simply of asking for something. It works through a celestial magnetizing of the whole soul. It lifts a man above the infirmities of the flesh. It brings him into the region of supernal power. It gives him the inspiration of God Himself. God answers prayer just as in Nature he answers the wishes of the husbandman. He makes the clouds to rain, and the sun to shine; and forth from the earth come ten thousand voices of birds and insects, singing and chirping, making the air vocal, and filling our hearts full of song. And all things grow and flourish under the influence of the great vivifying Force of Nature. So when we walk with God, and live with Him, our prayers are answered, whatever we may ask for, because to love, all things are lawful. We pray for whatever we want, because we love God, because we are near to Him, because we adore Him, and because we are enraptured with the thought of His glory; and he sends answers to our prayers through ourselves, and outside of ourselves, in ten thousand ways. It is not half so much importance that we should know how the thing comes, as that we should know that the thing does come— peace, rest, purity, hope, aspiration, courage in darkness, insight into the life to come; the prolongation of our manhood into the eternal sphere, that we may feel the crown before ever it is put upon our head; that we may hear songs before ever they are uttered by us, sung by those who await us in heaven. That which is immortal in us has not time to ripen in the short summer of this world. Generosity is kindness drawn out by the sight of need. It is the ministration of our senses in the work of kindness. Liberality provides for that need which is not seen, which our superior reason foresees or imagines. One acts as an emotion, the other as a judgment. The one is of the heart, the other is of the intellect as well as of the heart. One moves in a circuit of material things, the other is aeriform. The conjunction of the two furnishes the noblest form of benevolence—that which works both by sight and by faith. Generosity is a glorious thing, but it is not everything; it is inferior to liberality, and certainly it is inferior to both liberality and generosity. Liberality for the husband, generosity for the wife; that is, they ought to be married to each other, and then they form a perfect unity. Generosity works by sight; liberality works by faith. Never deliberate on your word, but let it go as the arrow goes to the target — let it strike and stand. Words are but the bannerets of a great army; thoughts are the main body of the future. Words show here and there a little gleam in the air, but the great multitude of thoughts march unseen below. How much of thought there is in cultivated men! How much of thought that goes for thin language! But how much more thought that never rides in the chariot of language! How much men think day by day that is only thinking! In my orchards to-day, there are, I think, on single cherry-trees thousands of blossoms; and probably all but about a hundred or two of those will drop without a cherry having formed under them. Men are like such trees. They breed thoughts by the millions, that result in action only in the scores and the hundreds. How much of thought and feeling is there, and what an incessant work is going on within the sensorium of the body, among men! How many angers, how many griefs, how many hopes, how many wishes, how many purposes; what ranges of speculation, what building of plans, some on the ground, and some in the air! What wonderful goods are being woven more won derful than by the Jacquard loom—in the manufactory of the head; and yet how little ever comes forth into the merchant's salesroom, how little is ever visible! We think, I suppose, a hundred times more than we ever put into action, or put into language, into visible exponential form. Folk's good and bad is like a board-teeter end goes up, t'other is sure to go down. No person is born great. If a man becomes great, it is by that struggle in life by which he develops himself. Greatness consists not in what one has, but in what use one makes of his possessions-not in capacity, but in a right exercise of that capacity. Doubt and faith are born twins, and you have no right to separate them. They ought to recognize each other. Doubt of things past is simply clearing the way to a brighter and a nobler future; and since with the spirit of knowledge, old things are passing away, let us thank God, and only ask that the doubters may become the new men of a generation of faith. Right in front of my house I have a beech-tree. All winter long, because its leaves were so beautiful during the summer, it holds on to them. In January they are there; in February they are there; in March they are there. In May the tree begins to grow and one after the other the leaves begin to drop. There is nothing that will undo the old dead leaf that has no juice in it, so quickly as growth in the tree. When men are growing, the old leaves begin to drop off. It is not a sign of decadence; it is a sign that summer is coming, that the tree is growing larger, and the gloss on the old leaves is a mere prophecy of the coming of new ones, fresher ones, brighter ones. The skepticism of honest men unfolds the truth, and becomes the conviction of the after-time. The unbelief of to-day is the faith of to-morrow. Prayer Paul was a moral genius. There are moral geniuses just as much as there are musical or artistic. is as much an original gift of genius with many men as poetry is with others. Spiritual insight is a gift; that is, some men have genius in that direction. Some men have genius in dealing with matter, and some have genius in the direction of mind or formative |