefest reason why Christianity has a right to
claim  your adherence is because she comes to you
as a friend and assistant.  She goes up to a man
and says to him, " Here, you are having a hard
time of it; let me help you." If he is blind, she
says, "Give me your hand, I will lead and guide
you."  If disappointed, chafed, and despondent,




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP,           155
she cries out cheerily to him, " Cheer up, friend,
God never made such a being as you to despair." If suspicious, bitter, and cruel, she exclaims, "Why do you make a devil of yourself?
You were not created to hate and hurt men, but to
assist and bless them."  If one is getting gross and
heavy in his tendencies and tastes; if his mind is
being polluted and his nature soiled; if appetite
is getting the mastery over reason, she plants herself squarely before him, and shouts, "Why do
you make a brute of yourself? Are you not
ashamed to go into the gutter with swine? Come,
wash and be more cleanly, and live as one of your
make should live."  This is the way religion helps
a man.  It helps him as a pruning-knife in a skilful hand helps a tree,    lopping off the dead, soggy branches, and pruning away the excrescences;
not only so, - it helps him  affirmatively as well
as negatively.  Where a vice had grown it inserts
a virtue; where a thorn had protruded a blossom
appears.  The man thus gains in a double sense.
He loses what tends toward death, and gains
what adds to the development of his higher life.
Piety is expansion. It does not cramp and fetter the nature.  It enlarges and liberalizes it;
shoots it out in all manner of new activities, and
widens it with a thousand generous impulses.  A
small mean man cannot represent Christianity
any more than a dwarf pear-tree can represent a




156           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
forest.  You must have some girth and altitude to
you, if you would advertise religion. The church
is not a treadmill, as some seem to regard it, where
sad-featured men and women toil and tramp continually between set limits, longing to break loose
and dash out, but are unable.  It is a gymnasium
rather, in which are vast appliances with which to
exercise and develop the soul, and thereby add
unto your nature a new vigor, a moral flexibility,
a spiritual elasticity, in order that in the end (to
continue the figure), when your grossness has been
sweated off, and every power and faculty trained
to the last degree of its capacity, you may be
able, with death for your spring-board, to vault
joyfully above the stars. The religion of Christ
teaches a man that, it is better to fly than to
crawl; that virtue is sweeter than vice; that restraint is nobler than license; and that man, I care
not how poor, weak, and erring he may be, may,
by the grace of God, yet recover himself, and go to
the grave with a hope in him that shall cause the
portals of it to glow like the illuminated gateway
of a palace when the king returns from  battle,
preceded by news of a glorious victory.
Let no one dare to preach, under the name of
religion, a set of dry, juiceless dogmas to this generation, when men long to hear the glad news of human progress and human redemption. Every chord
of my nature harmonizes with this popular note.




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.            157
It is not theology, the science of God, so much as:
biology, the science of living, that I would impress
upon you to-night.  I would not, if I could, put
any of you here into the strait-jackets of the
schools.  A man must be of stunted stock indeed,
if he cannot grow so as to burst the lacings of
any creed man ever devised.  Creeds and formulas as the main-springs of Christian activity are
of the past.  They were born, undoubtedly, in part
of the Spirit of God, but also in part of the spirit
of human bigotry and bitterness and ignorance.
The banner over us to-night, under which we are
all marshalled, is not emblazoned with the name
of Arminius, or Calvin, or Wesley, or Knox; but
another name is on it, and the letters of fadeless
light illuminate it from staff to border. It is the
name by which God is known in heaven and on
earth, — LOVE.  The creed of a church is good for
nothing save as it aids the church to better express its life and purpose and faith  in Jesus
Christ, and its yearning sympathy for man.  The
life which is yet to be lived ere our Lord and
King shall come with His holy angels, marching
visibly through the heavens in long and majestic
processions of power, will not be inspired by the
past, but by the future, — that future in which
Jehovah yet veils Himself, patiently biding the
hour for the perfect manifestation of His presence.
The present, which some hastily call the hour of




158           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
noonday glory, will appear to the ages ahead,
when, teeming with life, they shall look backward
upon it, as the dawn and twilight period of the
church.  Many a throne is to be levelled, many
a system of error broken into fragments, ere the
one throne and the perfect system of truth shall
have been erected and inaugurated. The time is
to be when God shall pour out His Spirit upon
all flesh, and "your young men shall see visions,
and, your old men shall dream  dreams."  Then
shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, full-orbed,
resplendent with unshorn beams, every ray fulfilling its ministry of healing, and the light of it
illuminating the earth from pole to pole. I live
my life as a man whom every passing day brings
nearer and nearer to fuller manifestations of God's
power, to clearer exhibitions of the Spirit's energy, to a wider diffusion of Christian dispositions
among mankind.  The white and the black, the
learned and the ignorant, shall yet stand together,
angelic in their disposition and works, hand linked
in hand, wing enfolding wing, in the unity of longlost but acknowledged brotherhood, — the unity
of perfect love.  Draw, then, O men and women,
your inspiration from the future. The air which
drifts up from the past is heavy and dark with
the mould and rank odor pf ruins.  Keep your
faces turned fixedly and reverently ahead, and let
the future, when the earth shall be full of the




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.          159
glory of the Lord, blow its perfumed breezes into
your nostrils.  Look and behold breaking through
and scattering the mist of to-day the effulgence
which streams upon you from to-morrow.
As I draw nigh to the closing words, let me
speak to you directly of Christ. Let me lift, with
a hand which will probably never lift it again before you all, the Cross of Calvary, - for that is the
symbol of Christ's friendship for you, and the sole
emblem of our fadeless hope. I would point you
to the'blool that was shed for you. I would repeat, ere my voice pass from your ears forever, the
invitation and assurance of your ever-constant,
ever-sympathetic, ever-helping Friend,-~ "Come
unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden,
and I will give you rest."  O woman, worn and
bowed beneath cares and sorrows your laughing
youth could not foresee,  O man, fretted and
chafed, grimly enduring yet longing for rest,and all you who stagger along your uneven paths,
bearing up under failure and disappointment, and
the load of your passions, with a bravery deserving a better cause and a better success, go and lay
yourselves down under the shadow of the Rock.
Lying there in humble dependence, the peace
which passeth understanding shall descend upon
you, as the dews of summer distil upon the
earth, and you shall see, as Jacob in his dream
of old time, angels ascending and descending,



160           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
going up with your petition, and returning with
supplies for all your needs.
As one who simulates no feeling, who never yet
exaggerated his anxiety to supply his audience
with a motive to act, who recognizes in the liberty
he claims for his own mind the fullest liberty on the
part of yours to decide, free from all outside pressure, this question of your immortal condition,speaking thus, and in such a spirit, I urge you to no
longer hesitate in what your reason and conscience
tell you is right. Make and speak now that needed
and noble resolution, which at many times of your
life you have been on the point of making, but
foolishly postponed. March no longer toward the
grave as toward an enemy, but make your approach unto it as men journey toward the gateway
of a palace, which, built at infinite cost, they have
inherited in the line of royal succession.
I close with the thought, that, through the appropriated friendship of Christ, much which you
have missed in this mortal life will be made up to
you beyond the grave. In the gift of heaven is
included all lesser gifts. Loves we have lost or
barely missed, virtues we sought but might not
attain, and the fulfilment of many a rudely interrupted dream, will greet us there.  At death we
shall have the opportunity to make a new start.
We shall select and discard with a higher intelligence than guides us here. Beyond the grave we




DIVINE FRIENDSHIP.           161
may not have the ordering of our lives, but we
shall have great liberty in choosing,- even the
liberty of the children of God. We shall be linked
with whatever is most kindred to us in fibre and
feeling, and streams widely apart on earth will
converge in Christ, and, mingling, flow in union
under that nightless sky forever.  Many a blunder
will be corrected, and many a failure made good
there. I trust, good friends, that through the friendship of Christ, and our hearty acceptance of His
assistance, it may"chance that we shall meet in a
temple far larger than this, not built by hands, and
engage in purer worship with a numberless multitude beyond the skies, whose spaces, adorned of
God, spread over our heads.
K




162             MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
SERMON VIII.
HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.
"And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired
to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed
for thee that thy faith fail not; and when thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren."-LUKE xxii. 31, 32.
S  OONER or later every Christian passes through
a sifting  process,   a process of temptation
and trial, of failure and fall. The path which
leads us to the beautiful gate is steep and rugged.
No foot treads it far without faltering; no pilgrim
enters the golden street with his sandals unworn;
no head feels the blessed pressure of the crown
which has not borne the markings of the thorn.
The words of our text introduce to your attention a disciple of Christ, when standing upon the
brink of a great temptation, and a greater fall.
He was about to be put under a pressure of which
he did not dream.  That pressure was to be too
severe for him.  He was to do a deed which will
stand to his shame and humiliation, so long as the
world  endures.   He was, as his Divine  Master
plainly said, about to be " sifted " by the Adversary.
There are two thoughts in connection with this
text. I wish to suggest two lessons which I would
impress upon your minds and hearts.  The first is,




HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.           163
the feeling of Christ toward Peter, and those who
fall like Peter.  The second is, the hope and duty
of the fallen.
I would first, in order to expand the subject,
call your attention to the clause, "I have prayed
for thee."
You observe that the singular number of the
pronoun is used.  Of all the disciples who were
to be sifted, or brought under temptation, it was
to Peter alone that His heart went out in urgent
entreaty.  But why for Peter rather than for the
others? Why should the merciful feelings of
His heart be concentrated on him? Was it because he was nearer and dearer and more amiable
than the others; more equitable in disposition,
more exemplary and mild? No, for he was the
reverse of this. Peter's eminence among the disciples at this time was not of this kind.  He was
hot-headed, rash, and egotistical, unstable and inconsistent.  At one moment he was brave as a
lion, heroic in all his impulses, and tense in all his
purposes; the  next he was timid, vacillating,
and cowardly. You see him at one moment, sword
in hand, foremost to defend his Master; the next
he stands by the fire in the court-yard stamping
and swearing, denying with oaths that he knew
any such man as Jesus.  But why should Christ
pray for such a man? one is naturally led to inquire.  Why did His love go out so warmly and




164           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
tenderly toward one capable of so much treachery and falsehood, one so selfish and unreliable?
Why select him  from  the other disciples, and
lavish upon him  so much tender solicitude and
prayer?
Now, friends, learn what sort of a man Christ
was, and what a moral phenomenon He was and
is to the world.  If you place your eye close to a
hole in perforated paper, through an opening no
larger than a pin's head you can see a landscape
whose diameter is measured by miles, and whose
limit is the limit of human vision.  And so
through this passage, when attentively considered,
you will see how the nature of Christ unrolls
itself; and the moral prospect the mind beholds
is boundless and superlatively beautiful.
No, it was not because Peter was lovely and
mild and consistent, but because he was just the
reverse of all this, that Jesus prayed for him. It
was not because he was strong and well braced, but
because he was weak and liable to fall, that He
remembered him.  It was not because he was consistent and grave, and above suspicion - such as
would make a good candidate for the deaconship
to-day - that His heart yearned toward him, but
because he was unsteady and fickle and notoriously reckless. I wish you all to observe here
- for I know that it will comfort some of you 
that the mercy of Christ abounds in the quality of




HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.           165
discrimination.  It adapts itself to man's needs,
and flows according to the measure of those needs.
I have heard it said that there is a law in nature
by which the broken branch of the tree, and the
bruised violet, and the wrenched shrub, and whatever else in the natural kingdom is maimed and
hurt, draws the necessary elements of healing from
the atmosphere; that the sun and wind and dew,
the shadows that cool and the rays that warm, become physicians to it, and perform their free and
unwearied ministries of love and healing. I have
often thought how  exactly this symbolized the
nature of Christ and the operations of His love.
Wherever you find a hurt or wound in the moral world, the healing influence of His love is
drawn to it. Wherever you find a man wrenched
and broken down in his hopes, — wherever you
find a woman fallen and crushed, wherever a
soul unstable and reckless, wherever any throe
and agony, any crying and wrestling, any struggling and downfall, there Christ is.  In thought
not a few reverse this law.  They forget that
the love of God in its benevolent operations increases by the ratio of our needs, and that the
lower down we are the stronger is the attraction
which God centres upon us from  above. At this
point will doubtless occur to you all the cheering
and infinitely tender words of Christ, when He
said, "I came not to call the righteous but sinners




166           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
to repentance";. and that other sentence, which
carries with it the force of a demonstration,~"The whole need not a physician, but they that
are sick."
Now men differ in blood and temper, in taste
and feeling, as widely as in the build of their bodies and in the look of their faces. NIow and then
you meet a man or woman made as the birds are,
to fly and sing.  In all their inclinations, in all
their propensities and aspirations, they are feathered and plumed for flight.  There is little virtue,
relatively considered, in some men being noble and
generous, and some women being pure and gentle,
because it requires little effort on their part to be
thus.  They were biassed toward such things at
birth.  They were dowered in their cradles with
such qualities by their parents.  And what a
heritage it was! And how low and mean does
any legacy of' stocks and money appear beside it 
Know and remember to-night that those parents
who keep their bodies free from debasing appetites,
and their minds uncontaminated by impure imaginations, shall, in bringing forth children like
unto themselves, add beyond all other efforts of
their lives to the bodily health and moral vigor
of the world.  I am  fast coming to think that
two thirds of every generation are mortgaged to
the Devil before they are born, and that it takes
twenty years of care and education to unrivet the




HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.          167
fetters which, by their own lack of control and
dissolute lives, the parents fasten on their children.
But, as I was saying, people differ. To some
refinement is natural, and virtue easy. I have
known women float through life as a white lily on
a darkened stream, -beings of beauty and fragrance, buoyed up so airily by the natural encasements of their virtue, that not a drop or stain
might touch or soil the exquisite whiteness of
their souls. But others I have known that were
like a lily, anchored by a law of its birth in a current, and it was swayed from side to side, and
buffeted, and not a moment was there in which it
was not threatened with submersion.  Men, too,
I have known, who were like granite columns,
shapely, ponderous, immovable. Neither wind nor
rain, no, nor the converging pressures of many
wicked influences, could move them  an inch.
But others there are like reeds and rushes, weak
and willowy, who cannot stand alone, but must
stand in contact with and supported by many
others, if. they stand at all. Here is one that
might seem almost a model, and you wish that all
might be born like him. But anon you come
across another, so weak and mean and effeminate
that you wonder how; he came to be born at all.
He is a miraculous creation in an infinitesimal
direction!




