and these all have their civilizing influence. A dime or half-dime saved each day may mean a few books, a good newspaper, a brighter smile on the face of the wife, better clothed and happier children. The more dimes and nickels saved and put to such uses, the more rapidly will the green pastures and still waters come, to ornament life's hard necessities and relieve its toils. Yet there is many a husband and father — sometimes, alas, even a wife and mother who drinks up his green pastures by spending the dimes and half-dimes for liquids that intoxicate. Philanthropy can do no better thing for the laboring poor who depend for their bread on their daily toil than to show them how, by saving a little money above their needs each week, they can throw around their toilsome, arid lives an atmosphere of comfort and even of a refining luxury, of which no one can rob them.

And, again, there is the ornament of a trustful and quiet spirit, exhibited in certain characters, which carries in itself all the blessedness of the best kind of outward possessions. Such persons may be poor in worldly goods, they may be forced to painful toils, their homes may have little of material beauty; but they have so adjusted themselves morally and spiritually to life's trials and duties that the green pastures and still waters appear in their souls. The beauty which graces their homes. is that of their own holiness, the nutriment they offer is that of the spirit. You feel in their presence the refreshing, assuring atmosphere of open

spaces and clear skies. They keep their serenity unmoved by life's changes, their trust undisturbed by its trials. They are not merely led by the Eternal, but they have within them the stability and life and repose of the Eternal. Mr. Wasson's fine poem, "All's Well," written from a bed of broken health and pain and threatening poverty, voices the feelings of those who have thus found their green pastures and still waters in the realm of mental and spiritual possessions.

"Sweet-voiced Hope, thy fine discourse
Foretold not half life's good to me;

Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force
To show how sweet it is to be!
Thy witching dream.

And pictured scheme

To match the fact still want the power;
Thy promise brave

From birth to grave

Life's boon may beggar in an hour.

"O wealth of life beyond all bound!
Eternity each moment given!
What plummet may the Present sound?
Who promises a future heaven?
Or glad, or grieved,

Oppressed, relieved,

In blackest night or brightest day,
Still pours the flood

Of golden good,

And more than heart-full fills me aye.

"I have a stake in every star,

In every beam that fills the day;
All hearts of men my coffers are,
My ores arterial tides convey;

The fields, the skies,

The sweet replies

Of thought to thought are my gold-dust;
The oaks, the brooks,

And speaking looks

Of lovers' faith and friendship's trust.

"Life's youngest tides joy-brimming flow
For him who lives above all years,
Who all-immortal makes the Now,
And is not ta'en in Time's arrears;
His life's a hymn

The seraphim

Might hark to hear or help to sing;
And to his soul

The boundless whole

Its bounty all doth daily bring."

But even where there is less of spiritual experience and of moral wealth than this exquisite lyric voices, considering, for instance, quite ordinary routines of life's ties, toils, and duties, there is always ample provision, if we will but seek and accept it, for a softening fringe around them of grace and beauty, which may be compared to the green pastures and still waters lying beyond the naked necessities of existence. A happy marriage and home, what refreshment and added vitality do they give to the treadmill routines of labor and duty! Friendship, good books, the beautiful in nature and art and the love that may be cultivated for the beautiful, and the stimulus and delight of intellectual companionship,- these all make a rich part of life's needful luxuries. Man can exist

without them, can exist and work and have all physical wants as a breathing animal gratified. But without them he cannot live according to the full breadth and wealth of the normal measure of manhood. So, too, duty may be gracefully clothed beyond the legal requirement of the commandment. The same kind of duty may be done is done by different persons so as to produce very different effects. Let it be, for instance, a needed moral rebuke to another or an act of charity. One person will do it with such rigidness of law and frigidity of manner as to irritate and arouse resistance. Another may do the same action with such graciousness of spirit as to make the recipient feel all the breadth and sweetness of Nature's bounty.

But, whatever possessions we may hold in this broader and higher domain of life beyond the bound of life's primary needs, there is yet always a vision of finer fields and purer waters still before us. There is no attainment that seems permanently to satisfy as if it were the end. The Eternal ever leadeth us on to some further goal. Nourished in the green pastures, refreshed by the still waters, we are strengthened for another journey and prepared for nobler tasks. "Sweet-voiced Hope" is the enticer. The young man's or the young woman's toil to-day over books or music or accounts, or at some necessitated or chosen task of the hands, might become a wearing, degrading drudgery indeed, did not hope light up the future with some finer achievement as the result. The

highest ideals of character, the highest ideals of society, these are still disembodied. They invite us onward to give them body and power. With social weals the age is alive. Impracticable, fantastic, impossible, many of them may be; but beneath them is a divine discontent, because of present wants inequitably satisfied and of higher wants struggling for birth, a divine discontent which calls for a new adjustment of social rights and duties. So much of human vitality, on one side, is spent perforce in the mere labor of keeping soul and body together, and so much, on the other side, is wasted in needless and enervating luxuries, that the refreshing pastures and restful waters of social life are hardly yet in sight. Still, there is good reason from past experience for the faith that present iniquities will gradually be removed, justice be done between man and man, labor and capital join hands in friendship, and, in some happier century to come, righteousness and peace kiss each other.

I know that the fulfilment of this great hope is commonly adjourned to another world. The Christian Church especially, apparently despairing of ever finding the green pastures and still waters on earth, has put them among the promised pleasures of the redeemed in heaven. This world it has described as mainly given over to the wiles and woes of evil, as a vale of tears and griefs: only in the world to come could the hope for happiness and peace find its fruition. But it has not been my