acres and his armies, of the feudal capitalist now-a-days, -the commercial baron, with notes at cent. per cent.; when I see the hyæna of the desert stealing his prey in an Abyssinian town, and the hyæna of the city kidnapping a man in Boston,-when I see all this, I say the thing is not hopeless. O no! it is hopeful. God knew it all at the beginning, as perfect Cause; cared for it all, as perfect Providence, with perfect motive, purpose, material, means-will achieve at last ultimate welfare for the oppressor and the oppressed.

I see the individual suffering, from want, ignorance, and oppression; the public woe which blackens the countenance of men, the sorrow which with private tooth gnaws the heart of African Ellen or William, the sin which puts out the eyes of Caucasian Cain or George. Can I fear? O no! though the worm of sorrow bore into my own heart, I cannot fear. The Infinite God with infinite power, wisdom, justice, holiness, and love, knew it all, and made the nature of Ellen and William, of Cain and George, and controls their circumstances, so that by their action and the action of the world of man and the world of matter, the perfect motive and the perfect means shall achieve the perfect purpose of the infinite lovingkindness of God.

Then how grand is human destination! Ay, your destination and mine! There is no chance; it is direction which we did not see. There is no fate, but a Mother's Providence holding the universe in her lap, warming each soul with her own breath, and feeding it from her own bosom with everlasting life.

In times past there is evil which I cannot understand; in times present evil which I cannot solve; suffering-for mankind, for each nation, for you and me; sufferings, follies, sins. I know they were all foreseen by the infinite wisdom of God, all provided for by His infinite power and justice, and His infinite love shall bring us all to bliss, not a soul left behind, not a sparrow lost. The means I know not; the end I am sure of.

"Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,

Thy hands made both, and I am there;
Thy power and love, my love and trust,
Make one place everywhere."

In the world of matter there is the greatest economy of force. The rain-drop is wooed for a moment into bridal loveliness by some enamoured ray of light, then feeds the gardener's violet, or moves the grindstone in the farmer's mill, serving alike the turn of Beauty and of Use. Nothing is in vain; all things are manifold

in use.

"A rose, beside his beauty, is a cure."

The ocean is but the chemist's sink which holds the rinsings of the world, and everything washed off from earth was what the land needed to void, the sea to take. All things are twofold; matter is doubly winged, with Use and Beauty.

"Nothing hath got so far,

But man hath caught and kept it as his prey;
His eyes dismount the highest star;

He is in little all the sphere.

Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Find their acquaintance there.

"For us the winds do blow,

The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow;
Nothing we see but means our good,

As our delight, or as our treasure;

The whole is either our cupboard of food,

Or cabinet of pleasure.

"The stars have us to bed;

Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws.

Music and light attend our head:

All things unto our flesh are kind

In their descent and being; to our mind
In their ascent and cause."

And do you then believe that the great God, whose motto, waste not, want not," is pictured and practised on earth and sea and sky, is prodigal of human suffering, human woe ? Every tear-drop which sorrow has wrung from some poor negro's eye, every sigh, every prayer of grief, each groan the exile puts up in our own land, and the groan which the American exile puts up in Canada,while his tears shed for his wife and child smarting in the tropics, are turned to ice before they touch the wintry ground,-has its function in the great chemistry of our Father's world. These things were known by God, and He will bring every exile, every wanderer in His

arms, the great men not forgot, the little not less blest, and bear them rounding home from bale to bliss, to give to each the welfare which His nature needs to give and ours to take.

The atheist looks out on a here without a Hereafter, a body without a Soul, a world without a Heaven, a universe with no God; and he must needs fold his arms in despair, and dwindle down into the material selfishness of a cold and sullen heart. The popular theologian looks out on the world and sees a body blasted by a Soul, a here undermined by a Hereafter of hell, arched over with a little paltry sounding-board of Heaven, whence the elect may look over the edge and rejoice in the writhings of the worms unpitied beneath their feet. He looks out and sees a grim and revengeful and evil God. Such is his sad whim. But the man with pure theism in his heart looks out on the world, and there is the Infinite God everywhere as perfect Cause, everywhere as perfect Providence, transcending all, yet immanent in each, with perfect power, wisdom, justice, holiness, and love, securing perfect welfare unto each and all.