168           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
Times and seasons also make a vast difference
with men in their moral relations.
Now there are seasons when, morally and socially, our experiences are as warm and genial and
equitable as weather in early June, - when all our
surroundings are fragrant, and the hours breezy with
good news; when everything seems to be shaped
for our comfort and prosperity; when health and
credit are good, all our enterprises well-timed
and successful, all our investments yielding good
returns, and old debtors, from  whom  we had
expected nothing, astonish us by their honesty.
Now at such a time it is not difficult for a businessman to be good, any more than it is for a boy to
sing or whistle when, with his fishing-rod over his
shoulder, he goes with great swinging strides down
the hill toward the trout-brook.  There is no temptation for him to shorten or neglect family prayers,
to be gruff to his wife or hard on his clerks, to drive
his bargains to the very verge of dishonesty, to
undermine his health by overwork, or commit suicide. When everything is prosperous and sunny,
I say, a business-man has no temptation to be dishonest and unchristian.
But wait awhile.  The season changes.  June
gives place to December.  The sky gets black and
squally.  The wind veers, and, instead of coming
like a warm, perfumed breath out of the south, it
is poured in gusts and currents out of the north




HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.            169
flecked with snow  and dreary with sleet, which
drenches the garments and chills through to the
bone.  Then is come the hour of weakness and
trial.  When credit sinks, and friends get suspicious, and investments yield nothing but loss,
and the anxious brain carries its burden clean
through the hours of sleep, and he rises unrefreshed, and failure stands not three days ahead of
him, - this is the day and the hour when a business-manl needs the assurance that, if there is sympathy for weakness in heaven, he has it.  Many
a man, as you know, has in such an hour closed
his ledger with a groan, placed a pistol to his temples, and recklessly made for himself a blood-path
out of his misfortunes or his shame.  But I often
think that the mercy of God is greater than some
suppose, and that many a poor, harassed, crazed
merchant, whose name is stricken in disgrace from
the book of. earthly exchange, will find it entered
in the Lamb's book of life, and live to glorify forever the love which was greater than his guilt.
Now I want vou to feel, all of you, that the
mercy of God is full of discrimination in the time
and measure of its outgoing.  It goes out most
strongly to the Peters of the world, and in the
hour of their greatest temptations.  God never
leaves those who are in alliance with him to fight
their battles alone.  Ahead of you are temptations
many, and struggles not a few. You will descend
8




170           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
more than once to the arena and the assault, more
than once be tempted to desert and deny your
Lord; but strengthen yourselves with the thought
that the heavens are prayerful for you.  The Saviour foresees, as he foresaw in the case of Peter,
how you are to be tried, and remembers you in his
prayer.  The prayer of Christ is worth more to
man than weapon of steel or armor of brass. One
word of intercession from  Him  avails beyond all
our calling and crying.  Yea, I could die mute and
content, did I but know that my Saviour pleaded
for me.
Now, as I have said, the future may be full
of trial. There is nothing so black that it may
not contain, —nothing  so venomous but that
it may lie coiled in it, ready to strike and fang
you.  But, fellow-Christians, let none of these
things disturb you. Out of the future, out of its
possible darkness and disaster, sound the strong,
cheerful words of Christ, - "Ye believe in God,
believe also in me."  And tlhe saints ready for the
coffin check their feet on the borders of the grave
for a moment, and, looking lack toward us, with
their faces already touched with the light of the
eternal world, say, "Though we walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil;
for God is with us,. His rod and His staff they comfort us."  The living and the dying share equally
in the discrimination of His mercy.  To the weak



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.           171
est shall come the most strength, to the rashest
the most control, to the neediest the most provision, and to the guiltiest the freest and most
abundant pardon.
Now you see that Christ takes an interest in
each of his disciples, even down to the most unworthy.  Take our churches, and examine them in
their individual membership.  In them, as among
the twelve, all shades of temper and degrees of
consecration are represented.  Here is a man who
adorns his profession, and here another who barely
escapes being a dishonor to Christ.  Here a woman who, in the love of her children and the comforts of her home, finds all the security that earth
affords, and the lively stimulus of a healthy pride.
By her side, perhaps, sits another, torn we know
not by what internal tumult wrought up day by
day to an unnatural and ruinous excitement, and
whirled around the circle of fashion so rapidly
that more than once she has become dizzy, and
spiritually lost her balance, and to-night she feels
that she is in danger of repeating that fall.
Now there is, as I suspect, a feeling in our
churches which leads men to overlook one of Christ's
most lovely and beautiful characteristics. I refer
to His solicitude for the wandering sheep of His
fold. The feeling I have alluded to is this, - it is
difficult to express it with precision in words, but
I think I can give you my idea, -the feeling, I say,




172           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
is this, that the consistent Christians monopolize,
as it were, the attention and favor of Christ, to the
exclusion of the delinquents. It is not-regarded
as credible that backsliders -the cold, the sluggish,
and the dissolute —   are recipients of His favor.
His pride and joy in the ninety and nine orderly,
safely housed, and well-behaved sheep, and not his
anxiety for the wild, foolish, lost one, are for the
most part the theme of thought and remark. And
this unscriptural and complacent sentiment grows
and grows, until a division line is drawn between
the main body of the membership and the backslider as sharp, as cruelly defined, and as difficult
to pass, as if the poor man or woman had actually
been excommunicated.
Now this is all wrong, and yet the mental revolt which many of you may detect in your minds
against what I am saying is the best of all gauges
to show you how deeply rooted this idea has grown
to be in the average judgment of the church.
The Johns who repose on His bosom, and not the
poor, hot-headed Peters, who stand stamping and
swearing in the market-places, are the ones we
deem the objects of His pity.
The practical evils which come from  this idea
are these, - it encourages spiritual pride and pharisaical complacency on the part of the majority of
the church; it also substitutes another sentiment
than that of love in our own hearts toward our back



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.           173
sliding brethren; and, lastly, it serves to plunge the
delinquents themselves into a certain posture of
antagonism to the church, and' an inward despair
touching their own ultimate betterment.  This is
the worst of all possible positions a man can get
into. When the Devil has threaded all the hope
out of a man, he has not merely cheated God of
the first harvest, but has destroyed the very seeds
from which all future fruitfulness was to come.
Now, if there is a single man or woman here who
is in or near the margin of such a state of mind,
the lesson of this text is for him. He holds to the
members of his church, more fortunate in temperament and training, the same relation that Peter
held to the Twelve, when the words of our text
were first spoken.  He is the object of Christ's
prayer to-day.  My brother, I do not know how
often or how far you may have fallen.  No one
save God does know. I do not care for that. Never
shall it be said that ten years of Christian life have
left me worse than a Pharisee. It is not in my
heart to cast a stone at you.  What have I to do
with stoning? Perhaps for twenty years you have
been unfaithful to your covenant vows, been derelict in duty, loved money more than Christ, been
proud and vain, in all the plans and purposes of
your heart worldly, in your appetites carnal. I do
not know but that, since you were last in a sanctuary, you have in act and word denied your Mas



174           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
ter, as did Peter, nor can I see upon the border
of what future denial your feet may even now be
standing.  I only know, my brother and sister,
that Christ singles out, from all His disciples here,
you who are most tempted and most liable to
fall, and, going down to your side, as you sit in this
hall, and fixing His eyes in love upon you, says, "I
have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not "; and
all I ask of you is that you shall remember this,
and go out from this place to-night girded and
braced with the thought that Christ has not cast
you off because of your sins, and turned you adrift,
but that he sees all your weakness and liability to
fall, and has singled you out from us all, not in
anger, not to reject and thrust you away, but to assist and put his arms of loving restraint around
you, and will so continue to do to your dying day.
The words of Paul are true, - as true now as ever,
as true to the modern church as to the church
at Rome; and you should all be persuaded that
neither life nor death, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor anything that can happen to
you, can separate you from God's love.
This is the anchor, the hope, to which I ask
you to weld your faith.  So rivet yourself to it
to-night that when the next gale bears down upon
you you will not be driven out of the harbor of
your refuge, out of your confidence in Christ's redeeming blood, to be tossed and buffeted amid




HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.             175
conflicting doubts and fears, but be held stoutly
to your trust, as a ship is held to its anchorage
when the anchor is struck into the cleft of a riven
rock.  There is not ahead of you a hand's-breadth
of sky which is not of crimson, typical of a fair
to-morrow, so long as in your heart lives a single
regret for sin, and a deep, warm  desire to be
better; and out of that tinted, roseate sky come
words of encouragement, and signs of promise, and
unspoken messages, and ministrations of love and
hope.  And not only so, but that sky deepens and
brightens its hue as it slopes downward; and at
death, when Satan shall gather all his terrors, God
will gather all His consolations, and that hour
which so many paint with blackness shall be as
radiant to the believer as golden mist.  And all
this I urge you to believe, not with wishing and a
vague hope, but with the firm assurance of faith.
I would now  call your attention to the last
clause of the text, "When thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren."
Now  if there is any class of men from whom
the church popularly does not expect strength, it
is pre-eminently from that class known as "backsliders." If the mercy of God was like the charity
of men, who of us would find forgiveness?  If a
professing Christian trips and falls, although it be
far less in extent than the lapse of Peter, it is all
over with him, so far as popular estimation goes.




176           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
No matter how useful he may have been. He may
have preached the gospel, and labored with good
results, for twenty years, but if caught off his guard
for a moment, he is overpowered by the Adversary, and falls, — farewell to his usefulness. " You
strengthen the brethren, indeed! Has it not been
proved that you were intoxicated, that you were
picked up drunk in the street, and lost your church
by it? You are a likely person to preach righteousness and temperance and judgment to come!"  Or
again: " You exhort or pray again in public! Did
you not forge a check, were you not tried for it, and
barely escaped the prison, and did not your church
excommunicate you for it? I would like to know
what good your words and prayers would do!"
My friends, that is the way that the world, and
the church, too, talks about men who have fallen;
but it is a wretchedly sad way of talking, after all.
If Peter had been a modern Christian, very slight
chance indeed would have been his after that exhibition of himself in the court-yard.  And yet
there was a vast deal of noble, self-denying, soulsaving work in Peter after his terrible lapse from
his Master, as you all know; for the Scriptures
bear witness to it, and heaven is full of the testi-.
mony and praise of it to-night.  And this Christ
saw, for He laid a solemn charge upon him in these
words, " When thou art converted, strengthen thy
brethren."  In saying this the Saviour enunciated




HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.           177
one of the greatest principles known to the student
of moral forces. The principle is this, - that all
instruction and warning in spiritual matters must
be based on knowledge and experience.
If I had a stretch of rapids to run, and could
select from a dozen guides, I would choose that
one who, when he last went down that terrible
reach of water, at the point of the wildest whirl
and loudest roar had his canoe twisted from the
pressure of his paddle, sucked from  under him,
and crushed to fragments on the rocky bottom.
And the reason would be, that he who once barely
escaped death, when next he neared that point
would approach with his senses all alert, and
know to the width of an inch where to steer, and
drive his flying shell straight to the proper point.
And so it is on that other river which we call life,
and along those portions of it where the current
is swift and full of eddies, the decline steep, and
the suction strong.  He who has passed down
such a passage, and been morally near wreck, is
the man to caution and strengthen me for the danger. No one can talk to young men, for instance,
concerning the woe of drunkenness like the reformed drunkard.  Who can tell you of the horror
of fire as he who comes staggering out of a burning building with his hands blistered, his hair
burnt to the scalp, and the skin of his face puffed
and white with the inflammation of the heat and
8*                        L




178           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
steam? When that man talks about the torment
of fire, you look at his face and see that he knows
what fire is. Why, I might stand and advocate
temperance, and you would listen respectfully, as
becomes you, and that would be all. My words
would make no great impression, start no new
conviction, nor move any such emotion of pity or
fear as you are capable of feeling.  But let me
bring a man here and place him before you who
has been a drunkard, a city sot for ten years, and
yet whom many of you would remember as an active and prosperous business-man fifteen years ago,
a kind husband, a good citizen, and an upright
gentleman. If I could bring such a man here, I
say, and place him before you just as I found him
in the street, ill clothed, tremulous and weak,
would you not listen? As you saw his pale, haggard countenance; seamed and marred with the
traces of debauch, - his eyes, out of which hunger and despair looked, - the shaking of his hand
as he stretched it out toward you, - the brokendown condition of the whole man, - and out of
his quivering lips heard the words: "I had a
happy wife once, but my cruelty killed her.  I
had wealth, as some of you know, but rum took
it from me. I had a home in that long-gone day,
but the sheriff sold it over my head. I had hope
once, both as to this world and the world to come,
but the light of it has faded, for my days are pass



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.          179
ing in disgrace, and I know  that no drunkard
can inherit the kingdom of heaven!" and then
heard him declare the truth extorted from him by
his agony, "The wine-cup has done all this for
me: beware of the wine-cup!" would you not be
moved, seeing this rman, hearing his words of warning? Would not the virtue of these young men be
strengthened against the accursed drinking customs of the day? Well, this law holds good to a
greater or less extent through all grades of experience, and none might be so useful to society and
the church as those who have fallen, and by their
falling gained the right and power to address
intelligent counsel and warning to others.
God lays a mission, therefore, on all of you who
by sad experience know the weakness of your own
natures, and the readiness of God to forgive. It is
to you who are wise with the knowledge of your
weakness that I speak; to you who are in that
unfortunate condition of mind in which a professor thinks that his past unfaithfulness cuts him
off from any future attempts of usefulness, that I
address the exhortation of the text.  I know not
where you worship. I do not know even your
name. My arrow is drawn at a venture, winged
only by the Spirit of God. But this makes no
difference with my feelings or with our relations.
For to-night, at least, I am your pastor; for to-night
I am the voice of God to your soul. Hear me as




180           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
such. Let your past be as a wild and frightful dream
that comes in the night and torments us with its
visions of terror, but departs with the rising of the
sun. Forget your past. Your repentance has covered and changed it.  Behold! see for yourselves!
its scarlet has become like wool, and its crimson
white as snow I Do not think that you are counted
out of the moral influences of your church by its
pastor? If he be a true under-shepherd of Christ,
he lays on you the injunction that was laid upon
Peter.  There is not a summation he makes of the
powers and forces to be organized in the future for
Christ and man in which you, your wealth, your
time, your friendship, your influence, your example,
are not counted. So far as your past has been
wasted you are to remedy it, and so live hereafter
as to strengthen the brethren.
Why, see the philosophy of this thing. Suppose
fifty men, who had lapsed from the perfect fulfilment
of their covenant duties, and have been adding little
to the moral forces of their respective localities,
should say, not all at once perhaps, not in so many
words, but in heart and act, "I have not been doing
my duty to the church, no, nor to my own soul
either, and I will change my course, rectify my
example, and henceforth, God helping me, will be
faithful to my pledge,"- would not that strengthen
the brethren?  Who can estimate the power of
such a stand, the addition which such a confes



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN.            181
sion and reconsecration would bring to the spiritual forces there? And the farther the man had
wandered, the more marked his failure in the past,
the more noticeable and influential for good would
be his return to duty.
Return, then, return, all ye who have wandered!
Come back, ye prodigals, smitten with spiritual
famine, to your Father's love and home! Let your
clerks, let your servants, let your children, let your
pastor, see the blessed change in your conduct.
Behold! into this audience the Spirit is now entering. He comes as the wind to the orchard when
about to bloom. What memories of former activity, what resolutions for usefulness, what hopes of
future labors, sweeter than the perfume of flowers,
are stirred as His impulse sways your minds! 0,
blow upon us, thou Divine wind! Come to these
frozen hearts here, as the warm  air of the south
conies to the ice in spring, melting it! Come to
these darkened minds, as a breeze comes out of the
west after a day of storm, sweeping the clouds
from the firmament, uncovering its majestic vault
of garnished blue! Come, as the scented zephyr to
the lattice of the sick! Come, as hope comes to
the lost, as faith to the dying, and as that eternal
peace which the world knoweth not comes to the
sainted dead! Behold, we.lift our eyes and hands
and hearts, and say, " Thou Holy Spirit, come!"




182           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
SERMON  IX.
THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.
"Preach the Word." - 2 TIMOTHY iv. 2.
N OTHING is more evident than this, - that
the death of Christ neither wrought any
change in the feelings of God toward the sinner,
nor in the feelings of the sinner toward God.
Whatever the atonement did effect, whatever use
it served, it certainly did not modify the relative
status of either. From the beginning God had
loved man with an infinite love. To that there
could not come, by any occurrence, addition. From
the fall of our first parents through all their successive generations, their moral alienation and antagonism  remained, and after Christ had wrought
out and finished his great work on earth and reascended into heaven, human nature remained in all
its old state of lapse and degeneracy.
From the start there had been two obstacles to
man's salvation. The first was that which the just
and holy claim of the transgressed law presented.
God must ever remain harmonious with Himself.
He cannot favor one attribute at the expense of
another.  His justice must be satisfied before




THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.         183
mercy can be exercised. In the Divine economy
the death of Christ sufficed to meet the demand
of the law. It was a perfect satisfaction to justice. In its legal connection it was held as a full
and ample equivalent of the punishment of the
sinner. Divine justice was honored, and without
discordance to Himself God could allow the sentiment of His mercy exercise. After the death of
Christ God could justify the unjust, and yet remain just to Himself. Thus the first great obstacle to man's salvation was removed.  But no
sooner was the first obstacle removed than the
second presented itself, namely, How might the
enmity of the human heart to the plan of salvation itself be removed? The death  of Christ
opened, if I might so express it, a broad, macadamized road along which the feet of men might
pass, without let or hindrance of justice, heavenward; and the cross, planted as a guide and sign
at the entrance of it, sent out its impressive and
perpetual exhortation to all to enter, — but none
would enter. A road, I say, was opened; a path,
wide and smooth, rising with easy grade upward,
lay before the race; a highway, at infinite cost,
had been cast up, along which the nations in
long and happy procession might tread; whensurprising fatuity! —  a discovery was made,the nations would not walk in it! An astonishing and persistent disinclination to be saved on




184          MIUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
the part of the imperilled, revealed itself.  The
avenue remained untraversed by the very ones for
whose benefit it had been opened. The possibility
of freedom had no sooner been proclaimed to those
in spiritual slavery than it was discovered that,
instead of appreciating the privilege, instead of
eagerly availing themselves of the chance of liberty and restoration, they absolutely preferred
their bondage.  They gazed with unlighted eyes
at the Cross, w.hich was the sign and seal of the
government's love and care for them, and heard
the proclamation of hope and redemption from
their chains without one emotion of gratitude, and
even with ignorant and defiant murmurs.  What
was to be done? Leave them to toil and die in
this base condition, or educate them up to an appreciation of their privileges? You anticipate the
answer.  God never despairs, never halts in His
merciful undertakings. In the flow of His love lie
the infinite resources of cleansing. No pollution
discourages Him.  He is to sin what the sun is to
darkness, —its master by inherent composition
of forces.  The second obstacle in the way of
men's salvation- their disinclination to be saved
- did not appall Him.  He proceeded at once to
devise and set in operation means for its removal.
He commissioned agents, and organized agencies;
the object of all their influence was to overcome
the sinner's disinclination to be saved. In this we




THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.        185
find the origin and motive of the ministry of the
Word.
By the ministry of the Word I do not, of course,
mean that part of it alone expressed by the
preacher, but all those enlightening, convincing,
and convicting influences which flow  from  the
history and revelation of God's dealings with man.
This book is indeed the source and head of the
Christian ministry and Christian influence, but it
does not give full expression to that ministry and
influence, any more than the spring in the mountain gives full expression to the river, of which it
is the beginning and first cause.  Consider how
many books the Bible has given birth to, and
what a vast influence those books have exerted
and are now exerting on the human mind.  Reflect, furthermore, how literature has been cleansed
and modified by it; and how the poetic imaginations of the race, purified from heathenish conceptions and lewdness, are to-day busily at work
swelling the aggregate of virtue and refinement.
Where, indeed, has not the influence of the Word
penetrated? Where has not the ministry of it, in
one form or another, gone? It has entered into
literature, and purged it of its indecencies and grossness. It has directed the chisel of the sculptor,
and made the marble contribute to its holiest conceptions. It has mingled the colors on the palette,
and endowed the canvas with a perpetual power




186          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
to refine and elevate. It has dictated constitutions
to governments; wrenched legalized wrong out of
statute, and marshalled the forces of legislation
in favor of liberty and man. It has even entered
the seat of customs, made commerce an honor and
an agent, and joined in close alliance with itself all
the manifold forces of business and trade. It is
only when you take into account all these widebranching influences which emanate from  the
Bible, that you can, even to a partial extent, estimate what it has done and is doing for the world.
Now the ministry of the Word, which has for its
object the removal of man's hostility to God, in
its widest sense, includes all these. By as much
as you enlighten the race, by as much as you refine
away its grossness, by as much as you root out its
vices and extract its antagonisms, by so much do
you bring it nigher to God. The early rains which
precede the summer's warmth do no more surely
prepare the earth for the seed, than do these worldwide, humanizing tendencies, which  through a
lengthened pedigree trace their birth from  the
Gospels, prepare the souls of men to accept the
atonement. There are, I have no doubt, men and
women in this audience to-night who have been
thus indirectly operated upon by the Spirit, until
you stand as orchards do in June when ready to
break into floral beauty and fragrance as soon as
the warm southwest shall blow upon them. You




THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.        187
are at the very point of presenting yourselves to
God with every faculty in full bloom. Through
a literature which the Gospels have purged and
made clean, -through home influences, which are
the gift of the Cross to the nations that embrace
it,- through the providential dealings of life and
death, - through manifold methods, your minds
have been enlightened, your consciences quickened,
your hearts made tender; and, to-night, you are as
the soil when the sower passes over it with the
seed. God grant that the truth may find lodgement to-night in those hearts best prepared for
its coming, for so shall it spring up, blossom, and
bear fruit after its kind.
I do not want you who have not as yet recorded
your love for God to feel that the Sabbath is the only
time, or the church the only place, or clergymen
the only men, when, where, and by whom the ministry of the Word is proclaimed. The descent of
the Spirit is like the distillation of dew, - not confined to the hours of one night, but yielded by the
heavens under the workings of an organic law of
mercy. Wherever you find discipline for your passions, wherever control over your appetites,, wherever food and exercise for your virtue, wherever
opportunity for benevolent action, —whenever or
wherever a sight of beauty or sound of harmony, or
anything of God or man sweet, pure, and elevating,
then and there are you ministered unto out of in



188           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
finite mercy.  Then and there does God seek to
take you, as a gardener does a vine which has
been wrenched away from the trellis, and with
the tenderest touch and solicitude train you once
more around the prop and pillar of Divine support. There is such a thing as narrowing religion
and its offices by the way in which you regard
them. Some look at the ministry as I was wont to
amuse myself when a boy by looking at objects
through a glass with the ends reversed; and the
result is that they see but one man,- and what a
small one he often appears to be! My friends,
the minister of the Word is not the ministry of it.
The one may be very small.  He is but a man at
the best; but the other is vast, full of expansion,a combination of forces powerful and not a few,
of whose action and energy God himself is the
motive cause. The minister is a man, with the
weaknesses, foibles, and imperfections of a man.
His appearance may not please you, his manners
and habits of thought and speech may offend you.
Pique, prejudice, and a superior taste may all
combine to make you dislike him. But the ministry of the Word, who can dislike that? What taste
can criticise sunlight? What refinement take offence at the solar warmth? The sense of smell
might as soon cry out against fragrance as man's
soul revolt at the sweet ministries of God's love.
Now I feel that I am speaking to men who know




THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.        189
much of life, to men whose work it is to build
dams in swift currents, whose very business puts
them under daily pressure and temptation; and I
wish you all to feel that the ministry of God's
Word comes to you through many channels beside
my voice. The anchor of your hope, friends, is
not cast within any church, but within the veil,
which is the presence of God; and your daily words
and acts strengthen or sever the strands of which
the cable that connects you therewith is woven.
God ministers to you in ways manifold, and methods not a few, - in the crash of your overthrown
fortunes cloven by an unexpected bolt; in the
wreck of your worldly plans and hopes; in the
family altar, or the mournful absence of it; in the
habit of caution and prudence which your dealings
with men have taught you; in the dying and burying you behold; in the privileges of liberty, and
the powers and pleasures of knowledge that you
enjoy. All these are but the methods of His ministry to you. These are the electrified wires along
which His messages of warning and direction
come. These are His angels, commissioned of His
mercy, and whose mouths are fill of entreaties
higher and more impressive than man's. No! My
voice is but for a moment. It sounds, and the
sound of it passes away forever. The moment
that you pass from these doors to-night you plunge
again into a current, - the current of worldly life




190           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
and business, the current of temptation to cheat
and deceive, and put a price upon your virtue.
And I know well that in the roar of that stream
my words will be lost, and the sound of their warning be drowned.  Yea, and if God shall not then
minister to you in some other way, and brace you
up, you will be spun from off your feet and swept
cown stream.  But God's love is like the sun, and
it rays its warmth and light along many lines, and
its illumination is everywhere. You cannot escape
from it any of you. It will be with you in the
week to come, yea, and through all the weeks of
your lives; and they will be sweetened by the
ministries of it, as meadows are sweetened by the
fragrance of many flowers, seen and unseen, -now
a breath rising at your very feet, and anon another
and a sweeter blown to you from afar.
Now I would that you all might feel this, because it is truth, and also might recognize with
most devout gratitude to-night the source of it. All
those ministrations calculated to soften, refine, and
lift you come from  God through Christ. Every
drop in this broad river on which the world, and
especially this nation, floats like a richly freighted
ship, has come down to us from  Calvary.  Over
the very fountain-head of all these outflowing influences the Cross stands, and will stand forever as
the symbol and sign. And it is because of the
love of God to us that our feet stand in such high




THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.          191
and privileged places to-day, where we overlook
such an auspicious future.
Now it is possible that some of you have fallen,
for it is natural for men and women to trip.  You
stand to-day like those who have entered many
races, but never have won in any, - discouraged,
spiritless, or in a kind of sullen despair.  Now I
wish all of you who are in any sense in such a
condition of mind to cheer up and enter once more.
Make one more attempt.  Nerve yourselves for a
vigorous effort. The eyes of the brave look forever
into azure, the eyes of the coward forever into
blackness. If I could single out that one who has
made a greater failure of his life than the majority of
us, whose future morally is black, who has reached
that lowest state in which a man can stand,- when
temptation has only to present itself and he instantly yields to it, -who is regarded with sorrow
and displeasure by the church, and with suspicion or
contempt by the world, I would go to him and say,
" My good fellow, cheer up.  There is a chance in
your future yet."  Why, I went down to the scene
of a conflagration one day, -  marked by a heap of
ruins from which smoke and steam were still issuing. What a power there is in fire! No wonder that
it is used in Scripture as a symbol of hell.  What
terror there is in the rush and roar of it! What
suggestions of stifling, as it whirls a blast of hot
air into your face!  What a parent of eddyings




192           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
and whirlwinds its fierce heat is! How it sucks
and roars and flares and shoots its columns of red
flame upward, as the current which itself has created draws through it S For terror and power and
suggestions of peril, which make men spring from
their beds, and women shriek, and children scream,
what can compare with fire? Well, this terrible
agent had been at work at that warehouse; it had
beaten down the roofs, and pushed over the walls,
and dashed down its supports, and broken all its
massive braces, and left literally nothing  but
masses of bent and half-molten iron, the foundationstones, and the bare earth on which they rested.
There never was a more complete ruin, never a
more total overthrow. Twelve months after I stood
on that corner again. I looked about me bewildered. I crossed the street, and gazed wonderingly
upward.  Could I believe the evidence of my
senses?  The ruins had disappeared, every trace
of fire was gone, and a massive structure of granite
and iron towered nigh to a hundred feet above my
head; and the spacious compartments resounded
with the whir of wheels, the creaking of pulleys,
and the shouting of men trundling bales and straining at the elevators.  And I said to myself: "Man
is indomitable.  No failure discourages, no wreck
appalls him.  From the ashes of his old the creation of his new conceptions arise, and the failure
of yesterday gives birth to the triumph of to-day."




THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.         193
But do you think, good friends, that material
ruins are the only ones men can rebuild? Is the
destruction of warehouses and mansions the sole
destruction he can remedy? Are the prostrated
columns of trade the only ones he can re-raise andc
establish?  I tell you nay; the sane resolution,
the same energy, the same hopefulness and effort,
carried into the sphere of moral disaster and
wreck, will accomplish even more glorious results.
I care not what or how much has been overthrown.  Honesty, virtue, sobriety, -  all may
have gone down, but so long as the foundation,
which is life, is left, so long is there hope and opportunity.  So I say to you all, no matter what
may have been your failure, nor how total your
overthrow, —  no matter, spiritually, where you
stand to-day, nor how black and ugly is the face
of the past as it scowls at you through your recollections, - you are not lost, you are not undone,
you need not despair.  You have only to clear
away the rubbish from the foundation, and begin
again. In this endeavor you will not work alone.
There is not a twig on a tree which seeks growth,
there is not a flower in the field that craves fragrance, unassisted of God.  But are you not of
more value in His sight than flowers and trees?
Does the sun withhold its rays from  a bruised
violet which a thoughtless foot has crushed? Do
the clouds refuse to condense themselves above
9                         M




194          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
the parched ground, and empty from their distended borders the moisture of the shower? Does
not the solar beam  slant an equal ray upon the
mud of your streets and the grass of your lawns?
And if God is thus mindful through nature to
minister to the inanimate and the senseless, will
He be less thoughtful and loving in His provisions
for you? Never believe it. You will be ministered to, you will be fed; yea, as young birds, blind
to the mouth that feeds them, so the providence
of God, moving on noiseless wing, will come laden
with nourishment, and perch above you, silencing
your clamors by supply; and all that is pure and
noble in you shall be grown and developed. under
the brooding love of God, until at the breaking of
some bright morning the hour of flight and song
will come, and you will never have done with
soaring and singing.
I have dwelt thus at length on the ministrations
of the Word as a means to remove man's opposition to God, that you might see how nigh in manifold methods your Heavenly Father comes to you
in your daily life. I wish all you business-men,
and all you young men, and all you laborers here,
to feel that God's truth is not shut up between the
covers of any book, nor proclaimed by any man or
class of men alone, but that you may find and
feel it anywhere and at all times; that day by day
it comes knocking at the door of your hearts seek



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.          195
ing entrance.  The influence of the Spirit which
inclines us toward Christ is not enclosed in pipelike ordinances and formulas, and led into our
churches as you enclose and lead water into your
reservoirs. No! It is, rather, like the water which
flows in the river, permeating the earth on either
side with its irrigation. It lurks like moisture in
the atmosphere, and sifts from the heavens like
cew, or falls on human hearts as the. outpoured
shower upon the thirsty soil in summer.  This
Divine influence is as universal as atmosphere, as
generic to the moral order and economy of God
as sunshine is to the material world.  Your souls
are not like birds in a vacuum, which fall plump
to the bottom  of the jar, and lie gasping and
fluttering, unable to lift themselves.  They are,
rather, as those same birds when in the free outer
air, under the curvature of whose wings a strong
current of wind is sweeping, and all they need
is to poise correctly with easiest inclination this
way and that, and the movement beneath lifts
them.  What a sight it is to see a bird thus suspended above you, and to watch him as he poises
with nicest balance, while the invisible but adequate forces under him push him upward until he
seems but a tuft of brilliant plumage smitten by
the sun! So it is, spiritually, with you all.  You
do not lie gasping in a morally thin and exhausted
atmosphere.  You breathe an air full of the bra



196           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
cing element of noble impulses. Underneath you
are the uplifting influences of God's Spirit, coursing
steady and strong like the wind.  I ask you tonight to put yourselves in such a position that
you can be lifted. I do not address you as professors or non-professors, as penitent or hardened.
I speak as to men and women endowed with reason, gifted with sensibilities to feel, capable of
gratitude, able to decide as to what is right and
just. I place heaven before you in these closing
words.  You can see, if you will but look, the
streets and walls and gates, and all the outflashing
glories of it.  You know what a force the Cross is
in the world; why it was set up, and what forgiveness of sin and impulses toward virtue men
receive from it.  I ask why so many of you reject it. Is there not a tide of conviction setting
many of you toward it?  I feel it to be so.  Do
not resist, do not struggle against it. Steer directly
and joyfully toward it, rather, as ships long buffeted
by storm come flying in from the foam and thunder of the tempest-swept ocean toward the protection of the harbor and the quiet waters of the bay.
Suppose, my hearers, that this city should yield
itself, in the action of all its inhabitants, to the
ministrations of God.  Suppose the men who conduct its business, build its houses, swarm its factories, people its streets, and direct its energies,
should in the coming week, by the grace of God, be




THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.       197
converted, and ever after bear the name and live
the life of Christians. What mind here can adequately conceive of the blessed change such an
event would cause? What absence of vice, what
peace, what prosperity, what hope, would be ours!
And yet such a result would be brought about by
individual decisions. Though all were converted at
the same moment, yet each of you would have to
decide for yourself. Why should it not begin here
in this room, to-night? Who of you will be the
first to decide? Quick, for the heavens are watching! Whose is the name that goes first into the
skies?
0 the decisions of this night! Better by far to
have stayed away than, having come, to decide
wrongly! If, as it is said, the fall of a pebble shakes
the earth to its centre, how heaven vibrates with the
thoughts you are thinking now  To think and not
to conclude; to conclude only to decide amiss; to
add one more grief to the sorrows of the Spirit,
one more rejection to the many you have already
given to Christ, one more insult to God; to do this,
moreover, on the Sabbath evening, God's own day,
set apart by Him for your especial benefit, bringing to you such an opportunity, being, as it may
be, your last on earth- ah, who can bear the
thought?
Enough has been spoken, - too much if it be
in vain. I turn from the shadow to the sunshine,




198          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
from the clouds and fogs of the present to the pure
azure of the future. The banners under which I
ask you to serve to-night will yet be blazoned with
victory. They will shake out their glory over the
heads of those whose feet will enter heaven as the
feet of those who are more than conquerors. Decide as you may, God's purposes will not change.
Whether you contend or assist, His cause will move
on with the motion of a chariot when a king drives
it to victory. Over thrones and proud empires the
Nazarene has walked, on shield and pennon his feet
have trodden; and to-day, amid the kingdoms of
the earth, He marches on, the centre of agenciesmore destructive than cannon, more terrible than
an army with banners. Think you that the cause
of which Christ is the leader will fail of complete vindication? Will the influences of which
He is parent, which have braved successfully all
manner of opposition for so many centuries, which
have levelled so many palaces, overturned so many
thrones, broken so many fetters, enlightened so
many minds, ever die? It cannot be. We shall
go to our graves, fellow-Christians, but we shall go
as warriors have gone who lived long enough to
know that their bravery was not in vain. We
shall sleep, not as those who have no hope, but
as they who hear far down the future the smiting of victorious shields and the shoutings of a
great multitude.  Amid the tumult and commo



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD.          199
tions of the earth, amid the roar of all battles, the
Christian hears but one voice, publishing itself
with the sustained clearness of a bugle, saying
only this, but saying it forever, "Behold, I make
all things new."  And God who is over all shall
minister unto all, until this Divine assurance shall
have been fulfilled.
I invoke the Spirit of Christianity. From her
birthplace in the East, with the flush of the Orient yet kindling on her brow, I summon her to
the West. I invoke her presence in your hearts, in
your homes, throughout all your streets. Under her
inspiration may you live, and by the winged mercies of it be at last lifted into the skies.  For so
will it come about that you will die easily when
you come to die, and put your arms around the
pillars of Death, not with fear and shrinking, but
as those who find that they have arrived at a
happy opportunity.




