the devil." It comes to our entire race and says, "You're a ruin, a ghastly ruin, an illimitable ruin." Satan sometimes says to me, "Why do you preach that truth? Why don't you preach a gospel with no repentance in it? Why don't you flatter men's hearts so that you make them feel all right? Why don't you preach a humanitarian gospel with no repentance in it, saying nothing about the ruin, talking all the time about redemption? Instead of preaching to five thousand you might preach to twenty thousand, for there would be four times as many who would come to hear a popular truth as to hear an unpopular truth, and you have voice enough to make them hear." I say, "Get thee behind me, Satan." I would rather lead five souls into heaven than twenty thousand into hell. The redemption of the gospel is a perfect farce if there is no ruin. "The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." "If any one, though he be an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel than this," says the apostle, "let him be accursed." There must be the midnight ride over the ruins before Jerusalem can be built There must be the clicking of the hoofs before there can be the ring of the trowels.

Again. My subject gives me a specimen of busy and triumphant sadness. If there was any man in the world who had a right to mope and give up everything as lost, it was Nehemiah. You say, "He was a cupbearer in the palace of Shushan, and it was a grand place." So it was. The hall of that palace was two hundred feet square, and the roof hovered over thirty-six marble pillars, each pillar sixty feet high; and the intense blue of the sky, and the deep green of the forest foliage, and the white of the driven snow, all hung trembling in the upholstery. But, my friends,you know very well that fine

architecture will not put down home-sickness. Yet Nehe miah did not give up. Then when you see him going among these desolated streets, and by these dismantled towers, and by the torn-up grave of his father, you would suppose that he would have been disheartened, and that he would have dismounted from his horse and

gone to his room and said: "Woe is me! My father's grave is torn up. The temple is dishonored. The walls are broken down. I have no money with which to rebuild. I wish I had never been born. I wish I were dead." Not so says Nehemiah. Although he had a griet so intense that it excited the commentary of his king, yet that penniless, expatriated Nehemiah rouses himself up to rebuild the city. He gets his permission of abHe hastens away to He gets his passports.

sence.

Jerusalem. By night on horseback he rides through the ruins. He overcomes the most ferocious opposition. He arouses the piety and patriotism of the people, and in less than two months, namely, in fifty-two days, Jerusa lein was rebuilt. That's what I call busy and triumpant sadness.

My friends, the whole temptation is with you when you have trouble, to do just the opposite to the behavior of Nehemiah, and that is to give up. You say: "I have lost my child and can never smile again." You say, "I have lost my property, and I never can repair my fortunes." You say, "I have fallen into sin, and I never can start again for a new life." If Satan can make you form that resolution, and make you keep it, he has ruined you Trouble is not sent to crush you, but to arouse you, to animate you, to propel you. The blacksmith does not thrust the iron into the forge, and then blow away with the bellows, and then bring the hot iron out on the anvil and beat with stroke after strike to ruin the iron, but to

prepare it for a better use. Oh that the Lord God of Nehemiah would rouse up all broken-hearted people to rebuild. Whipped, betrayed, shipwrecked, imprisoned, Paul went right on. The Italian martyr Algerius sits in his.dungeon writing a letter, and he dates it "From the delectable orchard of the Leonine prison." That is what I call triumphant sadness. I knew a mother who buried her babe on Friday and on Sabbath appeared in the house of God and said: "Give me a class; give me a Sabbath-school class. I have no child now left me, and I would like to have a class of little children. Give me real poor children. Give me a class off the back street." That, I say, is beautiful. That is triumphant sadnessAt three o'clock this afternoon, in a beautiful parlor in Philadelphia—a parlor pictured and statuetted-there will be from ten to twenty destitute children of the street. It has been so every Sabbath afternoon at three o'clock for sixteen years. These destitute children receive religious instruction, concluding with cakes and sandwiches. How do I know that that has been going on for sixteen years! I know it in this way. That was the first home in Philadelphia where I was called to comfort a great sorrow. They had a splendid boy, and he had been drowned at Long Branch. The father and mother almost idolized the boy, and the sob and shriek of that father and mother as they hung over the coffin resound in my ears to-day. There seemed to be no use of praying, for when I knelt down to pray, the outcry in the room drowned out all the prayer. But the Lord comforted that sorrow. They did not forget their trouble. If you should go this snowy afternoon into Laurel Hill, you would find a monument with the word “Walter” inscribed upon it, and a wreath of fresh flowers around the name. I think there has not been an hour

But

in sixteen years, winter or summer, when there was not a wreath of fresh flowers around Walter's name. the Christian mother who sends those flowers there, having no child left, Sabbath afternoons mothers ten or twenty of the lost ones of the street. That is beautiful That is what I call busy and triumphant sadness. Here is a man who has lost his property. He does not go to ha.d drinking. He does not destroy his own life. He comes and says, “Haruess me for Christian work. My money's gone. I have no treasures on earth. I want treasures in heaven. I have a voice and a heart to serve God." You say that that man has failed. He has not failed-he has triumphed. Oh, I wish I could persuade all the people who have any kind of trouble never to give up. I wish they would look at the midnight rider of the text, and that the four hoofs of that beast on which Nehemiah rode might cut to pieces all your dis couragements, and hardships, and trials. Give up! Who is going to give up, when on the bosom of God he can have all his troubles hushed? Give up! Never think of giving up. Are you borne down with poverty! A little child was found holding her dead mother's hand in the darkness of a tenement-house, and some one com ing in, the little girl looked up, while holding her dead mother's hand, and said: "Oh, I do wish that God had made more light for poor folks." My dear, God will be your light, God will be your shelter, God will be your home. Are you borne down with the bereavements of life! Is the house lonely now that the child is gone! Do not give up. Think of what the old sexton said when the minister asked him why he put so much care on the little graves, in the cemetery-so much more care than on the larger graves, and the old sexton said "Sir, you know that ‘of such is the kingdom of heaven,' and

I think the Savior is pleased when He sees so much white clover growing around these little graves." But when the minister pressed the old sexton for a more satisfactory answer, the old sexton said: "Sir, about these larger graves, I don't know who are the Lord's saints and who are not; but you know, sir, it is clean different with the bairns." Oh, if you have had that keen, tenZer, indescribable sorrow that comes from the loss of a child, do not give up. The old sexton was right. It is all well with the bairns. Or, if you have sinned, if yon have sinned grievously-sinned until you have been cast out by the Church, sinned until you have been cast out by society, do not give up. Perhaps there may be in this house one that could truthfully utter the lamenta. tion of another:

"Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell-
Fell like a snowflake, from heaven to hell-
Fell, to be trampled as filth in the street-
Fell, to be scoffed at, spit on, and beat;
Praying, cursing, wishing to die.
Selling my soul to whoever would buy,
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread,

Hating the living, and fearing the dead.”

Do not give up. One like unto the Son of God comes you to-day, saying, "Go and sin no more;" while He cries out to your assailants, "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone at her." Oh! there is no reason why any one in this house, by reason of any trouble or sin, should give up. Are you a foreigner, and in a strange and Nehemiah was an exile. Are you penniless? Nehemiah was poor. Are you homesick? Nehemiah was homesick. Are you broken-hearted? Nehemiah was broken-hearted. But just see him in the text, riding long the sacrileged grave of his father, and by the