And what shall I say of all those who have followed armies; who have buffeted storms; who have ventured into the infernal edge of battle; who have toiled night and day in military hospitals-those faithful surgeons who, while others smote to destroy, cut only to make alive; who bore the heat and burden of campaigning, the perils of climate and of battle, and finally fell, willing to die, but not willing to relinquish their humane and noble devotion to the suffering?

And what shall I say of heroic chaplains who, in the leisure of the camp, are instructors and servants of all, and who, like the noble Butler of New-Jersey, in battle, kept up with the line of fire, drawing out the wounded from among the dead, until he, too, fell dead, pierced to the heart?

And how shall I worthily enough speak of those angel bands of women who gave themselves, and in scores of instances gave their lives, to the unwearied performance of the duties of humanity? They counted not their lives dear unto them. They offered up their souls unto God, in hospitals, in fields, far from home, and among strangers, that they might be joined to their Lord in giving their lives for others.

Among the poor and lowly, among servants and humble laborers, how many have given their lives in affectionate fidelity to others! In the noise of the great grinding world their name and acts are not heard; but they are all marked in heaven. Not one in all the annals of time, nor in all the races of men, has ever given life for others willingly, that God did not mark and register and remember.

While, then, it is possible, literally, to give our life for others, and while we may sometimes be called in the performance of our duty to do it, so that we shall not say that dying for others is antiquated; yet, in the main, if we are to follow our Lord, and to give our lives for others, it must be by the use which we make of those lives.

Now, he who devotes the active hours of his life to those spheres to which Providence calls men, is really giving himself for others. It is not necessary that a man should go apart from life in order to do the work of piety. Piety is the right performance of a common duty, as well as the experience of a special moral emotion. Too often men think that religion, like music, is something that belongs to a department which is exceptional and quite outside of the ordinary routines of life. We leave religion to go to our work and duty. We forsake work and duty, at appropriate periods and pauses, to go back to religion. But a better conception of religion is, that it is the conduct of a man's disposition in work, by work. It is that which is inseparable from his identity. It is his nature, his carriage. It is the fibre of his feeling, and the sphere in which it develops itself. It is not upon holydays, but upon common days more than

upon any others, that it acts. For though upon special days his distinctively moral feelings may flame up and have more measure and conspicuity than upon others, they are not therefore his best days.

I have noticed that the slender brook which carries the mill is more musical on Sunday than on any other day; because the mill stands still, and the brook, having nothing to do with its water, gurgles over the rocks, and flounders over the dam, and makes a thousand times more merry noise than on any other day. But Monday comes, and the gates are hoisted, and the mill runs, and the brook is not so musical; but the mill is more so. The mill did nothing on Sunday; and the brook is doing more on Monday than it did on Sunday. It played on Sunday, but it works on Monday. And Christians, as it were, play in the spirit, and have a holy jollity, on Sunday. It is a holiday for them. Nor would I undervalue their experience or joy. But I say that they are not so busy when they sing and pray and rejoice in the sanctuary, as when, by the power of some moral emotion, they are combating temptation, and resisting pride, and overcoming selfishness, and building again the kingdoms of this world with the holy stones of the New Jerusalem. Then, when piety costs; then, when it means bearing, heroism, and achievement; not then when it seeks joy, but when it seeks battle-then men are nearest to God, and most like Christ. When a man stands upon the deck, and at the bench, and by the forge, and in the furrow, and in the colliery-then, if ever, if he has a life to live of true piety, is the time; and there, at the post of duty, is the place. For, all the humblest avocations and employments are so arranged that, while they serve to support the actor, they do a hundred times as much fo the community as they do for him that follows them. It is unfortunate that our habits of thought have not been more Christianized, and that our phrase has not been converted, as well as the people who use it. For, we are accustomed to speak of trades, various manual employments, and professions, in their lowest relations. If we speak of the carpenter's business, it is either as a toil or as a support. It is a toil, and it is a support; and these in their relative positions are not unworthy of consideration; but that is not the whole, nor the half-that is the least part. What a man himself derives from the cunning craft that he pursues, is not half so important, as it is not half so much, as what he gives by it.

The carpenter that builds a mansion, rearing it through the whole season, receives a few thousand dollars, and is supposed to be well paid, and is himself satisfied. And men seem to think that is the whole that he has done. He has worked diligently during the summer, he has earned his thousands to support his family; and perhaps a thousand or two is laid up for the time to come. And what

has he done? Earned his money? Yes, he has earned his money; but he has built a mansion in which a family shall be sheltered through a hundred years. He has built a temple where the old patriarch shall offer sacrifice and incense of devotion in the presence of coming generations many. He has built the halls where social joy shall be. Here is the room that grief shall fill with funeral; and here is the room that joy shall fill with wedding. Here is the room where children shall sport through the livelong year. Here are the threads of life, dark or light, gold and silver or black, to be wrought out and woven together. And here, when he is dead, and his children die, his work stands, and is the home of peace and comfort and piety -the very temple of God.

He built one, and ten, and twenty, and it may be a hundred of such dwellings; and he got what? A few pitiful thousands of dollars. And he gave what? he gave to the community benefits, opportunities, instruments, influences. In his skill, in his mind, or incarnated in timber or in metal, he gave to the community priceless gifts. And are we to take these precious inwardnesses of men which are imbedded in their labor, and to think of them only in the poor, pitiful light of pelf, of what they brought back to the pocket, and not of what, through them, the man brought back to the community?

