them, and help them. Be ye ready. There are ten thousand opportunities. All that is wanting is that you should have a heart to improve the opportunities and make use of the means. Now Christ says to every one of you, 66 Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Is there any thing worth living for more than such a mission? It is good for a man to write a book. A book will live, and shall have no sexton; but he himself will soon die, and be laid away. A book is an invention by which men live after they are dead so far as this world is concerned. A hymn or song that deserves to live is lifted above persecution. The tyrant or despot can not touch it. But oh! neither book, nor hymn, nor song, nor any product of the human mind, is to be compared with the immortal life itself; and ye that save one soul, and lift it, by the power of your instrumentality, blessed of God, into the sphere of immortality and glory, shall shine as the stars in the firmament ! Such achievements will be a source of more joy, when you stand in Zion and before God, than all the treasures of the world. For when death comes, not your ships, not your store-houses, not your piles of gold, not your reputation among your fellow-citizens, not even the joys of the future state, if you could rise and see them in the light of eternity, would you value in comparison with the satisfaction of having been permitted to save one soul. Some of you are just beginning life. Learn early that to help others is to bless yourself! Your joy is bound up in others' benefit. Some of you are in the midst of life. I do not ask you to lay aside your profession or your trade that you may preach the Gospel. Some men, perhaps, might well become preachers. One of the most eminent lawyers in Boston, who was lately converted, has given himself to the work of preaching the Gospel, and he promises to be as useful, if not more useful, than many of the ministers of that city. I think it is glorious for men, when they have made enough to live on, to say, "I am satisfied, and now I will de vote all my time to my fellow-men." I like to see men rising from lower to higher spheres of activity. But most of you will go on in your present spheres. Go on, then, as you are; but remember that there is somebody at your hand that needs succor which you can give. All you need is consecration; all you want is God with you; your greatest need is a holy heart, a real love, an honest purpose, a manly disposition to save men. God will give you the opportunity. Some of you are drawing near to the end of life. Take one more companion along toward heaven with you. There are many of you that, if you could look into heaven, would see waiting for you a part of that host that shall throng the gate, and give you a choral entrance into the Celestial City. You have saved many souls; but are you satisfied not to save one more? No man ever hunted that he did not want to take yet more game, though his bag was full. No man ever fished in the brook that he did not want to catch one more fish. You are coming to the last turn in the brook. Throw again. You can not carry up too many souls for Christ. Brethren, our time is near at hand. Some of you will never meet here again. Some of you will never hear me preach again. But in the judgment day, at that hour when we stand before the throne, one thought, one feeling, will rise above every other-that which relates to God and eternity. Live, then, as in that hour you will wish you had lived. The following Discourse was delivered by Mr. Beecher on the eve of his departure for Europe, as a familiar Lecture to his own people, on Wednesday evening, May 27th, 1863, in the Lecture-room of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. A CONVERSATION ABOUT CHRIST. "And behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them."-Luke, xxiv., 13–15. WE are not exactly like this band of disciples, and yet we are a disciple-band. We are not walking in the midst of the same troubles and disasters which had overshadowed them, and yet we are in some sense walking together in the twilight and in the evening. And it is very fit that we should talk one with another; not, as they did, of disappointed hopes and expectations, but of hopes fulfilled and of expectations realized. I want, then, to speak to-night only a little, but that little I desire to speak of the sacred name of Christ, who is my life, my inspiration, my hope, and my surety. I can not help stopping and looking back upon the past. It is thrust upon me every day again and again; and my personal and experimental life, in some sense, is separated from my current experience. I look at it almost as a thing that has had nothing to do with me, and that belongs to some other one. And I wish, as if I had never done it before, to bear witness to-night, not only that it is by the grace of God, but that it is by the grace of God as manifested in Christ Jesus, that I am what I am. I recognize the sublimity and grandeur of the revelation of God in his eternal fatherhood as one that made the heavens, that founded the earth, and that regards all the tribes |