On the shore of Time where Atheism sat in despair, and where Theology howled with delight, at its Dream of Hell all crowded with torment at the end, there sits Theism. Before it passes on the stream of Human History, rolling its volumed waters gathered from all lands, -Ethiopian, Malay, Tartar, Caucasian, American,—from each nation, tribe, and family of men; and it comes from the Infinite God, its perfect Cause; it rolls on its waters by the Infinite Providence, its perfect Protector; He knew at Creation the history of empires, these lesser dimples on the stream; of Ellen and William, Cain and George, the bubbles on the water's face; He provided for them all, so that not a dimple deepens and whirls away, not a bubble breaks, but the perfect Providence foresaw and fore-cared for it all. God is on the shore of the stream of Human History, infinite power, wisdom, justice, love; God is in the air over it, where floats the sparrow that fell, falling to its bliss,-in the waters, in every dimple, in each bubble, in each atom of every drop; and at the end the stream falls into the sea,-that Amazon of human history, under the line of Providence, on the

Equator of the world, falls into the great Ocean of Eternity, and not a dimple that deepens and whirls away, not a bubble that breaks, not a single atom of a drop, is lost. All fall into the Ocean of Blessedness, which is the bosom of love, and then the rush of many waters sings out this psalm from human nature and from human history,-"If God is for us, who can be against us?"

VI.

OF PRACTICAL THEISM, REGARDED AS THE PRINCIPLE OF ETHICS.

LET INTEGRITY AND UPRIGHTNESS PRESERVE ME.-PSALM XXV. 21.

LAST Sunday I spoke of Speculative Theism as a Theory of the Universe. To-day I ask your attention to a Sermon of Practical Theism; of Theism considered as a Principle of Ethics.

You start with the Idea of God as Infinite in power, wisdom, justice, love, holiness; you consider Him in His relation to the universe, as perfect Cause and perfect Providence; you see that from His nature He must have made the world, and all things therein, from a perfect motive, for a perfect purpose, of perfect material, as perfect means thereto; and therefore that Human Nature must be adequate to the end which God designed; that it must be provided with means adequate to the development of men; that all the faculties in their normal activity must be the natural means for achieving the purposes of God. You see that as He gave Nature, the material world, its present amount of necessitated forces, knowing exactly how to proportion the means to the end, the forces to the result which they were to produce ;-in like manner He gave to man his present amount of contingent forces, knowing perfectly well what use men

would make thereof, what abuses would ensue, what results would come to pass, and ordered and balanced these things, compensating one constant by another, caprice by necessity, so that our human forces should become the means of achieving His divine purpose, and the freewill of men should ultimately work in the same line with the infinite perfection of God, and so the result which God designed should be achieved by human freedom: therefore, that this perfect Cause and perfect Providence has provided human freedom as part of the perfect means whereby human destination is to be wrought out ;—which destination is not fate, but providence.

Well, this Idea of God, the consequent idea of the Universe and of the Relation between the two, cannot remain merely a theory; it will affect human life in all its most important details.

It will appear in the Form of Religion. Man must always work with such intellectual apparatus-faculties and ideas-as he has. With the Idea of the Infinite God, he must progressively construct a form of religion corresponding to that idea. That form of religion will comprise the subjective worship, and the objective service of God; and so it will become the Theoretic Ideal of Human Life.

Then that form of religion will appear in the Actual Life of men, and in all the modes and modifications thereof for no human force is so subtle as the religious; it extends, and multiplies, and goes into every department of human affairs;

"Spreads undivided, operates unspent."

Let us now look at the theoretic Form of religion which belongs to this idea, and at the Realization thereof in human life. Treating of a theme so vast I must pass over much which I would gladly say, and only briefly touch where I would fain pause long and dwell.

I. First, then, of the Form of Religion. Of Religion there are always two parts: namely, the subjective portion, which is Piety, consisting of emotions that are purely internal; and next the objective portion, which is Morality, internal in part, and external also; rooted in our consciousness of God, and branched abroad into practical