Why, that old smith, rugged himself, almost, as the storms he prepares to combat, hammers morning and night upon the links that form the chain which clasps the cable. It may be, as in the olden time, yet more ponderously, that he in the stithy works on the huge shank of the anchor; and when his summer's work or winter's toil is do: e, and it is sold for the ship, men ask him, "What got you for your labor?" Nobody ever thinks of saying to him, "You have worked a whole winter to make a gift; what have you given to the community?" What has he given? It may not be known for a long

On voyage after voyage the ship goes, and there lies his gift, useless and unsuspected. Some day, the ship bears back a thousand precious souls, among them mothers whose flowers lie at home waiting for them to return; fathers, who can not be spared from the neighborhood; public men of signal service-the very salt of the times in which they live; heroes and patriots many. Then it is that the storm beats down and seeks to whelm them all in the sea, and to whelm the community in mourning. Then it is that, when every other effort has been made in vain, the anchor is thrown out. And now the storm rages with increased violence, as if it were yet more angry because it is thwarted. But the good blacksmith's work holds. Sinking far out of sight, and grappling the foundations of the earth, it will not let go. And we, for the first time, see the value of his gift. Every link has been properly welded; and, though the wind howls,

and the sea wages a fierce and desperate battle, and the strain is tremendous, the storm passes by, and there rides the gallant ship safe! There is what he gave. He gave a chain, an anchor, to the community, and salvation to the hundreds on board the ship, and joy and peace where the tidings come of souls saved from the remorseless deep. And yet, how many men think simply that he made an anchor, and got so many hundred dollars for it! He made an anchor, and saved a hundred lives.

So men that fill our houses with conveniences, with comforts, with various instruments by which our time is redeemed to higher and nobler uses; men that make implements-they give my brain a gift. He that makes a machine, emancipates me. For if matter can not be made to toil upon matter, then men must toil upon it. And just in proportion as you make slaves-the only slaves that are fit for this world-machine slaves-just in that proportion you redeem the mind to greater leisure, and to a larger sphere for the moral functions of manhood. And all men that labor thus productively and skillfully are real benefactors of the community. And why do not they know it? Why do not they feel the honor? Why do not men preach it to them? Why are they not told that they should not look upon the mere self-side of their avocations? The merchant, the mechanic, the day-laborer, bearing endless benefactions to the community-why do not they regard their labors in a higher light? Why do they not feel that they are contributing to the welfare of their fellow-men, as well as to their own welfare, and that so they are following Christ? If they only did their life-work on purpose to follow Christ, if they only did it because it was following Christ, if they only joyed in following him, and if the consciousness of following him was their reward, then they would rise to the dignity of some remote imitation of the Master; whereas, they are without the reward, even though they do the same thing, if they do it only for selfish, pitiful pelf.

Let every man, then, follow the occupation that God has given him, and understand that in following it he is rendering a service to his fellow-men; and let him feel, "I am honored in these appointed channels of God's providence, that I am permitted to give my life for my fellow-men-that is, to live it for them."

'The accumulations of industry, of skill, and of enterprise; the power which comes from them, and the power which comes from study, from experience, and from refinement, are all of them but so much which men have the means of giving for their fellow-men. Too often, now, as men grow wiser, they despise the vulgar and the ignorant. As men grow richer, they can not any longer consort with common people. As men grow finer, the vulgarity and the coarseness of the rude is insufferable to their morbid refinement. And as men be

come better, it is said-I say worse-they go further and further from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who brought with him. the glory of that nature which he could not relinquish: "Who," though he "thought it not robbery to be equal with God," "made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross: wherefore God hath highly exalted him."

Now, in proportion as you are noble, in proportion as God has made you wiser and stronger than any body else, in proportion as study and opportunity have refined you and cultured you—in that proportion God requires that you should give the benefit of your gifts and attainments to the whole community. You can not follow Christ except you do it. Do I not see men who think they follow Christ, but who manifest none of the spirit of Christ? What is the nature of that religion which satisfies itself with empty compliances of the sanctuary? Do I not see many men who honor the Sabbath, but care nothing for those people for whom the Sabbath was made? Many men honor the sanctuary, they really love prayer, they really glow under the hymn, they delight in taking official part in the services and duties of religion; nevertheless, so soon as they have performed their own duty to God, what becomes of their life? How many there are that began life as the worm begins it, and fed voraciously until they were full, and then silently sloughed their wormskin, and spun around about them a silken house! They retired from life. And you shall find a great many such Christian worms, that have had the benefit of the whole summer, and have retired to some out of the way place, where, suspended, as it were, from the limbs of trees, in these silk-wound cocoons the chrysalis waits for the next

summer.

The chrysalis is not a fool. There is a next summer for him. But if a man attempts to do the same thing; if he feeds upon all God's bounties, and only succeeds in spinning out of his own bowels for himself a silken dwelling, and then wraps himself up in that, there is no next summer to him. He will never come to be a butterfly, though the chrysalis will, and will rise up in judgment against him. He will be damned! For that which is very well for a bug, is very poor for a Christian. And yet, how many men there are who hold themselves bound by arguments, and bound by doctrines, and bound by churches, and bound by all the various prescriptive rights which are innocent enough in themselves-which, if they do not do any good, do not do much hurt-how many there are that spend their lives in the midst of all the pleasing trifles of that vast museum of curiosities which are labeled "religious," and think themselves Christians! Here are all the forces of the understanding; here are