200-          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
SERMON X.
THE CHURCH, -ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY.
"And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily." - ACTS xvi. 5.
T HE subject I propose to discuss before you
this evening is this, - The Christian Church,
its Object and Capacity.  My more immediate desire is to examine into the status of the Church
as it now exists, and the character of public sentiment toward it.
The Church, in its universal application, signifies the aggregate body of believers in Christ, —
faith in Christ, as a Redeemer from sin, being the
distinctive characteristic of those who compose it;
and all who believe in Christ as the Saviour,
whatever may be their views touching interpretation and minor doctrines, are its members. This
is the general meaning of the term.
In a local sense, a church is composed of any
number of Christian believers who, from feelings
of duty to God, each other, and the world, have
consociated for mutual profit, and that they may
the better advance the kingdom  of God.  The
Church, originated in Christ as the Pastor, and
the twelve disciples as the original members.  It




THE CHURCH, —ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 201
was continued and multiplied by apostolic authority and labors, and has been constantly identified
with all that concerns the advancement of God's
spiritual kingdom.
It should also be observed that the conviction
of all Christians, up to a very recent date, has
from  age to age most positively reaffirmed the
Divine origin and sufficiency of the Church. The
current of Christian sentiment has set, I say, with
an uninterrupted flow in this direction, - that in
the local churches, in the powers and functions,
the agents and agencies, they represented, the;
world recognized an institution not merely begun
in Christ, but all-sufficient to accomplish, so far as
human instrumentalities can, the work of Christ
on the earth. This, I repeat, has been, up to a recent
period, beyond question the universal sentiment
of Christians. The great impulse given to missionary effort, near the beginning of this century,
which resulted in the establishment of the Foreign Board and Home Missionary societies, had
as its prime cause this idea, -  that Christ held
His Church responsible for the conversion of the
world.  And it is this thought, ever present in the
bosom of the local churches, which to-day holds
them  steadily up to the line of consecrated endeavor.  This I regard a fair statement.
Now there are two opinions, growing apace, hostile to this view of the Church.  Neither is as yet
9*




202           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
fully developed; one not sufficiently confident to
express itself in words.  But unless one of these
opinions is checked and the other corrected, we
shall soon see them both in the field in open and
undisguised opposition to the Church. What at
present is only whispered in the ear will be proclaimed from the housetops, and an embarrassing
and grievous schism will occur, the result of which
no one can foresee.  I will here present more fully
both of these opinions, hostile as they are to the
scriptural and hitherto universally accepted view of
the uses and objects of the Church, - show whence
in part they arise, what is their tendency, and how
to render them powerless for harm.
The first opinion is this: That the Church, although originally an excellent institution, and one
which in time past has served moral interests, is
now outgrown and left behind by the progress of
events, and through the operation of its own past
benevolent action has become useless and effete.
They who hold to this opinion are men and
women of sceptical and so-called liberal tendencies of mind, -people of radical and erratic temperaments, who by nature are inclined to reject
and override whatever offers the least restraint to
their latest-formed opinion or speculation.  Many
of this class have been checked and balked in
what, it must be confessed, were most noble endeavors for human advancement, by the slow and




THE CHURCH, —ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 203
cautious movements of the Church, or perhaps
still more by its direct and persistent opposition;
and they have naturally, looking at it from their
point of view, jumped to the conclusion that the
Church is a cumbrous and uninspired organization, which has no sympathy with human wants,
and is opposed to all needed change; and which,
through its laws, ordinances, and ceremonies, and
above all through its vast hold on human credulity
and unintelligent reverence, blocks up by an unrequired machinery the path of just and'salutary reform. They instance the attitude of the churches
toward the antislavery cause in the early stages of
its history, their present lethargy touching the temperance movement, the unwise and unspiritual conduct of the Presbyterian and Episcopal denominations in reference to those of their members who are
most active in labors of love and efforts to give the
Gospels free scope; and charge that, practically and
in point of fact, the Church prevents. the accomplishment of the objects for which it was originally ordained. Furthermore, they inveigh against
the spirit of caste and exclusiveness which exists
in the Church, shown chiefly in the construction of
magnificent palaces of worship for the few, while the
many have not the Word of God preached to them,
and charge that even its activities are thus proved
to be in opposition to the evangelization of the masses. They also urge that there is in the churches




204           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
such blind adherence to old forms aidl customs,
which every sensible person knows are practically
of no value in our day, - such timidity and conservatism in its worst sense, -such bigotry and intolerance manifested in their refusal to receive, any
to their fellowship who cannot intellectually subscribe to their covenants and human interpretation
of Scripture, — such opposition to science, which
it thereby forces into antagonism to the Bible,that no enlightened, philanthropic, and progressive
persons can conscientiously belong to them; and
hence such must work outside, if at all, of their
iron-like and ever-contracting circumference. They
also declare that no latitude, no freedom of thought,
no liberty of investigation, is allowed the preacher
or members; that the fear, nay, the certainty of
discipline and excommunication with the accompanying loss of reputation and forfeiture of confidence and support, is held over their heads, and
hence no reform can ever come to existing evils,
because the very sources of reform -  free discussion and investigation - are things denied.  I
might instance other charges; but these, in substance, make up the grave indictment against the
Church as an institution.
Here, then, is a charge, held, made, and discussed
openly and by many.  Some of the cleverest writers of the country are weekly, in one form or another, reiterating it.  Some of the ablest speakers




THE CHURCH, —ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 205
are proclaiming it, now in the form of argument,
now of satire, now of invective.  Some of the best
men and women of the land - if money given, if
time devoted, if life consecrated to human good
are to be admitted as testimony of character -are
believing it. And it is to be feared that numbers
are tacit disciples of the doctrine, whom timidity,
interest, or lack of occasion and prominence unite
to keep silent.
Now, my friends, you will observe that the
strength of this charge lies, not in the ability of
the makers of it, nor in their persistence and
honesty, although these are powerful elements
of persuasion in this country, but in the fact
that there is a certain amount of truth in the
charge itself.  The indictment is strong and to be
dreaded, I say, because the party against whom it
is drawn is in a measure guilty.  It is true that
the position of the American churches in relation
to the antislavery reform, tested either by the
votes of their presbyteries and consociations, by
the voice of their pulpits, or the votes of the
membership, was not in harmony with the spirit
of the Gospel, or with a correct and humane public opinion. When Mr. Garrison went to the prominent clergymen of this city, begging that they
would assume the leadership of a cause to guide
which lhe felt himself, young and unknown as he
was, to be incompetent, and was rebuffed by all, 




206           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
even the elder Beecher turning him off with the
proverb, "I have too many irons already in the
fire, young man, to attend to it," he did by that
act expose the spiritual deadness and unscriptural
position of the churches.  When a, Presbyterian
synod excommunicates one of its most godly and
energetic members, because he will sing songs
other than the psalms of David,- good soul-lifting
Methodist hymns, and those tunes which make the
Sabbath-school melodies so refreshing, -it gives
cause for Piety itself to arraign it.  When the
Episcopal Church arrogates to itself to say that
Mr. Tyng shall not preach Jesus Christ to dying.
men, unless in surplice, and a building consecrated by a bishop's invocation, it puts a weapon
into every hand hostile to the Church as a divinely organized and soul-converting institution.  It
makes possible and just the charge, that professed
followers of the Saviour bar and ban the free and
benevolent flow of redeeming grace.  When any
church forbids a man of intelligence and veracity,
who claims to love the Lord Jesus as his Saviour,
to enter its communion; shutting his devout and
hungering soul away from the table of his Lord,
from the broken bread and symbolic wine, because
of some intellectual difference of opinion touching
some minor doctrine, or some little matter of detail
touching the government of his life, which are subjects of pastoral conference and instruction, and




THE CHURCH,-ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 207
not evidence of repentance and faith, -it does
by that act not merely expose itself to the charge
of intolerance, but offends one of Christ's "little
ones," and in so doing pains the Saviour Himself.
Many a professed Christian, also, by the manner
in which he has treated his spiritual teacher; by
an unfriendly watching his public utterances in
order to detect some doctrinal unsoundness, or to
catch him in some verbal lapse in what his own
narrow and ignorant mind had conceived to be
orthodox; by dwelling upon and publishing the
discoveries of his suspiciousness; by helping thus
to perpetuate a public opinion opposed to growth
in knowledge and therefore in grace; — many a
professed Christian, I. say, has by such conduct
filled the quiver of satire with the arrows, and
forged for invective the bolts, at the launching
forth of which the bosom  of the Church has
been lacerated, and the honor of her enjoyed and
royal liberty in Christ prostrated.
No; the Church is not free from blame in
these particulars. She has more than once taken
positions that have made her obnoxious to a just
censure. She has shared in the world's selfishness
and cruelty, and set herself against what she afterwards acknowledged was of God's own doing; and
to-day she is by no means impregnable to a criticism the severity of which lies in the fact that it
is just.  This is, then, the first source of that dis



208          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
trust of and opposition to the Church as an institution which one who watches events and the
tendencies of the times sees is beginning to assert
itself.
Now, friends, how can this feeling be checked?
How can we prevent this sentiment from going on
and extending itself indefinitely?  How can we
take those elements out of the atmosphere which,
if allowed to multiply and combine, will in some
evil hour descend with the velocity and violence
of lightning upon the organization that we love, and
in which we believe the hope of the world lies?
WVell, I know of but one way. It is this: The
churches must, henceforth, so act as to make criticism powerless. " When is criticism powerless? "
you inquire. " When it is palpably unjust," I respond.  This every public man in the country
knows from  his own experience. The sentiment
of fair-play, of equity between man and man, is
pre-eminent in America. The Anglo-Saxon is the
only race with which the jury system has ever been
a success; where, indeed, it has ever been seriously
attempted. In no other country are public men
so fiercely assailed as in this; in no other are they
so safe, provided that in the main they are right.
No one man, no clique of men, not even a newspaper, can lie a man out of usefulness in this
country.  They may pile falsehood upon falsehood against him, they may cover him with abuse,




THE CHURCH,-ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 209
they may pervert his words and malign his motives, they may task the utmost resource of  lisrepresentation to his hurt; but the American people will hear both sides before they render judgment. Every public man knows this.  It is the
joy and safeguard of public life.  Stanton knew
it.  Lincoln knew it.  Beecher leans confidently
upon that belief to-day.  You may pass this as a
maxim, —no one can be condemned in this country
on malicious reports, on mere hearsay. Criticism,
in order to be powerful, to be hurtful in America,
must be just. In the long run, every man and
every institution gets its deserts.
Well, by this star should the Church be guided.
ATe must put the Church in such a position toward
man in all his needs, toward society in all its
wants, that adverse criticism will have nothing reasonable to hurl against it. We must so act that
any but malicious opposition will be impossible,
and therefore harmless.  Our love for man, our
labors for his best interest, must be so open, so
self-evident, so like the sky at noonday, that no
eye can fail to see and rejoice at it; so that even
the blind shall bless the warmth of that beneficent
influence the source of which they cannot in their
blindness behold. The safety of the Church lies
in progress. It cannot become an intrenched camp.
You can never so fortify it that the world will not
storm over its walls, and leave it, as an army leaves
M




210           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
an enemy's city, a mass of ruins.  The Church is
not a walled city, it is a movable column, and its
safety lies in moving on continually.  Those who
anchor it to one fixed position, who would wall
it in with formulas and moat it round with
orders and creeds, are its worst foes.  If the
Church does not lead the race, the race will walk
over the Church, and go on without it.  Human
advancement will not stop for any institution whatever. If any one should be foolish enough to array
the Church against science, do you think science
will stop? If any against reform, think you reforms will cease? Nay,-you must annihilate mind
before you can check the progress of science. You
must root out sympathy and humane impulse and
divinely inspired love from the soul, ere man will
tamely surrender his inalienable right to expand
and elevate himself and his kind.  The prerogative of immortality will be given up only with
the soul's consciousness.
The second source of peril to the Church, the
second sentiment that is hostile to it, lies, not in
the opposition of outsiders, but in the scepticism
of a portion of its membership as to its powers
and capabilities.
Like the other, this feeling is in an undeveloped
state.  It is latent, or in its first stage of manifestation.  Many do not suspect its existence, when
in fact it has already become a part of their con



THE CHURCH, -ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 211
viction. As in the case of insanity, the acts, and
not the consciousness, of the patient reveal the
lapse of reason; so the actions, rather than the sensation, of many in the Church testify to the lapsed
state of their views and feelings concerning the
powers and destiny of the Church.
The feeling, I say, is evidently growing in the
Church that the Church is not sufficient in and
of itself to convert the world; that some other
organization must be raised up in order to reach
the mass of men with the saving truth of the Gospel. Only a few weeks ago a young man, eminent
in the religious world, expresed to me the conviction
that the Church was destined to decline and give
place to other organizations, until, at the coming
of Christ, there would be no Church. He based
his belief on the assumption that the Church was
unable to meet the exigencies of the future. For
years there has been a growing inclination to work
outside of the churches, as it is styled; to build
up other organizations, and make them  independent of the churches.  The idea has gone abroad,
and lacks not advocates in private conversation
and public conventions, that the churches are not
adequate to the work; that they are too unwieldy
and inelastic to accomplish what the Master requires to be done; that they answer the wants of
a certain upper class of society, are admirable as
educational institutions, but powerless to reach the




212           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
masses; unfitted, for instance, to do the work of
searching out and assisting young men in our
cities; not qualified for the rough, wide-awake,
hand-to-hand work of converting souls.  There
is not a person of intelligence in this audience
who does not know that this feeling is abroad and
being expressed in manifold ways.
Now I have this to say at the outset: If the
Church is not sufficient to carry forward the Master's cause, then something must be raised up that
is.  The cause must go on, Church or no Church.
Souls must be converted, and if the Church is not
able, is not adapted, to do the work, then must it
go by the board.  No obstruction must be tolerated to men's salvation; no half-and-half institution permitted to retard, even for a day, God's
saving purposes of grace.
The question, therefore, comes squarely before
us, —and the more thorough the discussion the
more satisfactory will be the conclusion that the
public will reach, - Is the Church, as an organization, able to go ahead and meet the obligations of the
fiture, or must it be given up as a converting agent,
and some other raised up to do the Lord's work?
This, when stripped of all merely accidental considerations, is the real proposition.  For to say that the
Church is to be retained when the accomplishment
of the great object for which it was organized is to
be left to other hands borders on the ridiculous.




THE CHURCH,    ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 213
The idea that the Church is in the years ahead
to be nothing but an educational institution, or a
convenient agent for administering the sacraments,
while all the active, soul-saving work is to be done
outside of it, - all the zealous, consecrated workers
to be beyond its direction and control, - is an
idea which has in it, should it ever gain popular
ascendency, force enough to destroy the Church
and wipe it out entirely.
My friends, you can regard this as certain, - the
Church can never exist disconnected with active,
aggressive conversion work. It was never formed
for a mere educational and sacramental institution, and can never continue as such. There can
be no such thing as a church outside of a membership; and when the active, working men and women
who compose the Church, and make it a vital and
vitalizing power, array themselves under other banners and names, the Church will cease to exist as a
body or become paralyzed in influence.  Its membership is to it what the breath is to the nostrils,
and with the breath life departs. So then it is safe
to say, that if the Church is not to live as a converting power and agent, it cannot live at all.
I call your attention, furthermore, to the thought,
that the real force of this query, - what makes it
dangerous to the Church, -is to be found in the
fact that it is raised in the Church itself.  It is
not an assault from without; it is a revolt (I use




214           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
the word in a modified sense) from within. The
query has been started in the very circle of Christ's
disciples. It is a hesitation, a wavering, a losing
of heart, a desertion amid His own followers, and
those followers, too, upon whom  He has most
relied.  The divergence, amounting in some localities almost to a schism, is, I say, within the
Church itself, and the fair structure of her spiritual
unity is liable to be rent asunder.  There are certain phrases and expressions uttered in conventions, and going the round of the press, that serve
to gauge the extent of this sentiment.
Now, friends, bear in mind that words are symbols of ideas.  They hold the same relation to
our feelings as letters do to thought.  As clouds
reveal to the eye the motion of invisible atmospheric currents, so words show the drift and direction of otherwise undiscovered opinions.  Words
are teachers also. They educate a people. They
are to ideas what colporteurs are to tracts, - they
disseminate them  from  house to house.  Words
are missionaries of the brain; tireless servants
they are, that voyage over all seas, climb all
mountains, penetrate the deepest valleys, drawn as
by an irresistible attraction wherever there is an
eye to see, an ear to hear, or a brain to understand.
Launch a word out upon the air, charged with the
propelling energy of an idea, and who shall set
limits to its flight? who tell where it will stop?




