home of the blessed; the sanctified and saved are the great household of faith; the great assembly of the just is the family of God. Heaven is the communion of holy and happy spirits; there voice blends with voice in common praise; there soul responds to soul in common purified affection; there is no solitary blessedness; there is no selfish joy.

For such a destiny as this, who does not see that God is training us now? He is doing it in every variety and form of social intercourse. He is bringing before us, and holding up to our view those principles, those necessities, those duties, through which the selfish, isolating, wilful elements of our nature are subjected, and brought under the control of reason, conscience and kindly affections. He is showing us how we must live, if we would live in harmony and peace; by what laws and rules we must be guided here, if at last we would be one in spirit with the ransomed before the throne.

And this earthly discipline, to him who views it aright, is truly invaluable. A wise man, a truly wise man, will not rebel against it, although he may, at times, be tempted to say," Good Lord, deliver us," or even to cry out, "Let this cup pass from me." He knows that it is sometimes. better for us to meet opposition and endure misapprehension, than be lulled to lethargy by the monotony of applause. He knows that our roughnesses are chafed away sometimes by the roughnesses of others, even as the rough fragments of the beach are rounded to polished pebbles by friction, or what may be called the social discipline of the rocks. He knows that human civilization and social culture and the grand stimulus to self-improvement would be impossible, without those social conditions which involve the meeting and mutual operation, and

perhaps collision, of social qualities. He knows that unless we have been disciplined to terms of association, we cannot associate, unless by contact with others we learn to restrain ourselves and know our own place, we shall be like a superfluous cog in the wheel, or a discord in the general harmony.

But the highest virtues of heaven find their nursery on earth in the field of our social relations. The noblest lessons that can be imprinted upon the soul may be learned under the divine tuition amid scenes of social intercourse. Here we learn to love, pity, forbear and forgive. Here we learn to welcome self-denial for others, to anticipate their wants, to guard their steps, to pray for their welfare, to esteem their gratitude. We are taught also to recognize our responsibility in their behalf. Isolate men from one another, make hermits of them, and how could there ever be any chance for the record of those great loving and generous deeds that shine through the night of ages like the jewels of time's diadem? Where had been the meekness of Moses, the love of David and Jonathan, the national devotion of Esther, the brotherhood of the early disciples, the fidelity of the martyrs sealing for others their faith with their blood, or the missionary zeal that with loftiest heroism, has gone down the deep, dark mine of heathenism to rescue those exposed to perish? Nay! taking a lower level-who would ever have read with such a thrill of admiring wonder the noble deeds of patriarchs and philanthropists, the self-devotion of a Regulus, a Wilkenreid, a Tell, a Gustavus Adolphus, a Wilberforce, a Howard, or a Washington? God's wisdom is gloriously illustrated by so ordering our lot, that the highest elements of our spiritual education are brought home to our own doors, so that he who would

learn the lessons of forbearance, charity, and generous self-denial, need seek them not afar, where academic halls invite the favored few; not in senates, where giant minds contest the palm of eloquence; not on the world's battlefields, where genius and valor alone can attain distinction; but by the quiet fireside, where filial duty and brotherly and sisterly affection may check lawless passion, and impel to the heroic deeds of a self-subdued and subjugated will; by the very way-side of our pilgrimpath, where we may take a brother's hand with the outgushing sympathies of fraternal affection; amid the common walks of every day life, where we may endure wrong without a murmur and return good for evil; in our own lowly or limited neighborhood, where we may find objects of pity and relief, and win the rich blessings of those that were ready to perish.

We are in our school-room. The text-book of social duty is thrown open before us, and the finger of the Great Teacher is pointing out the lines. Here we are to learn to curb self-will, to exercise self-denial, to take into view the wants and claims of friends, neighbors and the whole human race. The work of ministering angels is before us, and we may learn it if we will. How, if we spurn text-book and Teacher, can we avoid the doom foreshadowed in the sentence, "He that is unfaithful in that which is least, will be also unfaithful in much ?”

13

XXXIII.

INFLUENCE.

"He being dead, yet speaketh.”—HEB. xi. 4.

O error is more common among men than that which is committed by a false estimate of moral forces. Whatever is material and palpable arrests attention, but that which is voiceless and unseen, eludes notice. The lightning is more demonstrative than the sunbeam, and the tornado than the falling dew. Yet, it would be a great mistake to judge them by the degree in which they are calculated to arrest attention. And so also the motives and agencies that shape human action and human life, and extend to the moulding of the destiny of nations, are slighted by the materialistic philosopher as unworthy of scrutiny. He recognises the volcano; he respects the earthquake; he concedes the importance of mountain and valley, river and lake, forest and prairie; but the unseen agencies of thought and emotion, the elements of moral truth, fail to attract his gaze. He sifts the sands of history, but the subtlest and yet most powerful elements elude his search. He retains the quartz pebbles, but loses the golden grains of truth. His philosophy is the sieve of the Danaidæ.

Yet all around us extends that moral world, invisible to the outward eye, which concerns us more deeply than

soil or climate. The atmosphere which pervades it is influence, and it is not of less importance to the soul than air is to the lungs. It may be laden with fragrance; or charged with deadly miasma; it may bear the healing dews upon its wing, or it may sweep over us in blasts deadly as the Simoon of the desert.

To the student of history, noting generation after generation passing off the stage, it is singular to observe how they are all linked together, so that no biography of character is, or can be perfectly complete, which does not recognise in it the shaping elements that have come down from distant ages, or been derived from distant lands. Society reaching back to the fall in Eden has a strange unity, and may be compared to a living organism of which influence is the life-blood. Popular opinion may be compared to the heart, which receives its tribute, through the arteries and veins of the social system, from the very extremities, and sends it forth pulsating to find its way to the remotest portions and the least conspicuous members of the whole. There is constant change, but nothing is lost. Every drop is gathered up and helps compose the aggregate.

There is no fact more obvious to one who observes what passes around him, than the power of influence. It is a power working unseen, but producing surprising results. It works in a sphere susceptible oftentimes of deep and lasting impression; it fashions opinion; it moulds character; it gives shape to the career and destiny of men and nations. On influences, seemingly unimportant, and sometimes exercised without design, great events in the world's history have been poised. In the moral world there is something analogous to what we see in the physical, when the change in direction of a few