The church is a garden of the Lord where men are planted for the sake of growing. There is no charm in it, no promise in it; but there is culture, hopefulness and helpfulness in it. Not but that a man may live a Christian life outside of the church—he may. So a man may raise fruit on the side of the road; but the boys will be very apt to steal it; whereas, a sheltered tree behind the wall will carry its fruit to the right hands, and will be permitted to ripen it fully. A man may live a Christian life outside of the church; but he will be an extraordinary man if he does. There are some extraordinary men who do. I do not wish to instill in your minds any superstition that you cannot live a Christian life unless you join the church. A man may go to California across lots if he has a mind to; and if he gets there, he has got there that is all; but that is not the easiest way, and it is not the way that would be most likely to get him there. A man may educate himself and never go to school; but it is a great deal better that a man should go to school. It will facilitate his learning, and enlarge him in many ways.

You can.

Can a man become a Christian without acknowledging Christ? Just as far toward it as an apple can ripen without acknowledging the sun. An apple can grow, and get size, and get shape, and get juice with

out the shining of the sun; but I will defy any apple to get sweetness cut of that juice. I will defy any apple to change its sour sap into sweet sap, until it has the sun shining on it. And no man can become a Christian without the supernal light.

You may carry a lighted candle into a conservatory; but it will coax out no blossom. If, however, you let the sun shine in on the plants, a thousand blossoms will come out at once. And there is no mere human element that will ever bring out the blossoms of the soul. You must get the Sun of Righteousness to shine into the soul if you would have it blossom.

The spirit of the Gospel is democratic. The tendency of the Gospel is leveling, leveling up—not down. It is carrying the poor and the multitude onward and upward. It is said that democracies have no great men, no heroic men. Why is it so? When you raise the average of intelligence and power in the community it is very hard to be a great man. That is to say, when the great mass of citizens are only ankle high, when among the Lilliputians a Brobdingnagian walks, he is a great man. But when the Lilliputians grow until they get up to his shoulder, he is not so great a man as he was by the whole length of his body. So, make the common people grow, and there is nobody tall enough to be much higher.

The great mistake is made of supposing that an intellectual system is the Gospel. I am sure that there is no Gospel except that which is in the lives of men. The wisdom of God in the production of gentleness, sweetness, patience, long-suffering, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice - that is the Gospel.

Ideas are not Gospel; dispositions are Gospel; and he who brings to men thoughts of liberty in all things right and noble and good, and cheerfulness, and lovableness, and forgiveness, and patience, and longsuffering, and gentleness in the warfare of this lifehe that lives Christ knows Christ, and can preach Christ. Nobody else can. You may bring me a catalogue of fruits; all the fruits of earth do not taste good out of a catalogue. Bring me one cluster from the orchard, that touches at once my palate and my imagination. Gospel living is the only ordination that can make a man God's priest and God's minister.

The power of the Gospel is in the living of it, and not in the proclaiming it.

No man can preach any more of the Gospel than he has living in himself.

Sentiments are not despicable because they do not work at the mill, because they do not plow, because they bring no fruit for the counter or the till, because they have no money value. Sentiments are not indifferent and worthless. The riches of life are in them.

People of much sentiment are like fountains, whose overflow keeps a disagreeable puddle about them.

There is a providence of God, of a thinking of God for us; but it is no such providence or thinking as ever takes the place of, or interferes with, our own personal wisdom. There is a providence of God, but it never weaves cloth.

I have noticed that God's providence is on the side of clear heads.

We are the children of the King, and though yet our crown is not stretched out to us, though our hands are too feeble to hold the scepter, we are not unknown wonders in this life. We are well known and thought of, and our names are registered, and our places kept,

and all the joy of heaven, that so many myriads possess, is ours.

The care of no bird that flutters over her nest to feed her young, and the care of no mother who watches the cradle for her babe, is to be compared with God's tender care for us.

I think the whole round globe is but a cradle, and that God rocks it with his foot.

God's designs are seeds planted in human affairsthe seed tells the story of its destiny as fast as it grows, no faster.

God's methods of gaining victories, of securing results, frequently defeat our wisdom. We are in the smoke and confusion of the battle, confused and blinded.

Like children we like to drive until affairs begin to run away with us; then we cry out, "Where is our Father?"