THE CHURCH, -ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 215
The world of mind will never let such a word
perish.  Its pilgrimage is endless, and it will traverse the entire realm  of thought and impulse.
Like the wandering Jew, its footprints will be
found on the shore where the equatorial ocean
rolls its heated waves upon the hotter sands; in
the snows of the far north the traveller will see
them by the polar light, and where, as the ancients
held, the sun cools the flaming wheels of his chariot in the western tide, —wherever man is, there
will that word be, impressing men's minds, shaping
their opinions, and serving the cause which sent it
out commissioned as its herald. What men say is
an index of what men think, and he who would
know what public opinion will be to-morrow must
note carefully the public utterances of to-day.
The phrases to which I allude, and which I use
to show the drift of opinion as represented by
some men, are these and the like. They say, in
speaking of the Young Men's Christian Associations, for instance, "They help the  churches,"
"They have done so or so for the churches,"
"They are in close sympathy and alliance with
the churches."  What would you think of a man
who should talk about the Sabbath school " helping the church," or the Mission school as having
done this or that for the church, or the prayermeeting as being in "close alliance" with the
church? Why, the Sabbath school is the church




216           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
as truly as the preaching service. The Mission
school and the prayer-meeting are the church.
These are not outside, independent organizations
any more than the ministry is an outside, independent organization. They are no more separate
from the Church than apples are from the tree on
whose branches they hang.  From  bulbous to
ripened state the Church fed them, and all the
life, all the vitality, all the sweetness they haveis derived from  the blood and breast of their
grand old nursing Mother.  The foot has as good
a right to separate itself from the limb, or the
limbs from  the body, and call themselves independent organizations, and talk patronizingly of
the trunk, as the several co-ordinate branches of
the Church have to separate themselves from her,
and  start off into independency.  They are all
members of one body, of which Christ is the
regnant Head.  So long as they remain in Christ
they are indivisible.  They compose one organic
unity.  The clasp of an indissoluble union is
around them.  He who holds and teaches any
other doctrine opens wide the door of possible
difference, antagonism, and feud.
Now, if you search for the origin of this sentiment, of this doubt and scepticism touching the
Church, its powers and capacity, you find that it
is a stream that has two sources, - one of which
is the lethargy of the Church.  The Church, as an




THE CHURCH,-ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 217
organization, failed to meet the requirements of
the age, failed to improve the openings of Divine
providence, failed to supply the more active portion of her membership with work. Active, benevolent natures tire of forms and ceremonies;
their souls instinctively reject such dry husks, and
clamor for richer food. They cannot be content
with a dull, insipid routine of experience; they
cannot see men lost without making an effort to
save them.  The churches, partly from  egotism,
partly from timidity, failed to change their administration so as to meet the wants of the times, —
failed, to enlarge the sphere of their activities, failed
to bestir themselves for the salvation of the multitudes. The result was, that the zealous portion of
their membership, especially the younger, finding
no opportunity to work inside the churches, feeling
itself repressed, fettered, intimidated, broke away
from their direction and control, and struck out for
themselves. If they could not work in the Church,
they would work out of it, - for work they must.
The long-repressed, accumulating, pent-up water,
finding no sufficient outlet through the ecclesiastical flume, broke over and swept away the traditional dam, and flowed whithersoever it would.
This current of heaven-inspired impulse, which
should have been utilized in the churches, was
gathered into another organization, and the Young
Men's Christian Association was the result. Un10




218           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
employed in the churches, the young men naturally
jumped to the conclusion that the churches could
not furnish them  work, and this is now, I fear,
fast ripening into the conviction that God never
intended that they should.  Hence the expression,
" We help the churches," " We are in close alliance
with the churches," -which phrases mark as clearly
as words can, not a lack of love for the churches
(the movement has not reached that stage yet),
but a scepticism as to the capacity of the Church,
as an organization, to furnish employment to its
members, and a practical divorcement and separation from  it.  That is one of the two causes
alluded to.
Another cause is to be joined to this; the mingling of the two, —what may be termed the duplex cause,- makes the problem  intricate.
It is, as you know, in the nature of every
organization to enlarge, solidify, and protect itself, and the more successful an organization the
stronger does this tendency become, until at last
it grows to be the prime incentive, the controlling
impulse, and what was accidental and looked upon as a temporary expedient becomes confirmed
and takes the position of permanency.  Personal
energy, not entirely free from a questionable ambition, assumption of superior excellence, and a
sensitiveness quick to resent friendly suggestion as
a hostile criticism, - these and other elements of




THE CHURCH,-ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 219
power go to swell the total of the tendency in
question. This is the law. A hundred illustrations from  history might be brought to prove it.
Indeed, the best possible illustration is being day
by day given in our midst; and many who little
think it, will at no remote period, unless wisdom
prevails, be called upon to decide whether the
Church of Christ or another organization - an organization which at its inception was designed to
be no more separate, no more independent of the
Church than the Sabbath school or prayer-meeting
— shall receive their presence and their labors.
For when the churches shall lift themselves, as
they are sure to do, to an acknowledgement of the
wants of the age, and their manifest duty; when
they shall reeve in all their sails, and spread them
to catch the rising breeze of opportunity; when
every hand and every eye is needed to work the
ship, then will a voice go forth calling the wandering crews aboard; then must the gayly painted
and newly launched yachts be left, that the ships
of God may sail full manned whither the one sure
Pilot may direct and the wind-like Spirit waft
them.
I have thus, friends, frankly discussed before
you the two sentiments that are hostile to the
Church, - shown you the origin of each, and how
you can make both powerless for harm. For one,
I regard the Church as above all human institu



220           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
tions;  Its history is unique and sublime. Having for its foundation the words and deeds, the
life and death, of the One Man, it has stood the
shocks of time without being overthrown.  Its
walls are not of granite, yet have they stood
when granite has crumbled. Marble and porphyry
and bronze have yielded to time, but the passage of
years has served only to confirm and strengthen the
organization of God.  Upon the Church the Adversary has tried his every art, and exhausted his
utmost fury.  The fagot and rack, exile and death,
have all been used, time and again, to break
the cordon of believing hearts united by faith in
Christ; but no assault of fire or sword has severed
it. Without her ministrations the Word of God
would have been an unread. and unknown book.
In her have been generated and grown those benevolent energies which have elevated and blessed
mankind, and which to-day, with tireless zeal, are
carrying the Gospel to every desert tribe and the
savage islands of the seas.  She needs no eulogy
from any. I borrow out of God's free air no breath,
I marshal no words of stirring speech, to sound her
praise. Her wreath is woven, and well woven too,
both flower and leaf. Let no one tell me of another organization that is to supplant the Church
of the Most High. Let no one tell me that her
arm is shortened or her knees weak. Say not that
there is, or can ever be, an altar like hers, moist



THE CHURCH,-ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 221
ened as it is with the blood of her martyrs, and
smoking as it does with the incense of her praise.
Others may seek new houses and strange temples,
but the house of the Lord, the sanctuary of the
Most High, shall be my spiritual home.  I am
content with the glory of the Church, I am satisfied with her praise; for the beams of her house
are of cedar, and her rafters of fir.




222           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
SERMON XT.
THE POWER OF CITIES.
F ROM  the earliest period to the present time
cities have dominated over the world.  Into
them have flowed the resources of national power.
In their hands have been held the balance of,
empire, and the human mind has ever acknowledged the sovereignty of their sway.
Paris is France.  That phrase has passed into a
proverb.  In it all that is light and beautiful in
the French character, all that is wild and violent,
all that is poetic and refined, all that is gross
and sensual, is represented. The very gossip of its
boulevards epitomizes the philosophy of the nation.
It is the heart of the empire, and every province
sympathizes with the action of its great centre.
If Paris is'satisfied, the empire is peace; if the
capital is convulsed, the nation quakes to its remotest boundary.  In this wonderful city the
valor, the culture, the science, the poetry, and religion of the Gallic mind are concentrated. More
than once has the judgment of the nation against
its kings been expressed in the savage roar of the
cancille. More than once has French liberty been




THE POWER OF CITIES.           223
smothered in the blood of its streets, and hope entomlbed beneath the ruins of the barricades.
Ronme is Italy. Garibaldi saw it first, and strove
to burst its gates for the entrance of Italian
nationality with the rush of his volunteers. Cavour, the only statesman Italy- I had almost
said the only statesman Europe —has had for a
century, until Bismarck appeared, -  Cavour saw it
next, and attempted by diplomacy what the hero
of revolution has failed to accomplish with the
rifle and the sword.  He died in the midst of his
labors, his plans yet unconsummatedl; and Italy
stands to-day like a body without a head.  Her
natural capital, the city which most nobly represents her past, so fitted to express her future, is
in foreign and hostile hands.  Nevertheless, the
adage is correct,    Rome is Italy.
If I should allude to the past, your minds would
more readily yet catch the opening thought of this
discourse, and realize the potent influence wielded
by cities on national morals and life.
Jerusalem, whether ablaze with the glory of
golden tiles, as in the time of Solomon, or with all
her magnificence buried beneath the ruins of her
walls and the debris of the Temple, as during the
captivity, -at whatever date or in whatever condition you beheld her, she was Jerusalem  still, and
being Jerusalem, represented the Jews. The poetry,
the piety, the bigotry, the glory and shame, of the




224           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
Hebrew race were all enclosed within the circuit of
her walls. Here they crowned their kings, stoned
their prophets, and held their feasts. Here the harp
of the Poet King sounded its melodious prophecies
of the Messiah's birth, and here that Messiah received His sentence and His death. To the Jew
there was but one city, as there was but one temple, in all the world. The power and glory of the
Jewish name were enclosed within the city of his
home and heart.
But why enumerate? You are familiar with
history.  Why speak of Thebes with her hundred
gates, through which power radiated to the remotest corner of her domain; of Carthage, that
swarthy rival of Old Rome, which dominated over
the Afric coast; of Alexandria, city of books, into
which the lore of the whole world had been gathered; of Tyre and Sidon, marvels of wickedness,
associated with and begotten of wealth, such as the
world had never seen, the sails of whose ships were
of silk, and through whose streets floated the odors
of every clime; or of those vast cities, each city
an empire in itself, that stood along the banks of
the many-mouthed Nile; or of Rome herself, to
whose consuls the whole world, marching along
the Appian Way, brought tribute? All these are
known to you. The history of the human race has
been but the history of cities. Their rise and fall,
their progression and declension, are to the race




THE POWER OF CITIES.           225
what the ebb and flood of the tide are to the sea.
They have been the thesauri of the world's treasuries.  The ingenuity and skill, the industry and
perseverance, the valor and cowardice, the virtue
and sin, the life and death, of each successive generation have found expression in them. They have
been the oracles of human wisdom, the monuments
of human greatness, the arsenals of human power.
Whether you study their rise, existence, or their
fall, they epitomize the knowledge of the race and
the results of human effort.
It would be interesting, had we the time, to examine into the causes which underlie the origin
of cities, alld trace out the mental, social, and
material agencies to which their erection is due.
It would be found, could we push our inquiries in
this direction, that each of these had contributed its
full share to the common result. By nature men
are gregarious; they flock together. The spirit of
combination is as old as the race. Were the story
of the building of Babel but a myth, it would
still be pregnant with instruction. That attempt,
that first gigantic association of human endeavor,
whether a fact or a fable, would still stand as a
grand expression of a profound impulse, the embodiment of a primal idea.  That embodiment by
the wisdom  and power of God was checked, the
agents and agencies scattered; but the idea, the causal impulse remained, and does remain up to this
o10                       o




226           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
clay.  While the race endures, the same tendency
will prevail; the same spirit of combination will
receive the identical expression. The confusion
of tongues cannot check it. Application overcomes the obstacle of diverse languages. The antagonism  of speech can be harmonized, and the
chaos of unintelligible sounds reduced to order.
As the natural result of our social and mental
construction, strengthened by considerations of interest, cities will continue to be builded; Art will
seek some central galleries in which to exhibit
her achievements; Eloquence will build a platform
from  which to address the multitude; Architecture will chisel its granite and mass its structures
in imposing conjunction; Commerce, inspired with
the instinct of trade, will land her cargoes at accessible and central points.  Men, from a natural
tendency in part, from  material necessity in part,'will herd and mass together, even to their own
detriment, and cities will be built.  The future
will be as the past. The causes which have existed
will exist only more abundantly, and the history
of the centuries to  come, as of the centuries
passed, will be the history of their cities.
If you will take a map of the North American
continent, as you behold the length of its seacoast, its capacious harbors, the multitude of its
navigable rivers, some of them almost bisecting
the country, furnishing an inland communication




THE POWER OF CITIES.            227
unrivalled in the world; the vast extent and location of its great lakes; the position of certain lo.
calities, which makes them both the reservoir and
outlet for the products of the adjacent country, 
you will be led to exclaim, "This is to be a nation of cities."  The very conformation of the coast
compels us to this conclusion, and even declares
where they shall be built.  Take New York as an
illustration: a city which reigns queen of a continent, — a city with an island for her throne, and
ships for her messengers; who delighteth herself
with the cry of her pilots, and to whose feet
the waves of either ocean wash the wealth of the
world. Search for her origin. Her parentage was
not of men.  Her conception was of old time,
when the Almighty traced the boundary of the
sea.  She was begotten with the primal pangs of
nature, when this continent came forth from the
womb of waters.  New York is the child of God,
born when He drew  the outlines of our shores;
plighted to commerce and all its growth, when
He placed her in the arms of two rivers, and
breathed life into her by the cool breath of the
ocean.  Men, indeed, have clothed her in satin
and adorned her with gold, but she was begotten
out of the sea by the Spirit of the Lord.  Consider the conformation of the coast, behold the
vast extent of territory to which she is the natural
outlet, and you see at a glance, that, granted a




228           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
civilized and industrious population back of Manhattan Island, and a city at that point is a commercial necessity. And to-day, with all her wealth
and prestige, how long would New York endure if
the Hand which opened should close the outlet to.the ocean, and sever that great artery which connects her by way of the lakes with the heart of
the continent?
All that I have said touching New York is
equally true of Boston.  Upon the shore of Massachusetts Bay, so soon as New England should
become populous, a city would be sure to rise.
The instinct of Trade would naturally select this
site as the centre of her efforts and her success.
Here piers would be builded and warehouses
erected. Here, following in the train of wealth,
mansions would successively rise.  To this point
art would be attracted, and here, in the leisure
which money can purchase, letters would flourish,
and every principle of science, in the necessities
of your yearly growth, find substantial expression.
You may go west, along the shores of the great
lakes and the banks of its majestic rivers, and you
will find that the same law holds good.  Even beyond the present limits of population, it is not
difficult to locate those points where, as the restless multitude spreads itself over the plains, cities
will spring up, and great central depots of wealth
and power be established.  Considering the en



THE POWER OF CITIES.            229
ergy of our people, the natural tendency and natural necessity of combination in all human undertakings, -  considering the position and conformation of the continent, it is not hazardous to
predict that this is pre-eminently to be a nation
of cities.  The Atlantic slope is already urban,
and the time is not far distant when the valley
of the Mississippi will rival, in the number and
magnificence of its cities, the valleys of the Nile
and the Euphrates, when the civilization and glory
of the East were in their meridian glory.
Consider, now, the importance of cities as a
source of influence.
If this reasoning is correct, if cities are to multiply and abound, you will see that the whole complexion of our future is to take color and character
from this fact. The character of the people, the
character of our institutions, is to be vastly affected
thereby. There is a certain influence, a certain
atmosphere in city life, which modifies and shapes,
not only the speech and manners, but the thoughts
and opinions, of men greatly.  New England character is different to-day from what it was fifty
years ago, because New  England life is different now  from  what it was formerly.  And this
change in the life, in the thoughts, manners, and
opinions of New England men and women has
been brought about chiefly, as I believe, through
the influence of our cities. Some of you, doubtless,




230           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
can remember when the country influence preponderated in Massachusetts; when the wealth of the
State was more equally divided between the urban
and rural population than it is now; when in religion, in politics, in trade, in jurisprudence, the
towns and villages of the State held the heaviest
side of the balance; when the cities leaned, as it
were, on the country, and felt their dependence upon
it. You have lived to see all this changed; you
yourselves have aided to change it.  The cities
have broken away from their dependence on the
country, and the country now depends on them.
The cities now dictate to the towns and villages.
Through their great dailies they dictate in politics;
through their pulpits, benevolent organizations,
religious newspapers, and publishing-houses they
originate and express the moral convictions of the
churches; through their markets, their importers,
their bank establishments, their stock exchanges,
they dictate financially to the country; through
art, aesthetically; through architecture they shape
the farmer's house; through horticulture and landscape-gardening they are improving the appearance of every village and increasing the value of
every farm. The telegraph, the rail-car, and every
invention whereby the facilities of locomotion have
been increased, and personal transit from place to
place made cheap and easy, have all assisted to
bring about and hasten this transformation.  We




THE POWER OF CITIES.         231
have already reached that point of progress in this
direction that it can be in very truth said that
there is no country; in its old sense it does not
exist. The country tavern and stage-coach have
no more surely passed away than the old modes of
thought, ideas, and character-forming habits have
departed. City influence, city views, city customs,
preponderate everywhere, and are destined to do
so more and more.
I say that this change, this influence, will go on.
Its present momentum  alone insures it. Every
sign points in this direction.  The future will
be cast in this mould.  The nation will be more
and more deeply stamped with this impress.
Consider the attractive power of cities. They
draw the country population towards them by their
magnetism.  They are like huge sponges; they
absorb the talent, the enterprise, the ambition, of
every community that they touch with their power
and influence. Estimate the number of young men
in Boston to-day that were born outside the city's
limits. I asked seven one day whence they came.
Every one of them had come from Maine. Three
out of the next five I met were born in New Hampshire.  I took these twelve hap-hazard from my
acquaintance. Take New York City. That city
is a vast intellectual reservoir which drains half of
New England, and would all of New Jersey were it
not too sluggish to run! It has passed into an ad



232           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
age, that " no active, ambitious young man stays
in the country." He sets his face toward a city, as
a devotee of Mahomet sets his face toward Mecca.
It is very easy to complain of this.  It is fashionable to denounce it. Political economists may
declare that the foundation of all wealth, the basis
of all true national development, is agriculture;
but neither regret nor economic demonstration will
stop this great tidal movement of our population
toward our cities.  The laws which regulate such
popular movements are beyond our control.  Regret will never modify them.  They will continue
to operate and influence until some counter-attraction shall arise to neutralize them.  Cities will
multiply, cities will continue more and more to
absorb the country, cities will eventually dictate
the policy of the nation.
Here our feet press the threshold of the labyrinthine problem which, in the providence of God,
we are called upon to penetrate and solve. Here
we stand under the shadow of one of the great
ominous questions of the future.  The gravest
question of our day - that which will tax and puzzle us most, and yet one which challenges us to
instant and painstaking inquiry - is this, What is,
and what is to be, the moral position and character
of our cities? Can we safely trust them in respect to our liberties? Can we safely trust them
in respect to religion?  In those two propositions




THE POWER OF CITIES.            233
is wrapped up the destiny of the Republic and of
the American Church.  Will the Republic be secure?  Will the Church be equal to the emergency?  Here is ground for men of all creeds, of
all opinions, of all pursuits and trades, to stand
upon in common, to cordially strike hands in harmony of heart and action.
Well, consider this question a moment in its
relation to the Republic.
If the Republic stands for anything, it stands
not only as an expression of civil liberty, but for
that which insures and guarantees this.  When
you discuss the continuance of the Republic, you
discuss the continuance of law and order, and of
public morality in all its various phases of growth
and propagation. If the Republic means anything,
it means a pure and upright judiciary, an active
and untainted police administration, a well-protected industry, a well-observed Sabbath, a strictly
guarded and untampered ballot-box, and a system  of public education unsoiled with the touch
of venal politics. These are to our free institutions what the roots are to the tree,- the channels
of their growth, the braces of their power. When
these are severed, when these are torn up and displaced, the vital currents cease to enter the trunk,
the leaves wither, and the whole elaborate organization hastens to decay. If the Republic, in all
the phases of its life and expression, cannot stand




234           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
and thrive in the soil and atmosphere of our cities,
then, unless those cities undergo a change for the
better, the time will surely come when the Republic will not stand at all.  It will fall, and find its
burial amid the fragments of its own once glorious
structure., Its monument will be the ruins of its
own overthrow.
Now what is the condition of our principal
cities, politically, to-day? Look at New York, -
a vast and almost bottomless cesspool of corruption, a dead weight of ignorance and venality,
which the whole Empire State can with difficulty
buoy up! Look at its judiciary, heavy with the
murk of Tammany Hall, - a reproach to American Justice throughout the world! Look at its
financial jugglery and shameful monopolies, at
the expense of the nation and people! Recall
that it owes even its police protection to the State.
There has not been a time in twenty years when
the suffrage of our greatest and, in some respects,
our grandest city has not been two to one against
every principle of justice and morality which underlies our free institutions; when the Republic
would have stood an hour left to the voice of its
decision. It is safe to say that Republicanism
in New York City is a dead failure. The majority
of its population are as hostile to the very elements
of American Liberty and the Declaration of Independence as ignorance and venality and brutal
viciousness can be.




THE POWER OF CITIES.           235
You may go to Baltimore, to New Orleans, to
St. Louis, and even to Chicago, and you will find
such a state of morals, such a perverted judiciary,
such disregard of the Sabbath, that, if permitted
to grow, -will soon rank them  in wickedness with
the great Babylon of America.  You may take,
for instance, the influence of cities on the several
State legislatures.  You let a few millionnaires
come together and form what is called a "ring,"
and what a pressure they can and do put upon
legislation! Measures opposed to every principle
of public justice, bills creating and perpetuating
monopolies which drain the best blood out of the
industry of the State, are pushed through in the
very teeth of all the opposition which a knowledge
of their evil character and remaining virtue can
heave up in their path.  The outrage upon public
sentiment and the true interests of the commonwealth is done openly, defiantly, unblushingly.
But you should remember that this ill-omened influence, this startling phenomenon of power, originating and directed by pure selfishness, is yet in
its infancy. It is but recently that it has entered
as one of the elements of that problem  which,
under God, we are to work out on the shores of
this continent.  If already its strength is so considerable, what may we expect it to be when it
shall have had time to grow  and mature, and
enter the lists against public morality and pub



236           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
lie interest in all the might of its fully developed
manhood, equipped at every point?
Now consider for a moment the position of cities
in reference to religion.
At the first thought, when you consider the
number and variety of our church edifices, standing along almost every street and around our
squares, you would exclaim, " What a religious city
this is! how completely the population must be
reached by the influence of the Gospel! how
universal is the privilege of the sanctuary! how
thorough and general the Sabbath-school education!"  From  this cursory view  of things, one
might conclude that all the families of the city
must be church-goers, all the children religiously
instructed, and every soul reached by the ministrations of the Gospel.  But upon examination
he would ascertain how erroneous such a conclusion is.  He would discover that here, in Boston
itself, vast multitudes never even enter a church;
that hordes of children swarm the streets as wild
and untaught as if Boston was a heathen city;
that the churches, instead of gaining upon the
inrolling tides of ignorance and superstition, do
not even hold their own; that their seating capacity is not half equal to the necessities of the
population, and, worse than all, not over half of
the  sittings provided  are  ordinarily  occupied.
And as these ugly facts thrust themselves upon




THE POWER OF CITIES.            237
his consciousness, he would be prompted to say, as
some have said of late, "Protestantism is a failure."
Well, there is a false and there is a true side to
that statement. In its spirit, in its capacity to
reach and elevate, in its destiny and ultimate
issue, Protestantism is not and cannot be a failure.
In it is light enough to illumine all the darkness of ignorance, and warmth enough to evaporate
the dank vices which make so large a portion of
our cities a moral marsh, a breeding-place of corruption.  But in its present state of expression,
measured by those it has not reached, - by the ignorance burrowing at the very doors of its churches,
by the blinded eyes its fingers have never touched,
by the naked it has never clothed, by those in
prison it has never visited, by the souls in peril it
has never saved nor made any attempt to save, -
Protestantism in our principal cities is a failure.
Neither the Republic nor Christianity could stand
on the vote of our cities. Left to their suffrage,
justice would become a mockery; liberty degenerate
to license, and the Sabbath sink to a mere holiday.
The failure of the Protestant Church to realize
her relation to the masses has been and is her
chiefest error, so far as Christianizing the world
goes.  We have hitherto cultivated the table-lands
of society; we must now drain the marshes and
uplift the swamp level, by running purifying channels through their oozy beds.  From  these rise




238           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
those moral miasmas which carry taint and contagion to the very mountain-top of our civilization..
A Spiritual Board of Health must be formed, and
heavenly disinfectants be applied to every damp
lane and filthy tenement of our cities.  We must
run our fingers under the very roots of society, and
transplant it bodily into a drier and warmer soil.
This is not pleasant work. It is a tiresome and
hand-soiling horticulture.  The fragrance of the
rose and the orange is not in it. Broad walks and
wide lawns and the cooling shadow of trees do
not invite and relieve the laborer.  Nothing short
of the pressure of clearly apprehended duty will
sustain one in it. Easier by far is it to give charities than to distribute them; to provide bandages
than to bind up the bleeding wounds.  And yet
the work must be done, or the world will never
be brought to the knowledge and the practice of
Christian precepts.
Now it is just this, the personality of well-doing,
that I would place before you in this condition.
As Christians, benevolently disposed, we should
individualize our benevolence.  It is not for the
condition of the race at large that we are so responsible as for those individual members of the
race that are near us.  I am not so anxious for
the Christianization of Pekin and -Calcutta as I
am for the Christianization of Boston.  It is the
ignorance here I would enlighten, and the misery




THE POWER OF CITIES.          239
here I would alleviate.  I do not blush for the
heathenism  of China so much as for the heathenism of North Street.  I do not fear the cannibal
of the South Seas so much as I do the drunkards
and gamblers and Sabbath-breakers at our very
doors.  It is not over some Rome or far-distant
barbarian city that I lament; it is over this Jerusalem  of New  England, this Mecca of the Republic, that I mourn. When we reflect how much
the United States is to influence the world, and that
as a nation we are growing to be more and more
influenced by our cities, the improvement of their
moral condition becomes the great question of the
day,- a question which must be debated and settled speedily. I would that all the churches of
this city, of all creeds or without creeds, might meet
in solemn convention, to unite and fix upon some
plan by which, with the power of combined resources, they might carry personal cleanliness and
comfort, good food and raiment, education and the
glad news of Redemption, to the dirty, the starving,
the vicious and ignorant portion of our population.
I believe that a, movement might be inaugurated
by which all the moral and humane influences of
this city might be combined in furtherance of so
blessed an undertaking. I know well that sectarian
and denominational differences, that strong prejudices and some bitter memories, stand in the way;
but when vice and squalor burrow under the vQry




240           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
thresholds of our churches, when thousands live
within sight of our steeples to whom  the Sabbath has no meaning, and Christ is an unknown
word, save to point a jest or emphasize an oath, it
is not the time for us to ask men, in order to find
a point of difference, "What do you believe?" but,
that we may ascertain some sure ground of union,
" What are you willing to do? "  We must address
ourselves to this question, or else our churchsteeples will seem  to the multitude but cruel
mockeries, and the volume of our prayers be
drowned in the torrent of their cursing.
I need not tell you how natural it is for men to
exaggerate the value of forms and formulas. You
know the lesson of history and the warning of
Christ: we are to walk by the Spirit, not alone by
the letter. We are to believe only that we may act.
Faith is not the end. Pertinacious adherence to a
creed, however true, is not holiness.  It was not
the beautiful beatitudes of Christ, nor the Sermon
on the Mount, nor His farewell to His disciples,which, as an expression of undying love, has no
equal in literature, - it was His blood which saved
us, by making atonement for our sins.  It was
what He did, not what He said, that liquidated
Heaven's vast claim  against us. And so, my
friends, it is not our prayers and hymns, our words
and thoughts and hopes, which meet the claim
of duty now being put upon us; it is by well



THE POWER OF CITIES.            241
doing, not by well-saying or believing, that we
can discharge the requirements of the hour.  For
one, and I say it gladly, whoever will work for
Christ and man, let him come to my side, and he
shall be to me as a brother.  Not by his creed nor
by his church; not by his form  of prayer, but
by his works, will I know him.  Not by the bark,
nor the leaves, nor the shape of the trunk, but
by the fruit, shall the tree be judged.  Let the
churches, let all the Christian men and women
unite; let the humane and religious portion of
our population bury their past differences, cease
fromi invective and useless discussion of each other's peculiar form  of belief, and join hands to
ameliorate the condition of the poor and ignorant.of the city.  While we wrangle over theological
beliefs, the suffering and neglected die.
As I walk the streets of our city, where vice
makes its retreats, and poverty crouches in rags to
conceal its nakednes; as I think of the fingers
that bleed from  ill-paid toil, and the eyes that
ache; as I behold the swarms of children that
must be rescued from  the condition into which
they were born, or perish, - Arabs of the street,
and candidates for the gallows, from whom your
prisons are fed, and the army of crime, already
fearfully large in this country, receives its annual
reinforcement;  as I behold these, I say, and
think of their destiny, I feel that even a Hindoo
11                         r




242           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
would be welcome, could he aid me to save them
from  their fate.  0  the patience of God, that
He can bear with our idling and listlessness! that
He can look calmly on and see us debate trivial
differences, and elevate our prejudices to the dignity of essentials, while thousands on thousands
living all about us are at this moment without
God and without hope in the world! I marvel
that He does not shake the heavens in angry
warning over our heads, or visit us with some,
calamity, - some terrible disclosure of crime that
would make the edifice of public order reel, and
startle us into such thoughtful anxiety as would
unite us in the one great work of rooting out the
vice, elevating the morals, and establishing on
surer foundations the fabric of the great Republic.
Our city is full of unconverted men and women.
What are we to do with them?  Let them remain
strangers to God, and ignorant of the Gospels?
-Is that the voice of our piety? It is full of ignorance and vice; it is full of license and misery.
The soil under our feet is sown thick with the
seeds of future crifme; the air above us is hot
with inflammable elements. We see our peril; we
see our duty.  Here the power of Christianity is
to be put to the test before the eyes of the whole
world.  My friends, we must form some organization, with force sufficient to meet the emergency.
We must take the last element of risk out of the




THE POWER OF CITIES.           243
future.  We must make this city, -  which was
the cradle of American Liberty, the birthplace of
our Nationality, -  from  Beacon Hill to North
Street, all Christian.




244           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
SERMON  XII.
THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON, AND HOW
TO IMPROVE IT.
T HAD intended, friends, to present to you, in
this the closing discourse of the series, such
statistics and data in respect to the moral condition of our city as would give you all an intelligent and exact understanding of the matter, and
let you know just where we stand. But after having devoted much time, and not a little labor, to
the compilation of the needed material I had obtained, I found that I had collected subject-matter
for a volume rather than for one discourse; and I
was constrained to omit altogether the data and
explanation to which I have referred, and to confine myself to a course of discussion and suggestion this evening which, although less satisfactory to a student of social science, may prove
more pleasant and profitable to a popular assemblage.  And even after having adopted this latter
plan, I found it impossible to compress within the
required limits of time what I wished to say; and
I shall, therefore, from a fear of wearying your
patience, omit in the delivery a portion of my
discourse.




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    245
One thing must be borne in mind by those who
would obtain data on which to base an intelligent
judgment. It is this, Where and what is the source
of crime in this city? Where are the springs which
feed this prurient reservoir? Whence come those
streams of evil supply which keep this marsh of
iniquity ever full of impure waters, ever dense
with miasmatic vapors, of which virtue no sooner
breathes than it dies? Does it feed itself? Is it a
depth beneath which there is a deeper depth of
ever-rising foulness?  Does crime generate crime
and disease disease, as virtue promotes virtue and
health health?  My friends, facts do not allow us
so to conclude.  Crime kills itself.  Its law is not
the law of life, but the law of death. The tendency
of excess is to cut off the supply which feeds it.
Indulgence does not beget healthy, long-lived offspring. It is among the poor, the vicious, and the
sensual that Death has his own way.  There disease meets few checks; sanitary precautions are unknown, unpractised, impossible.  Left to the force
and operation of its own laws of life aned association,
North Street would soon be depopulated.   Scarce
a babe born there would survive its infancy.  Ere
its young eyes had fully opened to the light they
would be closed forever, and its little body would
sleep in that silent chamber which is beyond the
reach of neglect and cruelty.
No, the source of crime is not in North Street;




246           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
it lies farther up. There you behold the result, not
the beginning; there are the bitter dregs, but if you
would see the beaded surface of the cup you must
look higher. Crime works downward.  Like frost,
it strikes the upper branches first.  The dancehouse and brothel are the last result of a long
course of sinful indulgence.  The wine-cup, the
theatre, the ball-room, seduction, fashionable looseness in morals in the upper circles of society,;
these are the sources whence flow those evil waters which, gathering impurity as they descend,
stagnate at last in North Street.
In this connection you see the powerlessness
of police regulations to reform  society.  Even if
reformation ever came from  repression, it would
still be beyond the power of force to accomplish
the desired end, because the seeds and roots of the
evil are where the fingers of no municipal regulation can reach them.  You cannot put espionage
upon vice previous to some overt act. You can,
it is true, station your police in the hovels and
dance-houses of North Street, for there vice is
open, coarse, uncovered; but you cannot enter the
mansions of, the rich, and those whose social position protects them from legal inquisition, - where
vice, if it exist, is veiled under the gauze of outward propriety or rouged with the colors of virtue.
This fact must ever be borne in mind by students
of the social question.




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    247
But, in point of fact, force is not the agent of
reformation. Correct morals cannot be beaten into
a man by the baton of a policeman.  The municipal court and the house of correction are not
the fountains whence the waters of regeneration
flow.  Law  can punish and kill, but it cannot
redeem. It can confine the body, but it cannot
renew the character.  You may load down your
statute-books with penal enactments until they
cover every detail of crime, and yet not a thief
would be made honest, not a fallen woman restored by your legislation. I know well that law
can remove temptation from  men; that it can
check, by the fear of penalty, the open indulgence
of existing passions; but farther than this we
cannot rely on it. You must not suppose that
when  you have placed a policeman on every
corner, and a detective in every dark alley, you
have done all that you can do to improve the
moral condition of your city, and make life and
property safe.  The tree whose every leaf represents a separate curse, whose odor is disease,
and whose fruit is death, draws its life from soils
far beneath the surface.  Its roots are imbedded
amid the ignorance, the appetites, and the passions of men.  These law never reaches.  You
might as well expect to quiet the surging of a
boiling caldron by skimming the surface as to
quiet the evil agitations of men's hearts by legal




248            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
enactments.  In vain resort to law, in vain multiply police; the tumult will still go on, passions will still rage, appetites still seek indulgence, and the heart still beat behind the prisonbars with the same wild unrest that impelled to
the commission of the crime.  Law, therefore, 
first, because it cannot reach the source of crime,
and, secondly, because, if it could, it is unable to
remove it, -  cannot be relied upon to accomplish
what is the crying necessity of the hour.
But if police regulations cannot effect the reformation, neither are the moral and spiritual forces
now in the field able to accomplish the desired
work.  These forces may be represented by four
elements of power, -  the Church, the Mission
School, the Public School, and the City Missionary
Society. Take these in their order and examine
them; observe the extent and the limitation of
their power.
So far as the influence of the Church extends,
it is potential for good. The preacher covers in
his discourses a wide field of duty and instruction.  There is little in ethics, there is little in
politics, there is little in human progress, of which
the pulpit does not treat.  I am willing to grant
all that the warmest advocate of the Church as
a power in American society can claim.  I appreciate fully the influence of repeated weekly ministrations of the clergymen of this city upon its




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    249
morals and piety.  So far as their voice extends,
it is a voice of quickening and inspiration; but a
vast multitude in this city never hear the preacher's voice.  The glad news of redemption through
Christ; the instruction which would, if heard, enEighten their minds; the exhortation which would
strengthen their virtue; the supplication which
would lift their hearts to the Throne, is never
heard.  The sound of no church-bell calls them
to prayer; no altar invites their presence; no
pastor watches over their souls.  In a Christian
land they are without Christianity; in a city of
prayer their lips know not the habit or the value
of supplication. Living by our very side, immortal as ourselves, they are without God and without
hope in the world.  Nor is there any prospect that
this lamentable state of things will be changed for
the better in the immediate future.  The fashion
of church architecture which is now in vogue is
one of the most serious obstacles in the path of
reform.  Wealth builds the churches, not to accommodate the poor, but for wealth to worship in.
I am not one of those who cry out against elaborate and costly edifices of worship. Let the architect and the artisan exhaust their utmost resources
to adorn and make imposing the structures in which
the Most High is to be adored.  Nothing is too
grand, vast, or magnificent for such a service.  I
only ask that, when erected, they shall be open
11 -~




250           I MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
to all. Let the wealthiest and the poorest, the
strongest and the weakest, the taught and the
untaught, worship side by side. But the day
which shall see this aspiration realized in this
country is, I fear, remote.  Pride and fashion,
prejudice and timidity, will be slow to yield their
sovereignty over the American mind.  The tide
sets in the wrong direction, and the magnificent
opportunity is floating away from  us.  As the
facts now stand, our population is increasing much
faster than our church accommodations; and he
who looks to our churches to redeem  our cities
from  their present deplorable state of semi-heathenism will live, I fear, to groan over a bitter
disappointment.
The second agent which is now being relied
upon to convert our cities is the Mission School.
My friends, I fear the position I must assume
in this discourse will expose me to the charge of
captiousness; but, believe me, I do not aspire to
be regarded as a professional fault-finder. Neither
in spirit nor in practice am I a carper. I only set
myself to analyze certain factors which represent
the present available moral forces of our city. If
my analysis leads me to a conclusion other than
hopeful, I am not to blame.  I am guided, not by
my desires, but by my convictions.  I seek only
the testimony of facts, and abide strictly by that
decision which they compel. That mission schools




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.   251
accomplish much good, give much needed instruction, and in individual cases bring about a radical
conversion, I do not deny. For years I served as
a teacher or officer in them; for other years I have
studied them  and their influence in connection
with my pastoral labors.  I am  an enthusiastic
advocate of the system. But I am convinced that,
though their influence for good is great, it is overrated by the public.  The system is not capable of
accomplishing any such results as are expected of
it. Children that are depraved in private cannot be
reformed in public.  There is no influence that
can stand against home influence.  When the
parents are as near being devils as the limitations
of the flesh will allow, and home is a social and
domestic hell; when the malevolent passions are
the first to wake in the child's breast, and the first
sounds its ears interpret are those of brawling and
oaths; when all the surroundings of the boy are
gross and sensual, his playmates incipient thieves,
the hero of his neighborhood a successful burglar,
and his vernacular the blasphemy which cuts the
air like a flying scrap of red-hot iron, - it is like a
farce to expect that an hour's instruction once a
week in a mission school will reform him.  That
hour is like a plank thrust out from the bank into
a seething current, but it is idle to suppose that it
can hold its own for an instant against the one hundred and sixty-seven other hours of the week. The




252           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
mission teacher has only one foot of the lever on
his side, while the Devil has one hundred and
sixty-seven on his, weighted also in his favor with
natural and acquired depravity beyond estimate.
Is there any doubt, friends, which will win, which
will lift, the boy? Why, the Sabbath-school teacher has no chance at all! The odds are all against
him.  [Now and then he makes a success.  There
are exceptions to every rule.  I am  not talking
of these.  I am not talking of what supernatural
power may, at certain long intervals of time, effect.
The age of miracles is not entirely passed.  Now
and then the voice, which even the grave must obey,
speaks, and a soul, startlel from  a sleep heavier
than that which held the body of Lazarus, comes
forth to the amazement of its friends.  But miracles are rare. We have no right to make them the
basis of our expectations. And if we seriously propose to improve the moral condition of this city,
we shall make a great mistake if we suppose that
any multiplication of mission schools will do it.
A city of debauched parents and godless Ihomes
will be a city of idiots and thieves and paupers
until you reform  these sources of their supply.
Virtue, under certain conditions of life, is impossible: the conditions must be changed before it can
exist.  You might as reasonably expect to grow
violets on Charles River flats as to rear a child in
holiness in a basement in North Street. I have




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    253
been in dens of this city where even a saint would
stifle, so rank was the atmosphere with vice.  The
causes of crime do not lurk in the mind alone;
they exist in the body as well.  And the only
way to reform the mind and soul is to reform the
body first.  Diet and cleanliness precede the Lord's
Prayer in the alphabet of social ethics. One of the
most practicable and worthy undertakings in the
way of reform  is, as it appears to me, the effort
that is being made to provide Christian homes for
the homeless children of our cities. This is better,
so far as it is possible, than mission-school enterprises. There are thousands of children in this city
to-night who can never become industrious and virtuous men and women here.  They are like young
and delicate plants which have sprung up in too
damp a soil.  They need transplanting.  The gardener must go down into the soft muck, and run his
fingers carefully under their roots, and set them
in warmer and drier soil.  So it is with these
children.  They are now in a moral marsl.  All
the conditions of growth are against them.  We
must lift them out of their present surroundings,
and start them  anew  in better.  Five thousand
children should be sent into the country from Boston alone.  The country wants them, and they
need the air and work, and such homes as can be
found nowhere save in the country.  Take them
from  their debauched and brutalizing parents;




254           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
take them  by the strong hand of legal provision, if necessary.  You take them  thus to send
them to prison, the reform ship, and the house of
correction; can you not, then, take them in order
to give them health and home and holiness? Talk
about parental rights! What right has a father to
brutalize his boy, to beat his body, to debase his
soul, to educate him  by speech and example to
be a pauper, a thief, or a sot? What right has a
mother to prevent a girl's development in womanhood, to stand between her soul and virtue, between her mind and knowledge? Has the State no
rights in her children?  Is there a boy in your
streets in whose growth and character the Commonwealth is not interested?  Has humanity no
rights? Are we to stand idly by, and see minds
darkened and bodies diseased and souls lost? Has
God no rights, and must His people continue to
see the city which religion founded and which religion has adorned surrendered over to a heathenism
which'has in it all the moral darkness of Africa,
with a thousand-fold more cunning and viciousness?  Has Liberty no right even to protect herself? Must she permit, without protest, the ark
of her safety, the ballot-box, to be submerged and
swamped beneath a rising deluge of vice and ignorance?  For one, I am not of the number who
believe it.  We have a right, I maintain, to take
these children, by statute if need be, and put




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    255
them  a thousand miles from  the corruption in
which they had the misfortune to be born, -to
place the width of the continent between them
and that daily and hourly contamination which
steals the name of mother and the title of father
the better to fence itself from  moral and legal
check. Not only so, but it is the duty of the State
to protect childhood from such influences as are
sure, if allowed to exist, to prevent them from ever
becoming honest, industrious, and intelligent citizens. The object of government is to preclude the
need of jails and poor-houses, and not to build
them, - to assist man to develop in worthy directions his character, and give the lowest a chance
to rise. And, in the furtherance of this object, it
has the right to separate the children of misfortune from  the dire conditions of their birth, and
remove them  to more favorable ones of life and
growth.'But it is not my intention to discuss all the
minor questions of duty and expediency which
grow out of the main consideration, -the moral
improvement of our cities.  I return from what
may be regarded a digression to allude to one
other movement in the right direction.  I refer
to what is known as the Industrial School enterprise.
Consider this matter a moment.  Get an intelligent conception of the causes which make this




256           MIUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
movement eminently a necessity. There is a crime
among us of which you all know by report at least,
although I doubt if one in a hundred outside of the
police force has any idea of the extent to which it
abounds.  And yet it seeks little concealment, 
only enough to hide itself from  the eyes of the
unobserving, or those who do not wish to see.  It
walks your streets, infests your Common, rendezvouses in your theatres, rents your tenements,
rustles its silks in some of your finest mansions,even audiences convened for the worship of God
have more than once been put under police espionage in this city to protect the sanctity of the
occasion from the intrusion of this nameless crime.
Now whence does it get its supply? Having in
the lives of its personal victims but an average of
three years, and losing thirty per cent of its number every twelve months, how comes it that its
ranks are ever full?  Through what conductors
that impart poison come the waters that keep this
polluted cistern filled continually to its very brim?
Well, there are many sources of supply. Seduction
yields a certain proportion; inherent depravity
adds its per cent; intemperance and ill-treatment by parents, relatives, or husbands; indolence; evil companionship, - each yields its share
to swell the awful tide: but another cause remains
to be mentioned, which gives, according to the
best data gathered, over one fourth of the whole




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    257
number, - it is destitution. Of two thousand subjects examined in New York City, it was ascertained that five hundred and twenty-five were
compelled to become, prostitutes through destitution.  They had no inclination for the horrid
life; every instinct of their natures rebelled against
it; but they were driven to it by sheer starvation. Mothers sold their chastity to buy bread for
their children; daughters, to procure medicines for
their sick parents, -yea, in some cases, that their
mothers might have a roof to shelter them in their
last sickness, and a bed on which to die in peace.
This is not imagination employed to paint a picture to excite your sympathy; I am only quoting
official facts and figures. Nor was this destitution,
in the majority of cases, the result of improvidence; it was the natural result of that false system  of female education which prevails in this
country, which leaves the women of the land to the
sport of a fickle fortune.  We educate our girls to
spend and not to earn, to depend upon others for
support and not upon themselves, - leaving them
at the same time exposed to every contingency of
sickness and death, which often deprives them  in
a moment of that support which they need, and
without which they cannot live with virtue, unless
assisted by charity.  I know that we plume ourselves upon  the educational facilities that we
enjoy.  It is our boast that knowledge is open to




258           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
all; and the boast is allowable, if by knowledge
you mean only that which belongs to scholarship,
which adorns character with the power and grace
of intellectual acquisition, which fits our girls for
the parlor and for that leisure and refined companionship which wealth and fashion secure and
demand. But if knowledge means something more
than this,-if it includes.that power which enables one to support himself, which makes the
fingers worthy allies of the brain, which arms one
against the contingencies of life, the uncertainties
of fortune, —if knowledge means this,-then is
our boast but the assumption of unthinking conceit,
for such knowledge America does not give and
never has given to her children.
Why, look at your educational system.  Examine it soberly a moment, and see what it does
and does not do.
You take a girl of poor parentage and social inferiority, whose parents do not know perhaps how
to read or write, yet a girl of promise, quick to
learn, apt to imitate, physically beautiful.  For
eight years- years which cover the formative period of her life — you give her the best advantages
of your superb public schools.  She sits at the
same desk with the rich man's daughters, recites
in the samue class, studies the same books, hears
their conversation, adopts their standard of taste,
their ideas of dress and views of life and labor.




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.   259
For eight years you have been educating her to
love ease and refinement, and all the concomitants
of such a state.  At last the girl is graduated, 
graduated, I will admit, a lady. You have taught
her art and science, literature and poetry, made
her fit for the parlor and the mansion.  You have
educated her pride, her vanity, her taste.  You
have unfitted her for her former life and sphere.
Will she go down and drudge with her ignorant
mother? Will she mate with and marry the companion of her coarse, hard-working brothers? My
friends, such a supposition is against all reason.
It flies in the face of well-established social tendencies.  No, you have made her a lady, as Americans understand that term, and a lady she will
be.  If her beauty and accomplishments win her
a husband able to provide her with a home, that
home she will adorn and that husband she will
make happy.  If not, what? Will some of you
answer? You have made her a queen, now guarantee her a throne.  What can she do? Teach,
you say.  Fifty applicants for every position, I respond.  She might set type, and earn from twelve
to twenty dollars per week; but you have not
taught her.  She might operate a telegraph, but
she knows not even the alphabet of the art.  She
might mould and engrave, and win a generous support, perhaps fame; but your schools provide no
teachers for so beautiful and lucrative a profes



260           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
sion.  She might even earn a fair competence as
a seamstress, but the whirr of a sewing-machine
would disturb the class in philosophy and French.
What can she do, I repeat?  Clerk it for six
dollars per week, and pay five for her board and
room-rent!
My friends, virtue will not live at such a rate.
You have no right to expect it will.  If you educate girls to expect luxury, you must provide them
with the means to honestly obtain it. It is the
duty of those who shape society to remove temptation from  the people, to make virtue easy, and
put vice at the greatest possible disadvantage.
But the educational and social system  which we
tolerate in America reverses this wise rule.  We
make vice easy, nay, almost a necessity, in that we
educate our girls for a style of life which nothing
but labor liberally compensated, or vice, can support, and then deny them  both the labor and the
compensation. Under the workings of our present
arrangements virtue starves and vice feasts. The
one drudges its life out in rags; the other promenades your streets in silks.  Many a female clerk
can save but a dollar a week. That is the amount
she has left after deducting the cost of her board
and lodging.  The pitiful sum represents six days
of weary toil.  But a smile will buy her a dress,
and a week's compliance with temptation put
more money in her pocket than she could save




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    261
by the practice of a year's economy. Such are
the facts of the case, and the crime will increase
so long as the cause is allowed to remain.
If an enlarged system of education be objected
to on the ground of expense; if you should say,
"Your theory is correct enough, but its reduction
to practice would add twenty per cent to the cost
of maintaining our public schools, and we cannot
afford it," I reply, You can afford anything which
lessens crime twenty per cent. Virtue is never
dear and vice never cheap at any price.  Contented and hopeful Industry, and Morality, her
twin-sister,   these are to the state what springs
are to rivers; and whatever can add appreciably
to these should receive at once the attention and
support, not only of those in authority, but of all
who have the honor of the Commonwealth and
the good of humanity at heart.
I have now spoken of the Church, the Mission
School, and the Common School as agents of reform, and suggested the weakness, the limitations,
and the inefficiency of each, as measured by the
especial work to be done. Only one more agent
remains to be considered. I refer to those efforts
which for the most part are made through what
are known as City Missionary Societies.
These societies accomplish, beyond doubt, much
good. The persons employed are men and women




262           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
of piety and zeal.  Far be it from  me to lessen
in the least the value of their self-denying labors,
or detract an iota from  the estimation in which
they are deservedly held by the Christian public.
I am  not talking of persons, but of systems; not
of agents, but of organizations.  Speaking thus,
and with no personal allusions whatever, I maintain that city missionary societies are doing, and
can do, as now conducted, scarcely anything to
meet the physical and moral necessities of our city.
Individuals here and there are assisted, — fed,
clothed, and reformed; but the ignorant, impoverished, and vicious class, as a class, remains substantially untouched.  There are many reasons
to account for this state of things.  In the first
place, we have not admitted our responsibility in
the matter.  The Christian public have not seriously interested themselves in it.  We have not
confessed, even to ourselves, that we are under any
obligation to the poor, the fallen, and the falling;
our aim, our chief effort, has been to protect ourselves from  them.  If we could keep our lives
and property passably safe; if, through police regulations, we could overawe the vicious classes,
and keep them in subjection to law, so that they
should not gain the ascendency and imperil our
material interests; if we could only confine them
within certain sections of the city, as we do Indians upon their reservations, we have been con



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.   263
tent. But that we were really responsible before
God for their moral condition, or had any positive
obligation in the matter, this we have never seriously believed.
In the second place, we have never made any
downright, determined effort to overcome the evil.
It has been fashionable for each of our churches
to sustain a mission school, to support a city missionary, and take up occasionally a contribution for
the "Wanderers' Home," and similar institutions,
and so we have done it; but as to joining hands in
fraternal union, as to rising in our might and saying, "Cost what it may, this shame and danger
must be removed from  our midst, this home
heathenism must be rooted out," we never have
done it. No such effort has been made here as
was made under the leadership of Chalmers in
Edinburgh to reform the vicious classes of that
city. We have worshipped our God in comfortable temples, sung our hymns of praise and joy, indulged in splendid seclusion our hopes' of heaven,
as if there were not thousands within the sound
of our Sabbath chimes who had no temples in
which to worship, no hymns to sing, no joy to
cherish. And if we have at intervals warmed up
to the work of saving souls, if we have longed and
given to spread the Gospel news, it has been for
the Caffre and the benighted heathen on some fardistant shore, and not for men and women living




264           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
and dying at.our very side, who know nothing
of Jesus save as a term with which to edge their
wit or emphasize an oath.  And if one, driven by
curiosity or some worthier motive, goes cown
into this moral Gehenna that yawns at our very
feet, and, returning therefrom as from the very
valley of corruption, lifts his voice to tell us of the
sights he saw and the sounds he heard, we regard
him as a second-rate sensationalist, whose trade it
is to deal out to his audiences exaggerated descriptions of pathetic and horrible experiences.  The
speaker is not credited, and the audience remains
unconvinced.
The best plan, as it appears to me (to get at the
matter in a business-like way) is to do here what
Chalmers did in Edinburgh, - district the city, and
apportion the districts among those churches of
the city willing to embark in the enterprise. Hold
each church responsible for its section, and let
none undertake to cover more territory than can
be cultivated thoroughly, and at once.  The work
should include every branch of reformation, beginning with the lowest, and in certain sections of our
city it would be found to be the most essential, -
the body. Cleanliness precedes piety in the order
of spiritual development.   The bath-tub before
the Bible, soap before the religious tract.  The
work must be from house to house, one at a time,
and, as the prime condition of success, in connec



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    265
tion with civil authority ancl co-operation wvit7 the
police.
This last suggestion may appear startling to
you.  It certainly is novel, but I am  convinced
that it is both necessary and feasible.  Indeed, I
would not predict success of the most earnest
effort, under the most judicious management, on
any other condition.  In order that any salutary
reform may be effected, certain nuisances must be
abated, which can be done only through civil action. Certain laws, now a, dead letter or nearly so,
must be rigidly enforced, but this can be done only
through the police department.  The moral and
the civil forces must work in union in order to
effect their object.  At present they are divorced,
and alone neither can accomplish what they might
if united.
Look at this matter a moment.  The first essential of reform  is knowledge.  The reformer must
make himself acquainted with the habits and customs of the depraved, and the causes which lead
them  astray, and which now operate to keep them
in bondage.  He must learn to distinguish between the hardened criminal and the novice in
crime, and tell at a glance to which class a person
belongs. He must know the haunts of vice, the
dens of infamy, the hovels of poverty, and all the
concomitants of those whom  he is to benefit.
Without such knowledge he is as powerless to
12




266           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
help as a physician, when he finds himself face
to face with a new, unheard-of, and virulent form 
of contagion.  Well, what do we do?  Why, we
elect some pious woman as our city missionary, 
a woman who knows no more of vice in its origin,
growth, subterfuges, and deceits than your wife by
your side, my friend.  You send out that woman,
fitted neither by nature nor education for the work,
and pit her against the hardest, most cunning,
shrewdest class of our population. They masquerade to her face, and laugh at her behind her back.
She is a mere shuttle for the nervous strokes of
their wit to pass to and fro between the warp of
their coarse mirth.  You have sent her to a work
novel, arduous, demanding peculiar natural qualities and a peculiar knowledge whichl she does not
possess, and the result is what every intelligent
person would expect: the ignorant are ignorant
still, and the tide of vice and evil indulgence casts
its sluggish waters higher and higher up, until
they wash the very foundations of your churches.
I would give more for two Christian ex-policemen
as city missionaries than any fifty church-members you may select and send down as evangelists
to North Street. My two would relieve more honest poverty, stop more brutality, minister to more
sickness, reform more drunkards, lift more of the
fallen, detect more hypocrisy, do more good, than
all your fifty put together.




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    267
And here permit me to say a word concerning
the personnel of your police force.  For a year I
have watched the department closely, made myself acquainted with the duties and responsibilities
of the policeman, as he goes his daily and nightly
rounds. I know the estimation in which the average policeman is held by the wicked, the poor, and
the unfortunate; and here I bear a sincere and,
as I believe, an'intelligent testimony, not merely
as to faithfulness in discharge of their difficult
duties, but more especially in reference to their
character and standing( as men, amid the classes
with which they are more immediately brought
in contact. Of their official conduct and services
public reports speak; but of their numberless acts
of kindness to the poor, their deeds of charity to
the friendless,.their self-sacrifice, often of both time
and money, to assist the destitute and the unfortunate,-of these it is in my power, as it is certainly
a pleasure for mne, to bear witness.  Many a warm
Christian heart beats under the policeman's badge.
Many a patrolman of your city has endeared himself to the poor and the sick of his beat by his
deeds of love and his words of counsel and sympathy.  More than one member of the force, as I
have reason to know, has fulfilled the highest
ideal of a police-officer, in that he is regarded, not
merely as an officer of the law, but as a friend and
counsellor in times of trouble.  My warmest sym



268          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
pathy and admiration are given to these men, who,
without the support or praise of any, without even
any profession on their part, are doing noble missionary service for the city and for God.
My idea is, as I have said, that all our missionary efforts should be conducted in connection with
the civil power and the police.  We need the
knowledge that these men alone can give us.
What do we clergymen and citizens know of the
unfortunate and criminal classes of our city, conpared with these men whose duty it is to become
intimately acquainted with them? They have
studied the problem  as we have not.  Standing
amid the results of indulgence and crime, they
can tell you the causes, point out the several
stages of that long yet swift descent which, beginning at the level of innocence, landed the girl in
iNorth Street.  Take any clergyman in this city;
let him doff his clerical robes and don the blue
uniform, and pass five years on his beat in North
Street, - every day and night of those years on the
alert, studying countenances, watching modes of
life and their results, seeing the benefit and the
abuse of law, learning the goodness and the meanness of men as only a patrolman can, - studying
this great problem of the causes which vitiate a
population, and which reform.  Let a clergyman
do this for five years, I say, and what professional
brother in this city would be able to advise, touch



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    269
ing missionary work, as could he? But if five years
could do so much to furnish one with needed knowledge for this service, what must we conclude concerning those who have spent ten, fifteen years,
nay, almost a lifetime, as some of your police-officers have, in just this business?  If I had tile
missionary work of this city intrusted to me to
organize and conduct, the first thing I should do
would be to invite the Mayor of the city and
the captains of the police to assist me in mapping out the plan, and urge their co-operation
in its general execution.  More intelligent, willing, and'zealous co-laborers it would be difficult
to find.  I am  not sure but that, before this
great work will ever be intelligently undertaken,
some central organization must be formed; a
church dedicated solely for this purpose must
be built, open to all willing to work for God and
man,-a church of great wealth, gathered from
all denominations, and numerous in membership,
manifold in diversity of talents, whose sole mission
shall be to wash and whiten the moral uncleanliness of Boston.  All hail to the day when such a
church shall take its stand among us, and proclaim,
"For the sake of the Republic, for the sake of humanity, and -nobler motive yet —for the glory
of God, we devote the energies, the prayers, the
wealth of this church, to the Christian-ization of
Boston."




270           MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
My friends, I thank you for your patience, which
I feel I have sorely taxed to-night, and for the
courtesy and kindness with which you have here
received my words. I will detain you but a moment longer.  It is to say that, upon whatever
sanitary and reformative agents we may rely to
assist us in the work, it is in religion alone that
we can find the motives and the spirit needed.
It is the power of God unto salvation that we must
have with us in all our efforts, if we are to succeed.
Not to the body alone does triumph come through
the Cross, but a more far-reaching and extensive
victory comes to the soul.  The soul has its diseases, - where shall it find a physician? It is
stricken with weakness,   by whom  shall it be
braced with power?  There is to virtue a grave,
and the wailing above it is sadder than the surge
of winds through the cypress.  I-ot are the tears
that fall above it, and no human cry can express
the agony of a spirit bowed down in despair, and
groaning for virtue lost, for manhood smitten, for
honor gone forever.  Show  me where love was
lost, where faith was rent, where hope died out,
where all that made the man went down, and I
will show you a spot too sad for cypress, too black
for crape; and yet hope may come to that desponddent soul and light to that darkened spot.
Nevermore shall the stricken eagle rise; nevermore with living wing shall it sport along the




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    271
edges of the tempest and rise superior to the cloud;
never will the Sun behold it in its aspiring flight,
and take it to himself, hiding it from mortal sight
in the blaze of his brightness; but, lifeless and
debased, it shall lie until the worm shall know it,
and the vile things that crawl feed on the plumage
of the sky.
But to the stricken soul, to the debased spirit,
to overthrown manhood there is a hope.  The Gospel speaks, and that which had no power to rise is
lifted. Life comes back to it. Strength throbbing
with power; vigor which beats with full vein; aspirations which outsoar the eagle's flight, leaving
the sun beneath them; hope that contents itself
with nothing that is not heaven; and a purpose
which bears the buffets of evil fortune without a
murmur, which keeps an even pace against a tornado's pressure, - all these come to the soul through
Christ, renewing the marred features until the
original loveliness appears, as tints in colored marble grow under the smoothing-plane, and man resumes once more the long-lost look of God.  0
men and women without the power of the Gospels in your hearts, how much you lose! Give up
your wealth; fling beauty aside, yea, fling it from
you until you shall be as was the Man of Sorrows,
in whom  men saw no comeliness; part with position and all that vanity craves; - only have the
power of God's transforming love in your hearts,




272           MIUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
and your wealth shall be beyond the riches of men.
and your royalty beyond the royalty of kings.
People talk about religion being a restraint upon
men. Andso it is in one sense,  but it is a very
small sense indeed. There are in man certain destructive tendencies, - passions which make him
their sport, appetites which coerce his better judgment,-and religion puts a curb upon these and
reins them in.  But religion has other and larger
uses than this.  Fetters and cords and gags do not
represent it.  It directs more than it dams up; it
germinates more than it stamps out.  God purifies
the soul very much as you air your rooms. You
do not keep the doors and windows shut, and throw
in chemicals, trusting that they will master and
renew the vitiated element; you open all the doors
and windows and ventilators, and let God's pure
air flow in from without,- a strong, crisp current
through every door and window, and thus you
purify your chambers.  So it is with God. The
purifying influences come from without, not from
within. He throws open all the windows of the
soul, - the windows of feeling, of impulse, of imagination, of purpose, - and sends a strong current of
vitalizing grace sweeping through them, until every
apartment of our nature is reoxygenized and made
healthy and bracing.  Negatives do not express
religious duty. The " shall nots" are less frequent
than the "shalls."  I love to think that religious




THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    273
life is the growth of all the faculties, and not a slow
strangulation of them.  As I look at it, religion
no more cramps a man than wings do a bird or
fins do a fish.  It supplies him  with propelling
power.  A  Christian man should be an active
man, -  active in every faculty, every fibre vibrating with energy.  Great injury has been done
religion by allowing people to regard it as a mild
form  of slavery, a kind of bondage to goodness,
in which people consented to be tied  up that
they might not hurt themselves or others.  But
there is no such religion as this, -  at least in the
New  Testament.  The Gospel Christ taught and
Paul preached is a gospel of liberty and not of
slavery.  The more that faith in Christ works out
its legitimate effect in man, the more is he emancipated, the freer he becomes.  You all see this.
You can each of you recall, probably, some person in slavery to some particular form  of sin, -
some habit, some appetite. Take the appetite for
alcoholic liquor. Let it once get its fingers fairly
around a man's throat, and it rarely lets go until it flings him  aside as a corpse.  When the
man is black in the face, and his blood chilled
forever, and his body fit only for the worm, then
it quits its hold, but rarely before.  While he
lives the man is the slave of his sinful habit.  To
it he gives his earnings, his time, his health, the
clothes on his back, even his children's bread, - all
12*                         R




2*74          MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
go to gratify the cravings of his appetite. But let
the grace of God come into his soul, and his fetters
are broken; he stands disenthralled and erect, a
free man.
I tell you, friends, there is hope for all.  Christ
is able to save even unto the uttermost.  Only
make the Gospels known, only preach them  so
that men can understand them, only keep this
radiant sun in the heavens, and the spiritual nature
of men must blossom.  You might as well charge
the swelling buds in June not to open and grow
fragrant when the beams of the sun are prying
open all their leaves, and the south-wind is forcing
itself in among the petals, as to forbid men to flower
out in goodness under the influence of the Gospels.
I preach the message of God to you, therefore,
not with threats.  I tilt against your fears with no
spear-like denunciation. The message I am set to
carry to my fellow-men is not one of terror, but of
glad news.  I know that God is inflexible in justice toward those who persist in wickedness. I
know that His wrath, when kindled, can burn to
the lowest hell; but fear is not a gospel motive,
terror is not a substitute for love.  He does not
drive men, He guides. He does not threaten, He
invites.  Christ did not come to condemn the
world, but that the world through Him might be
saved.  This has been greatly overlooked.  The




THE  MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.    275
New Testament has often been preached as a book
of legislation rather than of salvation.  Christ has
been held up as one who is to judge the world
rather than one who is to save the world.  This is
a horrible perversion of His mission.  I present
God to you, this evening, not in His judicial but
His paternal relations to men.  You are all His
children; erring and disobedient some of you, but
children still.  His heart is full of love for you.
His face is not averted in anger. He lifts the
liglht of it upon you at this moment.  Some of
you, perhaps, are discouraged. He says, " My child,
be of good courage, I am with you always."  Some
of you are weak and weary; you have walked far
and borne much.  He says, "My child, see, thou
art weak, but I am  strong; thou art small, hut I
am  vast; come to my arms, lay yourself on my
bosom, and I will carry you the rest of the way."
Some of you are in grief; the voices of the departed are ever in your ears, their faces ever before
your eyes; you cannot at times eat or sleep because
of your weeping.  " Hush," He says, " subdue your
grief, and live your days in hope and joy. Heaven
is large, and its ministrations are abundant.  The
departed are with me; when you meet them again,
you shall have them forever."  And some of you
are far off, rebellious and bitter. But does He pursue you in wrath, does He smite you?  Ah no;
the rain falls on the just and the unjust. He calls




276            MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.
to you, He sends me as His messenger out after
you, with the command, " Tell them to come back,
yea, every one.  I would not that any should perish.  Tell them  all to come back to their Father's
love and home."  Let this be the closing utterance, the last words, probably, which, as a preacher
of the Gospel, I shall ever address to you from
this platform. In weariness and weakness often,
amid doubts of purpose and of plan, in narrowness
of conception, in feebleness of expression, I have
striven for these twelve nights to teach and inspire, to direct and encourage you.  Through them
all God has been with us on our right hand and
on our left; and at times I have seen, or thought
I saw, among us the Presence which is ineffable.
Believing most firmly in the power of the Gospel to save, in the efficacy of the Blood to atone,
in the willingness of God to forgive, in His love
for the lowly and the lost, I launch this voice into
the air; I send it out over the city   would that
it might reach every heart and every ear  -
"Come back, all ye who have wandered  from
virtue, -come back to your Father's love and
home."
THE END.
Cambridge: Electrotyped by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.